Lostcityfoundfic: The Undone Years (Genish, PG-13, SGA/SG-1) 6/7

[vain_glorious]

The Undone Years 6/7
Part 1 for header info

The discovery changed some things. Some people stopped acting like Sheppard was just crazy. Started acting like maybe he just wasn't the Sheppard they knew. Which actually meant Ford and Lorne now had no idea how to they were supposed to behave with him. It was almost like they thought they didn’t know him at all. Their team - minus Sheppard - headed off to the planet to help dig the thing out.

It took about a week. In the meantime, Sheppard was still confined to quarters on base. Maybe more punishment than making sure he stayed put. He had no place else to go, now, and no reason to leave. He wanted to be with the teams pulling the thing out of the ground, but that was out of the question. Maybe they thought he’d try to stick his head in it again.

Teyla stayed with him. Landry took off the Airmen guarding the door at her request and allowed Sheppard to move around freely if Teyla was with him. It was better than being followed around like an inmate, but Sheppard didn’t like the acknowledgment that everyone thought Teyla could kick his ass. Even though she totally could and he knew it.

Having Teyla back was good and bad. Sheppard had missed her, maybe more than he’d admitted, while she’d been away.

But her absence had interrupted whatever weird normalcy they’d been establishing in their mundane suburban home. Even after she’d been called back to duty, their weekly MALP conversations had maintained what probably passed for intimate domesticity for them.

Now he was focused again on the Stargate, on Pegasus, on getting back to Atlantis any way he could. Teyla wasn’t an idiot. She could tell where his mind was at. He knew it had to hurt, even if she said nothing.

The bed in the quarters they shared was a lot smaller than the one in their house. Teyla hadn’t reached out to Sheppard romantically – sexually – since he’d woken up here. Even though they’d been sleeping in the same bed for months now. He deliberately hadn’t thought much about what that was like for her.

But the smaller bed was closing the distance between them, in a very literal way.

More often than not, Sheppard woke up with his arms around Teyla, their bodies increasingly intertwined in the smaller space.

He didn’t freak out about it. He didn’t need to.

Sheppard had decided that it wasn’t wrong, even if it was weird. This wasn’t his body and this wasn’t his Teyla, but the person who owned this body belonged with this Teyla. He wasn’t betraying anyone or anything. Teyla was so happy that he didn’t instantly pull away from her. It was good to see her smile, and curling against her soft, warm body wasn’t too bad, either.

He woke one morning, feeling one of Teyla’s smooth legs lying up against, almost between his calves. Without opening his eyes, he could tell she was snuggled near him, the warmth of her breath against his ear.  

When Sheppard gradually opened his eyes and lolled his head towards her, he found Teyla already awake. She must have been watching him sleep, which would have creeped him out in the beginning.

“Hey,” he said, voice coated in sleep.

Teyla smiled at him. “Good morning,” she said, and continued to stare at him.

“Hrm,” Sheppard answered, a little bewildered by her intense gaze.

After a second, Teyla spoke. “You are very much the same,” she said. “But different, too.”

Sheppard met her eyes, unsure what to say. With the arm she wasn’t using to prop her head up, Teyla reached out her hand a touched the side of Sheppard’s head, where he didn’t have any stitches or staples and the hair was thick and full. He let her touch, then stroke him.

“Whatever happened,” she said, still petting his hair. “It changed you,” she said. “I wish it had not.” She sounded oddly resigned, almost wistful.

“I’m sorry,” Sheppard said, softly. He didn’t know what else to say. He was sorry. Teyla didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve to have him here instead of the Sheppard she knew.

“You are needed there?” Teyla asked, but it was barely a question.

Sheppard nodded, feeling her hand moving against his skull. He was glad she understood that, or at least glad she saw reasons other than him not wanting to be here.

“It’s very different,” he said. “We stayed and…did a lot.” He didn’t want to go into it, didn’t know if he should or if she needed him to.

“Better?” Teyla asked.

Sheppard paused. He couldn’t say it was. Heightmeyer, Weir, Beckett, and Ford came instantly to mind. But Atlantis. And Ronon. And his team, his Teyla and his Rodney.  He shook his head. “Gotta finish what I started,” he said.

Teyla’s hand stilled against his hair. “Would it be so bad,” she began, “to stay here?”

“No,” Sheppard said, without pausing. “If I can’t…” he trailed off. “I’ll be here. It’s okay.”

“Okay,” Teyla repeated. In the next second, she was leaning forward. She went to kiss him, chastely, and this time Sheppard let her.

~

Landry was cautious, but he seemed to believe Sheppard now, too.

Sheppard was invited to his office. Under the circumstances, it was more of an order. Teyla accompanied him, instead of the Airmen, so he didn't get escorted through the halls of Cheyenne like a prisoner.

"It seems you may not have hit your head that hard," Landry said, after Teyla and Sheppard arrived and had taken seats. Landry's daughter, Dr. Lam, had also joined them in his office.

"Yeah," Sheppard said.

Teyla stayed silent.

"He did hit his head," Lam interjected. "Whatever he hit it on, Colonel Sheppard had a severe head injury. That happened."

"Why was the object not discovered when he was injured?" Teyla asked.

"It was covered in dirt and rocks," Landry answered. "They literally didn't see it.”

“And after Colonel Sheppard was injured, no one was really paying attention to what he'd landed on, just on getting him out of there,” Lam contributed.

“They were looking for Naquadah, anyway” Landry said, “They didn’t expect anything else to be there.”

"What is it?" Sheppard spoke up.

"A large artifact of Ancient technology," Landry said, which wasn't very informative. "Or so Dr. Jackson tells me."

"What does it do?" Lam asked.

Landry shrugged. "Besides serve as pointy surface for Air Force Colonels to slam their skulls into, we don't know yet."

Sheppard saw Teyla frown and shift in her seat.

"Call us here to tell us that?" asked Sheppard.

“No,” Landry said. “I didn’t.”

He reached into a desk draw and produced a manila folder, tossed it onto his desktop.

"It seems you have knowledge of the Pegasus galaxy," he said. "More than from the Atlantis mission."

Sheppard didn't argue that all of his knowledge came from the Atlantis mission. "Looks like," he agreed. He saw Teyla nodding slowly.

"Then I can tell you this, now," Landry continued. "The Atlantis mission is ongoing."

Sheppard froze. "What?" He looked at Teyla. "Did you know about this?"

Teyla shook her head. "I was told it was too expensive and politically unpopular after the mission failure," she said. "You said the SGC would never go back to Pegasus." She was glaring at Landry.

"I think I said the IOA would never go back to Pegasus," Landry said, ignoring her outrage. "The difference is a fine one," he admitted. "But it's an important one. The SGC has been back in Pegasus since about two months after the Atlantis survivors were returned to the Milky Way."

"Why?" Sheppard asked.

"To find the city of the Ancients, of course," Landry said, plainly. "And all the advanced technology and weapons it contains."

"How?" Sheppard demanded. "Who's there?"

"Daedalus-class ship called the Apollo," Landry said. "Minus any international crew and all the pesky IOA involvement that comes with them."

"Why are you telling us this, now?" Teyla asked.

Landry tapped the manila folder on his desk. "Colonel Sheppard may now have valuable information that could help us find Atlantis."

"You do not know that," Teyla said, instantly. "You do not even know what the object is."

"No," Landry agreed. "But it's Ancient. That's close enough to proof for me."

Lam made a derogatory noise in her throat, but said nothing.

Sheppard spoke up. "Yeah," he said. "I think I can help." He paused. "We're going to forget about the little incident from a few days ago, right?"

General Landry gave Sheppard the manila folder contents. It was a summary of the past four and a half years of the Apollo's mission in Pegasus and their progress in locating Atlantis. He took the papers with him back to his quarters, Teyla walking tensely at his side.

"I cannot believe they kept this from us," she hissed, when they entered his quarters.

Sheppard glanced at her, having trouble gauging why she was suddenly so upset. "They said," she snapped. "That all travel to Pegasus had ceased and would never resume." She realized Sheppard wasn’t understanding her. “They said that I would never be able to go home!”

~

The Apollo had spent nearly the past four years in the Pegasus galaxy. Searching pretty much blindly for Atlantis. But otherwise under strict orders not to engage the native populace, by which Sheppard was pretty sure the Pentagon meant the Wraith. And it looked like they’d obeyed that instruction, staying cloaked constantly and completely avoiding even the hibernating hives. Sheppard was filled with relief when he read that, almost unexpectedly so.

Otherwise, the files didn’t say much. Without Atlantis as a starting point, without its extensive if ten thousand years out of date library, Pegasus was an enormous and mysterious place. They didn’t know Atlantis could be under an ocean and they really didn’t know what they were looking for.

That made Sheppard feel inexplicably smug, like he was in on a secret that no one else would ever guess. Which he was, even if he didn’t know why. Even if he still had no idea how he was getting back to it. Atlantis and everyone on it suddenly felt much, much closer. And that felt really good, the best he’d felt since he’d opened his eyes, seen Ford, and realized what’d been taken from him.

Teyla read the summary after him. Quickly, like it didn’t hold her attention. It probably didn’t. There wasn’t anything in it that would. Pegasus was her galaxy, but it was more to her than anonymous planets

“They have done nothing,” she said, almost bitterly, when she finished and dropped the manila folder on her lap.

“Looking for Atlantis,” Sheppard reminded her.

“With your people’s technology,” Teyla retorted instantly, “they could fight the Wraith.”

Sheppard froze, lips half open. He hadn’t imagined that’s what was going through her mind. “You’d think,” he said, very quietly. Teyla looked at him in confusion. “They should have told us,” Sheppard said, quickly changing the subject. “That operations in Pegasus continued. Told you.”

Sheppard wasn’t sure that they should have told him. He had no idea if he would have given a shit, having never seen Atlantis. It was long ago, but remembered his skepticism well. If he’d never seen Atlantis, he’d probably have been satisfied leading an SG team in the Milky Way. If he’d never seen Atlantis, that would have been exciting enough.

“No,” Teyla said. She stood up, stalked across the room and tossed the manila folder on to the foot of their bed. The pages fluttered out, fanning across the bedspread. Teyla looked at the mess and frowned. “My people are gone,” she reminded him.

Right. Sheppard wanted to tell her that they weren’t. That despite Michael’s best efforts, the Athosians were fine. They were happy and thriving and alive. Except, of course, Michael hadn’t happened. Not here.

“My home is here now,” Teyla said, taking a seat next to the spilled pages and half-heartedly shuffling them back into their folder. “It is,” she said, softer, deliberately not raising her eyes to look at him.

“Would you have gone?” Sheppard asked, though he already knew the answer. “Back? I mean,” he swiveled his hand over his abdomen in poor interpretation of ‘gutshot’. “After?”

Teyla shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think not.”

But she was looking at him like, yes, she would have, with him.

~

They brought it back to the SGC almost a week later. It being the large, buried Ancient device Sheppard had so cleverly found. He got to see it brought through the ‘Gate, an enormous cube-like object covered in dusty tarps and tied to what amounted to a big ass dolly as it was rolled down the ‘Gate ramp. Landry didn’t want him to go near it until, as he said, they ‘understood it better.’ Sheppard guessed everyone thought he was going to try to stick his head in it or something.

They still didn’t know what it was. He almost suspected that they did and were keeping it from him for sinister reasons, until he attended one of the weekly debriefings and witnessed Carter and Jackson’s obvious and genuine frustration. Landry looked too irritated to be faking and the rest of SG-1 was too disinterested to be trying to trick him.

“Let me touch it,” Sheppard suggested, after listening to fifteen minutes of monologue about what hadn’t worked thus far.

“We had Major Lorne try to turn it on,” Carter answered, a step ahead. “It’s broken.”

“Maybe,” Jackson said. “We don’t know what it is or how it works. Possibly we aren’t using it correctly.”

“Possibly,” Carter concurred. “But, it is damaged.”

“How so?” asked Landry.

“Part of the surface,” Jackson said. “It’s cracked.”

“Did Sheppard’s head do it?” piped up Mitchell.

“Yeah,” Carter answered, trying very hard not to sound accusing, “probably.”

Vala tsk-tsked at him and shook her head. “Maybe he broke the on button,” she suggested.

Carter shrugged, helplessly. “It’s entirely possible. I haven’t even come close to figuring out its power system – assuming it has one.”

 “It is not Goa’uld in origin,” Teal’c offered, and at least he was trying to be helpful. “Nor have I ever heard of or witnessed it in their use.”

“Thanks, Teal’c,” Carter said.

“I bet I could figure it out,” said Vala, thoughtfully.

“No,” said Carter, instantly.

“Hell no,” added Jackson.

“If you want to see inside it,” Vala said, ignoring their reactions. “You need something to make it go boom.”

“I’m going to veto that,” Landry said, mildly. “Anything else?”

“If you need a fresh pair of eyes,” Sheppard said, keeping his gaze fixed on the tabletop. “Dr. Rodney McKay is in town.”

Silence answered him, until Carter huffed.

“Dr. McKay no longer works for this facility,” Landry answered, not unkindly.

“But we’ve called him before,” Carter said, after a moment. “It’s not a bad idea.” Landry didn’t look pleased and Carter shrugged. “I’m the one that has to listen to him gloat,” she said. “I think Colonel Sheppard’s right – we need McKay’s help.”

It didn’t take long to get McKay to Cheyenne, once Landry grudgingly gave consent for Carter to bring him in. There was no guarantee that McKay would agree, of course, but Sheppard correctly predicted that, bottom line, McKay wouldn’t be able to resist the invitation.

Sheppard managed to be in the room when they asked him. The Ancient object wasn’t anywhere in sight of course, all McKay got was a non-disclosure form on an empty table.

“You know,” McKay was saying to Carter when Sheppard arrived and sidled up beside Mitchell, who watching from the wall next to the door. “Eventually, you’re going to have to save your own asses. Veronika and I are moving to Moscow this year.”

“You already said that,” Carter said, coolly. “It has nothing to do with anything. If you don’t want to help, you should have told us so over the phone.”

McKay crossed his arms. “Help you what?”

“You know how this works,” Landry answered, interrupting Carter’s eye roll. “Sign the non-disclosure form, first.”

“Of course I know how this works,” McKay retorted. “You’ve only come crawling back for help a dozen times since I quit.”

Landry rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked pointedly at Carter. “This was your idea.”

“Just sign it,” Sheppard said, sharply. “Just sign it, McKay, you know you want to.”

McKay turned his head towards Sheppard, shock on his face. He hadn’t seen Sheppard come in. He looked at him for only a second, then turned back to Carter and Landry.

“Well, I see why I’m here. You let the brain-damaged lunatic touch something, didn’t you?”

Next to Sheppard, Mitchell made an irritated noise. Like he wanted to come to Sheppard’s defense.

“The brain-damaged lunatic knows more than you do right now,” Sheppard answered. “So sign it or get out, McKay.”

McKay jerked a thumb at Sheppard, still not looking at him. “Why is he still here? Doesn’t a brain disorder make him unfit for duty?”

“No more than a personality disorder,” Carter retorted swiftly. Sheppard held back a grin. She tapped the signature line on the legal packet sitting on the table.

Looking irritated – but also curious – McKay grabbed the pen from Carter’s finger tips, bent over, and scrawled his name.

“Okay,” he said, straightening up. “What is it?”

~

McKay vanished with Carter and Jackson. Sheppard could hear him loudly mocking the entire story as they walked down the hall. It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe Sheppard. No one did. But if anyone could get the hunk of Ancient tech to give up its secrets, it was McKay. Sheppard believed that.

With that, he forcibly turned his attention to something else. They weren’t letting him near the thing in Carter’s lab, but there was something he could do. Landry wanted to test the theory that Sheppard did indeed have a working knowledge of the Pegasus galaxy. And Sheppard had the perfect way to do just that.

Maybe.

He could have used McKay’s help with it, actually, but wasn’t sure he could take the amount of arguing and verbal abuse it would involve. And this McKay hadn’t been there, really, and wouldn’t have any idea what he was talking about. And Sheppard probably couldn’t trick McKay the way he could mislead Landry.

Sheppard did his best, by himself, with Teyla watching him curiously the entire time.

It didn’t really take long. Writing the instructions was the simple part.

“This will help them find the city of the Ancestors?” Teyla asked, sounding dubious, when he was done.

“No,” he said.

Teyla tilted her head. “Did you not tell General Landry that it would?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “I lied.”

Teyla took this in, saying nothing.

“It won’t find Atlantis,” Sheppard told her. “It’ll tell me just how similar this Pegasus is to the one I remember.” He paused. “But don’t tell Landry that?”

“I will not,” Teyla promised. “Of course.” She was still looking at him curiously.

“This is more important,” Sheppard said. “Believe me.”

Sheppard hadn’t quite anticipated just how long it would take for his instructions to reach the Apollo in Pegasus. He should have. No Atlantis, no routine databurst, no McKay-Carter intergalactic bridge…none of that.

When Sheppard turned over the mission instructions, he asked Landry how long it would be until the Apollo received the message.

“Six to eight weeks,” Landry replied. Sheppard stared at him. “It’s another galaxy,” Landry reminded him. “We’ve actually reduced the time since the mission commenced. It used to take almost six months.”

“How?” Sheppard asked. “How does the SGC communicate with –”

“It’s like satellites,” Landry interrupted. “As I understand it. The Apollo builds communication installations as it goes, leaves a trail of them like telephone polls.”

“From Pegasus to Earth,” Sheppard said, his gut twisting.

Landry didn’t sense his alarm. “Correct.”

“A breadcrumb trail for the Wraith to follow,” Sheppard said, loudly.

The expression on Landry’s face flickered. “The Wraith are hibernating,” he said.

“Not all of them,” Teyla spoke up, pointedly.

“And they’d all wake up if they had a food source like Earth,” Sheppard said.

Landry’s brow creased. “I’ll pass on your concerns,” he said. “But we haven’t had any problems for four years, Colonel.”

“You’ve been lucky,” Sheppard said.

But Landry didn’t want to argue with him. Instead, he was scanning Sheppard’s document.

“If the Wraith are so formidable,” Landry began.

“They are,” Sheppard and Teyla interrupted, simultaneously.

Landry’s gaze flicked off the sheet, up at them both with irritation. “Sharing a brain again?” he said, with amusement. “You must be getting better.” He continued: “Why do you want the Apollo to follow subspace Wraith ship signals?”

“Not Wraith hive signals,” Sheppard corrected. “Those are different. I want the Apollo stay the hell away from those.  Follow the low-frequency Wraith signals. They’re distinct from the hives.”

“If they’re not hives,” Landry said. “What are they?”

Sheppard crossed his arms over his chest. “People.”

“Wraith?” Landry asked.

“People,” Sheppard repeated. “And if the Apollo can find the people the Wraith are hunting, then they’ll know enough to find Atlantis.”

That was a lie. But Landry bought it and Teyla didn’t tell on Sheppard.

~

It was really anticlimactic.

Sheppard’s message to the Apollo, which would only get their mission started, wouldn’t even reach Pegasus for weeks.

McKay was here, now, but even combining his brainpower with Carter’s and Jackson’s, work on the Ancient device retrieved from P3X-463 went slowly.

Sheppard wasn’t allowed to help, even when he pointed out that it was entirely possible he’d actually recognize it on sight. All that got him was permission to enter the room and look at if from a distance. They still seemed to think he wanted to try and touch it or something.

He didn’t know what it was. It looked Ancient and would have fit right in with the general Atlantis architecture and décor, but Sheppard had never seen it before. He pretended he didn’t realize this immediately, though, and took the opportunity to stare at it for a few seconds and watch the three scientists at work. The thing was a big, solid block. Like it should open up and have something inside.

It was familiar to hear McKay’s cranky monologue – interrupted periodically to snipe at Carter and Jackson for various things. Familiar and yet distant, because it felt like ages now since he’d been separated from Atlantis and his team.

Sheppard didn’t seek McKay out, after he was escorted out of the lab where they were working on the device. He kind of wanted to, but there didn’t seem to be a point. This McKay didn’t share anything with Sheppard except a few hellish months under siege on an alien planet, which hadn’t really happened to Sheppard.

Instead, Sheppard went home with Teyla, again. To their quiet little house in the suburbs. He came back to the SGC every day to do the pointless, political duty concocted by General O’Neill. It was boring and pointless to begin with, but now it just seemed tedious and empty.

Teyla didn’t return to the mission that had called her away. Sheppard had kind of expected her to leave again. Evidently, they’d found a new negotiator to persuade the chief guy into letting SG teams pillage all the Goa’uld stuff from his territory.  It turned out to be Lucy Hurst, from Sheppard’s SG team, and Ford and Lorne went along with her. 

 He hadn’t seen them much, lately, but it was still odd not to even pass them in the hallways. SG-1 was still grounded, Carter and Jackson spending every waking hour poking at the Ancient device pulled out of the ground. Teal’c must have taken the opportunity to go hang with the Jaffa or something, because he vanished.

As a result, when he wasn’t playing house with Teyla, Sheppard spent a lot of time with Mitchell. Mitchell and Vala, of all people. Both of whom were bored out of their minds by the inactivity, but couldn’t contribute to the scientific stuff going on in the labs. Well, Vala claimed she could, but they wouldn’t let her touch it.

The medical staples and what not finally came out of Sheppard’s head during this time. It was an uncomfortable, though oddly not that painful procedure. At least he no longer looked like Frankenstein. Well, actually he did, just with giant bald patches where the hardware had been.

Sheppard looked ruefully at himself in the hand mirror Lam provided to show him his new look. “Fantastic,” he said.

“It’ll grow back, I promise,” Lam said.

“Let’s hope so,” Sheppard answered, scowling.

Next to him, Teyla smiled brightly. She reached out and ran her fingers down the side of his head, over the stubble and down to the tip of his chin. “I have missed your hair,” she said.

Lam looked away for a second, as if to give them privacy. Sheppard saw her smile, though. Like she thought this was cute.

“My dad hasn’t missed it,” she said, as Sheppard rose to leave. “He’s secretly hoping it only grows back to regulation-length.”

Sheppard raised an eyebrow.

Lam nodded. “I told him it’s not medically possible.”

With the nuts and bolts out of his skull, Sheppard looked a lot healthier. He no longer had to have physical therapy with Keller, just hit the base gym on his own. Heightmeyer hadn’t rescheduled him for shrink sessions, maybe decided it really didn’t have a point now.

Other than the part where he was riding a desk, life was almost sort of normal. Not by Sheppard’s standards, of course, but still.

He even got roped into the stupid basketball team thing, because Mitchell and Vala were bored and Jackson said sports were among the safest ways to occupy Vala’s time. Sheppard wasn’t very good, not that he’d ever been, but especially after what his body had been through.

Teyla was good. It was bizarre to watch. They didn’t have a basketball court on Atlantis, so he’d never seen her do it before, of course. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Teyla was strong and athletic at everything.  She had excellent hand-eye coordination and despite being the shortest person on the floor, could cut through to the net almost every time.

She also kind of played dirty. Maybe because she was the smallest, but Sheppard saw her jabbing elbows with violent precision into Mitchell’s ribs. She also totally hip checked Vala, once, and sent the other woman sprawling to the floor. Sheppard was glad she was on his team, even if that only made it more unfair since Vala and Mitchell were very obviously going easy on him.

Afterwards, Vala and Mitchell departed the gym, trash-talking until they were out of earshot.

Sheppard took a seat against the wall, a little winded. He was a lot better, but occasionally got reminders like this to kick up the cardio at the gym.

Teyla came and stood over him, leaning on her knees. She was out of breath, too, which made Sheppard feel better.

“You cheat,” he said, resting his arms on his kneecaps and his chin on top.

Teyla laughed. She dropped to the floor and moved so that they were shoulder to shoulder against the wall.

“I do not cheat,” she retorted.

Sheppard snorted his disbelief. Teyla’s arm was hot against his bare skin, hot and slick from exertion.

“Once,” Teyla said, actually panting a little. “Vala convinced Teal’c to bend the metal on our rim so that the ball would not go through.”

“Huh,” Sheppard chuckled. “That’s cheating, too.”

Teyla turned her face toward him to say something else. He saw the sweat-soaked tufts of hair that hadn’t made it into her ponytail flattened against her neck. Teyla parted her lips to speak. Sheppard leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, swallowing the startled noise she managed to make when he did so.

The kiss wasn’t chaste like before; it was open-mouthed and deep, long enough that Teyla grabbed the back of his head with one hand and held him there, while Sheppard reached across her body to clutch at her opposite hip. His fingers tangled in her waistband, and then they both had to pull away to breathe.

When he looked at her, Teyla was flushed and breathless for a whole different reason.

 “Should requisition a court for Atlantis,” Sheppard said, unthinking. “When we get back.”

He froze before the last word left his mouth, watching as Teyla’s face crumpled.

There was silence for a second, then Teyla spoke. “We were never on –“ she began.

“I know.” Sheppard pulled his arm away from her, refolded it on the top of his knees. He shut his eyes, tilted his head back against the wall. “Sorry.”

~

Teyla scattered from the gym, after that, making a flustered excuse about showering. Sheppard let her go. He went to the men’s locker room showers, giving her a wide berth if she was using the facilities in their quarters. Yeah, he was still supposed to have an escort if she wasn’t with him, but nobody noticed.

He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Hadn’t meant to kiss her, either.

Sheppard retreated to the cafeteria, not because he was hungry but because he didn’t know where Teyla had gone and thought she deserved some space.

Half of SG-1 was in the cafeteria. Jackson and Vala were seated near the door, eating Jell-O. Actually, Vala was spoon-feeding Jackson Jell-O. Sheppard stared, squinted, then crossed the room to investigate. When he was closer, Sheppard could see Jackson’s hands lying flat against the tabletop, wrapped entirely in gauze like mittens.

Sheppard walked up to them, tilting his head to get a better look. “Hello,” he said, peering down at them.

Vala looked up at him. “Hello,” she said, cheerily. She was clearly enjoying this.

“Hi,” Jackson said, less thrilled.

“What –”

“McKay turned the damn thing on while I was still touching it,” Daniel snapped. He turned his gauze-covered hands palms up, as if Sheppard could see the injuries. “Ow.”

“The Ancient device?” Sheppard clarified.

Jackson nodded.

“Seems your head screwed up its power distribution system,” Vala informed him.

Sheppard slid into the seat next to Jackson.

“McKay turned it on?” he asked.

“And then I screamed and he turned it off again,” Daniel muttered, looking at his hands angrily.

“So,” Sheppard said, tentatively. “It works?”

“Hrm,” Jackson said. “I don’t think I was supposed to tell you.”

“You just did,” Sheppard snapped, annoyed. “So keep going.”

Jackson shrugged, apparently not all that bothered by disregarding Landry’s orders. “It works,” he said.

“What is it?” Sheppard demanded.

“Broken,” Vala answered him. “Right now.”

“There’s a screen on the side that lit up,” Jackson said. “I saw some writing in Ancient before it powered down. McKay and Carter are trying to stabilize the power so it doesn’t throw the next person who touches it across the room. Then, I can get started on translating whatever it says.” He shrugged. “That should at least tell us what it is and maybe what it did to you.”

Excitement flared in Sheppard’s chest, but he kept his face carefully blank.

“Okay,” he said, evenly. “Thanks for telling me.”

It took a really long time for McKay and Carter to get the thing to that point, though. Every time Sheppard checked, Vala had a new story about someone nearly getting electrocuted whenever McKay tried to turn the device on.

It was really frustrating. And it felt like forever.

Sheppard and Teyla didn’t talk about the kiss in the basketball gym, or the borderline insane thing Sheppard had said afterwards.

He knew why it had happened. Both things, even though they were mutually exclusive. Either he was married to Teyla or he was going back to Atlantis. One or other. He knew this, and so did she. And so they didn’t talk about it.

~

Sixteen weeks after Landry sent Sheppard’s message to the Apollo, somewhere in Pegasus, the SGC got a response.

Of course, they didn't tell Sheppard about it until a week later. Landry and a bunch of other higher ups read it first. And totally didn't understand what it meant. Sheppard had told them his instructions would help lead Apollo to Atlantis. They hadn't. Not to Atlantis, but to Runners hunted by the Wraith, who might have heard of the city of the Ancients but surely didn't know where it was.

Sheppard hadn't remembered the exact frequency of the transmitter implanted in Ronon. But he'd remembered its general range and how different it was from the signals broadcast by Wraith vessels. He'd hoped that be enough, and that the Apollo commander (Colonel Ellis, maybe? Who knew?) would be skilled enough to recognize the difference between a Runner and a hive ship, if it came to that.

It hadn't been the safest decision. Sheppard had thought about how badly the SGC was apparently underestimating the Wraith. He'd had thoughts that in sending the Apollo to find the Runners, he'd help the Wraith find the Apollo and the technological trail back to the Milky Way.

But Sheppard had done it anyway. He'd lied to Landry and the entire military structure, and sent the Apollo to rescue Ronon. 

Landry called him and Teyla to his office to read the report.

The Apollo had found seven Runners. Three living and four corpses.

Sheppard's heart shot straight into his throat when he read that part of the report. He had half-expected it. Eleven years was a long time, too long for one man, even if that man was Ronon, to survive as prey to the monsters of Pegasus. It didn’t make it easier to read.

The Apollo had buried the four bodies they found, which was noted as an afterthought in the report but actually made Sheppard unexpectedly content. It was something, even if the Apollo was too late to help them in any other way.

The surgical crew of the Apollo's medical staff performed the extractions in the field on the three separate planets where the surviving Runners were found. Following Sheppard's strict instructions, the ship's sensors had been used to locate the men. Marines with Zats knocked the Runners out and stood guard until the operation was over.

Afterwards, Sheppard had told the crew of the Apollo to ask about Atlantis, but let the Runners go immediately, regardless of their answers. He hadn't been wholly sure that part of his instructions would be obeyed.  

It had been. Two of the Runners had given the predictably useless answers and been released. The third had woken up before the Zat blast should have worn off, knocked out the Doctor that tried to talk to him, and vanished by the time anyone else noticed.

Sheppard had to put the mission report down in his lap when he got to that part, the words blurring on the page. He pretended to be engrossed in it as he blinked until his eyes cleared. He was under Landry’s watchful eye, and he didn’t have an explanation why it would make him so emotional.

He knew it was Ronon before he even got to the description of third Runner. But the height and the hair confirmed it: Ronon was alive and the Apollo had removed the Wraith transmitter.

“Does that make any sense to you?” Landry asked him.

Sheppard looked up from his lap, forcing his features blank. “No,” he said, slowly. A lie he hadn’t even planned on telling came out of his mouth: “One of those people should have known where Atlantis was,” he said, peaceably. “But it was a woman,” he added. “She must not have survived.”

Next to him, Sheppard could tell by the expression on Teyla’s face that she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“She told you where Atlantis was?” Landry asked.

“No,” Sheppard said, careful not to contradict himself. But he wasn’t a great liar. “We met her later and she knew where Atlantis was. She’d never come because the Wraith were pursuing her.”

It sounded good to him.

“Atlantis wasn’t where we thought it would be,” Landry told him. “But you remember that it was.”

Sheppard avoided eye contact, looking past the General at the wall behind him.

“We still don’t know why,” he reminded Landry, shrugging. “I’m sorry. But, at the very least, you set some innocent people free.”

And that was completely and totally true.

Teyla confronted him, the moment they were out of the General’s office.

“What was that about?” she asked, softly as they walked down the corridor.

“A friend of ours,” Sheppard answered.

“Yours,” Teyla said.

“Ours,” Sheppard repeated. “I hope you get to meet him someday.”

~

~please feed the author~

Part 7