John didn't like to gripe about the things he missed about Atlantis. If he wanted to bitch, he was generally content to call Rodney and let him do it for him. It took less energy and was more amusing.

But there had been days in the week or so since the Lanteans had kicked them out of the Pegasus Galaxy when he missed certain things acutely. Like the puddlejumpers, for instance, John thought as he dabbed experimentally at a small cut on his cheekbone the SGC doctors had treated less than an hour earlier. They just made running for your life so much more time-effective.

The SGC wasn't Atlantis and John hadn't expected it to be. Yes, he was grateful that he still got to lead offworld missions but it wasn't the same and it had been a close one this time. A close one without the benefit of a puddlejumper. So, he was maybe a little homesick. He'd had to pick up and leave often enough in his life that it wasn't a big deal. He was just tired, that was all. The sort of aching and worn-out fatigue that seeped into all your locked places and loosened things you'd rather keep stowed tightly away.

That and he kept forgetting that the doors didn't just slide open for him anymore.

His first day on duty in the Cheyenne Mountain base he'd forgotten and in the extra 5 odd seconds it'd taken him to remember why the door wasn't taking care of itself had been hit from behind by a little waif of a scientist who'd been too buried in her notes to notice him.

He'd stumbled forward a step, nearly colliding with the door, but she'd gone sprawling backwards to the floor. Her skirt rode up long, slim legs and she'd made a small squeaking sound as she hit the ground which he very carefully did not laugh at. He knelt to help her desperate scramble to pick up the papers that had scattered all over the corridor.

"I didn't see you," she'd said, distractedly. "I just didn't see you."

John figured that was because her glasses, thin, black wire-frames, were lying on the ground five feet away from her. He picked them up and handed them to her. When she slid her glasses back on her face, they coupled with her dark messy bun to complete the librarian-esque image.

She blushed a little as she climbed hastily to her feet. "Oh. Colonel Sheppard. Hi."

"Hello."

"I'm sorry. I really didn't see you there, Colonel." She held out the left, ringless, hand and John took it, using it to pull himself up and then shaking it a little awkwardly.

"That's all right..."

"Oh. Um, Helena. I'm Dr. Helena Meyers." She glanced down at the unwieldy stack of papers she held in her free hand. "It's okay that you don't know me. You just got back and I'm down in the labs with the computer engineering division all the time."

John nodded. "Sounds interesting."

She tilted her head, and looked at him appraisingly from the bottom of his worn boots to the top of his head. "Really?" she asked skeptically.

John gave her a grin. "No, but I just knocked you down and I'm trying to be nice. You're ruining it."

She smiled at him and he'd liked the way it went all the way up to her big brown eyes. "You get points for the effort."

"We're keeping score now?"

She'd smiled again before finally pulling her hand from his. "Women are always keeping score, Colonel." Her tone was coy and sort of throaty but it shifted almost instantly back to that harried scientist distraction he was used to from Rodney. "But I have to go. These were already late. Nice talking to you," she said as she sidled past him and out the door he still hadn't opened.

Now that he'd noticed her, it was as if all of a sudden Helena was everywhere in the SGC. Her presence had made several meals in the mess a more pleasant experience if only by virtue of the fact that he didn't eat alone. And in the past week, they'd had half a dozen brief conversations as they passed each other in the halls. Nothing important got said, just mild flirtation that had gotten less harmless as time went on until that last encounter, the one they'd had as he'd left the infirmary, not half an hour ago.

The memory of the seemingly mild-mannered Dr. Helena Meyers' frank offer of dinner made John significantly less tired. Saying no to an alien princess who wants you to be her king and rule her backwater planet is one thing, after all. But saying no to a mature Earth woman when she asked you out on a date was something else entirely.

After all, she was hot in a naughty teacher sort of way. John was a man who could appreciate a beautiful being - woman, man, ascended Ancient, whatever - and Helena was textbook pretty beneath those glasses and her general state of disarray.

But what was really hot about her was that she was smart. Intelligence had always turned him on and she was very, very smart. Not Rodney smart, but of course if Rodney was to be believed no one was. But still she was a genius, a card-carrying member of Mensa (he hadn't seen the card but she'd offered to show him in a tone that had made a little piece of laminated paper seem sexual—yet another of the many reasons he liked her) and she'd done the hard part of making the first move for him.

So now he had a date for the night. His first real date since before he'd started his first tour in Antarctica. The simple prospect of an evening with a beautiful, intelligent woman he wouldn't have to lie to about his job was enough to put a spring in his step and make the mission reports and paperwork he had to fill out before he could leave seem like less of a chore.

He hadn't mentioned the date to Rodney when he'd called that afternoon. He hadn't mentioned Helena at all, because they were good friends but there some places they didn't go.

No. That wasn't really true. Rodney's habit of speaking before thinking had informed John of more than he sometimes wanted to know. The reality was that there were places he didn't like to go and in the last few years, Rodney had learned not to push.

But that was okay. This thing with Helena wasn't the sort of thing he'd want a friend's input on. And even if it had been, he still wouldn't have wanted Rodney's. The man, for all his skill with machines and math and the physical universe in general, was god-awful with women and John didn't want his bad mojo rubbing off on him.

He worked for the SGC, for God's sake. He had enough bad luck already.

~*~*~

Helena's glasses were on crooked. They hung off one ear and John could not believe how hot the lopsided messy look was on her. Of course the fact that her glasses were all she was wearing didn't hurt in the least.

"So do you still respect me, Colonel Sheppard?" Helena asked, her chin resting on her hand. Her hand, of course, was resting on the bare skin of his chest.

This wasn't where he'd expected to end up on the first date. Hoped? Yeah, of course. Every guy wanted to get to this part as quickly as possible and the ones who said differently were lying.

But he'd slept with her—twice now, which wasn't bad considering how long it had been since he'd been with anyone—and he still wanted to talk to her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like that. Chaya, maybe, but he wasn't sure if she counted.

"If anything I respect you more," John replied as he lifted a hand to fix her glasses. "That flippy thing was worthy of an Olympic medal. Of course, if that was in the Olympics, they wouldn't air on basic cable."

Helena laughed. "What can I say? I've got game."

"You have it and you win."

She smiled at him and laid her head on his chest. The urge to run like hell wasn't strong enough to drive him out of bed so he let himself run his fingers through her dark hair. It was the first time she'd had it loose since he met her.

"What are you thinking?"

John sighed but smiled. "You had to ruin it."

"I'm a girl, John. I couldn't help it." She tapped her fingers on his skin. "Come on, tell me."

"I was counting backwards from a thousand."

"How far were you?"

"Six hundred ninety three."

"You're a quick counter."

"I'm good with math."

"Me too. Computer science and all." Helena lifted her head so she could look at his face. "John?"

"Hm?"

"Do you want to do this again?"

"This going out and having dinner or this naked gymnastics?"

"Either. Both would be nice."

"I think I could be convinced."

Cold hit his skin as she rolled off of him and scooted up the bed to rest her head on the pillows. John watched as she turned to face him.

"Next time we both have a night off?" she offered.

"If that happens before we all get blown up or conquered then you've got yourself a date, Dr. Meyers."

~*~*~

"It's too dry here. It's playing hell with my sinuses. I'm on the verge of a spontaneous nosebleed every time I go out in that heat."

"Like in those Japanese cartoons when they see a pretty girl?" John asked. He held the phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder so that he was free to doodle on a pad of paper instead of filling out his mission report.

"What? No. I'm just sensitive to the dry heat."

"You're just bored, Rodney."

"Possibly. You're not?"

"In general or just at the moment?"

John stared down at the picture he was drawing. It was a really really bad sketch of a puddlejumper which was currently resembling a can of Campbell's soup more than a space ship. But it was more entertaining than writing a mission report for boring planet PX-seventy billion or wherever.

So maybe he was bored with work, yes, but he was off duty tonight. And so was Helena.

All in all, the month back on Earth hadn't been a complete bore.

"Colonel, I have about seventeen time-sensitive projects I could be working on."

"You called me."

"That's beside the point," he snapped and John could almost see Rodney waving his hand dismissively at him. He couldn't stop himself from smiling at the image.

"It can't be that time-sensitive if you're making social calls. Is the solar system going to blow up? Because if it is I can let you go," he teased.

"No," Rodney said sourly. "I am not going to blow up another solar system. I didn't blow up the whole thing and we said we were going to stop bringing that up all the time. I made one little mistake and you people just can't let it go."

"It was a pretty big boom, Rodney."

"Who uses the word 'boom' in conversation? You're like a six-year-old."

"Hey, my inner child is nine and he takes offense at that."

"Don't you have work to do?" Rodney demanded.

John added a few lines to his puddlejumper sketch. The poor thing was really hideous. The Lanteans would be horrified. He felt like sending them a copy of his rendering in a databurst for General O'Neill. Or he should show it to Helena. She'd get a kick out of it and he liked it when she laughed. Then again, so would Rodney. Although Rodney didn't really laugh that often, come to think of it.

He needed to get to a Xerox machine. Then he could do all three.

"Don't you? You're the important scientist guy."

"Oh yes, I was in the middle of making a series of personal jet packs before I called."

John sat up at that. Because really, what guy hadn't wanted a jet pack when he was little? He certainly had. And maybe he wouldn't say no to one now. If he was offered.

"Really?"

"What? No! Jet packs aren't real. For god's sake, the amount of heat generated from the thrust that would be required from that sort of jet propulsion system would burn your legs off before it ever got you off the ground."

"Way to kill my fantasy there, pal."

"You fantasize about jet packs? Clearly, you're more twisted than I thought, which is saying something."

John wondered for a moment how Rodney would react if he had any idea what John really fantasized about. Not well, most likely. Although to be honest, a jet pack had never come up before. Now it was there in full force, fitting neatly into an image of Rodney in a barely-there leather superhero costume along the lines of Batman or possibly Nightwing that flashed through John's mind's eye.

The visual should have been a ridiculous one, as the idea of Rodney as anything even close to Batman could have been dorkier but not without a lot of work. Yet John found it to be startlingly hot and a bit unexpected.

John had forced himself out of the habit of thinking about Rodney like that now that he didn't see him every day. He found it was easier not to dwell on what he'd decided long ago was a pointless and juvenile crush when the object of the obsession was hundreds of miles away than it was when he was living down the hall from Rodney. Biweekly phone calls did not call for the same sort of closeness as living that close to someone and surviving dangerous missions through the gate together.

The fantasies had thankfully become less frequent once they'd been parted for awhile. John had them even less now that he was seeing Helena. And if thinking about Rodney sexually didn't come up, thinking about having to hide his desire didn't either.

It was only when Rodney called that those annoying issues seem to float up out of his subconscious. So, needless to say, he was a little distracted by the task of pushing them safely into the back of his mind where they belonged and came back to the conversation a little bit behind.

"—in a week."

"What?"

"Did you go deaf or did you just stop listening to me?"

"Are you going to yell if I say I stopped listening?"

"I would consider the option but you're not worth the energy."

"I won't be swayed by flattery so don't bother."

"Are you at least listening now? Or is your paperwork that much more interesting than our conversation?"

"I don't know. I've got some requisition forms I could be filling out. And I could probably catch Helena if I leave now. "

"Who?"

"Helena," John said, because she'd been a fixture in his life for a month and so of course Rodney knew about her. Only he didn't. "This girl I'm sorta...she's a girl."

"Is she an Ascended girl?"

"She's just a girl," John sighed.

A very smart, very pretty girl who he suspected knew a thing or two about gymnastics. A girl whose regular presence in his life and bed provided a considerable consolation prize for losing Atlantis, his contact with Teyla, Ronon, and Elizabeth, and his chance to fly in outer space on a regular basis.

"Really? I didn't know you went for the non-Ascended type."

"She's from New Hampshire."

"New Hampshire's up from here in latitude isn't it? So technically she has to ascend to get back. You really should double-check her references. Make sure she has, I don't know, parents."

"You don't really think you're funny, do you?"

"Who's being funny? You've got a track record, Picard."

John rubbed at his eyebrow with the eraser of his pencil, as if that would somehow erase the irritation from his brain. "McKay."

"What?"

"Setting aside the fact that I am not a member of Star Fleet or a captain, that one doesn't work by virtue of the fact that unlike Patrick Stewart, I have hair. So could you stop calling me Star Trek names and go back to what you were talking about earlier? Something's happening in a week? You can tell me, I'm not ignoring you right now. "

"Oh, yes, yes, yes. I'm flying in to Colorado Springs. I just got my ticket."

"Really? How come?"

"Business mostly." Which was code for: try to talk Samantha Carter into letting him work on her projects and/or go out with him. John didn't give him much of a chance for either but it would be good to see him again.

"We'll hang out while you're in town," John said. It wasn't a question. Having even one more member of his Atlantis family was too good a prospect to leave vulnerable to Rodney's always too-busy work schedule.

"If I don't have too much work, I guess that'd be all right."

He wouldn't have too much work. Colonel Carter liked John and she wasn't Rodney's biggest fan, despite (or more likely because of) his obsession with her. A few quick words and they'd have at least a few hours to hang out, have dinner, start feeling like things were normal again—or as normal as they could be without Teyla, Ronon, Elizabeth, and, well, everyone else.

"We'll work something out."

"We always do. Or, rather, I always do and you try your best not to ruin it."

"Yeah, miss you too, buddy," John sighed and glanced at the clock. It was later than he'd thought and he needed to actually get his report finished and filed if he was going to meet up with Helena tonight. He was supposed to be at her apartment in two hours or so. If he rushed, he could probably still make it on time. "But I've got to run if I want to get out of here in the near future."

"I need to make sure my obsequious toadies haven't destroyed my lab. It's like they were all cursed with ten thumbs and double-digit IQs. They'll give anyone a PhD these days," Rodney lamented distractedly. "I'll see you in a week, Colonel."

"Seeya in a week."

He hung up the phone, pushed his doodle away and set to work. The sketch fell off the desk but it didn't look any more like a puddlejumper when it hit the floor of John's office.

But even focusing completely on his work, it still took John about twenty minutes longer than he'd hoped to get his paperwork finished and turned into Landry's office. It was another ten minutes to get everything settled and leave the base.

John was on the less fashionable side of late when he finally made it to Helena's apartment in downtown Colorado Springs. He'd tried to call her before he left, let her know, but she hadn't picked up.

She didn't answer when he rang the bell, not even to call out that he should just hang on a second. But she was there. He'd parked in the empty space next to her car. She didn't answer when he pounded on the door with his fists. He tried her cell phone, then her house phone. He could hear the phone ringing in the apartment until he heard the duality of her voice in his ear and from the other side of the door as the machine picked it up.

His first impulse was to kick down the door. One too many rescue missions, John supposed as he pushed down the urge and tested the doorknob instead

"Helena? It's John, are you there?" he called as the knob twisted. It was unlocked and the door swung inward.

Her apartment was dark. All the curtains were pulled shut against the stars and the street lights. The only light in the entire place was a sliver of yellow glowing from beneath the bathroom door.

"Okay, this stopped being funny about ten minutes ago," John muttered as he flicked on the living room light and crossed the small, neat space to the bathroom.

He could hear the sound of slowly dripping water on the other side of the door. Like a leaky sink but hitting water instead of porcelain or metal. But other than the slow dripping there was silence and it made something in his stomach clench as he pushed open the door.

The bathroom was done in cheerful shades of yellow that cast a horrific contrast on the scene before him. It was like a something out of a slasher movie - terrible, too bright, and completely unreal. John's hand groped for something—a wall, a counter, a doorjamb, anything to hold himself up as his knees weakened.

"God, Helena, no..."

The tub was a murky red pool, rippling as stray droplets of clear water fell from the faucet. Her hair was loose and wet on her shoulders, like he had only ever seen it when they made love. And her glasses, her glasses were missing.

John didn't know why but the lack shook him almost as much as the ribbon of blood that trickled slowly from the deep, vertical wound in her right forearm from elbow to wrist, down her hand off her long fingers and onto the cold tile. He certainly noticed it before he realized that her bare breasts were not rising and falling.

His knees failed him just as he made it to the side of the bathtub which was funny because John really couldn't remember moving. He honestly couldn't. Not when he crossed from the doorway to her side, not when he pulled her soaking naked body out of the water and into his arms.

He didn't consciously do any of it. In fact, his brain didn't snap back into sync until he was pushing strands of wet hair off her face and searching, desperately, for breath signs or a heartbeat as his hands exerted desperate pressure on the gaping tears in the flesh of both her arms.

"Come on," John hissed.

He blinked back the pain that was shooting through his chest from somewhere near his heart as he laid her down carefully on the floor and tilted her head back with one blood-slicked hand before starting compressions.

CPR was basic. He'd learned it in high school. He'd spent his entire career dealing with crises and he could save her. He saved people for a living out in Pegasus, damnit, the least he could do was save one woman on Earth.

"Come on, Helena, don't do this. Don't you dare do this!"

Thirty chest compressions then two breaths. Just like he'd learned. Now if she would just breathe. Just one breath and he could let up long enough to call 911.

He felt ill as he heard one of her ribs crack beneath his slippery hands on the count of twenty-three. That had to mean he was doing it too hard, didn't it? What if it punctured her lung and made it worse?

John told himself it didn't matter, made himself believe it, as he pinched her nose and breathed into her mouth, long and deep. He pulled away to take another breath and her eyes fluttered and that was good.

At least he really hoped that was good because she still wasn't breathing. John couldn't help but notice as he pinched her nose again that her lips were starting to turn blue.

This time when he breathed into her mouth she breathed back and her whole body shuddered on the tile. It startled him so much he would have jumped, if her left hand, wrinkled from the water and stained red, hadn't jerked up and yanked him closer by the back of the neck.

For a split second, he was kissing her. It was desperate and terrified but for the most part it was just a kiss like they had shared hundreds of times in the last month. It was familiar, her tongue sliding over his, her lips soft and cool. But almost as quickly, John was choking and gagging as something solid and slick shot into his mouth from hers, tearing the back of his throat.

He wrenched himself free as blood filled his mouth and then-

His entire world froze. He was still in the gory mess of Helena's bathroom, still kneeling on her floor where she lay, still dying. He just couldn't control how he sensed any of it. His hands, his legs, his vocal cords, his eyelids, the beat of his heart, the pattern of his breath—John was cut off from all of them.

Cold laughter echoed through his head as his legs moved of their own accord to lift him to his feet, stepping casually over Helena's now limp and empty body. He watched from a distance through his own eyes as something made his hand reach for one of Helena's guest towels.

Horror didn't twist his guts because he couldn't control them anymore. He didn't scream because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his lips to do anything but smirk at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

You are still there, John Sheppard, a voice, the same voice that had laughed at his helplessness, hissed through him. After all, it would be so much less enjoyable if nothing of the host survived.

He didn't even need to watch the eyes in his twisted reflection glow gold. He knew what it was, the alien presence that had stolen his will and left Helena Meyers dead in her own home by her own hand.

Clever host, the Goa'uld practically purred as it washed John's hands. Inside John's head, the Goa'uld sounded nothing like one of the booming gods its kind pretended to be and everything like the snake it was. I like that you are clever, John Sheppard. You give me so much more to work with than the female did. All those fascinating memories and dreams leading you far from that shy little boy you keep locked away.

Fuck you, you slimy son of a bitch, John thought. Fury and hate and a sharp edge of fear punctuated his thoughts.

Cursing couldn't keep him distracted from what the Goa'uld was doing with his body. It was poking at Helena's body with the toe of a boot as it dialed 911 on his cell phone. His will made John's throat speak, cry, into the phone about his suicidal girlfriend. It made him sink to the floor beside her cold, wet body to wait for the ambulance to arrive and for its first performance in the role of Lt. Col. John Sheppard to begin.

All John had at the moment was hope that the snake couldn't act. But he remembered the time he'd spent with the thing when he'd thought it was Helena. He remembered how much he'd liked her and how much he'd wanted her. He wondered how long the Goa'uld had been in control, if he'd ever actually met the real Helena Meyers, and his suspicions caused a little of that hope to evaporate as the Goa'uld rose to meet the paramedics.

Its laughter echoed through whatever part of John was still his even as it spoke to the two men in blue coats, affecting John's stance, tone, and syntax. And all John could do was watch and listen as the paramedics declared the woman he'd never really known dead on her bathroom floor and the Goa'uld made his body pretend to weep.

~*~*~

The Goa'uld had been digging around in his things and in his head, for the last twenty-four hours. It had called into the SGC to inform them of Helena's death and take what Landry considered to be a deserved day off to recuperate from the shock of finding her.

The general offered him the whole week off but the Goa'uld had turned him down. John could almost believe it was something he would have said as the Goa'uld convinced his CO that getting back to work would provide a much-needed distraction.

And if he'd been half convinced, Landry had bought it hook, line and sinker. The cool and flawless invasion of his life had John bouncing off the walls. Metaphorically anyway.

At the moment, it was keeping itself busy riffling through what few possessions John kept in his apartment. Not that it mattered what he had on hand.

The Goa'uld had all his codes, all his keys, all his cards and information. It could get at whatever it wanted and it was simply taking its time. Enjoying itself in the playground of John's life.

Do you not want to know my name, John Sheppard? the Goa'uld offered suddenly.

John was caught off guard for a moment. He had been railing against the strange nothingness that held him as the Goa'uld fished out John's lone photo album, which was less like an album and more like a shoebox with pictures dumped in it. He'd thought the damn thing had forgotten he was still awake in there.

Go fuck yourself, John thought bitterly. He was good at being difficult just for difficulty's sake. He'd had a lot of practice

But I know how you like naming things, particularly your enemies. Steve. Bob. Michael. You still wonder about Michael, where he is, what he is truly called. My kind already possess names, John Sheppard. I can feel your desire to know mine.

You think that knowing your enemy will help you fight me. It will not. But I will tell you so that you can better know your master. It pleases me to indulge you so.

I could give a flying fuck, John snapped back helplessly. He wished the damn thing would go back to leaving him alone if it wouldn't leave completely.

The Goa'uld went through his pictures like they were a textbook. He didn't have many, but it spent a long time studying the ones of his father, and of Teyla and Rodney and Elizabeth. It touched the pictures as if it had been there in the moment the picture was taken, as if it knew any of the people John loved.

It made everything John owned seem dirty.

But it was better that it was here, in his home, than in the SGC. He didn't want to think about that, about what it could and would do to his friends and colleagues. Here in his home, at least, the evil fucker wasn't doing any active damage. It couldn't hurt anyone else like it had hurt Helena.

I gave her what she wanted. She was begging for death weeks ago. I was kind. There are many more painful ways of eliminating a useless host. Would you like me to show you?

John didn't dignify it with a conscious response but it just laughed at his small act of defiance.

Oh, believe I will enjoy being you, John Sheppard. I have never had a host fight as hard as you. And such a rich life you have to fight for, filled with such interesting friends who possess the same gifts as you - beauty and strength and endless misguided compassion.

You hurt them and I'll kill you.

How? the Goa'uld asked indulgently.

It had become bored with his photos. What did it need with pictures when it had his memories? It moved on to his music collection and was currently perusing his Johnny Cash albums, the CDs and the records.

Your body cannot draw breath without my command. How do you propose to kill me? Please, I am curious. You and your kind are so good at making plans after all.

To be perfectly honest, John didn't have much of a plan. They wouldn't have caught the Goa'uld in Caldwell last year if Cadman hadn't been unbelievably on the ball. He'd never have guessed.

So really, he didn't have a plan so much as the hope that his friends would realize something was wrong and fix the problem. And they would. They'd come for him. He just had to trust his team.

How will they know to come for you? They will never know you are gone.

They'll know. They'll know something's not right and when they do, they'll cut you out and snap you in half.

Such hope. It will be amusing to watch it wither and die.

Yeah, good luck with that, snakeboy, John thought with a smugness he really didn't feel. You don't know me and you don't know them.

The Goa'uld made a low growling noise. The sound could have been made aloud or it could have been just in his head but John heard it loud and clear. He started as it threw one of his favorite records; a vinyl first edition of "Live at Folsom Prison" his dad had left him when he died, across the room and into the wall. It broke as it hit with a crash.

I am Mavet, son of El, loyal and favored agent of Lord Ba'al and above all, I am now you, John Sheppard. Everything you were, everything you are and everything that you will be—all of it is mine. And my will is your existence. You will bend and you will break and when you do, I will be here to reshape the fragments of your consciousness to the mold of my desires.

If John had been able to he would have gritted his teeth and flipped Mavet the bird. Still, the snake got the message loud and clear: Bring it on.

But the damn thing just laughed its echoing, inescapable laugh again.

I do love a challenge, John Sheppard, Mavet replied jovially. Not that you will prove much of one.

John had thought he understood the term impotent rage before. Turned out, he hadn't. But he was sure as hell learning now.

~*~*~

No one noticed.

More than the paralysis, the lack of sensation, that was what blew John the fuck away. No one noticed anything. Landry gave him a small consoling pat on the shoulder when they passed in the hall but no one else could even tell something was off.

Five days off-world and no one on his team batted an eyelash at his behavior. Because the words that left his mouth didn't sound wrong. They weren't out of character.

No one noticed that John was just a passenger. Not a single member of his team seemed even remotely aware that he was experiencing his life like most people experienced the movies, in the dark from a few rows back with no control over the plot.

And as with many movie experiences, there was always someone a few rows ahead who wouldn't shut up.

I do not understand how your kind has managed to inflict so much damage when you are such a fragile lot, Mavet observed as it slung Wallace's arm over his shoulder to help him walk on the ankle he'd just broken. You are all so clumsy and you cannot even heal yourselves properly.

I really don't care, John snapped. Don't care, don't care, don't care, so just shut up.

How did you do it? Your species can barely function without a symbiote.

Magic beans, John replied deadpan. We sold this old cow and then up popped a beanstalk. Once we had the magic harp, it was cake.

He was only half focusing on Mavet's insult as he watched Bambus up ahead on point, obviously feeling like an idiot for falling into that stream.

Mavet didn't reply. He didn't seem to be in the mood to talk to John for any reason other than gloating at the moment. The guy did love to gloat. And to taunt.

Mavet found taunting him more entertaining than anything on TV or in print. But he tended to save that for nights, when John wanted nothing but darkness and oblivion but with Mavet keeping his eyes open he couldn't just fade away into unconsciousness.

John had been a prisoner for a week and already he was worn out. It wasn't just the horrific lack of control and claustrophobic cramping of his existence, it was that nothing worked.

He'd tried screaming, raving, wailing and thrashing. When Landry had led them into the control room, he'd thrown everything he had into trying to get through to the transmitted image of General O'Neill. He'd have been happy with anything, a spastic blink, a small twitch. Anything would have been enough, even if the General hadn't seen it.

He might as well not exist for all the good it did him.

And that was when the realization hit John, like being cracked in the face with a Louisville Slugger. For all intents and purposes, he didn't anymore.

Looks as if it is just you and me, John Sheppard, Mavet chuckled, ever the eavesdropper on John's thoughts. You should not worry. You will grow to love me in time. One day we will return to the Pegasus Galaxy and shape to it to the will of the Goa'uld, a new empire for Lord Ba'al.

Mavet's satisfaction only amplified John's horror. It numbed him through the SG team's debriefing. He was deaf and blind to everything until he heard that familiar voice echoing through his office on speaker phone.

"I hate it here."

McKay. They were supposed to meet up tomorrow. Rodney was coming and they were supposed to have dinner. He'd forgotten. He'd completely forgotten.

Oh, fuck, no.

Yes.

"How is that possible?" Mavet asked and John hated him for making his own body a traitor.

"It's true."

Mavet sighed and took a seat behind John's desk. He is an irritating little man, your Rodney. It is a shame he is so useful.

John couldn't let himself react to the comment about McKay. That was what Mavet wanted and he refused to give it. This was twisted enough already, especially when Mavet began talking to Rodney again, pulling facts from John's memories.

"Look, they gave you everything you wanted: your own lab ..."

"It's too big."

He would not last ten minutes under torture. He would crack like an egg and his tears would be sweet.

That was an image John really didn't need.

Shut up. Just shut up.

"Hand-picked assistants..."

"Yeah, sycophants every one of them."

There would be so many pieces he would never be repaired. The Tau'ri would be finding bloody pieces of him scattered throughout the cosmos.

Stop it, damn you and keep your snake hands off my models, John thought as Mavet studied the plane models that littered his desk.

They are your hands as well, John Sheppard. What is yours is mine.

The insinuation was dark and ugly. But it was a better subject of thought than the idea of Rodney being torn apart by any of the many Goa'uld torture devices.

"Even your choice of projects."

Mavet's patience with Rodney was wearing thin and it made John nervous. So far, he'd killed at least one person John knew of. He hadn't done any damage but John had no idea what the snake's MO was. It could be after anything from world domination to just general malice and Rodney seemed to attract malice from their enemies.

"Well, that's not true," He heard Rodney say sadly.

"Well, other than going back to Atlantis, I mean," Mavet amended.

It was just so...him. It was exactly what John would have said, exactly how John would have said it. There was nothing about it that should or even could have clued Rodney in.

"You know, the truth is..." Rodney sighed and trailed off.

Must he always be this melodramatic?

I like him this melodramatic.

There is no question of how you like him, John Sheppard. I can see that plainly. I simply cannot fathom why.

Well, we've only been seeing each other for a week. I'd hate to think I've lost my mystery already.

He isn't talking.

Yeah.

Irritating little human.

Yeah.

I will enjoy killing him when the time comes.

John's head was filled with laughter, his own for once.

You're definitely not the first one to feel that way.

"What?" the Goa'uld snapped, hair's breadth away from losing his cool and slipping into those strange, multifaceted tones, and John fell a little bit in love with Rodney.

Rodney and his personality had achieved in five minutes what John hadn't been able to with a week of sound and fury. He had pissed off Mavet, good and proper.

"I don't—I don't wanna use the term 'lonely,' but, uh, there are certain people who ... I miss."

Whiny, pathetic human, he snarled. I will use his skull as a bowl.

You don't strike me as the arts and crafts type, John replied gleefully. You should really answer him, you know.

Do not toy with me, John Sheppard. You will not like the outcome.

Try me.

Mavet's smile curved John's lips.

"Me?" Mavet asked flirtatiously.

John fumed. You think you're funny, don't you snakeboy?

I think you are funny, John Sheppard. With the doors you think are closed and the locks that do not hold.

Bite me.

It would seem that I already have.

"You?! You I'm talking to on the phone right now and having dinner with tomorrow, so not so much, but other people—people who I may never see again. Like, even Elizabeth—she hasn't returned any of my calls."

"I know what you mean."

"Hey—at least you still get to go offworld with a team of your own." Rodney's long-suffering sigh echoed over the speaker phone. It was so familiar, so damn normal that John would have smiled. Mavet just rolled his eyes.

"Oh yeah, the best and the brightest," Mavet returned. He sighed his frustration and John took the moment to quietly enjoy his captor's irritation. It was the little things in life you had to treasure. "All right, see you tomorrow night."

"Yeah, wouldn't miss it. Hey, you know, I-"

Mavet clicked off the phone before he could finish, relieved to be rid of Rodney. It was a sentiment he shared with many others on at least a dozen planets in two galaxies. Just not his host.

He's an ungrateful little man, isn't he, Mavet observed.

It's because he knows he's just that good.

You do not really think that.

Yes I do. I'd be dead about a hundred different ways if he weren't as smart as he is.

Although given the current situation, John thought that might not have been such a bad thing. He couldn't help but feel that being sucked dry by a Wraith was a little better than being trapped in his own head with a Tim Curry-wannabe lizard.

Your species' affection for the Earth arts never ceases to be entertaining. How can you exist so entranced with fiction?

Aren't you tired of talking to me yet?

Mavet laughed, out loud, as he slid down in the big chair that was one of John's favorite things about having his own office.

Oh, I will never tire of you, John Sheppard. Your tiny sun will expand and die first. Of that you can be sure.

~*~*~

John hadn't cried since he was ten years old. In his defense, he'd broken his arm pretty badly jumping out of that tree.

He shouldn't have let Billy Hodgson and his little brother, whose name he'd forgotten years ago, talk him into climbing the damn thing in the first place. He blamed it on the fact that his dad had just gotten stationed at Hurlburt Field in Eglin Air Force Base a couple weeks earlier and the fact that there was nothing in Mary Ester but trees and that in almost a month, the only kids he'd met were the two brothers who lived down the street.

It was his dad's first relocation since his mom died and going from just outside Los Angeles to a little town in north Florida had been the hardest move of his life. And at the time he had just desperately wanted the Hodgson brothers to like him.

It turned out they had liked him okay, and probably would have even if he hadn't climbed that stupid tree. Billy helped him stagger home but his dad had been at work or on a test flight or something, so he'd waited.

Billy had waited with him until he'd had to go home for dinner but John had stayed and waited alone, for hours, for his dad to come home. He had no idea how long he'd spent, sitting perfectly still on the brand new couch, trying not to breathe too hard so as not to jostle his arm. But around ten at night he'd started to think his dad wasn't going to come home at all and the tears he'd been holding back since he hurt himself had all come out at once.

Which was of course when Robert Sheppard had walked in the door. He was clearly shocked to find his only child not only still awake at the late hour but sobbing, and injured. He had carefully pulled his son into his arms so he could lift the skinny boy off the couch and carry him out to the car. He'd called him Johnny, like he used to before she died, and told him that he was going to be okay. At the time John had kind of lost it.

It wasn't the worst injury he had had in the years since. But he'd stopped crying by the time they got to the emergency room and he hadn't really cried since that night.

He'd shed a few tears when Dex and Mitch died and when his father passed, but his grieving tended to involve quality time slamming his fists into the nearest object. Wall. Punching bag. The face of an off-duty marine. That was almost always followed closely by going out and getting drunk for a couple days before pushing the loss as far out of his mind as he could and getting the hell on with his life.

So the fact that all he really wanted to do was cry like the ten-year-old he'd once been was saying something.

He couldn't help the feeling. The situation was just so completely out of his control it that it left him with a strange sense of fragility. And he couldn't escape that reality as he watched his friends laugh and talk with Mavet over dinner.

Carson was smiling and teasing and Rodney made snippy comments and Elizabeth was just Elizabeth and they were all so happy to see each other and him. They were happy to see him and yet they couldn't tell that it wasn't him.

He'd known, of course he had, since the moment he was taken. But up until that dinner, John had been positive they'd be able to tell. He'd been so certain of it that he'd been willing to wait and almost indulge the Goa'uld.

Now, the reality of how hopeless things were crashed in on him all at once, like they had that night in his living room in their house in Mary Ester.

They couldn't see that he was gone. And how the hell were they going to save him if they didn't know he was gone?

Answer? They weren't.

They were going to go on with their lives, blithely ignorant until the alien using John's body as its own personal Gundam mecha turned around and killed them. And they would never know until his hands squeezed the breath from their lungs.

John had never been the suicidal type. Sure if the situation called for it, if lives could be saved by his sacrifice, he was the first on the front lines. He'd never been tempted by a straight razor or a bottle of pain killers or anything like that though. But this was the first time it occurred to him that maybe Mavet hadn't been lying about Helena wanting to die.

Because there was no point in trying to scream. It just entertained Mavet, gave him some kind of sick rush or something. And all of John's attempts to distract him just didn't work. Nothing worked and all John could do was watch, whether he wanted to or not.

That was the worst. Worse than the powerlessness. Worse than the paralysis. Worse even than knowing, even if it was only in the vaguest sense, what the Goa'uld was planning, was having to watch everything.

He didn't want to look at Elizabeth's smiling face or the laughter lines around Carson's eyes. He didn't want to see Rodney scowling as they rehashed the Cadman Incident. He couldn't reach them and he'd have given anything not to have to watch as they proceeded on with their relatively normal existences.

He especially didn't want to have to witness the moment his life came back for him and he wasn't there to live it. Their phones went off and from the first ring John knew.

Before Mavet answered the call, he knew what it was. And so Mavet knew it too. The bastard was like Tyler Durden in Fight Club but not as likeable or attractive.

John decided he needed to stop knowing things. Just, pfft, wipe out his entire brain and reboot. He'd be less dangerous if he could start from scratch with a clean hard drive for a brain, instead of one that knew how to infiltrate the SGC, sneak into the Pegasus Galaxy, and pilot pretty much every military helo ever built and, of course, Lantean puddlejumpers.

He'd never had much luck when it came to getting what he wanted though. So why should anything change now?

Are you not happy to return to Pegasus, John Sheppard? Mavet asked as they emerged on the other side of the stargate. His hands flexed on the jumper controls almost sexually. I know how you have missed your home. The Goa'uld liked flying almost as much as he did. Figured.

I'm not returning. You are.

We are one.

More like one and a half, John thought tiredly. How he could be tired without a physical form was beyond him but then it was probably all psychological. He was all psychological.

We will succeed in reclaiming the city of the Ancients, John Sheppard. I look forward to seeing if it fulfils the expectations your memories have instilled or if it surpasses them, as your Dr. McKay did.

I thought you didn't like Rodney.

Rodney was right behind him in the jumper, talking and planning, trying to rewrite the gate macro to get them to the new Athosian planet. But he was close enough to set John's body on edge, with or without Mavet's dispensation.

I do not like his insolence and his attitude. His other attributes, however, have proved most appealing. And the reaction he elicits from your body is most...favorable.

John chose not to actively reply to that. It was the only choice he had left.
.
~*~*~

Your friends have succeeded and you are returned home. There is no point in attempting to lie. Did you not enjoy this?

'This' had been sneaking through his city, which at the time had been crawling with Asurans. 'This' had been using a deception that was only slightly more graceful than the plot of an I Love Lucy episode on Woolsey and O'Neill to get around the Asurans' version of the Jedi mindfuck so that his team could do what needed to be done. 'This' had been taking a big old risk and possibly getting nuked to kingdom come.

And no, John hadn't really enjoyed the process. He was a doer not a watcher. He'd wanted to be in it, for his instincts to have a chance to react, to think for himself about the situation his team was in. Instead Mavet was sucking information and experience out of his brain like a leech and using it himself.

Effectively too.

And the slug had liked it. He was Goa'uld, a violent species by nature, but Mavet liked playing war. It was a favorite game to him, the way golf was to John. Mavet had been giddy through the attack, voicing his regret that since the Asurans were replicators, they had no blood to shed.

That had freaked John out sufficiently. But the way Mavet pulled out information of how Atlantis worked for his touch, things like the chair, the crystal trays, the doors? That had been so much worse.

Because now that things had calmed down and most of the Atlantis team had returned, by the authority of the IOA, Mavet had taken to long walks through the bowels of the city. And along the way, he stopped to read.

There were some things John hadn't taken the time to learn about the Goa'uld when he'd read some of the early SGC mission reports. He'd focused on the important stuff—what they were, what kind of technology they had, who the big name players were, the difference between the Goa'uld and the Tok'ra.

He hadn't noticed anything about how fast the little fuckers could learn things, like languages. Take for example, Ancient. What had taken Elizabeth months, if not years, to learn took Mavet less than 24 hours.

Rodney would have been beside himself if he knew even half the things Mavet unearthed using his species' gift for language and John's genetic make-up.

John didn't understand most of them himself but he knew enough to know that a lot of it was disgustingly hazardous. Maybe not unsafe in a boom-goes-the-solar-system sort of way but definitely if-used-wrong-could-kill-lots-of-my-friends-and-other-innocent-people type threats.

And yet at the end of each exploration, Mavet always turned off whatever he had found (if he'd turned it on to begin with) and made his way back to the main living areas of Atlantis. That confused the hell out of John.

I thought you Goa'uld wanted to kill us all.

No, not all of you. And certainly not you, my host. Your people will have their uses yet. When the time is right.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Mavet almost always responded when John tried to communicate with him. His answers weren't always helpful. In fact they were typically hateful or cruel but they were usually relevant.

It puzzled John but he'd learned in the weeks since reclaiming Atlantis that while Mavet wasn't playing with what you'd call a full deck, he had enough cards to be seriously dangerous. The guy was hundreds of years old, scary loyal to that Ba'al dude, and had infinite, maddening patience.

Also? He had a really fucked up sense of humor.

Whether or not John actively responded didn't make a difference to Mavet. All the snake had to do was dig up a particularly nasty memory—his mother's viewing was a favorite of Mavet's—and wait for John to react. While John was reacting less spectacularly than he had in the first couple weeks, certain things got to him every time. And whenever that happened, he could hear that laughter.

He was bored, too. A lot. There was nothing to touch or feel or do for hours on end. He had a front row seat for whatever Mavet chose to look at and he could hear what was going on outside in the real world he used to live in, though it was usually little more than an echo, as if it came from far away and down a long hallway. But that was about it.

He complained about it. Loudly. Often. And sometimes in the form of song. Patrick Swayze had the right idea with that whole Henry the Eighth song. It was deeply irritating and went on forever like the Song That Doesn't End, also a classic.

But John got the feeling that one of the plethora of things that Mavet could do in his head that he couldn't was tune out. And there were times, especially when Mavet was with Teyla or Rodney, when John actually envied him that.

That envy was scary as hell because, John realized, it meant he was getting used to living like this, a captive in his own skull. It meant that his consciousness was trying to prepare itself to settle in for the long haul. And with a Goa'uld, if the mission reports he'd read back on earth were to be believed, that haul could last hundreds of years, sometimes thousands.

Mavet's caress on his mind as that realization dawned was part affectionate and part vindictively triumphant. Clever host, he murmured. I do so love how clever you are, John Sheppard. It pleases me greatly.

Go fuck yourself.

Mavet glanced across the mess to the table where Rodney sat with Radek. They were bickering, animatedly, probably about how Rodney was against redistribution of two of the three Asuran ZPMs.

There had been emails to Elizabeth. Lots of them, she'd said through gritted teeth. Rodney was unwavering in his conviction though, his hands were waving in the air and his voice was just loud enough to be heard from the other side of the hall but not understood.

Why would I do that... when there are options available that are so much more pleasurable?

That dirty feeling, the one Mavet's presence had left on his belongings back in Colorado, was back with a vengeance. It hit harder than ever and coated every aspect of John's awareness.

I will tear you apart, with my bare hands so help me God if you so much as touch—

Be still, John Sheppard, Mavet commanded, taking a bite of the not-steak they were serving today. It is what we want. You know this to be true. I plan to take only what we want. For now.

It's not yours to take, damn you.

Mavet laughed at that, barely keeping it internal. John's shoulders shook slightly at the stifled chuckles. Do not be foolish. I have been given dispensation by Ba'al to take what I desire as I ready this galaxy for his eventual conquest. Everything in the Pegasus Galaxy is mine to seize and use as I see fit. Everything.

~*~*~

Rodney named the whale Sam. Of course he did. It was always about Sam-freaking-antha Carter. If her technological advancements hadn't saved their asses on a few occasions, John really would have been able to dislike her more.

This once, though, she gave John bright, sharp hope on a more personal level.

Rodney was fixated on Sam Carter, a brilliant, blonde, female scientist. His opposite in pretty much everything but military service. That proclivity for women of the tall, blonde persuasion was great news for the first time since John had woken up and smelled Rodney's coffee two years ago, trapped in a quarantine with Teyla while a deadly virus threatened to destroy Rodney's hyper-brilliant brain.

John was counting on that obsession. He was depending on it to protect Rodney. Mavet had too much to lose to try and force the situation and if Rodney was straight then that'd be the end of it.

But Rodney kept looking for him to talk about that huge, stupid whale/fish/flagi-whatever thing. And Mavet was only too happy to indulge him.

Snakeboy had stolen the idea to take him whale-watching in the jumper from one of John's standard fantasies. It was an old one involving the bench seats in the back that didn't contain Rodney every time, but always featured someone on the Atlantis mission. The weirdest one had featured Heightmeyer and Radek, simultaneously, but John had known better than to try and analyze that one.

Rodney was surprised by the idea, stuttering and trailing after Mavet as he followed the shortest path to the jumper bay, mapped courtesy of John's memories. But he'd seemed more than enthusiastic about it which wasn't particularly shocking.

It was a good idea, the whale-watching plan. It was off the beaten track yet strangely intimate; the sort of thing people did on dates. Yeah, it wasn't a ride on a Ferris wheel but still. It was pretty cool.

Now if only it wasn't so spectacularly unfair that Mavet got be the first one to pilot a jumper recreationally underwater since Rodney's brush with watery death. There was no way he could possibly appreciate this the way John did, not even if he was feeling what John was at the very moment the jumper hit the water.

He wanted so much to have been there alone, just the two of them instead of a crowd of three. He wanted to contribute something, anything, to get in the way of the, albeit platonic, intimacy that Mavet had stolen from him by sliding so effortlessly into the role of Rodney's close friend.

At least he did until the pain came.

It rolled through John like a wave and Mavet cursed in a strange curling language that was sort of like Arabic but not really. It wasn't out loud or aimed at John directly.

It was just there, floating in the ether and John picked it up. Along with the panic.

A little worried there, pal?

You will be silent, Mavet snapped, his eyes focused on the whales and on Rodney.

Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think we might need to have a little chat. You seem a little on edge there, slithers. Problems in biped land? You know if you can't handle the limbs, you can just hand the reins back over and I'll take care of it for you. I've got more than thirty years of experience with this model.

Mavet's hands tightened on the controls, his fingers flexing in time with the wave of vibrating pain that echoed through John's skull. Not a happy camper at all and if Rodney had a chance to realize he'd developed a nosebleed and started going ballistic old Scaly would be even less happy.

He's bleeding.

I can see that, human.

Human? No pet names today? Someone's testy. Go on, say something. Tell him. Help him. If he freaks out, you're going to have to deal with him.

Do not give me orders, host. I will do as I please when I please. It is my will that allows you to communicate with me and you would do well to remember that.

You're a bigger bitch than my ex-wife.

Mavet did not answer. He could have been ignoring John, of course, but John would have laid money that he was just distracted. But he finally, though it had probably only been a few seconds, commented on the blood slowly leaking from Rodney's nose.

From there it was only a couple minutes before Rodney's head hit the console and the blood started leaking from John's ears.

Mavet stared at the red liquid for a second, transfixed by it. It was almost as if he'd never seen blood before, when he'd all but reveled in its presence in the ghoulish arena of Helena's bathroom. John would have given a lot to know what the hell he was thinking in those moments before he took the jumper out of the water and radioed for help.

If he had to guess, he'd lean towards the pain and the silence being the top of Mavet's priorities.

John himself could hear almost nothing. The rare muffled noises sliding their way down that long corridor to him were the only sounds from the outside he'd had since the bleeding started. So Mavet's hearing was probably only slightly better.

And then there was that pain. It had receded as they got farther away from the whales but it was still there, sharp and angry in the quiet and making Mavet the most agitated John had ever felt him.

So John took that opportunity to shut right the fuck up and give the snake a taste of his own medicine.

He'd never been the strong, silent type. He was the smarmy, mouthy type and had been since high school, when it had become apparent that he wasn't going to be growing in time to avoid regular beatings from the senior bullies. It was part of the reason he used to get on so well with General O'Neill. He couldn't just stop being who he was because he was trapped in a prison that made the accommodations in Papillon look appealing.

But he'd focused, hard, on thinking as close to nothing as possible during those long hours in the infirmary. Because Mavet could pick up on anything, any stray thought, so John brought one of his more useless and uninteresting skills to the forefront. He counted to 20 in the Farsi he'd learned before shipping out to Afghanistan so many times in those six hours he lost track.

It was only right, John decided, only just that his captor find out what it was like to be cut off from the kind of contact he wanted. And with his hearing impaired, even for the relatively short time it took for the Goa'uld to heal John's damaged eardrums, Mavet was, in a sense, almost as deprived of contact as John.

A prospect that did not make Mavet happy. The Goa'uld was not a fan of boredom.

You will respond.

Yek, dow, seh, chahar...

I will not indulge your friend again. His curiosity is dangerous and cannot be trusted.

Panj, shesh, haft, hast...

I rather hope that he does not heal quickly. He is far more entertaining deaf. It changes nothing of his character. Do you think he ever listened?

Noh, dah, yazdah, davâzdah...

Do you honestly believe that this will work, John Sheppard? That something as simple as reciting numerals in a local Tau'ri language of a culture for whose ancestors I was once the God of Death will stop me from digging into the deepest places in your soul?

Sizdah, chahârdah, pahardah, shanzdah, hefdah...

Do you think that I will not find what you hide from these people you claim to love, the images and wants and fears that you repress? I will wrench them from you and paint this city with them if you do not answer me now, John Sheppard.

Hezdah, nuzdah, bist. Right. Back to one. Yek, dow...

You have made a grievous error in judgment this day, my lovely host. I show you great mercy in giving you one last chance to rectify it, to show me the respect that I deserve and to heed me when I call upon you.

Seh. Chahar. Panj.

You told me once you were a good counter, John Sheppard. It seems you were far more literal than I believed at the time. I remember the way your lips moved as you spoke, strong and soft. I chose you then, with your skin warm beneath my touch.

John faltered. Six. Six came next. Panj was five so what was six and god, he really couldn't think about Helena right now so six. Six in Farsi was what? He knew it. He did. Six.

Haft. No. Haft was seven. Shesh was six, haft was seven. Then hast, then noh. Like riding a bike. Dah was ten and then yazdah was eleven. Because one was yek and dah was ten. So yazdah, eleven. Davâzdah was twelve.

You will regret your defiance soon,Mavet promised softly as sound began to filter back into John's quiet little cell. He was healing himself. When I am once again safe from these beasts, you will be sorry. This I vow.

Sizdah, chahârdah, pahardah, John recited. He'd learned more Farsi when he was in Afghanistan. Things like 'Where's the bathroom?', 'I'd like to buy that,' and 'What do you mean you don't serve alcohol? What kind of country doesn't have beer?' But things like that required thinking.

So he kept counting, right up until the moment the sound clicked back on and he could hear Rodney, and his own voice, talking again.

By that point, he had more interesting things to focus on than 1 through 20. Things like sentient, talking whale-fishes, an imminent solar flare, and how to keep from dying in the radiation blast it was going to emit.

Although who put a planet close enough to a sun for that to be a problem anyway? That was really bad planning on the Ancients' part, John thought. And as pissed off as he still was, Mavet agreed.

~*~*~

For the record, the Daedalus shield thing was his idea, not Mavet's. He had the idea before the news of the coronal mass ejection was relayed to Elizabeth. He got the idea the first time the information about the Adaris and the Ancients' shield implantation filtered through to him and Mavet had railed at his very thought.

The Goa'uld was against being on or near the Daedalus. And it wasn't because this could be, hell probably was, a complete suicide mission. Mavet, strangely, was of the opinion that John's plan would work. No, his concern revolved around an almost violent insistence that he not be in proximity to the Daedalus' commander.

It's that or die. I'm cool with dying though. Anything to make you go away.

We will not die, John Sheppard. I can heal this body of any damage it could sustain from beneath the city's shields. I will not be compromised to save the lives of some aquatic fauna and the humans left on this planet's mainland.

Compromised? Letting people die is going to compromise you more than whatever the hell you think Caldwell is going to do. I wouldn't let them just die. You know that and you know that if you're going to keep being me 'til your sugar daddy is ready to take over Pegasus, you can't let them die either.

They'll know something's wrong. You might as well turn on the glowy eyes and creepy voice right now if that's your plan. But hey, if that's the way you want to play it, go for it.

Pester me no more, John Sheppard.

Rodney's little "mass-extinction" "no breathable air" speech did a better job of changing Mavet's mind. He was a little more willing to risk being around Caldwell with a clearer understanding of how very dead he could end up being, shield or no shield.

However, he'd stayed at least two yards away from Caldwell at all times on the Daedalus. He'd skirted the edge of the control room, twitching with what the rest of the crew must have assumed were nerves over the latest and greatest Crazy Sheppard Plan.

But John could feel, vicariously, the low buzz in Mavet just being near Caldwell.

It's because he was a host.

Clever.

So you've mentioned, John said as Rodney ranted and panicked over the intercom.

Mavet had his eyes glued to the coronal ejection. It was horrific. It was beautiful. He wished for a brief moment that some of the radiation from that brilliant tendril of living starlight could slip through the Daedalus's shields and burn the invader out of his head so he could see this clearly instead of through that fog of distance.

Now is not the time to entertain the musings of your fanciful mind, John Sheppard, Mavet retorted. He was nervous as he dug John's fingers into the shoulder of some poor young airman behind one of the control panels as the heat building up behind the shields rose.

Then ignore me.

Which was sort of funny to John. He should be the one ignoring Mavet, not the other way around. Especially with the possibility of imminent death so very near.

Near but not here. He trusted Rodney, even if Mavet didn't. But then what the hell did Mavet know? He'd only been in John's head six weeks. John had had two and a half years to get used to the different cadences of Rodney's panics.

And he was doing okay with those shields. Not great but okay. They were going to save Atlantis. Rodney's panic over the heat build-up faded into self-assured triumph.

A triumph he'd helped bring about. Even from inside his prison he was still able to make himself useful to his friends, his mission, if only abstractly.

You were useful to me as well.

Get bent, you're ruining the moment.

It is not your moment to enjoy. It is mine and my difficult human's.

He's not your human and it was my idea. You'd be a crispy critter without it.

I would have found a way, John Sheppard. I always do.

"Permission to return to Atlantis, Colonel?" Mavet asked from his safe distance away. "Dr. Weir will want a full report."

It seemed to John that Caldwell was studying them with suspicious eyes. He'd noticed something was off. The man hadn't risen as high as he had in the ranks without being canny. And for a split second, John thought that Caldwell could see through the mask of cool sanity Mavet projected to where he now lived, trapped in the dark.

But John must have been just that desperate because Caldwell didn't give any further indication that he could sense the Goa'uld from where he stood 10 feet away. Instead of calling security or buzzing the news down to Elizabeth, he nodded.

"We'll be within teleportation distance in a minute or two. Hermiod will transport you and McKay back to Atlantis as soon as we're in range."

"Cool."

Caldwell rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his ship and his crew.

It doesn't sound right when you say it, John thought sullenly as he and Rodney appeared back on Atlantis. He usually loved the whole beaming up and down thing. He'd never actually called Hermiod Scotty but he'd thought about it one or two dozen times.

This time was different though. With the Goa'uld at the wheel, teleporting offered the briefest, strangest nanosecond of freedom, the sensation of being truly separate, before he landed back in his obelisk.

It was amazing how many things there were that he'd once loved about Atlantis which he couldn't stand now. It seemed like there were more every day.

~*~*~

"I can't believe your idiotic plan worked," Rodney remarked later after they were done debriefing.

Can't have been that idiotic then, John thought ruefully. That was the closest to a "job well done" one could expect to get from Rodney.

"My plans always work," Mavet replied. He could have been speaking as John or to John. Sometimes it was hard to tell from the inside.

Not so much from the outside.

Rodney snorted.

"Except when they fail spectacularly."

"You shouldn't underestimate me Rodney," Mavet said coolly, curling the corner of John's lips up predatorily. "I don't think you'd like what happens." He shrugged. "Then again..."

Rodney waved a dismissive hand at him and Mavet caught it by the wrist. Whatever smart comment Rodney was going to make died on his lips and they came to an abrupt halt in one of the lower-traffic corridors.

Stop.

Make me.

"Colonel-"

"That's not my name."

John isn't your name either.

"Sheppard, let me go right now or I will-"

Mavet pulled Rodney closer, and oh god, John knew that move. Helena had always liked holding him by the wrist. It was one of her signatures and she used it all the time: when they made love, to lead him through her apartment, to show him something that one day they went up to the Garden of the Gods. It was one of his favorites and now- he wondered how he could have forgotten, even for a second, who Helena had really been.

"You trust me."

"Only marginally farther than I can throw you."

"I think you trust me a lot more than that. Say my name."

It was so fucking out of character that Rodney had to know. He had to just know, John thought desperately, as Mavet crowded him into the wall.

"Did you hit your head on the control panel of the Daedalus or something? Because you're behaving like a bigger idiot than usual."

Mavet lifted his hands and planted them on the wall next to Rodney's shoulders, walling him in.

Don't you fucking dare.

Mavet leaned closer. "Say it. I want to hear it. You've never called me by it."

I swear to God-

I am your god, John Sheppard. You should not have pushed so hard to incite my wrath earlier, my lovely host. I did promise you punishment and I am nothing if not true to my word.

"If I say it will you promise to let Carson give you a CT scan?"

Mavet pressed John's body flush against Rodney's. "No."

"Sheppard-"

"John."

It's not you.

Oh, yes it is.

Rodney's eyes were wide. "You've lost your mind."

"My name is John. Say it, Rodney."

Rodney licked his lips nervously. Mavet grinned. And John was drowning in a rage so intense he could barely think.

"Okay...John...what the hell is going on with you?"

Please. Please, don't.

John hadn't realized he was ready to beg. He'd been so sure he was stronger than that. But the first rule of torture was that, eventually, everyone breaks.

John had only been waiting to hear Rodney say his name for years. It was only something he'd been thinking about for months. One syllable was all it took for something black and foul inside John to crack open like a rotten egg.

And just like that, John lost.

Mavet laughed, out loud and in John's head, and pressed harder. It had to hurt a little but there was a bright light in Rodney's eyes that wasn't just fear.

"We almost died today," he pointed out.

"Would that that were something novel," Rodney lamented, his eyes darting around the empty hallway.

"So maybe I'm done waiting."

"For what?"

It is almost too easy, Mavet mused as he lowered his mouth to Rodney's. It is too easy.

John wanted to vomit. Or scream. Or hit something. Or cry. Mostly he wanted to cry.

Mavet's grip on Rodney's wrist tightened when Rodney's free hand came up to hold the back of John's neck. He mumbled something about his 'stupid hair' into John's mouth as he kissed Mavet back with shocking enthusiasm.

You could have had him a hundred times, John Sheppard, Mavet hissed. A hundred times. He bends to us. You will feel it as I do.

Mavet slid John's free hand down to rest on the column of Rodney's throat. It wouldn't take much pressure to crush the life out of him if that was what Mavet wanted. And underneath the sizzle of physical want was the smallest threat of that violence.

Rodney finally pulled back, gasping for breath. But Mavet didn't give him a chance to do more than pant before he was kissing him again, pushing them down the hall as they went.

It was strange how John felt it. It was like a tactile version of that game Telephone, and he was the fifth or sixth recipient of the message. He got it, the sensation, but it was garbled and wrong from being processed by someone else first.

Lie back and think of England. Or whatever. John's cognitive process had sort of stalled as Mavet found an open door, pushed them into an empty room—a closet of some kind—and began to tear at Rodney's clothes with John's fingers.

It was a spectacularly bad idea on Mavet's part. Anyone could find them. The door didn't have a lock.

But no one would, John realized with a resignation that was starting to feel tragically familiar. No one was coming to save him from this. Mavet had been using him for weeks and there was no reason for him to stop now, nothing that could make him want to.

The pain that echoed through John as Rodney just...melted into Mavet did nothing to stop his captor. If anything it spurred more enthusiasm in the questing motions of his hands and mouth and hips, pulling response after hot response out of Rodney.

"Kneel," Mavet growled and Rodney jerked away at that.

"Was that a command?" Rodney demanded, halfway between really turned on and really offended.

Mavet started. It was the closest he'd come to dropping the character of John Sheppard and he dug, John could feel him do it, into old memories and old conversations with other people in similar situations.

"I...I'm not great with-" Mavet waved a hand in an inclusive gesture.

Mavet was more than capable of demanding and taking exactly what he wanted, of course. The Goa'uld had lived as a god once, wringing his desires out of the willing and unwilling alike. But the old methods weren't the right ones for this and he knew it.

John wished he didn't. John wished a lot of things really, as Rodney rolled his eyes and shook his head. Mostly he wished his self-proclaimed genius would have the good sense to get the fuck out. To run. Run far away and stay there because this was wrong. It was so fucking wrong John could barely grasp it.

But Rodney's good sense had never revolved around the interpersonal.

"A please wouldn't hurt you."

Mavet grinned so hard that John could feel it hurt.

"Here?"

"If you're nice about it. What's the magic word?"

"Please."

"See, how hard was that?"

"Says the man who uses it once every decade."

"Well, most things don't warrant it."

Mavet licked his lips, enjoying more than the physical aspect of all this. He'd told John in the beginning, back when he'd had more hope and defiance and smart comments, that he loved a challenge. It seemed that held true with Rodney now.

John just cringed and tried to keep his thoughts from heading in the direction of pleading. It would get John nowhere because that would be giving Mavet exactly what he wanted.

It wasn't easy because the only other things he could think about were the way Rodney's uniform shirt had come off and how his lips felt, even through that horrible distortion, on his skin. Mavet glued his gaze to Rodney's lips and John was unable to look away as Rodney took him in his mouth.

He'd fantasized about this for years. It had gone down a hundred ways in his head. But now that it was happening, John felt like he was back in Helena's apartment, covered in blood, afraid and powerless, seconds away from losing himself.

It was revolting, how it wasn't John that Rodney was really touching. The way Rodney was being deceived was the worst lie John had ever been involved in, willingly or otherwise. A surge of hatred boiled through John for the damn snake who was taking this, raping John from the inside out with a willing partner.

You want this.

No, I don't.

You have for many months. Now we have it. Do you not feel this pleasure, this power over him? I have watched your face go slack with pleasure many times, wondered how you felt. You feel it now, as you did with the female only this is better, more.

The worst was that John did. It was sex without a body. The tendrils of sensory input he received - the feel of Rodney's tongue, lips, and teeth, the feel of the skin on his shoulders under his hands, the taste of blood where Mavet had bitten John's lip - were like a funhouse mirror reflection of what should have happened.

Watching Rodney suck him was beautiful but it made his soul feel grimy and, for some reason, deeply guilty. His body hadn't even climaxed yet and John was tired in a deep place he hadn't known he had.

The way Mavet fisted his hands just-this-side of cruelly in Rodney's hair, however, that was going to haunt him. Big time. Which, John realized as the resonance of orgasm floated to his little prison, was exactly what Mavet was aiming for.

~*~*~

The first time John was with a guy was in college.

It might not have ever happened at all. He hadn't even thought he'd go to college. His plan had originally been to enlist straight out of high school until his dad had talked him out of it.

"Trust me on this one, Johnny. You'll go farther, faster as an officer if you get yourself a degree first," Robert had counseled him. "Especially if you do AFROTC while you're there."

They'd been living in California again at the time, in a house on the beach. John had been learning to surf and thinking about how amazing flying was going to be if riding the tops of waves was this cool.

"I can always go later. I got into a couple UCs."

"You won't go later. You won't go ever if you don't go now. You know I'm right, Johnny."

His dad would finally retire two years later, when the cancer got bad enough to keep him from working. In less than ten, he'd be dead, and John would only just barely make it home in time to say goodbye.

But that day, on the deck of their house, Robert Sheppard had only just been diagnosed. He was still strong and handsome but John had had a very difficult time saying no to him back then.

So he'd gone to UCLA because it was close. And that was key because he'd been half convinced at the time that if he left his dad would just magically drop dead, even though his doctor said his chances were good.

In the end he was glad he did it, because he wasn't really ready for the Air Force at eighteen. His drill sergeant in basic had been of the opinion that he wasn't ready for it at twenty-one. He was, according to Sgt. Zimmern, a smart-mouthed, wiseass cut-up with authority issues, but he was a wiseass who'd been trying his best to tackle school and his father's illness simultaneously and that did a lot for maturity.

Plus, if he hadn't gone to UCLA he wouldn't have met Andy.

He was with Andy between Martha the geology major and some girl with green hair and a deep and abiding obsession with Kurt Cobain before it was cool. It had been a lot like dating a woman without a lot of the rules, which was kind of nice. John had never liked rules but he really liked Andy's hands. And his mouth. And his ass. And yeah, his sense of humor and all that crap.

But mostly what John had liked about Andy was how new absolutely everything had been. All of a sudden he had a whole new world of possibilities to explore and only four years to explore them before he lost the option.

Because there hadn't been DADT when he was growing up. There was just a dishonorable discharge and the possibility of a court martial and time in Leavenworth. His dad had never talked to him about that part of his job, but John had heard him and his mother talking once, when he was about nine.

He'd been the type of child to sit outside his parents' room and listen to their quiet talk at night when he couldn't sleep. Usually they talked about their day, made jokes, or just watched the Tonight Show. Occasionally he heard soft sighs that he didn't understand until years later.

That night, however, his dad had sounded so...sad was the only word John had been able come up with at the time, as he told his mom about his day. The couple had been turned in three separate times in the past. The fourth time Robert hadn't been able to afford to look the other way anymore.

One of them had gone to jail a week earlier. The other had been found that day, a hanging suicide a mere twelve hours before his fate was supposed to come down.

Those images had scared the hell out of John at the time but he hadn't really understood it as an eight-year-old. When he hit fourteen they made a lot more sense. So much so that they had formed a sticky coating over his impulses that had kept him from doing a lot of things over the years.

They'd kept him away from even daring to explore certain temptations until he was out of his old man's house and the fear was farther away. They led him to break up with Andy right around the time things were about to make that vital shift from 'friends who really like to fuck each other' to 'something more.' And most importantly, the memory of his father's soft, sober words to his mother had kept his hands the fuck off of Rodney McKay for the last few years.

There were so many really excellent reasons why sleeping with Rodney was a bad idea. And he'd stayed away from the idea, let his naturally equal desire for women help distract him.

Only now look at where he was—where he'd always wanted to be, in bed with Rodney. Yet at the same time he was so far away he could have been back in the Milky Way.

It made him think that maybe he shouldn't have left Andy back in college. Or let Emily file for divorce. Or flipped that godforsaken coin. Or any of the dozens of things he'd done since the day he decided to join the Air Force.

Because it had been more than a week of the Mavet-Rodney-fuckfest and John was ready to kill something. Preferably Mavet. Slowly. With one of those really dull plastic sporks they have in crappy high school cafeterias.

But the rage was easier than the powerless feeling of being made dirty. Not that he'd lost that. No, that was still as strong as ever, itchy and ugly like clown makeup. But the fury was stronger.

He practically boiled with it all the time now. It was getting hard to focus on what was going on around him beyond the sexcapades he couldn't seem to stop or escape. Even on missions through the gate.

Rodney, apparently, got handsy when he was getting laid regularly. Not so anyone else would suspect of course. The man was neurotic, self-important and a little bit paranoid—not exactly the hugging type—but still, there was a noticeable shift. And Mavet just liked things that felt good. To him, sex felt good. Torturing John felt good too. And doing both at the same time? Too much good to pass up.

Killing felt good too. Killing felt more than good—it was a favorite. Mavet savored the whole thing with Kolya in a way that made John deeply apprehensive, like a man living at the base of an active volcano.

Death was a natural pleasure for Mavet. The speed and ruthlessness with which he had killed Kolya in that square had made a few things evident to John.

The most important being that it wasn't so much a matter of "if" he was going to strike the people of Atlantis. It was a matter of "when".

It was also clear that when it happened, it wasn't going to be graceless or random. Mavet was going to think about it. And he was going to enjoy it. He had floated on Kolya's death for hours like it was a good orgasm.

The only person with even the remotest clue was Teyla. It was there in her expression when she looked at him as they left Lucius Lavin to his own devices, narrowed and concerned, telling him that she'd seen something of Mavet in his eyes in that moment.

She just couldn't place what that something was.

She asked him about it later, when Mavet was only slightly letting her kick his ass at staff training.

"Are you certain you do not wish to talk to me, John?" she asked as she circled him.

"About what?"

She lifted an eyebrow at him asking plainly 'Are you kidding me?' Then she took Mavet's legs out from underneath him.

Staff practice had become one of John's favorite times since his capture. He felt the pain when she "trained" him, but it was worth it to know that Mavet did too.

"What?"

Teyla looked down at him. "You killed a man yesterday, John."

Mavet just tilted his head and held up a hand. She took it with a heavy sigh.

"You cannot tell me that you are not feeling-"

"The guy tortured me, Teyla. He tried to kill me. He's threatened all of you at one time or another. Hell, I lost track of the times he's put one of us in danger."

John hadn't. Each time stood out in sharp relief in his memory every time the Genii were mentioned.

In the face of this argument Teyla's lips thinned into a line. "You showed no mercy."

"Neither did he."

She held onto his hand and stared into his eyes, searching. For the first times in weeks, John gave screaming and flailing a chance. The way she was staring, he could almost believe that she would see, that she could hear.

But instead she just sighed again.

"I am concerned about you, John. Your behavior lately has been a little..." She tilted her head to the side as she searched for the right word. "Strange."

"I'm fine," Mavet assured her, but he gauged her in return, studying her grasp of the situation.

She is clever for a primitive. Dangerously clever. It always surprises me.

John had never been a fan of surprises.

Come on, Teyla, he prayed. Say my head hit the ground just now and demand I see Carson. Make me get a CT scan. Do something. Do anything.

"That was not what I was asking."

"Telya, don't worry about it."

"You are my friend, John. I cannot help but worry."

John missed her intensely in that moment and she was right in front of him.

"Well, I appreciate it but there's nothing to worry about."

Mavet handed her his staff, saying loud and clear that training time was over. She took it from him, still gazing at him with a suspicious expression. Mavet gave her one of John's best smiles.

"If you want to talk-"

"I'm fine, Teyla. If I wanted to talk, I would."

"I find that often you want to talk but cannot."

"Not this time."

She gave him a warm, accommodating smile. "When you are ready, John, promise me you will find me?"

"Sure thing."

She didn't believe him but she let it drop as she walked beside Mavet to the mess hall for a drink. She was so close that John could almost imagine he could feel her arm brushing against his.

He couldn't ever remember feeling so alone.

~*~*~

John nearly died laughing when Rodney got turned into a superhero which was a refreshing change of pace. Rodney wasn't a superhero like Batman or Iron Man, who were just rich guys with neat gadgets that the Atlantis science team could make in their sleep, but a real one, with honest to God superpowers and everything.

Mavet really wanted those superpowers. Listening to him pester Elizabeth about them was just part of the fun for John. It was almost as good as riding a Ferris wheel.

John's personal favorite of SuperRodney's powers was the mind reading. God, he wanted to kiss Rodney's mind reading power. Buy it candies and flowers and take it out for dinner.

If not because of the possibility that Rodney could hear him (he hadn't so far) then because it made Mavet twitchy as fuck.

Maybe if you had less to hide, John mused as they watched Rodney scribbling frantically on a notepad. He wouldn't have anything to find. Just a theory.

He is not a hero. He will not come to your rescue.

Yeah. But I bet you're not going to be fucking him again any time soon.

Mavet didn't have an answer for that. John had learned to take his small victories where he could and the whole situation with SuperRodney was definitely that. He wasn't faster than a speeding bullet but he could move stuff with his mind and that was too damn cool.

At least it was until Rodney started dying.

That was when it stopped being funny and became yet another exercise in despairing futility. John was getting really good at "functioning" through palpable desolation.

Function of course was a relative term, as he had nothing to do anyway, but he could still listen, still be aware, whereas a few weeks ago he might have shut down. Progress, not perfection, as the twelve-steppers said.

Mavet viewed Rodney's desperate attempts to produce as much as possible before he finally died as an amusement, like watching a dancing bear or a dog on a bicycle at the circus. For the most part, he was content to keep his distance and watch the spectacle unfold.

John suspected that was mostly because Mavet really didn't care. He had a tiny bit of affection for him, almost like a person would love a pet goldfish or maybe a lizard. Mostly he liked having sex with Rodney. And that small sliver of enjoyment competed with the Goa'uld's deep annoyance with him.

The bottom line was that Mavet didn't give a damn one way or the other about anyone on Atlantis. They could all die tomorrow and Mavet wouldn't bat one of John's eyelashes. In fact, he'd prefer it, so long as the loss of life didn't affect his greater goal.

None of this was news to John. It was just more relevant as Rodney's time got shorter and shorter and Elizabeth came to him for help.

She shouldn't have had to seek him out. He should have sought out Rodney, done everything he could to help like he'd done for every other member of his team when they had needed him.

Instead Mavet just flipped through one of John's old surfing magazines while Rodney quietly panicked on the floor of his quarters. After all, he didn't really care and Rodney's tendency to over-think gave him a fairly valid excuse for why the Ascension practice wasn't working.

The fourth time Rodney popped up Mavet was good and annoyed.

"What's wrong now?" he demanded, his tone that of an angry dean dealing with a problem student. Rodney missed it completely.

"Rodney, if you don't put some effort into this-"

"I know," he said, climbing to his feet and pulling that ridiculous brain wave thing off his head. "I don't have much time."

"So focus," Mavet said blandly.

"I think it's pretty clear that I can't focus on blue skies and Ferris wheels, John. My brain's going too fast for this mumbo-jumbo spiritual voodoo. At least what it's producing at this rate is useful."

"Well, then stop thinking."

"Oh, yeah, you're an expert at that."

Mavet sighed heavily and shook his head at Rodney.

I cannot say I will miss the constant assault on my patience when his body fails.

Shut your slimy mouth, John snarled as he stared at Rodney through Mavet's gaze. Rodney's fear was so blatant it was a wonder he couldn't taste it.

"You're not helping yourself here, McKay."

"You're supposed to be helping me." His hands fisted in the shirt Mavet wore. "So help me. "

Pathetic, Mavet bemoaned even has his hands slid up the back of Rodney's shirt. Rodney let out a small whimper as his mouth descended on John's. Like a dying pet that no one has the decency to put out of its misery with something as simple as a mercy killing. You know about mercy killings, don't you, my lovely host?

Like you know shit about mercy, John snapped furiously.

Oh yeah, he loved to think about his first trip inside a hive ship. That was such an awesome memory. He could barely resist replaying the mixture of resignation, exhaustion, and pain in Sumner's eyes over and over again.

Mavet chuckled inwardly as he pulled Rodney forward, onto his lap. He held John's body still as Rodney buried his face in the side of his neck.

Is this not mercy? he asked as he threaded a hand into Rodney's short hair.

This is self-serving bullshit. This is manipulative and—Never mind. I don't know why the hell I bother. Really. It's not like you give a damn.

He did it out of habit most likely.

My goodness, you are finally catching on. I knew you would.

Hook, line, and sinker, John though blandly as Mavet's eyes slid shut and those strange echoes of feeling began to migrate to him. The sensations were twisted and dirty but he had no idea how long Rodney was going to live, no concept of how much longer he'd be allowed even this. So despite himself, he savored them.

~*~*~

In the weeks after Rodney didn't die or Ascend, life sort of fell into a routine. There were no Atlantis-threatening emergencies Mavet had to fake his way through, no pressing arrangements on backwater planets, nothing beyond your standard gate trips.

So Mavet sparred with Ronon and Teyla. He hung out in Elizabeth's office on occasion (though less often than John might have). He played that Sims-like game with Rodney until the whole thing blew up in their faces, and slept with him when the mood struck him. He avoided the infirmary and Caldwell like the plague if at all possible. When the mood struck him, he continued his exploration of the darkened portions of the city.

It was the same boring pattern for weeks on end. It was enough to drive John half crazy. Especially the sex thing. He'd never thought that he could dread sex as much as he'd come to since being captured and yet, if he never had sex again...well, he probably wouldn't be having sex ever again so that point was probably moot.

But he had a lot of time to think about it. He had a lot of time in general in those painfully slow days. Too much time, he'd say.

Change came eventually and it arrived in the form of a card. Nothing special, just a scan of a very late or very early birthday card delivered in a databurst a few days after they got back from the near-catastrophe that was the moon ark. To be accurate, Mavet got a message, but it was addressed to Col. J. Sheppard so John counted it.

It would have been nothing remarkable if he ever got mail from back in the Milky Way. It wouldn't have been all that strange if he actually had an uncle named Alba.

Only he didn't and didn't.

Mavet's reaction had been one of quiet glee when he saw the simple message. Elizabeth had made a comment about how his birthday wasn't for another few months and Mavet had given her a small smile, what would have translated as a huge grin in normal beings, and said that his Uncle Alba had more important things to worry about than getting the dates right.

Which made John beg the question: how freaking stupid were the guys at Cheyenne Mountain that they couldn't tell that Alba was an anagram of Ba'al? Really. The best and the brightest his shiny white ass.

The whole thing kind of reminded him of that old black and white movie, Stalag 17. He'd always loved that movie. William Holden was nearly as cool as Steve McQueen in that one and when he was younger he'd always been of the opinion that there weren't enough POW movies. That was before he became one, of course.

Still, it worked a lot like in the movie. The hallmark card was the knot in the light cord; the anagram was the message in the hollow chess pieces.

And Mavet got the message loud and clear. He was smug as a cat that ate the canary as he headed into the bowels of the city and began turning things on.

Unlike the aimless rambling explorations the Goa'uld had been making since he arrived in Atlantis, these little trips had purpose. No matter how hard John pestered Mavet, he didn't get any information as to what that purpose was.

By the end of the week, just in time for Heightmeyer's mandatory day off, an entire science lab was operational and buzzing with energy with the exception of one lone machine, situated right in the middle of the room.

What? You don't like that one?

Quite the opposite, my lovely host, Mavet replied as he very carefully touched the last machine. It made a soft sound but didn't turn on. This one is my favorite.

What's it do? John asked tiredly. He didn't know why he bothered. To pass the time, maybe. There was nothing better to do.

Wait and see, John Sheppard. I think you will be...impressed.

Yeah, impressed was one word for it. It wasn't the right one, though. Devastated was better. Revolted was nice for it as well. Horrified was probably the most accurate description.

The damned thing made tumors that blew the hell up! They blew up, inside the human chest cavity just like a freaking grenade. What in the universe made the Ancients think building a device like that was a good idea he'd never know, even with Rodney's oh-so-logical explanation.

People were hurt. People were scared. People were just barely keeping it together before they found out what was going on.

Mavet was reveling in it. The chaos, the distress, the bloody death—these things were his element. And he was of the opinion that he'd been away from it for far too long. When the last casualty of the day was claimed, with an irony that Mavet found deeply poetic, something in John, his heart maybe, well and truly broke.

There weren't even enough pieces left for a proper burial when all was said and done. What remained were charred bits of a man who cared for every single person on Atlantis and hundreds of people across the galaxy, a man who John had called his friend.

John felt like he was bleeding inside as Mavet kept his eyes glued to the ceiling of John's room. A small smile curled John's lips and Mavet sighed with satisfaction.

You are so fucking twisted, John thought for the hundredth time since the first of those explosive tumors had gone off.

A necessary loss, Mavet replied. If it helps you, John Sheppard, the doctor was not my primary target.

It didn't help. Not even a little because Carson was still dead, murdered, as surely as if John had held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Teyla was still injured and he was still trapped while his world fell to sharp, irreparable pieces.

Who was then?

As many people as possible, Mavet replied mildly. The young woman was the most effective in that aim. The time fast approaches, my clever host.

Great. Awesome. Just wonderful. I hate you so much that it makes sick.

The funeral was nothing short of torture. He sat trapped in the dark, listening to Elizabeth speak from that far distance. No way to say goodbye, no way to apologize. Just a silent witness to an end, as Mavet had ended so many things for John.

It was three weeks later that they returned to Atlantis. A somber, more subdued cluster of people were beamed down from the Daedalus, looking worse for the wear after a week on Earth and two in transit.

Mavet had returned to Helena's still empty apartment and picked up her mail. The smell of blood had hit John like a fist in the face, which was strange because there was no blood inside. There was nothing there, not even furniture anymore. It was like Dr. Helena Myers had never existed here at all. And maybe she never really had.

The only piece of mail was pushed into the back of the mailbox. Another birthday card, nothing too sinister there. But Mavet smiled at the felt bear holding balloons, grinning innocently up from the cover of the card as if he'd just won the lottery.

Your boss is a class act. Bears and balloons. Scary scary.

Mavet had just grinned wider and slid the card into a back pocket. No one at the mountain had looked twice at the unassuming little piece of paper when the group headed back to Atlantis.

~*~*~

Little things started breaking over the next week. Lights. Hot water systems. Doorways. Simple glitches that on their own meant nothing. Except that Mavet was making them happen.

Why, John wasn't exactly sure until the day the deep space scanners went out and every technology-related scientist in the city was gathered together for the task of repairing the short. Even then he didn't know beyond the simple concept of 'create a diversion.'

It didn't all click into place until the door opened and Mavet walked, head high, into the chair room.

You're out of your freaking mind.

Calm yourself, John Sheppard. Now is not the time for more than a simple test run. No harm shall befall your friends. The word 'yet' hung heavy between them.

This is your great plan? Take over Atlantis with the control chair and hope for the best?

The best will be conquest. The best will be the domination of humans and Wraith alike as hosts for my kind. The best will come to fruition, my host. And it is all thanks to you.

You don't know what you're doing, John warned as Mavet moved to sit in the chair. You could blow yourself up by accident. Wouldn't that be a dreadful shame?

I have your knowledge and your aptitude. I will not err, Mavet declared as he placed his hands on the arms and leaned back in the chair.

It was instantaneous, the hum of the city through his brain. It was like coming home, no matter how many times he did this. He could feel her, Atlantis, clear and loud. She was so beautiful and oh, god, he'd missed her so much he hadn't even realized.

This is good, John thought idly as the city caressed him. He could stay like this forever. If he had the power he would just keep Mavet here, where they were still and he wasn't alone anymore, where he could actually feel something real.

Abruptly, so abruptly that it pulled John out of that blessed peace and into sharp, ugly awareness, Atlantis began...screaming was the only way John could explain it. It was like a woman's voice, loud and outraged, in his mind and a distant but shrill siren to his ears.

And then the pain, deep, burning, agonizing blinding pain. His body bucked in the chair and he was on fire. He was being torn open and the shriek Mavet gave from his throat wasn't even remotely human.

And there other noises now, far away and unimportant when compared to the holocaust that consumed John's mind and body. There was nothing outside of this.

Tears leaked from eyes he didn't realize were glowing and it felt like something was trying to claw its way out the back of his neck and the roof of his mouth. Running from the pain. The pain that was everywhere, in everything, for what felt like forever.

As suddenly as it had begun, John's body canted forward, his hands still pressed hard against the arms of the control chair. His mouth hung open and he choked as the roof of his mouth was cut open, blood coated his tongue. There was a high pitched screech and the sound of weapons fire and -

John blinked.

He blinked again.

He blinked one more time and then, very slowly, unsure if it was really happening, he lifted his right hand off the chair.

John stared at it, transfixed, then brought it carefully to his mouth. Bright red shocked his senses as his fingers came away bloody.

"John?" a woman asked.

Teyla. He was fairly sure that was Teyla. She sounded different than she used to. Closer.

He tilted his head for a different angle on his red-tinged digits, blinked again and then started to laugh softly.

The woman, yeah, definitely Teyla, crossed to him and knelt in front of him, placing her hand on his knee. He could feel the warmth of her hand, the shape, the pressure. It was so...there.

"John? Can you hear me? John, answer me. What happened?"

"Can you hear me?" John returned. His eyes went wide as the sound of his own voice, though shaky, hit his ears unfiltered for the first time in months. "God, you can hear me?"

He sounded borderline hysterical and tinny to his ears but it was what he'd wanted to say. He was speaking aloud of his own will and that made it the best sound he'd ever heard.

Teyla petted his knee carefully, as if he were a wounded animal. Which in a sense, maybe he was.

"Yes, we can all hear you."

John's eyes darted wildly around the control room. Ronon was standing like a statue, his face a blank mask but his eyes bright and angry. Radek stood behind Lorne and shared his expression of slack shock. Elizabeth's eyes were wide and wet, her hand pressed to her mouth.

And Rodney—Rodney was—Rodney was there, wide-eyed and horrorstruck beyond speech for all of a second before darting out of the room as fast as his legs could carry him.

And so was Mavet. A bit of serpentine tail still twitched on a burnt spot on the floor of the room near John's feet.

"I..." Talking wasn't easy anymore. He had to remember that he could first. It was conscious work to recall that his mouth would work if his brain told it to. His hands could move, his feet could flex, and his lungs could breathe. He'd forgotten so much in such a short time. "He's dead?"

"Very," came the response from over Teyla's shoulders. It was Ronon, the anger in his eyes fixed on the scorch mark in the floor.

Teyla reached up with a gentle hand and touched his face. He leaned into the contact, reveling in just feeling. Her skin was soft, if a little calloused in places, warm and tender.

"John, are you all right?"

John didn't answer. There really weren't sufficient negative words in any spoken language to answer that.

So he slid out of the chair, limp and empty, and into Teyla's embrace. His arms felt almost heavy as he wrapped them around her back. But they were his to move again. His, goddamn it. And when he started to cry, silent and hidden in Teyla's shoulder but shaking so hard it almost hurt—like he hadn't since he was ten years old—well that was his, too.

~*~*~

"Funny meeting you here. Miss me?" John quipped as Caldwell came to sit across from him in a back corner of the mess.

"How's the not-meatloaf?" Caldwell asked without preamble, glancing at the now cold tray before him. John had picked it up when he first walked in two hours ago to give him an excuse to be there and hadn't touched it since.

The fact that Caldwell's response had absolutely nothing to do with what John had said clued him in that he hadn't actually spoken, yet again. He rubbed the side of his face, his fingers scraping over coarse stubble he felt almost too acutely, and shrugged.

John wasn't so great at the whole talking thing anymore. He wasn't catatonic or anything. He responded with witty retorts to pretty much everything anyone said to him. It was just...he kept forgetting that his voice would work if he wanted it to.

"It's okay." John replied, a little slowly.

It wasn't as involuntary as it used to be, talking. Nothing was the way it used to be.

"Doesn't look it."

John shrugged and Caldwell shook his head.

"Do you know what I'm doing here, Colonel?"

He didn't know but he had a few ideas.

The rumor mill had been running at maximum capacity and it had a lot to work with. Crazy Col. Sheppard who skulked around the common areas at all hours, who used to be the enemy, who people would find sitting still as a statue for hours, unblinking and silent.

He's going to get sent back to Earth, they said. He doesn't interact with his team anymore. He's gone off the deep end.

Truth be told, the rumors weren't too far off the mark. But John would rather listen to the whispers of the masses than be left in silence with his thoughts. When he was alone in that kind of quiet, he thought he heard-

It didn't really matter what he thought he heard.

So yes, he was pretty sure he knew why Caldwell was sitting in his personal space. Elizabeth had no doubt made a few calls, pulled in a favor or six. She was no doubt of the impression that nothing else was working.

"Intervention?"

"Dr. Weir had a conference call with several members of the IOA via the gate. She asked me to sit in on the meeting."

"That's nice."

"My presence wasn't necessary, and everyone knew it," Caldwell said evenly. "Colonel, how long until you return to active duty?"

Technically, Caldwell was the ranking military officer on Atlantis, and he would be until John was working again. The guy should have been having a damn fiesta, shouldn't he? That was what he'd wanted to begin with.

"Why? Looking to set up shop?"

Caldwell rolled his eyes and let out a short breath. "No."

"Why not?"

"Honestly? Because I don't want the post. I've already got one on a good ship, with a good crew, that spares me from having to answer to civilians, no matter how well intentioned and intelligent they may be."

Silence hung between them for a long time.

John sighed as he reminded himself of the whole words to mouth thing. He really used to be good at this, the back and forth. It had been his specialty, pissing people off around the galaxy as surely as any of Rodney's tirades.

That was something else he wasn't going to think about. Rodney.

"Colonel, you should know by now that your...capture...it's being discussed heavily by the SGC and the Pentagon."

That was hardly surprising. A Goa'uld infiltration that high up in the infrastructure of the Stargate Program? Knowledge of a breach of that kind was necessary for the program's very survival.

"They say when I get my discharge papers?"

"You're not," Caldwell snapped, sounding the most frustrated John had ever heard him, and that included when he'd first arrived in Atlantis, angry and indignant. "For Christ's sake, Colonel, try to get a grip on what's really going on. I know that it's not easy after living in the dark, but I've been given the impression that you're not even making an effort."

John blinked and sat up a little straighter in his chair. It was an uncommon way for someone to put it, living in the dark.

No one else, not Heightmeyer or Elizabeth or Dr. Cole or Teyla had phrased it that way. They used words like trapped, captive, and restrained but said nothing about the dark, and John had never been inclined to tell them.

"Sir?"

Caldwell shook his head. His lips held just the barest hint of a smile.

It clicked in to place in John's head like a well-oiled machine. Frissons of remembered tension sizzled through his mind and he shook his head in dismay.

"You had a Goa'uld."

Caldwell actually did smile at him this time. It was a thin smile but it was genuine nonetheless. "And here I thought you'd forgotten."

"I...I've had a lot on my mind lately," John said lamely. That was a bit of an understatement. "Sir, if you don't mind my asking-"

Caldwell raised an eyebrow and tilted his head.

"When's it stop?"

"What?"

"All of it," John said softly.

There were things he wasn't going to bring up in the middle of the mess with a senior officer. Not outright. So much of it was too personal, too deep. It wasn't just the touch, and the speech, and the heavy feeling in his limbs that still hadn't really gone away.

It was the feeling of filth, deep inside, that he couldn't really define or expunge. It was the fact that he was haunted, by Carson's face and Rodney's skin and Helena's blood and that whispering voice. There was so much and John felt so damn tired but he couldn't really sleep.

"I was a host for a far shorter period of time than you were, Colonel," Caldwell replied slowly, carefully. "I'm not sure entirely what you're referring to but I can tell you that a lot of the physical things should fix themselves. Give it some time."

"Right."

"For everything else?" Caldwell shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. There was something in his eyes, something that John recognized. They spoke of a quiet sort of wound that wasn't noticeable if you weren't looking for it. "You might want to talk to that woman, Heightmeyer."

"I've seen her." An hour a day, every day since he was released from the infirmary on Elizabeth's orders. She was not happy with his attitude or his progress.
"Let her do her job, Colonel. They don't give out doctorates to just anyone and she's in Atlantis because she's the best there is at what she does."

John lips quirked. "Is that an order?"

"You're not technically working for the Air Force right now so I can't order you to do anything. Even if I could, I wouldn't. But if you don't take my suggestion, it's possible you'll never get back to active duty."

John said nothing. He just stared at Caldwell, at the way the light reflected off the top of his bald head, and the determined set to his jaw.

"You need to decide what you want, Sheppard," Caldwell said finally. "If it's to be part of this expedition, to be part of the universe in general, then I suggest you help yourself. You have the ability to again. You should take advantage of it."

John sat in the mess for a long time after Caldwell left, staring at a fixed point on the opposite side of the room and letting the noise of the mess fade into the background. He sat there thinking for over an hour but it only took about five minutes to realize that the older officer was right. The rest of the time was spent trying to figure what the hell he was going to do now.

~*~*~

Heightmeyer sighed and rubbed her forehead as he sat down. But she gave him a pleasant smile before cutting to the point.

"So, are you going to talk to me today or will we be pulling proverbial teeth?"

Okay. He deserved that. He'd spent a dozen sessions on her couch, monosyllabic and bitter. Only some of it was fallout from his time as a host. A lot of it was just anger - with her, with Elizabeth, and with the universe and life in general.

"I always talk to you, doc. You're the highlight of my day," John said lightly.

A grin, genuine and brilliant, split her face. "Oh my, two whole sentences back to back? Someone's in a good mood today."

"Not really. Just...sorry."

That got her attention. "For what, John?"

God, there were so many things. Carson. He was so fucking sorry for Carson and that woman, Dr. Hudson. He was so sorry about them that sometimes he couldn't stand to look at himself in the mirror. He was sorry about Kolya, in a weird, abstract way, much like the way he was sorry about Sumner even though he knew down to the depths of his soul that he'd done the right thing at the time.

John was sorry about Rodney, what his insolence and his want had inspired Mavet to do. He was sorry about the damage it had obviously done to Rodney. And Helena. God, he'd never stop being sorry about what happened to her even though he knew—in the rational, reasonable part of his brain—that the woman he'd cared for hadn't been real, that he'd never met the real Helena. But he'd still held her as she died and he was so sorry he hadn't been able to save her from their shared tormentor.

But in particular? At the moment?

"I've been rude to you for just trying to do your job. And I'm sorry."

"You went through an incredibly traumatic event, John. You can't be expected to bounce right back."

Only John did expect just that. He wanted to be back, to be normal and himself again. The fact that he wasn't frustrated him as much as it bothered anyone else. Probably more.

It didn't go unnoticed that his behavior had been seemingly more in character when the Goa'uld had been in control than it was now that he was free. And that wasn't fair, damn it.

"Your brain's had to change," Heightmeyer said gently, picking up on his line of thought. "You've had to change, to adapt, so that you could survive." She sighed. "Elizabeth sent me some case files from the SGC, from the former hosts they have records of."

John ran his hand over the fabric of her couch. He could feel the grooves in the material against his skin. The sensation was anchoring in its intensity.

"It varies from case to case and I won't give you details. But the sensory deprivation, the violation, the lost sense of self—you're not alone in these experiences, John."

"We should form a support group," he replied wryly, but she didn't react. She didn't even blink.

Again? Again with the forgetting. That was getting real old real fast.

"John? Is there anything you'd like to ask me about? Tell me?" Heightmeyer asked finally. She glanced down at her lap, at the notepad that sat there, then back up at him. "I ask because I don't think you started talking to me today because you're in a good mood. I think you've got something on your mind."

What didn't he have on his mind? That might be a less expansive answer.

"Is anything in particular troubling you?"

She was a shrink. It was her job to push. And she was good at her job. She'd helped Teyla. It was just...he didn't want people to know some of the things that were going on. Like why he stuck to crowded places.

"Anything?" she pressed.

Heightmeyer would think he'd lost his mind if he told her. Everyone would, except maybe Teyla.

Hell, John was starting to think he was going crazy so he wouldn't blame them.

He laughed bitterly. "You'll think I've lost it."

"I doubt that. Try me," she challenged.

"I can hear him."

Heightmeyer leaned forward. "Who?"

"Mavet."

Her eyebrows shot up. "The Goa'uld?"

"Sometimes." John gave her a devil-may-care grin. "Told you. Cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

"I didn't say I thought you were crazy," she replied sharply. "The Goa'uld's name was Mavet?"

"Yeah."

"And at times you think you can still hear him? He spoke to you when you were his host?"

John rolled his eyes, doing his best to make light of memories that kept him up at night. "He talked more than a seventh-grade girl."

"And that bothered you?"

"I'm hearing voices in my head, doc. Would that bother you?"

"You're hearing other voices? Or just him?"

John gave her a sidelong look. "Does it make a difference?"

She was scribbling on her notepad now. She didn't look up as she spoke.

"A big one, yes."

"Just him."

"Does he say anything specific? Anything that bothers you, agitates you more than usual?"

Mavet had lots to say. It was like the commentary on John's thoughts and feelings that had existed when he was subjugated had never ended. The snake still had something snide and vicious to add to his thought process, even after Ronon had blown him away.

It was like having a radio in his head that he couldn't always turn off. But being with people helped. The chatter of other people's conversations was the most effective thing to shut the bastard up.

"His voice just... it makes things worse. It makes me forget, I guess. I forget where I am, that I'm in control. It's like I'm back in my head and I can't get out. It just happens and I can't stop it," John finished, feeling drained.

He wasn't big with talking about his feelings under the very best of circumstances, but like this? He'd rather get a root canal without Novocain.

"All right. Good."

Okay. So maybe she was the crazy one here.

"How is this good?"

"It means that I was right, that you have PTSD, which is to be expected after an ordeal of that magnitude. It means that we can finally start making some sort of progress towards beginning the healing process." Her pen scratched across the paper as she spoke. A small smile curled her lips. "Don't worry. You're not suddenly schizophrenic."

"Right. And that's good?"

She glanced up and gave him what he guessed was meant to be a comforting smile. "Well, one can get better and the other can't really."

"And the one that can't is schizophrenia."

"Yes."

John rolled his eyes. "Well that's a relief."

"Every cloud has a silver lining," Heightmeyer replied dryly.

"You're a regular Pollyanna, doc."

She chuckled softly as she finished her scrawls on the page. Glancing over the edge he could see line after line of black ink on yellow paper, at least before she flipped to the next page.

"John, you've been in combat situations before. What do you know about post traumatic stress disorder?"

John shrugged.

He hadn't seen that much of it. Couple guys in his unit in Afghanistan hadn't been able to handle things, life in general, when they got back to the states. They'd just sort of snapped.

One of them had ended up leaving the Air Force. The other guy, John hadn't been friends with. Last he heard the guy was still in the military but he was flying a desk instead of a helo. Although having met the guy's wife on base a few times, he had a feeling that might have been because of marital stress, not post traumatic stress.

"It happens when the human psyche is subjected to extreme stress and trauma. It can cause flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, and a whole host of nasty symptoms. It happens because the human brain isn't meant to be under duress of certain degrees or durations. It can happen to people in the wake of wars, disasters, violent attacks, rape, and other traumatic events."

Heightmeyer took a deep breath and met his eyes. It was obvious she'd had that little speech, or a variation of it, planned for a while now. John wondered how long she'd had this built up. Since the moment she heard about what happened would be his guess.

"John, you spent six months as a prisoner in your own body. A foreign entity violated you by force and took control of every aspect of your life. In every way that matters, you spent the last six months in a sustained rape. And if that's not a traumatic event, then I don't know what is. "

John swallowed, trying desperately to halt the rapid drying of his throat. Her eyes were boring into him and he really wanted to be anywhere but here right now. It didn't really feel like this was helping, not when his mouth was like cotton and he could feel himself starting to sweat.

And she could see it. He hated it that she could see it.

"Take a deep breath, John," she instructed gently. "I know that things have snowballed rather quickly but I'm convinced you can handle what I have to say. By telling you this, now that you seem more willing to interact and accept, I'm trying to give you back some of your power over yourself and your situation.

"I don't expect you to deal with any of this today. The psychological wounds inflicted on you by the Goa'uld—even if they're only a fraction of what I suspect—are tremendous. It's going to take time and effort for you to heal, and a lot of it. But I've found that many people find things less scary when you take away some of the mystery. That's why I'm doing my very best to be upfront with you about my observations and assessments."

John licked his lips. "I'm okay with mystery. I love a good mystery."

"Really?"

"Yeah, are we done yet?" John asked. He was done with this. He'd go nurse his psychosis somewhere else for the next twenty-four hours, thanks.

Heightmeyer glanced over his head at the clock on the wall and nodded.

"Are you going to be here tomorrow?"

He'd already made it to the door when she asked. "I wasn't under the impression I had a choice."

"I meant mentally," she clarified. "It won't be like it was today, John. I feel like this was more of a diagnosis than a session. We'll have to make up for it another day."

"Sure. Whatever," John replied distractedly, ducking out as fast as possible.

John thought people were supposed to feel better or something after that sort of thing. That was the point of seeing a therapist as far as he was concerned. So why were the only things he felt exhaustion and an empty ache?

~*~*~

It took him a moment to realize that there was someone knocking on his door. That was mostly because the pills Heightmeyer had prescribed the day before so that he could sleep were just this side of narcotic and he'd thought that the pounding on the door was actually tribal drums for about two solid minutes.

As it stood, Zelenka wasn't the last person John expected to see at his door but he was definitely at the bottom of John's expected visitor list.

John blinked at him. Twice, just to make sure he wasn't still dreaming or that the Czech wasn't a trauma flashback of some sort. He'd been pretty sure that was limited to the voice but you could never be too careful.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but I must speak to you."

"Radek? Do you know what time it is?"

"It's ten o'clock, Colonel."

God, it was only ten? Damn horse pills, he'd have to talk to Heightmeyer and Carson about what they were giving him.

No...not Carson. Dr. Cole would be on duty or the other one, Dr. Keller.

Because Carson was gone. John wondered if it was going to feel like he'd killed Carson all over again every time he remembered that he was gone, and if it was, how the hell he was supposed to survive.

"Colonel?"

"What?"

"It's—it's McKay."

"What about him?" John asked, trying very hard not to let nerves shake his voice or his stance.

"Well, frankly he's unlivable."

"That's new?"

Zelenka gave an acknowledging nod but protested just the same. "More so than usual. More than is tolerable."

"How's that my problem?"

It's your problem because of all the damage you did, hissed that voice, the one that was like a less cultured version of Mavet but that Heightmeyer had explained was just his subconscious, chemically-altered mind reacting to negative stimuli. Have you even apologized yet for killing his best friend? For getting him fucked by an alien? Have you said you're sorry to anyone yet? Or is that too interpersonal for you to handle?

"His behavior changed after you-" Zelenka stopped, mid-sentence and glanced quickly at the floor, over his shoulder at the Johnny Cash poster on the wall, anywhere but in John's eyes. "After your rescue."

"So it's my fault?"

Zelenka sighed, adjusted his glasses, and looked at John with a wealth of patience born of having to put up with Rodney sixteen hours a day, every day. "No. I'm merely saying that I think his change of behavior has something to do with your..."

He floundered for the right word in English and came up with nothing. That was understandable. John was a native speaker and he still hadn't found the right word yet.

"Yeah, my thing. So, why're you telling me this in the almost-middle of the night?"

Zelenka flushed. "Because I've run out of patience but also because I know that at this moment in time, he is alone in his lab and easily cornered, I mean locatable."

Zelenka's levels of tolerance pretty much made the guy a shoe-in for sainthood and the fact that he was cracking was a very bad sign. For Zelenka to complain to John about Rodney, it had to have been like living under the threat of a nuclear meltdown in the labs the last couple weeks with a sudden turn from possible threat to Chernobyl.

And guilt dictated that John go down and do something about it. After he slept long enough to let whatever the hell was in Heightmeyer's pills wear off. Or not, if Zelenka wasn't going to leave.

"I haven't slept in days."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm gonna go sleep now."

Zelenka nodded and took a step back quickly. "Right. Sorry. Didn't mean to intrude," he said quickly, defensively.

And now John felt worse, for some reason. He was fairly certain that a woman had taught Zelenka how to sneak in the guilt like that. He'd only ever met women who could do that before.

John sighed.

"Where is he?"

"In the main laboratory. Perhaps you could go turn something on for him?"

John rubbed his forehead. He could feel a headache coming. It wasn't there yet but oh, it was brewing like storm clouds.

"Yeah, maybe I'll do that."

"Excellent. Bez práce nejsou koláče," Zelenka said cheerfully, before disappearing down the hallway as if he'd never been there.

"Yeah. Okay. Same to you," John muttered as he fumbled for his shoes.

~*~*~

Rodney looked as tired as John felt. He perched on a stool, bent over something (that was no doubt very vital to the survival of Atlantis and possibly the human race), and rubbing his eyes in the low light.

As he moved closer, John became fairly certain that Rodney had lost weight, no doubt from avoiding him in the mess. There was also a tense set to his shoulders that hadn't been there before.

"Working on anything important?" John asked softly.

Whatever it was, it went flying from Rodney's grip as he jerked up like a startled animal. It landed on the floor with a crash.

John winced. "That sounded expensive."

"Priceless," Rodney snapped. "And completely useless now, thanks to you." He gave John a withering stare. "What are you doing here?"

"In the grand sense? Because you know, I live here," John replied lightly. At least he sure hoped it came off as levity. He was doing his best impression of someone who didn't care and he'd never been good at impersonations.

Rodney rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. "I don't mean on Atlantis, Colonel. I mean here, in my lab, in my space. What are you doing here?"

"I just... got...bored," John said lamely, leaning a hip against the lab table and wishing he couldn't read absolutely everything Rodney was thinking on his face.

Rodney's expression said plainly that he didn't trust John any farther than he could throw him, and Rodney threw like a girl.

"After three weeks, you got bored?"

"I used to get bored all the time."

"Really? Was that you?" Rodney asked and Jesus, that was just cold. John barely restrained the instinct to flinch.

"Damnit, Rodney, that's not fair."

Rodney pushed off his stool and stood with his arms crossed defiantly. "Life's not fair."

"Yeah, I'm well aware of that. Of the two of us, which one just spent the last six months trapped in his own head?" John snapped as his brain switched from defensive to offensive. And for the first time since Atlantis drove Mavet to tear his way out the back of John's throat, talking was easy again.

All of a sudden it was like riding a bike, and wouldn't Heightmeyer be thrilled? She'd call this progress and a healthy, emotional outlet. John just called it being pissed off.

"I thought it was you. I spent months thinking it was you," Rodney practically snarled. But he was hugging himself with a defensiveness that belied his aggression. "I trusted your face and I trusted your words and—"

"I know!" John shouted, moving towards the man he'd considered his best friend months ago. Things had changed and they were almost strangers now. Strangers with a huge mess between them. "You think I don't know?" he demanded, moving towards Rodney. It was a horrible parody of that day in the hallway, with John crowding Rodney slowly but surely against a wall. Only this time it was a desk with a computer perched atop it. "You think I wasn't aware and awake for every second, that I didn't have to listen to you all talk to him, laugh with him, thinking he was me?"

"I don't know," Rodney bit back. "I don't even know you're you now. For all I know, you could be another Goa'uld come to finish what the first one started."

"Would it matter? Would that stop you from fucking me if I dragged you off to a closet right now?" John asked, his voice dropping an octave and taking on venom that wasn't his, couldn't be his.

He deserved the punch Rodney threw. He deserved that and more but instinct was stronger than desire in this case and he dodged it and the second, wilder one Rodney tried to deliver with his left fist.

John grabbed his hands to prevent another strike and gave Rodney a shake.

"Stop it," John hissed.

"Let me go, Sheppard," Rodney returned evenly.

But there was panic in his eyes. Fear. And John was sick of dealing with fear, others' and his own. He released Rodney and pushed away, disgusted with himself.

"Fuck, I'm not gonna hurt you. Have I ever hurt you?"

Rodney rubbed his hands but he was nursing a wounded pride more than anything. "Define hurt."

John scrubbed his face with his hands and then let them drop heavily to his sides. He had a feeling this wasn't what Zelenka had had in mind.

"McKay..."

Rodney shook his head, his arms wrapping back around himself. It made him look much younger than he should.

"I thought it was you," he said again. "I thought it was you and I thought we- I don't know what I thought we were doing, Sheppard, but I thought it was something."

John sighed heavily. He remembered those distant sensations, echoing sounds, distorted tastes. He remembered seeing Rodney, asleep and peaceful one night, before Mavet expelled him from John's quarters.

"I know."

"Thank you. I guessed that," Rodney snapped. "How much do you know?"

"All of it."

Rodney twitched. His whole face seemed to tick with a sort of barely restrained horror. The self-control of the reaction told John that he'd suspected this possibility already. It explained a lot about why he hadn't seen him in the weeks since his release.

"How much is all?"

"I could see. Whenever my eyes were open I could see. And when he wanted me to, I could hear and feel."

John swallowed around the ache in his throat and his tongue brushed over the still healing place on the roof of his mouth. He hadn't told Heightmeyer these things. But then, he hadn't been forced to see Heightmeyer laid bare and vulnerable like he had when Rodney was under Mavet's touch.

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, I'm sure you are." Rodney shook his head again and rubbed his upper arms. "I thought it was you," he said again. As though, if he said it enough times, things would suddenly get better. "I really did."

"I know you did, Rodney." And John didn't know if that made it better or worse.

Rodney laughed. It was a soft, almost tragic sounding laugh that John had never heard before.

"What?"

"I think you should leave." Rodney said with a small, sad smile that was so completely out of character for him it froze John in his tracks. "Yes, you should go."

"We're not finished here."

"We never started."

"Rodney-" John began, unsure what came after the simple sound of his name. But he wasn't given the chance to find it.

"I think I'm done," Rodney mumbled softly, glancing around the lab with tired, lost eyes. He gave John a thin, wavering smile and a stiff nod. "Good night, Colonel."

John couldn't watch Rodney leave. But he couldn't help but hear the door slide shut behind him and it hit him like the punch Rodney had failed to land earlier.

~*~*~

The thing about Kate Heightmeyer was that she was a doer. You wouldn't think it, what with her chosen profession, but she was a firm believer in 'don't sit there, do something' and it came through in her methods of practice.

The woman never ran out of suggestions. For everything John brought up, she had a possible solution. She always prefaced them by saying "It may not work for you, but this has worked for other people so why don't you try..."

Her suggestions for countering the nightmares—because now that he could sleep for longer than twenty minutes at a stretch, joy of joys, there were horrific nightmares of burnt human flesh, blood on yellow tile, and Rodney's exposed throat and chest covered in hand-shaped bruises—had been journaling or positive self-talk (which was basically talking to himself). She was a big fan of the positive self-talk. While they weren't the worst ideas he'd ever heard, they did make him feel like a bigger nutcase than he already did.

"You keep using terms like that - nutcase, crazy. Why do you think you have to be crazy, John? Why can't you just be reacting to trauma?" she had asked, that pen of hers scribbling away just a second behind her thoughts.

"I am reacting to trauma. Like a crazy person."

"You realize that every time you say that, it makes it seem as if your pain isn't valid?"

"Doc..."

"Why do you do that?" she asked in that gentle, probing 'I already know what's wrong with you, why don't you catch up already' way of hers. It always made John WANT to shake her until she just gave him all the information she had.

John rubbed the back of his head. "I don't know."

"I don't think that's completely honest," Heightmeyer said softly. "I think that maybe you do that because you're angry."

Of course he was angry. That didn't take a graduate degree to figure out. A fucking snake used his body as its puppet to kill his friends and coworkers and fuck his teammate.

"You wouldn't be angry?" John had asked finally.

"Of course. Anger's a natural response to an attack of such a personal nature. That's not in question. I just want to know who you're angry at."

"Besides the snake?"

She had merely tilted her head and stared at him innocently. "Are you mad at someone besides Mavet?"

He hated that. Those rhetorical questions that she had the answers to but he didn't have a clue about.

"Why don't you think about it and get back to me in another session? No rush," she offered magnanimously. "It's just something to turn over. But until we can get to the root of this anger, have you thought about getting back into a regular training routine with your team? It may not work for you, but I know that exercise has provided a healthy outlet for rage and frustration if you're not willing to give my other suggestions a try. I think it could be a good way to speed the reintegration process with your team. I think that more than anything, you should try to stay active."

John had nodded because that was an idea that didn't make him feel quite as Looney Toons. It wasn't that much of a change for him anyway. After the disaster that was his conversation with Rodney a few nights ago, he'd started running again. Resuming training was the next natural progression.

Granted he might have taken Heightmeyer's suggestion to stay active a little bit too far. When he lay panting, bruised, and bleeding on the floor of the gym for the fourth time in as many days, he had a feeling this might not be what she had in mind.

He didn't particularly care, though. There was something deeply rewarding about getting and giving a good beating. The aches and pains had a sort of satisfying sting that John relished hours after the sparring sessions were over.

Ronon, on the other hand, didn't look to be in too bad shape as he bent over to help John up. He had a few small bruises on his jaw but was mostly unharmed.

"Again?" John asked as he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He slid stiffly back into fighting stance.

"I don't think so."

John threw a light punch that Ronon deflected easily.

"You can't be tired yet."

Ronon shook his head. "I'm not."

John bounced on the balls of his feet. "Well, come on then."

"No."

"Damnit, Ronon-"

The blow sent John flying off his feet and into the wall with a jarring thud. He blinked at the dueling images of Ronon as the big man leaned down and lifted John off the floor by the front of his shirt.

"Did that hurt?"

"Yes," John groaned through gritted teeth.

"You want another one?"

"Yes," John spat. His mouth was full of coppery blood that slid slickly down his throat.

Ronon lifted an eyebrow and let him drop. He landed with another thump and winced.

"Too bad."

"Fucking-"

"Get up, Sheppard. You need to cool down, take a few days off."

"I've been off for almost a month," John protested as he attempted to climb to his feet. His knees felt a little weak and he slumped against the wall.

Ronon shook his head and took a few steps back. "Yeah. There's a reason."

"Ronon, come on. We're not done yet," John protested.

Even has he heard the words leave his mouth he knew that there was something off. There was something about this whole scenario that wasn't normal or healthy. He shouldn't want this kind of pain. He never had before. But the throbbing in his jaw and the jabbing hurt in his shoulders and arm and legs where they hit the wall felt almost soothing.

"I'm not going to hurt you again, Sheppard," Ronon said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Why not?" John demanded, anger and pain pulsing hot in his head and making him stupid.

"You're not the enemy, Sheppard. I already killed it."

That simple statement hit John harder than the blow had and sent him sliding back to the floor. He had no idea what to do with that, what to say in response, but he knew that he couldn't argue with the things Ronon had seen.

"You want me to get someone?" Ronon asked, looking awkward and uncomfortable.

"Just help me out of here," John mumbled lamely.

Ronon nodded and lifted him up off the ground, gentler this time. He slung John's arm over his shoulder and helped him limp to Dr. Keller, who took one look at him and called Heightmeyer.

She looked him over, took in the purpling bruises and split lip and careful movements. She sighed.

"John? Care to share with the rest of the class?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

She rubbed her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger. "I do have other patients, you know."

"You didn't have to come."

"Yes, I did. You're hurting yourself," she said on a sigh of frustration. "In the psychiatric field we call this sort of thing self-destructive behavior. If it had happened on Earth, I could probably convince a judge to get you put away for thirty days. This is the kind of thing that people get discharged for."

Those were fighting words and John sat up a little straighter on the edge of the hospital bed.

"I'm not that crazy."

"Really? You keep telling me otherwise. Tell me why I shouldn't recommend you go back to Earth and get well there?"

He shrugged and glanced nervously around the empty infirmary. "I don't know. I guess it felt good."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"That's not good enough, John. Why did it feel good?"

"Look, I already told you I don't know."

"Yes you do," Heightmeyer argued. Her voice was cool and her eyes were sharp like he'd never seen them before. "Tell me why it felt good to bruise, tell me why you liked the taste of blood in your mouth. Tell me, John. You know why."

John fisted his hands in the fabric covering the bed he sat on. A bead of sweat formed on his temple and began a slow journey down the side of his face.

"Why, John? You can tell me. It's okay. I already know."

"I...it...was coming."

"What was?"

"The pain."

"Why was it coming?"

"Because it had to," John replied numbly. He flexed his wrists, twisting the sheet, just to remind himself that these were his words from his thoughts. That he was still in control because he sure as hell didn't feel like it. "I mean, I had to get it."

"Why?"

Because he deserved it. Because he'd hurt Rodney and killed Carson and because he deserved the hurt that Ronon dished out with his massive fists and more.

"John?"

"Yeah. I've got it." His mouth felt so dry it was a wonder he could talk at all. "Thanks."

"You don't think it'll help to say out loud?"

It absolutely would not help to say it out loud. It was already way too real.

"No."

She nodded and reached out to place a hand gently over his. She squeezed and gave him a soft look.

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"It wasn't your fault." She gave his hand a tug and he glanced up and into her eyes. "It was not your fault. None of what happened was."

John shrugged and looked away. "Yeah."

She let go of his hand and took his face between her palms. It was what John would call a new twist on hands-on medicine.

"You don't believe it. I want you to say it until you believe it."

"Doc-"

"Say it wasn't your fault. That's an order."

"It wasn't my fault," John mumbled as best he could with his cheeks held tightly in her hands.

"Say it again."

"It wasn't my fault."

"Again," she demanded in a quiet tone that held more intensity than the yell of any drill sergeant.

"It wasn't my fault."

"Say it," she said passionately, "over and over. Say it until it becomes your truth. It doesn't matter that it is the actual truth if it's not yours."

"It wasn't my fault," he said softly and god, this time he could almost believe it.

"That's right," Heightmeyer said with a glint of triumph in her eyes. "Nothing that Mavet did to you or anyone else was your fault. You didn't ask for it. You didn't deserve to be violated and you don't need to be punished." She gave him a tired but bright smile. "It wasn't your fault."

It was hard not to believe a woman when she spoke like that. John nodded as best he could with her holding onto his face as her words seeped past the wall of his stubbornness into his brain.

~*~*~

Robert Sheppard met Kathleen MacCarthy on a bus in Boston a week before Thanksgiving while on a three day pass from Hanscomb AFB. It was just a regular city bus, nothing out of the ordinary, until she stumbled on with her dark hair floating loose around her face and her arms full of more books than she could handle. Robert watched transfixed as she fumbled and dropped an especially large art history text. Chivalry dictated that he pick it up for her and give her his seat, and she'd given him the most breathtaking smile he'd ever seen before thanking him and striking up a conversation.

She'd enchanted him so that he missed his stop. He got off at hers instead so that they could continue talking. Robert had pretty much followed her home to her dorm and just never left.

At least that was the story his parents had told John when he was small.

Of course it wasn't that simple. Life never was, but John didn't find out most of the more complicated issues until years later.

He didn't know that only a few months after his parents met his dad was reassigned to the 2nd Air Division just in time to be a part of the initial implementation of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam. He had no idea that they fought for two solid days when Robert told her about it, before finally running off to Maryland for a quickie wedding. He didn't know that his maternal grandfather disowned his mom for marrying beneath her and that she had to drop out of college because he wouldn't pay for it any more.

He just knew that his mom was an artist and his dad was a pilot and that they loved each other. And when he was little, he didn't really need more than that.

He only really worried about them once.

His fourth grade teacher had called his parents in for a parent-teacher conference and they had come home fighting. They were shouting at each other before they got inside the house and John had snuck out of his room to eavesdrop.

"For god's sake, Robbie, it's not like he's suddenly different just because of some stupid test!"

"No. We just suddenly know. This could be great for him, babe. Think of what this could mean for him."

"And when we move again?" Kathleen had demanded. "What happens to him then? He has a hard enough time as it is. Do you really want to make it worse?"

"He can handle it, Katie," Robert countered. "He's a Sheppard. He's tough. If we do this, he'll have an edge when I get transfer orders."

His mother had given a loud frustrated sigh and said a bad word.

"Come on, babe, you know I'm right."

"No, damnit, you're not going to win this one. Yes he's bright, but we knew that. We've always known that."

"But Katie this is-"

"I know what this is!" she shouted, agitated. "Okay? Becca was like that. Becca was just like John."

And just like that John was listening with rapt attention. Because his parents fought, sure, but it was rarely like this, and that the argument was about him made him feel sick and nervous. And they were talking about Aunt Becca. He'd only ever seen pictures of Aunt Becca, a thin woman with thick glasses and a sad face. She had gotten sick and died before he was born and his mom didn't like to talk about her.

"Even staying in one place all the time, it was hard for her. She was lonely all the time and she felt..." Kathleen trailed off. "I don't want that for him. He's normal, Robbie. Let him just be normal."

"But he's not normal," Robert protested. "He's better than that. He's exceptional."

"That's not necessarily an easier life. The life we live is hard enough on John. I don't think we need to add to the struggle, do you?"

John listened intently to the sound of his parents' pacing footsteps. It took them a long time to talk again and when his father finally spoke John gave a sigh of relief.

"I don't think we should let this pass."

"Then we'll do it here, at home. But I don't want him skipping a grade and I don't want him in any kind of program that may not exist the next place we move."

"I think you're blowing this way out of proportion," Robert had snapped.

"And I don't think you're taking our son's situation into account. I think you're doing this because it's almost as good as any other medal on your uniform," she'd shot back. It was a hurtful and thoughtless thing to say but John hadn't known how much so at the time.

"You know that's not true," Robert hissed.

"Sometimes I wonder."

"Katie, stop it, damn you. You don't need to do this."

"Do what?"

"This. This low-brow garbage you pull every time you don't get your way like the spoiled-"

"Spoiled? Robbie, I gave up everything for this, remember?"

"Constantly."

"It was worth it," his mother had said so softly John almost couldn't hear her. He inched closer and strained to catch every word. "You, John, our life. I wouldn't change a second, you know that. But, Robbie, this time I know I'm right. Please, just trust me."

"Babe-"

"Trust me," she pleaded softly, a complete turn around from only minutes earlier. "I need you to trust me. I'm your wife and I'm his mother and as both, I need you to trust me. "

Robert had sighed, loudly, then placed a noisy kiss on what John figured was her forehead. He didn't like to think about grown-ups kissing.

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"That. With the eyes. You know what."

"This?"

"Katie..."

"How about this?" she asked and there was a soft laugh and then silence.

John had snuck back to bed, closing the door to his room and pulling the covers over his head. It was one of the biggest fights his parents had ever had as far as he knew, but all their fights seemed to end like that. They always eventually quit yelling and went back to loving each other again.

It wasn't long after that that she died. It was a no-fault, one-car accident that happened on a rainy Thursday morning. She hit a puddle and hydroplaned into a tree on her way home from the grocery store. By the time the EMTs arrived, she was already dead.

In many ways, losing her was almost easy because it happened so fast. One minute she was alive and the next John was being checked out of class in the middle of current events by his dad.

There was never anything to worry over, nothing to fight. John just held his father's hand and trusted him to lead him through it.

That was not to say that it wasn't one of the worst things that had ever happened in John's life. His tight little family was decimated and his dad wasn't particularly great at picking up the pieces there in the beginning. Kathleen took a piece of Robert with her when she died and it took a long time for him to put himself back together enough to be the parent John needed.

And he had needed a lot because he would remember looking down at her from his father's arms until the day he died. She had small cuts on her pale skin from where the mortician had gone in and rebuilt her face and she hadn't looked all that peaceful to John's eyes. The image of her like that had haunted his nightmares for years and it still cropped up every once and a while.

But after that, it had pretty much been over. He'd had to grieve and learn to get along with his father, just the two of them, but it had been abrupt and mercifully quick.

On the other hand, it took his father a horrifically long time to die. Almost ten years, when all was said and done. It was nearly a decade of chemo and pain and too many crushed hopes for John to count. And he'd held on to each minute with both hands and the skin of his teeth because Robert had been all the family he had.

John hadn't been ready to lose him at twenty-six. Any age was too young to be an orphan but when things had started to snowball, he'd been stationed in Italy and waiting for NATO to get back into the Balkans. By the time he'd managed to procure leave and make it back to the States, his father wasn't the man he remembered anymore.

That his once strong and proud father was bald and skeletal, John could handle. It was listening to him babble incoherently from pain and drugs that John couldn't stand. Over the course of the next three days he had to sit and watch his father die. The only thing about the whole ordeal that had given John any sort of comfort was the way his father had smiled and whispered his mother's name as he passed.

John had made a large volume of really stupid mistakes after his father's death. They were many and varied, from a really dumb drunken encounter with a superior officer that could have gotten him kicked out of the service to requesting and receiving an assignment back in the States. But the biggest of his mistakes was Emily, the girl he met on a bus in New York who was smart and lovely but didn't have the best sense of humor and wasn't at all cut out to be married to a military man, especially not him. Of course, John didn't realize that until she was packing up all of her things and some of his while listing his faults.

She was gone for all of twelve hours when John realized that maybe he didn't really love her as much as he loved the idea of the family she could have been. That made him feel like a complete piece of shit but was probably one of the more enlightened realizations he'd ever had.

After that it was pretty much just him, on his own, until he landed in Antarctica and just so happened to sit in a chair that lit up when he touched it.

Then in a matter of days he went from the end of the Earth to the end of the universe. His dad would probably have thought it was funny that he had to go that far to get a new family but maybe that was why he liked them so much.

Granted, they weren't anything like the one he'd had. They were more mismatched than his parents were on their worst days but damn it, they were his.

And one of the things John had been realizing over the last month was that he wasn't prepared to lose them. Not over a fucking Goa'uld that had taken far more than its fair share of his life and his soul already.

Maybe he had the way his parents raised him to thank for that. Maybe it was just because he was a stubborn ass who didn't know when to quit. Either way, within forty-eight hours of the spectacular mess with Ronon and Heightmeyer, he'd made decision into action and was busy hunting down Rodney McKay.

It took him about an hour to find him. He was in the second place John checked but his search was slowed by the completely unhelpful misdirection and confusion of Rodney's lab toadies and the fact that he ran into Elizabeth who wanted to know how he was. And as she had displayed the patience of a saint with him over the last month, he'd felt compelled to tell her the truth—which was good news for once because he was, in fact, a bit better.

So by the time he made it to Rodney's room, he'd lost a lot of his original momentum. And the door was locked.

"Rodney?"

"Yes?"

"Let me in."

"Sheppard?"

"Yeah."

"No."

"Rodney, open the door."

"I don't think so."

"I can make it open, Rodney. So unlock the door or I'll get Atlantis to do it for me."

The sound of muted grumbling filtered through the door as it beeped in submission. John sighed in relief and let himself in.

"Came for round two? I have to tell you, Colonel, I'm not in the mood to- what happened to your face?"

"It sassed Ronon's fist. It knows better now," John answered dryly, trying not to smile because it hurt his face.

It was hard, though, because this felt so good, snarking at Rodney. It felt normal, for the first time in ages, like John was starting to really be himself again.

"Oh." Rodney blinked and nodded distractedly before turning his expression into a look of withering disdain. "I can see you're back your charming self. Wonderful. Care to tell me why you chose the one day I've had off in the last twenty or so to come and harass me instead of coming at any point during my twenty-hour work days when I wasn't trying to get some rest?"

"I didn't want to interrupt you. You could have blown up a solar system or something," John said, trying for teasing.

But it came out mean and just as spiteful as anything his parents had thrown at each other in the passion of their most heated arguments. And Rodney was naturally offended.
"It wasn't the whole thing and that's not the point."

"I know that."

"All right, then what are you doing here?"

John sighed and sat down on Rodney's bed. He hadn't been invited to do so but he wanted to, just once, be there as himself the way he hadn't every time Mavet fell into bed with Rodney.

"We need to talk."

"I don't want to talk to you," Rodney snapped. He crossed his arms and looked downright pissy, which was better than devastated, John had to admit. Bitchy, angry Rodney he could handle. Heartbroken, betrayed Rodney was something else all together.

"Tough shit. You can't always get what you want."

"Are you going to quote lyrics at me now, Colonel?"

"Only if you make me. Listen, we've got to stop this."

"What? There is no this."

"This," John said, waving a hand between them. "This you being ticked at me for something that happened to me. I'm going to be back on active duty eventually." Soon, if he could just get Heightmeyer to sign a simple evaluation. She was being difficult about it.

"That's nice for you."

"And when I do, I'll expect my team to be in working condition."

"Well, then I think Zelenka would be an excellent addition to your team, Colonel. He's relatively intelligent and if Ronon keeps an eye on him he shouldn't trip over his own feet."

John stared at him, gobsmacked. "You're not leaving the team."

"Colonel, I'm-"

"You're not. Sorry. It's not your choice."

"It's not yours, either."

"It is, actually."

"Really?"

"Yes," John lied.

Elizabeth had always let him run his team his way. It was what made them so successful. John had no doubt that she'd trust him to do so again when he came back to work. So while he couldn't force Rodney to remain on his team, he was pretty sure that Rodney didn't know that.

"I can't. You'll have to work around that."

John could feel a headache coming on. And not a creepy-ghost-Mavet-voice-flashback headache or a sleeping pill hangover headache. No this was an old and familiar Rodney-induced headache. It was almost welcome. Almost.

He knew why Rodney didn't want to do this. There were good reasons, dozens of them containing various incriminating comments and impressive positions, for him to want to stay the hell away from John. The things that had happened left Rodney vulnerable and John understood that. He understood vulnerability of that sort better than Rodney probably ever would.

That didn't change the fact that he'd grown up with the idea that when you fought with someone you cared about, you stuck it out. You worked through it. You didn't waver until you fixed it. Part of why he'd lost Emily was because he'd forgotten that in the aftermath of his father's death.

He wasn't going to lose another member of his family. Not when he didn't have to.

"Tell me what you're going to need for us to get back to normal."

"A time machine."

"I don't have one of those. What else?"

Rodney paced, like a big cat stuck in a too-small cage. He looked like he wanted to talk his way through his thoughts but couldn't or wouldn't with John right there.

John was okay with waiting. He was reasonably comfortable and he slid into the habit of immobility without conscious thought. It clearly unnerved the hell out of Rodney who realized John was zoning out before he did.

"You can stop that."

John blinked slowly. "What?"

"The blank zombie-like stare. It's disturbing. The whole thing is disturbing."

"What is?"

"You are!" Rodney burst out angrily, obviously a little surprised with himself.

This was different from their fight in the lab, where Rodney had just seemed lost. Now instead he was furious. And, John had to admit, with good reason.

"That wasn't me."

Rodney let his words fall off abruptly and hung his head in humiliation. And that John could understand full well.

"I need to know why, Sheppard. I need to know why it happened before I can work with you again."

Yeah, John would like to know why it happened as well. But John's why probably a little more cosmic than Rodney's was, and he hadn't figured it out yet. He probably never would.

But he could give Rodney an answer. He probably wouldn't like it, but it was something.

"Because he knew it'd hurt me," John said simply. "And he thought that causing pain was fun."

For not the first time, John was grateful Elizabeth had forced him to see Heightmeyer. He'd resented her during the past few months but she'd made talking about what happened easier, if only by forcing him to practice. What he'd just told Rodney had been painful to share, but he'd been able to do it. And that was huge, even if Rodney didn't realize it.

For his part, Rodney looked disappointed and dismayed. "That's it?"

"That's pretty much it."

"That's- kind of...anti-climactic, I guess." Rodney frowned, his brow creasing with thought.

"It's bigger than you'd think," John said softly because it hadn't been even remotely simple at the time. It had been rape and torture and he'd barely come out of it with his sanity intact, and there was a part of him that was screaming for Rodney to realize that.

Rodney looked into John's face, searching for what, John didn't know. But whatever it was he must have found it because he nodded, then sat down carefully next to John.

Their shoulders brushed softly and John almost stopped breathing. It was the closest he and Rodney had been since before the Ancients returned to Atlantis all those months ago.

"Sheppard?"

"Yeah?"

Rodney scratched behind his ear as he turned to look directly at him. "It's occurred to me that I, uh, haven't asked how you are. Which is extremely thoughtless and self-centered of me, more so than usual at any rate, so, um, how are you?"

John smiled, not caring that it reopened the scabbing cut on his lip or made the bruises on his face ache in protest, because that was a question that a friend would ask. It meant that angry and hurt though he might be, Rodney still cared about him.

He could build on that. It would take time but their situation wasn't as hopeless as he'd feared. They could get back on track, John was sure of it.

He didn't expect things to return to the way they had been between him and Rodney. Too much had happened to them for that. But for the first time, John really believed they could one day move forward in a new direction. It wouldn't be the one they'd started out on but then maybe that wasn't a bad thing.

"Not too hot, but I'm getting there," he answered honestly once he'd gotten his idiot grin under control.

"Oh," Rodney replied awkwardly. He sounded a little unsure of how exactly to respond to that. "That's good, I suppose."

"Yeah." John agreed with a nod, shifting just a little as he spoke.

His shoulder brushed Rodney's again with a whisper of contact that felt better than almost anything John could remember. The smile it caused fought its way onto John's face against his will. And in that one moment, John was okay with the lack of control.

"Yeah," John repeated. "It's good."

(finis)

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