They step through the gate, just like any other day, Ronon at John's
side, McKay in the middle, and Teyla on their six; the MALP had shown a
vast and empty field, and the Ancient Database had had nothing to say
about P44-336, but there is an energy reading that McKay insists is
impossible. There's always an energy reading. Ronon lifts his nose to
the faint breeze and sniffs, his shaggy head swinging from side to
side. “I smell something,” he says, a faint furrow between his brows,
and John is about to ask for something a little more specific when the
wormhole disengages with a whoosh, and there is an unfortunately
familiar sound behind them, the distinctive ratcheting ka-chuck of a gun cocking.
John
frowns a little, because the sound is familiar, but still a little
weird for Pegasus, where projectile weapons tend to be either fairly
modern (theirs), and thus don't need to be cocked, or fairly alien
(Genii), and thus don't have many of the more distinctive
characteristics of weapons from Earth. He raises his hands while he
frowns, though (leaving his P-90 dangling from its strap against the
cradle of his hips, hoping that his body conceals enough of it that
whoever is behind them can't see it), because he's not stupid.
“Hey,
there,” he drawls, and turns his head slowly, more to get an idea of
where all his own people are than to get a look at whoever just got the
drop on them. Ronon is looking sideways at him, hands well away from
his body, though John can see his right hand twitching in anticipation.
He twitches one corner of his lips in acknowledgment of the eyebrow
that John quirks at him, and doesn't move. A little behind him, Rodney
has both hands up, and the lifesigns detector he'd been holding is on
the ground between his feet. Face up.
John smiles when Rodney mouths the word four at him.
Oh, good, John thinks. Even odds. He likes even odds; he has yet to meet any other four people as kick-ass as his team.
Teyla
is a couple of feet behind Rodney, hands spread and away from her body,
but not raised. She's got her head cocked, listening, but appears
serene and unworried. She is right behind Rodney, though, her body between his and whoever is behind them, and John thinks, I've got the best team.
He isn't actually worried, yet. Sadly, this kind of thing happens to them all the time, and it doesn't always end badly. In a galaxy full of life-sucking space vampires, better safe than sorry is a way of life.
“We come in peace,” John says, because he fucking loves saying it, it will never not
be funny, and he'd think the snort he gets in response was Rodney's
except he's looking right at Rodney when it comes. Rodney arches both
brows at him; he doesn't look amused.
“Eddie,” someone says, a male voice, slow and deep; it causes goosebumps to shudder up John's arms, and he has no idea why.
John
isn't surprised when someone circles into his line of sight, isn't
surprised at the huge-ass revolver (it's the size of Ronon's energy
pistol; the bore looks like a fucking tunnel) that's trained on
him, isn't surprised at the careful grace and competence with which he
moves; what surprises him are the jeans the guy is wearing, familiar
and foreign at the same time, and doubly incongruous because of the
deerskin shirt they're topped off with. The guy – a kid, really, maybe
twenty five or so, tops -- is smiling, at ease, not exactly friendly,
but not unfriendly either. He says, “Hey, that's a cool gun.”
John
blinks and hears himself say, “It's not the coolest I've ever seen, but
it doesn't suck.” His own voice sounds distant to him.
There
is something naggingly, unsettlingly familiar about this guy. John is
simultaneously certain he's never seen him before in his life, and that
he should know who he is.
The guy, Eddie, nods genially. “Why
don't you put it down?” It's an order, but a gentle one, and the look
on the kid's face is vaguely sympathetic when John hesitates. Probably
Eddie thinks John is worried about being unarmed in the face of the
kid's really big gun, but that's not actually it.
John is worried because he isn't worried.
He
has hunches all the time, and as a rule he isn't opposed to listening
to what his gut tells him, but this feels... This whole thing feels
weird. He isn't afraid; he isn't even anxious. But he's thrumming,
suddenly, with something bright and hectic, anticipation or excitement.
“Sheppard,” Ronon says, dubious, not a question.
“We don't want to hurt you,” Eddie says, and John believes it.
“It's
okay, Ronon,” John says, and unslings the P90's strap with slow,
exaggerated care. He isn't afraid, but he's not stupid, either. He
believes that Eddie doesn't want to hurt them, but he can see the wary
tension of war in the kid's face and shoulders, and John's seen enough
action to know that you don't startle someone who has had to make peace
with being a killer of men. “Sidearm, too?” John asks, and hears Ronon
rumble softly with disapproval.
Eddie, watching John with
something like speculation furrowing his brows, looks past him for an
instant. “Nah, that's okay. You could never get to it in time.” He
smiles as he says it, not quite smug, but certain. “The other machine
guns, though,” he says, and gestures with the barrel of the cannon he's
holding, probably at Rodney and Teyla, who also have P90's. John
automatically compensates, putting himself between Rodney and the kid's
gun. The kid's eyes flicker with something, but he adjusts his aim back
to John deliberately, and John relaxes slightly.
“Colonel?” Rodney asks, a question.
“Yeah, go ahead,” he says, and adds, “Slow and easy,” for McKay's benefit, as Teyla already knows.
Eddie
relaxes visibly when Rodney and Teyla stop moving behind John. “Great,”
he says, and casually jams his giant gun into a holster on his hip.
“I'm Eddie Dean. So, what the hell is that thing?” He gestures at
something behind John, the 'gate probably, John thinks dimly, but he
doesn't even turn to look.
The sudden pounding of blood in his ears is cacophonous and echoing, and John can't think anything but, Eddie Dean, Eddie Dean, Eddie Dean, over and over again. He's turning away from Eddie (Dean, Eddie Dean) before he can stop himself, taking two steps and looking, searching, because...
“Roland,”
he says faintly, and the world goes grainy and gray for a few seconds
during which John realizes he's perilously close to fainting. He
doesn't, though, just sways a little, and stares at Roland Deschain
with the distant memory of the rush of empty air blowing past his ears,
falling, falling again.
“Colonel!” Rodney snaps, suddenly right beside him, a hand on John's arm, and
“Sheppard!”
Ronon echoes, voice tense with impending violence, and John somehow
finds himself reaching out for Ronon, capturing his wrist just as
Ronon's hand settles on the butt of his gun.
“Don't,” he says,
and Rodney inhales sharply and goes shatteringly tense, fingertips
digging into John's biceps, and John knows before he looks up and sees
the enormous barrel of Roland's revolver already trained on them.
“Everybody just settle down,” he drawls, slow and shaky, and then he
takes a deep breath and tries to follow his own advice. “Nobody is
shooting anybody today.”
But he can't stop staring at Roland, at
how he looks older and almost desperately tired, and Roland is looking
back, eyes just a little wide, not recognition, but almost, almost.
Roland looks like he's seen a ghost, pale and strained, mouth a tight
line.
“Bert,” Roland grinds out, and John doesn't know the name, but he isn't exactly surprised. “Cuthbert?”
“Roland,
sugar,” a woman says, and John sees her with a sharp stab of
recognition, though he's never met her, not even in the weird not-real
dreamworld in which he'd sort of met Eddie Dean. “You know this
gentleman?”
“Susannah?” John hears himself say, and he takes a
step forward, taking in the Baretta in a makeshift shoulder rig resting
against the curve of her left breast and the wheelchair and the
familiar-but-not curl of her mouth and line of her jaw. “Are you
Susannah?” he demands, helpless to stop himself, helpless to quiet the
harsh, breaking sound of his own voice.
Her mouth falls open a
little and she looks at him, really looks at him, her eyes gone narrow
and intent. She opens her mouth, but John's gaze has moved onto the
fourth member of their little band (ka-tet, he thinks distantly,
the word rich and vibrant in his mind), at the boy standing just behind
her, one hand curled around one of the push handles on her wheelchair,
and before she says anything at all John croaks, “Oh my God,” and sits
down hard.
The world retreats for a few seconds, and there's
nothing but the drumming blood in his ears; John feels sick and shocked
and horribly, wrenchingly envious, his head swimming and his
gut churning with it. Eventually he becomes aware of the warm, solid
feel of Rodney's hand on the back of his neck, Rodney's voice close by
saying, “Just breathe, John, breathe,” and John obeys, a deep,
shuddering breath that makes the nausea retreat somewhat and brings the
world back into focus, though he can only see the ground between his
combat boots.
He doesn't look up immediately; he needs a few
minutes to get it together, to push through the disbelief and the
pointless, prickling sense of betrayal and get his mind around...
He
jumps when something warm bumps his leg, and opens his eyes to find
himself looking into the wide, gold-ringed eyes of something out of his
dreams. He doesn't remember it, he doesn't know what it is; it had come
to him sometime after the dreams had been waking ones, and he remembers
it the way he remembers other dreams: vaguely and distantly. But that
same fission of recognition and something about the way it looks at him
makes John lift a cautious hand and touch its furry head. A slender
pink tongue snakes out of its mouth and swipes across the heel of
John's palm, and then it nuzzles its head into his hand, letting him
stroke the soft, sleek fur.
“Ake,” it barks, and sniffs John's hand and wrist and all the way up his forearm. “Ake, Ake,” it tells him, and it's so fucking familiar that John's chest hurts with it.
“John,” he corrects it quietly, and it gives him a dubious look.
“His name is Oy,” the boy says, and John looks up and sees him like a slap in the face.
“He
found you?” John hears himself ask, his voice hoarse and on the edge of
pleading, and Rodney's hand tightens on the back of his neck, but John
is only barely aware of that. He realizes he's got both his hands on
the boys shoulders and he's breathing like he's choking on every
inhale. “He saved you?”
“He saved me,” Jake Chambers tells him,
his eyes bright with recognition and pity, and John lets him go and
buries his face in his hands before he can fucking embarrass himself.
**
They
leave him alone for a little while, both John's team and Roland's, each
group forming a little huddle, separate, but similar. He can hear
Rodney, occasionally, voice rising as he makes a point (“...statistically improbable, sure, but in an infinite possibility of universes, not even close to impossible...”),
and Teyla throws him concerned looks, but seems willing to wait for
John to make a move. Susannah eventually breaks away from her little
group and builds a fire; Jake joins her after a minute, the two of them
working together with easy familiarity.
It's Eddie Dean who
comes first, making damn sure John sees him coming in the manner of a
man who recognizes someone as dangerous as he is, and knows how
important it is not to sneak up on them. He sits on the rock next to
John and rests his elbows on his splayed knees, clasping his hands
between them. He doesn't say anything for a long time, which is fine
with John.
When he finally does speak, all he seems to be able to manage is, “The house... the door...?”
“I
don't know,” John says, wishing he knew a way to dispel the specter of
guilt he can see haunting Eddie Dean's eyes. “I had the key, but it
wasn't enough. There was no way through on my side.”
“Did you,”
Eddie begins carefully, brows furrowed in thought. “We could hear him,
before we got it open on our side,” he tells John, and his bleak tone
tells John all he needs to know about what that had been like. “We
could hear him, he could hear us. Could you hear us, Ja- John?”
“No,” John says thickly. “You just weren't there.”
He hears Eddie swallow, and they sit there silently for a minute, both of them probably wondering the same thing.
Eventually, Eddie asks, “How did you get out? I. Our Jake... We pulled him right out of that goddamned things mouth.” His voice was laden with remembered horror.
John
looks at him and smirks a little, grateful that he even means it. “The
gas was still hooked up,” he says, and watches Eddie's face brighten
with pleasure. “It was awesome,” he says, and Eddie grins at him.
Something
loosens in John's chest, and he grins back. Eddie glances over at where
Susannah and Jake are laying out something that smells pretty damned
good. His gaze doesn't linger, but they both see Roland sitting on a
rock a little way further, slowly rolling a cigarette. The look Eddie
gives John when their gazes meet again is disturbingly understanding,
but all he says is, “So, look, are you guys hungry?”
**
John
is torn between wanting desperately to stay, to ask all the questions
crowding his brain, and wanting to dial Atlantis and go home right the
hell now.
But it turns out to be okay.
They pool what
they've got together, and it's weird but not bad. Teyla and Ronon don't
ask questions which isn't unusual, but neither does Rodney, which is.
He looks at John sidelong a couple of times, and at Jake Chambers
almost as often, and John can see his giant brain working, imagines it
chewing up data and spitting out theories, but Rodney doesn't ask.
The
conversation is a lot less awkward than John would've guessed,
considering no one is asking any of the glaring questions, like: What
the hell is going on here? and Where are are you people from anyway? No
one's asking any questions at all, in fact. It's all almost idle
chitchat, which John's finds freakish mostly due to the fact that it's
so clear (to him) that the two groups are from such wildly different
worlds (universes, realities, whatever) that it's mind-boggling that
they have enough in common to even manage idle chitchat. When
one of the MREs turns out to have a chocolate bar in it, Roland's posse
(sans Roland, who is still sitting on his rock) shares it out a bite at
a time, smiling and murmuring among themselves, and John looks away.
John
catches Rodney surreptitiously feeding Oy bits of powerbar, and Eddie
and Ronon eyeball one another's big guns until Rodney impatiently tells
them just to trade for five minutes and be done with it. The two of
them give each other measuring looks and simultaneously ignore McKay,
but the next time John looks up (from watching Susannah and Teyla, who
are sitting knee to knee, talking in low voices and looking, John
thinks, eerily similar) the two of them have moved a little bit away
and are fondling one another's firearms. Rodney throws him a sideways
smirk, and John smirks back, and then there's the familiar sound of
Ronon's energy pistol discharging. John shoots to his feet, his sidearm
already in his hand, and watches a medium sized boulder disintegrate at
the same time that he recognizes Eddie Dean's whoop of delight, and
Ronon (Ronon) laughs out loud.
Rodney chuckles softly,
but John's gaze is drawn to Roland, who is on his feet, too, and
looking at John. He's too far away for John to be able to read his
face, but his heart is pounding so hard it feels like it's trying to
escape from his chest. Jake is standing beside him and speaking
quietly, one hand on Roland's arm; John has to look away from the
familiarity of that gesture.
He registers Rodney's hand on his
own arm a second later, and looks down to see McKay, expression
uncharacteristically sympathetic, looking back at him. He lets Rodney
tug on his arm until he sinks back down to the ground, and is grateful
when Rodney doesn't say anything at all.
Teyla helps Susannah
clean up the remnants of their meal, and John watches dully, aware that
it's nearing time to either head back or check in with Atlantis, but
carefully not considering what that means.
“That energy
reading,” he says after a while, and doesn't look up even though he can
feel Rodney's gaze boring into the side of his head.
“Yeah, okay,” Rodney huffs, probably rolling his eyes, and gets to his feet. “I'm on it.”
“Stay
in sight,” John says automatically, and Rodney gestures irritably at
him, tablet already in his hands, and wanders a few feet away.
John
stands up, partly to convince himself that this is just a regular
mission, and keeping an eye on McKay is part and parcel of that, and
partly because he's just too antsy to remain sitting. He trails McKay
around the edges of the 'gate, studiously not looking for Roland or for
Jake, deliberately turning his mind away from the unalterable past and
toward the well-known rhythms of his present, watching McKay mutter and
tap and hearing the comfortable sound of Teyla's soft voice and Ronon's
deep rumble nearby.
He hears Jake approaching, sees him out of
the corner of his eye, and seriously considers moving in the opposite
direction, but in the end he can't do that. No matter what kind of
twisted-up things he's feeling for Jake Chambers at the moment, the
fact is he remembers being Jake Chambers, and he can't bring himself to walk away from him.
Jake
stops beside him and just stands there, watching McKay with John,
silent and small and all knees and elbows, like John remembers being.
“So, Sheppard,” he says finally. “Did you kill dad?”
John
snorts, unexpected and harsh, and looks down to find Jake Chambers
smirking at him, one eyebrow cocked challengingly. “No, I didn't kill
him,” he says.
“Too bad,” Jake murmurs, lips still quirked.
“Wow,
you're... a little bitterer than I remember being,” John says wryly,
though the look Jake gives him says that he knows it for the lie it is.
“Mom's
maiden name, huh.” He scuffs a toe in the dirt; John sees he's wearing
something like moccasins, undoubtedly hand-made, on his feet. “Why?”
Jake asks, and John would attribute it to the oblivious way most kids
tended to ask very personal questions, except that John knows this kid.
“All things serve the fucking beam,” John quips, low and tight, and Jake starts, blinking up at him.
Then he nods. “Okay, yeah. Fair enough.”
And
then they stop talking because McKay comes stalking over, scowling.
“It's no good, there's nothing here,” he snaps, and jabs a finger
accusingly at Jake. “It has to be however they got here, but it's
completely dissipated, whatever it was.” He glares at Jake expectantly.
“It was a door,” Jake says unhelpfully, and smirks at Rodney's huff of displeasure.
John, in spite of himself, smirks, too.
Rodney
looks at John and then at Jake, and shakes his head. “Well. That's just
incredibly creepy in every conceivable way,” he tells them
conversationally. “If you and mini-me will excuse me, Colonel?”
He stomps off without waiting for a reply.
John
watches Jake watch Rodney walk away, a bemused look on his face.
“Mini-me?” he asks, looking up and catching John staring at him.
John shakes his head, but manages a smile. “Pop culture reference that would require way too much explanation,” he not-explains.
Jake just nods. Then: “We're a Colonel?”
“A lieutenant-colonel,” John clarifies. “In the Air Force.”
Jake brightens. “Really? Do you...?”
“Yeah,” John says, because there's no need for Jake to finish the question.
“Cool!”
Jake beams, and John smiles back, but doesn't say anything, throat
tight again. They turn at the same time and start back toward the
others. Halfway there, just as John is starting to feel a little less
like screaming, Jake says, low and brittle, “Did you really kill the
house?”
John stops, and so does Jake, though for a minute he
just stares at the ground, hands balled at his sides. After a few
seconds, he looks up at John, face pale and strained with remembered
fear, and John suddenly remembers the fucking place like he'd just
lived it, remembers scrambling out of a window that screamed and tried
to chew him up as it burned around him, remembers the glass in his
hands and the three-inch long splinters the housekeeper had dug out of
his palms and feet and ass (without ever telling his parents) and how
he'd thrown up for about a year in an alley a couple of blocks away. How he'd had nightmares for two years afterward.
And it clearly hasn't been anywhere near as long ago for Jake as it has for John.
He
crouches and gives Jake a long, solemn look. “I blew that fucking thing
sky-high, Jake,” he says, and pretends not to notice the way Jake's
lower lip trembles as he sucks in a deep breath. “It thrashed and
screamed and tried to take me with it, but it died. And I lived.”
Jakes
eyes blaze at him, bright with unshed tears, and John is unprepared for
it when he flings himself against John's chest, and falls backward onto
his ass on the ground. Even so, he ends up with Jake Chambers clutched
against his chest, arms tight around his slim back, while Jake shudders
and half-whispers, half-sobs, “How many of us didn't make it, do you
think?” and John closes his eyes and swallows hard, because he's not
sure he's got enough mental equilibrium left to deal with that thought
today.
“We made it,” he growls instead, “You and me, we're okay.”
The
storm passes quickly. John doubts Jake is any weepier than John had
been when he had been Jake, and isn't surprised when Jake pulls away
and rubs self-consciously at his face while John gets to his feet.
“Look,”
he says a little desperately, grasping at John's forearm as he starts
to turn away. “It probably doesn't help, or, you know, mean anything,
but. For what it's worth. I'm sorry I got saved and you didn't.” And
it's clear that he is sorry, his face pinched with misery, and John
sighs and feels like an asshole.
He rubs his face, and looks
away. When he looks back, Jake is looking over John's shoulder at
something, so John turns and sees that everyone else is watching them.
They aren't even pretending not to, and they've split up into two
separate groups again, probably without even realizing it. Roland has
abandoned his rock and is standing slightly behind Eddie and Susannah,
and Ronon has put himself between Roland's group and Teyla and Rodney.
“Nosy,” Jake mutters, but he's smiling a little, and John feels his lips curving into an answering smile.
“It's
okay,” John says, and it's a relief to be able to mean it. “I. I don't
feel like I lost anything, Jake.” The look Jake gives him is piercing,
knowing, and John shrugs, because, yeah. They both know what John lost.
But. “It's really okay,” he repeats, and Jake nods.
John's watch beeps and he glances at it, then at Rodney, who looks anxiously back.
“We gotta go, Jake,” John says, and gives Jake's shoulder a squeeze. “That's our curfew.”
Jake frowns and rolls his eyes at John's lame attempt at humor; they split up and head to their respective teams.
“Let's
wrap it up, folks,” John orders briskly and unnecessarily, since the
packs are ready to go – and John doesn't fail to notice that they're
one pack short, though he doesn't think about it except to hope that
Teyla got the medical kits and MREs out of the other packs as well --
and have been for a while, and the 'gate is no more than a hundred feet
away.
“We don't have to,” Rodney says, his gaze skittering from
John to someplace behind John. John deliberately doesn't follow
Rodney's gaze. “We could, Elizabeth would-”
John bends and
scoops up McKay's pack, tossing it to him. Rodney catches it with a
scowl and a whuf of breath, and John smirks. “Wraith to kill, galaxies
to save, McKay.”
He shoulders his own pack and slings the strap
of his P90 over his shoulder, checks the velcro securing Rodney's
tablet, surveys the area to make sure they aren't leaving anything
behind, and doesn't let his gaze stray anywhere near Roland Deschain.
He
looks at the rest of them, though, and it's both harder than he
expected and easier to think about never seeing them again. “Susannah,”
he says, and smiles.
“Take care, sugar,” she tells him, and her
smile is genuine, but when Teyla approaches the two of them lean
together, foreheads touching, and Teyla stays there for longer than
John has ever seen her hold anyone. She murmurs something soft and
stretches up to kiss Teyla's cheek, and Teyla smiles and touches her
face before stepping back.
“Eddie,” John says, and Eddie grins back and holds out a hand, palm up, which John obligingly smacks.
“Stay cool,” Eddie smirks.
“So I was thinking,” Jake says, frowning up at John seriously. “Why John? What's wrong with Jake?”
“Not
a thing,” John says, ignoring the tight feeling in his chest. “I just
got out of the habit. After the house thing, Mrs. Shaw only stayed
around a couple more months. I think she felt my terrible teens coming
on.” They exchanged grins. “No one else ever called me Jake.”
“Did
you stay at Piper?” Jake makes a face as he says it that John silently
agrees is exactly how he remembers feeling about Piper.
“Yeah. But then I gave dad a heart attack by going to MIT instead of Stanford, and running off to join the Air Force.”
The look Jake gives him is pure admiration. “Did he disown you?”
“Yep,” John says smugly.
“Cool,” Jake breathes, and John's chest clenches a little more.
John
can feel Rodney practically at his elbow, but for once he doesn't seem
to be bristling with impatience or anything else, even though John and
Jake aren't even saying anything now, just looking at one another
silently. Eventually, John reaches into his shirt, wedging his hand
under his vest, and captures his dogtags, tugging them up over his
head. He hands them over to Jake without ceremony, and says, “Take
care, Jake Chambers.”
Jake stares at them for a few seconds, and
then slips them over his head and under his own shirt. “You, too, John
Sheppard. I'm. I'm really glad you made it.”
John nods, smiles a little. “It's mutual. Look me up if you're ever back this way.”
And
there isn't anything left to do but look at Roland, to nod and force
his voice to stay even and quiet when he says, “Good luck, Roland.”
Roland nods back, pale eyes cool and distant, face still.
John
turns away. “Move out,” he orders, “Ronon, you're on point,” and Teyla
falls in beside Rodney wordlessly while John brings up the rear. It
takes them all of two minutes to get to the gate, the shortest mission
march ever, and Rodney dials without waiting to be told. John sends his
IDC through, and smiles when Elizabeth's voice comes over his headset.
“You're on time, Colonel,” she says, smile audible in her voice. “I take it things went well.”
“Yep, not a whole lot going on over here, Atlantis. We're coming in.”
Ronon
and Teyla are through, just like that, and Rodney's finally
demonstrating some of his trademark impatience, bouncing on the balls
of his feet. “Come along, Colonel, some of us have very important
things to be... oh.”
And maybe John would have looked back without the 'oh' or maybe he wouldn't have (he hadn't actually been planning
to, but he's been known to throw planning to the winds on occasion),
but the soft, unsurprised and not entirely pleased way Rodney says 'oh'
has him turning before he thinks about it one way or the other.
It's
Roland, and he's alone; John isn't surprised, he tells himself, and the
bright-hot and breathless feeling in his chest is nothing.
“Hile, gunslinger,” Roland says, slow and cautious. “Hile, John Sheppard.”
John
turns his face away for just a second, eyes closed, throat tight, and
okay, yeah. So. He remembers this. He remembers loving Roland like
nothing else.
Like he's never loved anything or anyone else until Atlantis.
“Colonel,” Rodney says, quietly but urgently.
John
can see Eddie and Jake and Susannah still a ways away, pointedly not
looking in this direction at all, of course, because this is. Well.
This is about as private as it got. He looks over his shoulder at
Rodney.
“Go on through, Rodney,” he says softly. “I'll be there in a minute.”
But
Rodney is beside him instead, the fingertips of one hand resting
lightly on the back of John's hand. “Look,” he says quietly, shooting a
nervous little glance at Roland, and then pinning John with an intent
look. “I don't know what, who he is to you, but I get that it's
something. That it... matters to you. But we need you in Atlantis,
Colonel. Atlantis needs you.”
It takes John a few seconds to get
what Rodney's saying, and the idea surprises him so completely that it
must show on his face because Rodney blinks, and then immediately huffs
out a breath.
“I'll be there in a minute, Rodney,” John repeats, and jerks his head toward the wormhole. “Hold the door for me.”
“Okay,” Rodney says, and swallows. He darts a glance at Roland again, but just repeats, “Okay.”
He waits until he hears Rodney go through before returning the greeting.
“Hile,
gunslinger. Hile, Roland, son of Stephen.” It feels like he's been
waiting forever to say it, and he immediately feels almost giddy with
relief.
Roland takes a couple of steps closer, and his eyes are
still pale and cool, but John's sees his throat working for a few
seconds before he says anything. “You look. You are the image of
Cuthbert Allgood. More, even, than Eddie.” He shakes his head, and the
smile he attempts looks more like a grimace than anything else. “Think
you that Jake will be the same?”
And it's so clearly an effort
for Roland to say anything at all, that John doesn't even care that he
doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. “Well, he looks just
like my grade school pictures, so I think there's a pretty good chance.”
“Ka
is a wheel,” Roland says like a sigh, and John's chest aches at how
much older he looks than he does in John's memory. “Jake tells me that
when you opened your door, we were not there. That you killed the demon
in that place and made your own way.” John just nods; he doesn't trust
his voice. “So,” he says soft and bitter, almost to himself. “I let you
fall again.”
“Roland.”
“I cry your pardon, John Sheppard,” Roland says, voice harsh with something that isn't anger.
“I didn't fall,” John grates out desperately. “I didn't fall, Roland. You didn't kill me.”
And
Roland actually looks so surprised for a second that John wants to
laugh, though it's short-lived, as Roland closes his eyes for several
seconds, going utterly still. He opens his eyes again before John can
figure out what to say, and he looks normal again, face quiet, eyes
pale. He stares at John for long, silent seconds, before finally
saying, “No. Somehow, I didn't.”
Then he smiles, a real smile
that seams his face into something altogether different, a memory so
distant that John has lost the shape of it, even in his dreams. “We are
well met, John Sheppard, we are well met, our two ka-tets.”
“Yeah,” John agrees thickly. “We are.”
**
Rodney's
the last one to show up, and he looks both hesitant and defiant when
John answers the door. He relaxes as soon as he sees Ronon and Teyla,
however, and smiles a crooked, tentative smile.
“Are you here
for story-time, Rodney?” John smirks, drawing Rodney's name out in the
exact way that he knows Rodney hates. Rodney just smirks back and opens
both hands to reveal several chocolate bars, probably acquired through
avenues of dubious legality. Ronon grunts his approval, and John steps
aside to let him in.
Rodney flops down on John's bed like he owns it and doles out chocolaty goodness.
John
thinks the door closed and settles up at the head of the bed where he
can rest his back against the pillows. He pokes Rodney in the ribs with
his toes until Rodney scoots down, grumbling, giving John some room.
They'd
shown up, one by one, no invitation issued or needed. He'd been pretty
sure they would. John thinks he should feel nervous, maybe, but he
doesn't. Ronon is watching him patiently, his left cheek improbably
distended by an entire Baby Ruth. Teyla smiles encouragingly at him
because Teyla is always supportive whether you need it or not, and eats
her M & M's one at a time. Rodney has inhaled one Reeses
Peanutbutter Cup, and passes the other one in the package to John. He
then steals John's KitKat and breaks off two bars for himself.
John peels the brown paper off his peanutbutter cup and takes a deep breath.
“When I was eleven, I died,” he begins.