Written By The Victors

by Speranza

Contents.

1. Volume One
2. Volume Two
3. Volume Three
4. Volume Four
5. Volume Five
6. Epilogue
7. Bibliography
8. Index

Volume One.

1.

2.

In hindsight, the ideological break between Elizabeth Weir and John Sheppard seems almost predetermined. Weir's diplomatic successes were based on her ability to coax disagreeing parties to abide by a series of carefully negotiated rules. Sheppard, on the other hand, had a long history of disregarding orders and a tendency to think that rules didn't apply to him. Sheppard's sense of himself as somehow exceptional only deepened once he went to Atlantis, probably because it was more or less true.

—Mark Leredo, The Atlantis Uprising, p. 45

Those who believe in the inevitability of a schism between Weir and Sheppard have to rewrite the four years prior to the Uprising out of all recognition. In fact, Weir and Sheppard worked closely and effectively from the death of Colonel Sumner through to the Recall of 4 A.T. (2008 A.D.) They each had the opportunity to have the other replaced, but chose instead to bolster each other's position. Weir famously insisted on Sheppard's promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and his continuing appointment as military commander of Atlantis; less well known are the letters the otherwise taciturn Sheppard wrote in support of Weir's decisions as expedition leader (now part of the Elizabeth Weir collection at American University in Washington, D.C.). Moreover, there is evidence that the two frequently socialized, both in Colorado Springs and in Atlantis. In fact, the widespread but unproven belief in a continuing correspondence between Weir and Sheppard in the post-Uprising years indicates that, despite the often-evoked 'inevitable schism', most scholars believe that the two leaders were not simply friendly, but friends.

—Franklin R. Caroll, Atlantis Revisited, p. 63

Much recent scholarship has been intent on recovering the so-called 'golden age' of the Atlantis expedition: the early years before the Recall, the Uprising, and the War. These scholars (c.f. Caroll, Fritz, Henderson) often have a concomitant desire to demonstrate the good relations that existed between the various factions. I myself consider the point stipulated, but what of it? Weir and Sheppard may well have come to consider themselves 'friends,' but it is truer to say that they were both cagey political operatives who, upon realizing their careers were now linked, threw in together against the SGC. Weir was wise to insist on Sheppard's promotion and continued leadership; for all Sheppard's so-called 'exceptionalism,' (see Leredo, 45-47), he had already proven himself willing to close ranks behind her, at least where the SGC brass was concerned. The flip side of Sheppard's occasional insubordination was that he was the least military of military men; any replacement would have been much more likely to challenge Weir's civilian authority. Similarly, Sheppard's support of Weir was not, or not only, an act of friendship; Weir's removal as head of the Atlantis expedition would almost certainly have resulted in the re-establishment of precisely the kind of traditional military hierarchy Sheppard most disliked and within which he would likely have been marginalized.

—Paul Dugan, A Political History of Atlantis, p. 34

Still, the seeds of discord were sown early on. Historians have pointed to the Atlantis Nanovirus Crisis of 1 A.T. (2005 A.D.), in which Sheppard not only disobeyed Weir's direct order but also forced the marines into making a direct choice between his commands and hers. Predictably, they obeyed him, thereby gutting Weir's authority among the military contingent. Weir papered over the incident in her reports, perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps out of gratitude for Sheppard's high-risk detonation of a nuclear device over the city. Sheppard's near-suicidal maneuver saved many lives, but was only 'authorized' in the most nominal sense, with Weir agreeing to the plan only after it was clear that Sheppard was going ahead with it in any case. So even by this early date, Weir and Sheppard had come to an accommodation whose subtext was that he would only obey what orders he wanted. Arguably, from this point onward, John Sheppard was the actual, if not the official, leader of the Atlantis expedition.

—Tina Eber, The Atlantis Chronicles, Vol 1., p. 56

Most political scientists point to the Nanovirus Crisis as a foreshadowing of the Weir-Sheppard schism and Sheppard's eventual rise to power. But I believe that the incipient conflict between Sheppard and Weir can be seen even earlier, in their radically different attitudes toward the native Athosian population. For all that Elizabeth Weir was a culturally-sensitive diplomat, she initially confronted the Athosians with a suspicion bordering on discrimination; for all that John Sheppard was an Air Force pilot steeped in a cliquish military culture, he immediately invited the Athosians into the city and treated them as allies, going so far as to choose Athosian leader Teyla Emmagan as a member of his team. Emmagan came to play a key role as Sheppard's second in command, and to exert significant influence in Atlantis more generally. As a result, Sheppard's team developed a strong loyalty to and affinity for Athosian culture (so much so that after Sheppard's capture and torture by the Genii in the winter of 3 A.T. [2007 A.D.], McKay resisted Weir's order to have Sheppard examined by the psychiatrist Dr. Heightmeyer and instead brought Sheppard to the Athosian settlement to be treated by the healer known as Leylana). Anyone tracing the roots of the Atlantean Uprising need look no further than the early bond between the Air Force pilot and the Daughter of Athos, an alliance which was formalized by their marriage in the winter of 4 A.T. (2008 A.D.)

—April Martin, Rising: A History of the City of the Ancients, p. 114

3.

"Five," McKay said with the dreamy reverence he reserved for particularly good coffee, certain exceptionally beautiful theorems, and Samantha Carter's breasts. "That's—my God, it's Christmas, it's just—it's everything I ever wanted. It's three plus two more."

Sheppard slouched deeper in his chair, slung one arm over the back, and stifled a smile. "And people say I'm a math whiz."

Teyla lightly smacked his arm with the back of her hand. "Do not begrudge Rodney his joy in this moment. It is a great day for Atlantis. It is a great day for all of us—"

"Five ZPMs! Five, five, five!" McKay sat up straight, looking like a kid who'd just gotten more cake than he could stand. He made an elaborate, popping gesture with both hands and then pointed at Sheppard, who hastily covered his mouth to hide his smile. "Five is my new favorite number," McKay declared. "We're taking a leave, all of us, and going to Vegas and betting everything on five."

"Vegas?" Ronon asked skeptically. "What's—"

"It's all gambling and hookers and, I don't know, Dean Martin," McKay explained, waving his hand. "Believe me, you'll love it. And we are not—" he added, jerking around to look at Elizabeth, who was just coming into the briefing with a sheaf of papers in her hand, "—not, not," McKay yelled, with maniacal glee, "giving any of them away to anybody! I want them! I want them for the goddamned city—"

Elizabeth showed him a quick, fond smile as she sat down. "Yes, well," she began.

"Rodney's got a point," Sheppard said, as offhandedly as he could manage. "We should keep at least a couple for the city. For—you know, weapons systems. Powering the shields." He shrugged. "Maybe flight—"

McKay called him out in two seconds flat. "Ha, yes, like you haven't been lying awake at night, just orgasming over the prospect of flying the—"

"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth said, and Sheppard wondered if the high spirits of the day were contagious enough to allow her to say, I don't think Colonel Sheppard's orgasms have any place at this briefing. He began to work up a shocked expression, just in case. But instead, Elizabeth turned to McKay. "We can keep three ZPMs," she said, and then, turning to Sheppard, "And you can fly Atlantis." And then, she lifted her head and said, to nobody in particular at the table, "They're recalling us back to Earth. We're leaving the Pegasus galaxy. And we're taking the city."

They all sat there, thunderstruck. And Sheppard heard a voice, his own voice.

"No," he said.

4.

Weir informed Sheppard, McKay, Emmagan, and Dex of the plan to recall Atlantis to the Milky Way at a meeting on 31 April 4 A.T. (May 12, 2008 A.D.) Both Weir and the SGC later admitted that the announcement was badly timed; Sheppard's team was still giddy over their discovery of five zero-point-modules on M8C-2300, and were unaware that the news of this discovery had prompted a series of hastily-convened meetings in the highest reaches of both the SGC and the Pentagon. Like the Lanteans, the SGC had been overjoyed at the thought of so much power. But their joy faded once military strategists realized that Earth lacked the technologies to use them. As General Gary Stanhope, head of the Pentagon's SGC subcommittee, recalled:

"We just stared at each other across the table, because what the hell were we gonna do with five ZPMs? We already had one in Antarctica, we had one powering the Odyssey, and now we had five more and no way to use them to protect our people. The only thing that could use that kind of power was Atlantis itself, and maybe that's when the idea hit us, that Atlantis was portable. It had been on Earth before, and we could bring it back here. Fully powered, Atlantis could have been the most powerful military base on the planet, and mighty enough to defend the homeworld against any alien threat."

But it was not to be. As Elizabeth Weir hastily wrote in her report, 'Colonel Sheppard not pleased with SGC directive, asks me to lodge formal protest.' Weir later gave a more in-depth account of the meeting to historian Lisa Ellis:

"John immediately came out against it: the policy, the order. I remember groaning inside, because when John got it in his head to object to things, he could be very stubborn. I remember thinking: 'well, now there are going to be arguments.' Arguments!"

But Weir could hardly have anticipated the events that followed; nobody imagined this moment as a trigger for revolution. As Franklin Caroll argues in Atlantis Revisited: "The entire expedition had been pulled out of Atlantis two years earlier, when the city was briefly re-occupied by Ancients. Sheppard was unhappy about that, but he registered no formal protest, and the evacuation proceeded without incident." (Caroll, 90) As far as the SGC was concerned, Sheppard had already accepted the idea of total withdrawal from Atlantis. No one expected him to resist taking the city back to Earth.

—Alfred Walson, Atlantis: Year One, p.70

Caroll and Walson argue that no one could have anticipated that John Sheppard would resist the Recall when he had not resisted the evacuation of 41 August 2 A.T. (September 22, 2006). But this argument fails to take into account Sheppard's intensely proprietary—and highly illegal—retaking of the city in December of 2 A.T. (January, 2007) once he learned that it had been invaded by Human Form Replicators. A mere three months after his redeployment back to Earth and reassignment within the SGC, Sheppard reassembled the dispersed senior civilian staff of Atlantis—Drs. Elizabeth Weir, Carson Beckett, and Rodney McKay—and, disobeying yet another direct order, organized a successful black-ops military infiltration of Atlantis.

The incident was swept under the rug, largely due to the influence of General Jack O'Neill, who had been rescued by Sheppard and was presumably grateful to him. Sheppard was not brought up on charges, nor was he even formally reprimanded. But Sheppard's actions were plainly mutinous. Moreover, they demonstrated that Sheppard thought Atlantis was his, and that he already had a stronger allegiance to Atlantis than to the U.S. military. This should have set off warning bells within the SGC, and the fact that it didn't was possibly the greatest policy failure in the history of the Stargate program.

—Paul Dugan, A Political History of Atlantis, p. 194

In A Political History of Atlantis, Paul Dugan argues that the Uprising technically began two years earlier, with what he describes as Sheppard's "plainly mutinous" actions during the evacuation of 41 August 2 A.T. (September 22, 2006). Certainly, Sheppard regretted the evacuation, which probably hardened his resolve to act swiftly where Atlantis was concerned. But we cannot draw too tight a connection between this event and the Uprising. As Dugan himself notes, all the senior staff of Atlantis regretted the evacuation, and all went along with Sheppard's plan to retake the city. This includes Elizabeth Weir, who broke with Sheppard over the SGC plan to bring Atlantis to Earth.

"I thought it the best of both worlds," Weir confessed to Lisa Ellis in a 2011 interview:

"We had been under near-constant siege in Pegasus, and the SGC's directive—to pull back and solidify our defensive forces—made sense to me. And we'd have the city; we'd have Atlantis, and we'd have Earth, and we'd be safe. I thought John would love that idea; honestly, I did. And then I saw his face and thought, 'Oh, my God: he's extended his whole 'Leave no man behind,' ethos to the entire Pegasus galaxy."

—Caroline Lambert, The Politics of Pegasus, p.82

There have been many attempts to reconstruct the first days of the Uprising, the time between Weir's announcement of the Recall and Sheppard's response, the Declaration of Galactic Sovereignty and the first round of arrests and deportations. We have only Weir's account of that fateful meeting, but we have no reason to question it: "John said no. Teyla and Ronon didn't say anything, but that wasn't unusual. Rodney didn't say anything, and that was unusual." In fact, McKay was the only genuine wildcard at the meeting; Sheppard's break with Weir, and with the SGC, was practically fated. But Rodney McKay's personal and professional history was more complex. Consequently, his decisions were much less predictable. They turned out to be crucial; it is not an overstatement to suggest that McKay's actions over the first few days of the Uprising may well have been the decisive events of the war.

— Mark Leredo, The Atlantis Uprising, p. 60

5.

6.

"Rodney left the meeting first, almost hastily; he just grabbed his things and bolted. That surprised me, because—well, you have to understand, Rodney and Teyla and Ronon and John were a team, with a strong team dynamic. I suppose I assumed that the four of them would go off somewhere and talk over what had just happened. But then Rodney left on his own, and I was relieved by that. I remember thinking, 'Oh good, Rodney will bring him to his senses'—John, I mean. I still thought this was just an argument; I didn't know this was the start of the Uprising. But John looked really worried and tense when Rodney walked out, and now that I know what he was thinking—well, no wonder. He really needed Rodney on board; there was no way he was going to be able to do this without Rodney. Rodney McKay quite literally controlled all the power in Atlantis."

—Dr. Elizabeth Weir, 26 Nov 2010

"Dr. McKay always insisted upon being recognized as a civilian. He wouldn't obey anything that even sounded like an order, despite being employed by the Air Force. He maintained that Atlantis was a civilian expedition and not a military base, and vehemently stood against what he saw as further military incursions into the city. He desperately wanted scientific discoveries and new technologies to filter back to the scientific community on Earth and, from there, back to the civilian population. Most of all, he repeatedly backed Dr. Elizabeth Weir as the civilian commander of Atlantis. So, no, I don't understand what happened. I don't understand it at all."

—General Stephen H. Caldwell, 12 Dec 2010

"McKay was, in his way, more comfortable in the military context than Sheppard was. He was the classic military scientist; certainly, he'd absorbed their style and ethos to a very large degree. I think he even had a t-shirt that said, 'I've been in therapy for years; I've got a military-industrial complex.' He was recruited by the American C.I.A., you know, when he was only eleven. And CalTech didn't want him just because he was brilliant. They had military contracts; they were hoping that his research would result in patents. By the time he was made head scientist of Atlantis, McKay had been working for or with the military for the best part of twenty years. Then he was invited onto Sheppard's away team, and he became even more military: he was given firearms training and combat training and dogtags, my God! He came to the lab one morning in civilian clothes, an opened-neck shirt, and these bits of metal were hanging round his neck. 'What's that?' we asked. 'What?' he asked. Then he flushed, touched his throat, and mumbled, 'nothing, nothing,' as he tucked the tags in. But he had them; we saw them. Sometimes you could still see a bit of metal chain, like a dog leash."

—Dr. Hans Bender, 15 Jan 2011

"I was disappointed, you know, when I first found out my brother was working for the SGC, though I can't say I was surprised; he was practically raised by the C.I.A. We're nearly eight years apart, Meredith and me, and he went off to CalTech when I was seven. So I don't remember that much of him from back then. But I do remember that those years were pretty miserable. My parents were going through a really bitter divorce, and he bore the brunt of it; I was the baby, you see, so I was protected. But sometimes Meredith would say these terrible, cutting things to me and make me cry, and it's taken me years to realize that that's how they must have talked to him. They never talked to me that way, my parents, maybe because I was the baby, and a girl. And later, see, I was the extra special golden child, because Meredith had run away by then. Or that's how my mother saw it—though it was true, I think; he really did run away. Science was his way out; I think he wanted music to be his way out, but it wasn't. I remember once, when they were fighting about something, Meredith yelled that when the C.I.A. took him into custody, he didn't want to come back. And it was meant to be cruel, but the thing is; I really don't think he was joking. I think he was absolutely serious about that."

—Jeanne McKay Miller, 9 Oct 2011

"He was a theoretician, first and foremost, when I met him. He spent years working out the mathematics behind energy physics, and he was brilliant at it: better than anyone, sincerely. But it was abstract to him: he knew about wormholes on paper, naquadah was a fascinating atomic pattern, the Stargate was something made of numbers. He didn't think of the Stargate as a real thing that you traveled through to get to places and discover things and sometimes get shot at. I think it was all just some complicated and gorgeous tune that he had in his head. But that was before Atlantis; he changed so much in Atlantis. I think for Rodney, Atlantis was where the rubber finally hit the road. John Sheppard was where the rubber finally hit the road."

—General Samantha Carter, 30 Sept 2011

7.

The days between the Recall and Sheppard's Declaration of Galactic Sovereignty were rife with tension and uncertainty. Expedition members were highly sensitive to tremors in the power structure, and this was more than a tremor: this was an earthquake. Word quickly spread: Weir and Sheppard had fallen out. Sheppard and McKay had not spoken for days. All off-world missions had been cancelled. Sheppard had closed ranks with Ronon and Teyla. McKay had gathered a small coterie of scientists around him for a series of closed meetings. Weir had been on the comm with the SGC for four hours. That much was true, but gossip soon began to spread like wildfire: Weir was demanding Sheppard be replaced as military head of Atlantis. (In truth, she was arguing that replacing Sheppard would only push McKay off the fence and onto his side.) Sheppard had written to the SGC to express his lack of confidence in Weir. (Sheppard had emailed the SGC, but only to register his objection to the planned recall.) Sheppard had taken control of the armory. (Not formally, though Sheppard visited the armory several times and had taken some provisional steps toward securing it.) McKay had refused to execute one of Sheppard's military plans. (In fact, Sheppard hadn't given any direct orders because McKay hadn't yet indicated how he would play his hand.) The city was awash with gossip and rumors.

—Alfred Walson, Atlantis: Year One, p.92

While McKay consulted his scientific inner circle—Simpson, Locke, Takaro, and of course, Zelenka—Sheppard did what he could to solidify his position. At the same time, the normally laconic Sheppard broke with protocol and ordered a databurst to Earth in order to contact his superiors directly and protest the announced policy. Sheppard, who much preferred action to words, nonetheless made a desperate and heart-felt attempt to get the SGC to rethink the proposed Recall: "Those ZPMs were found in Pegasus," he wrote. "They belong to Pegasus. Atlantis belongs to Pegasus." When the SGC disagreed, Sheppard shot back, "Do you understand that you're condemning an entire galaxy of human beings to be herded and culled?" The SGC replied that, of course, if Colonel Sheppard wished to remain in Pegasus defending the native populace, he was certainly free to do so. Sheppard's reply was immediate and eloquent: "Fuck you."

"That was when the penny dropped," General Alan Merriman recollected. "We all of a sudden realized that we'd left Atlantis in the control of this madman, an officer who'd already had three disciplinary hearings and who had left a trail of disobeyed orders a mile wide. That suddenly didn't seem very smart." The SGC quickly called together a series of high-level meetings to discuss contingency plans in case the Atlantis Expedition resisted the policy. But by then it was too late.

—April Martin, Rising: A History of the City of the Ancients, p. 114

On the morning of 35 April 4 A.T. (May 16, 2008 A.D.), Colonel John Sheppard walked into the Gateroom and climbed the stairs to Elizabeth Weir's office. He was flanked by Dr. Rodney McKay and Teyla Emmagan. Ronon Dex walked protectively behind him, and following him were Doctors Radek Zelenka, Rebecca Simpson, Tetsu Takaro, and Christopher Locke, and Marine Lieutenants Stackhouse, Yamoto, Cadman, and Jefferson. Any rift between Atlantis's scientific and military contingents had been healed; McKay and Sheppard were standing shoulder to shoulder. History does not record their meeting; we do not know precisely when or how or under what terms the pact between them was sealed. But some sort of rapprochement had evidently been achieved between them the previous night, because thereafter, they presented their interests as synonymous.

— Caroline Lambert, The Politics of Pegasus, p.132

8.

John had been hunched over his laptop for hours, slowly typing out his thoughts. He had struggled over every word: changing, deleting, undeleting. He'd tried to find polite ways of saying, "Look, you don't get it. These bastards eat people," and "I can't go. Don't you see? I started it," and then he had given up on being polite. It had gone a lot faster then.

It was the middle of the night by the time he pushed the laptop's cover down and switched off the desk light. He stood up; his muscles were aching, and he pressed his hands to his back, arched, and stretched before unbuckling his belt and roughly yanking it out of its loops. Sleep. God. He had to. He was just tugging the hem of his shirt up when the door chimed. John's eyes immediately moved to his gun, lying holstered on the bureau—and Jesus, what the fuck was that about? He wasn't there yet; they couldn't be there yet. John took a deep breath, left the gun where it was, and went to open the door.

It was McKay, standing in the dim hallway in his blue uniform shirt. John forced his clenched shoulders to relax. He hadn't seen McKay since the meeting, hadn't looked for him. McKay had been there. McKay had been there from the first, on every away mission and through every crisis. There was nothing he could tell Rodney McKay that he didn't already know. Rodney would side with him or he wouldn't. John tried to look like it didn't matter.

Rodney, on the other hand, was visibly nervous. "Hi," he said. "Can I...?"

"Sure," John said, and stepped back to let him inside.

The door slid shut behind Rodney, leaving them standing together in the dim light of John's room. "So," Rodney said, finally meeting his eyes.

John nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said, and meant: Yeah, he was serious. Yeah, this was for real. Come on, Rodney, he thought. Jump one way or the other.

Rodney stared at him, and then he was sliding toward him through the darkness and his hot hands were cupping John's face, pulling their mouths together. Kissing Rodney reminded him weirdly of bending to drink from the stream after days in the Afghanistan heat and dust, the way you lost your dignity entirely when the cool water ran over your chin and your lips and your tongue and you just pushed your face into it and scooped for water with your hand. He pressed his mouth to Rodney's even as his conscious mind frantically wondered if this was yes, if Rodney was throwing in with him or just throwing everything away. Rodney pulled back, panting and gasping, his hands still hot on John's face. John blinked and tried to kick-start his brain, but then Rodney was leaning in and kissing him even more intently, his tongue slick and possessive. Christ, it was so good to let someone else take charge for a change, and John let his mouth go slack for Rodney and debated sliding to his knees and rubbing his face against Rodney's hard-on. He suddenly really wanted to do that.

But Rodney slowly broke off the kiss and let his hands drop. He stepped away from John and said, in his normal voice, like they hadn't just kissed, like they hadn't just been this close to fucking, "Do you have a minute? I want to show you something."

---

It took four transporters and three flights of stairs to get to where Rodney wanted to take him, which turned out to be a door at the end of a corridor of one of Atlantis's more nondescript skyscrapers. John seemed to remember that the building had been swept and adjudged safe, but he couldn't remember anything else about it. Most of Atlantis was asleep, the occasional security patrol or nightshift worker aside, and they hadn't met anyone on the walk over. Nonetheless, Rodney had tightened his mouth and shaken his head in a quick, violent negative when John had asked him what they were going to see. Now, Rodney punched an elaborate Ancient code into the box before running his hand over the key reader, which flashed orange instead of the usual blue. John's eyebrows shot up: whatever was in here, Rodney had triple-protected it by not only locking and coding it, but keying it to his own, individualized genetic fingerprint.

The door opened. It was a lab, obviously, but kind of a cool one, with a big pentagonal console at the center like the TARDIS. The room was spare and uncluttered, like most Ancient spaces; there was no sign of the Earth science team with their lab equipment and their endless snake of cables. John slowly circled the room, stopping to glance out each of the windows at the night-lit city, before turning to Rodney, at the console. "So?"

Rodney didn't look up; he was pressing some sequence of buttons with intense concentration. John felt a sudden flash-fire of emotions: Rodney was such an asshole. Where the hell had he been? And what the fuck was with the kissing? And what if Rodney wasn't with him? And why the hell were they here? And why weren't they fucking? Fuck him, just—and then Rodney looked up and said, "So. Yes. Well. I had a theory."

"Really?" John asked, because maybe he was teetering on the edge of intergalactic war and an affair with Rodney McKay, but there was always time for sarcasm. "What, you?"

Rodney didn't rise to the bait, which meant that whatever he had to say was probably pretty important. It had better be, anyway; they could be fucking right now. "Yes. About the ZPMs. I was going to tell you at the meeting, but under the circumstances—"

John had steadied himself against the wall with one hand at the mention of the ZPMs, and Atlantis obligingly slid a slab of bench out of the wall for him to sit on. He sat down, hard. He was such a fucking idiot. He had secured the armory but he hadn't thought to lock down the ZPMs. "Rodney," John said in a voice like broken glass. "Tell me you—"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. First thing I did, straight out of the meeting. But listen to me," and behind him, the console had started to glow pale orange and yellow and pink, like the beginning of sunrise. "There's five of them. Five, and the city only needs three to run at full capacity. But I had this theory, so I went looking though the database for devices that run on ZPMs, and this one—" Rodney turned and gestured broadly at it with both arms: an impresario announcing an elephant, "—takes two." The console's colors had deepened into those of an Atlantis sunset, deep pink and orange and gold. "Though really, it requires all five to work," Rodney added abruptly, letting his arms drop. "Three ZPMs in the city and two plugged in here—"

John stood up and peered suspiciously at the machine; he couldn't see the ZPMs. "I thought you said they were secure."

"They are. They are, I promise you, I've locked down the whole sublevel, and nobody knows about—oh God, wait, wait," Rodney said, and grabbed his forearm tight enough to hurt. "Here we go!—oh, shit, look away, it's bright, I should have brought goggles for you," and John turned away and threw an arm up to block his eyes just as a thick column of brilliant yellow-orange light shot up toward the ceiling. A moment later, the light went out, leaving them in the normal, almost-fluorescent lab light. John looked back at the console, which seemed to have finished whatever it was doing and turned itself off.

Rodney was staring at it in a kind of rapture. "I don't know how it works," he murmured reverently, "not exactly, not yet. I mean, okay, it's working on a microcosmic scale that I can't even comprehend, but it's somehow tearing the fabric of space-time in order to tap into all the residual background energy left by all the big bangs of all universes simultaneously, though that's not even the incredible part! The incredible part is—"

"Rodney," John said as patiently as he could manage. "What did it do?"

Rodney grinned wider than John had ever seen him grin in four years of finding eleventh hour solutions and throwing Hail Mary passes. "Touch it," he said.

John swallowed his response to that—Christ, his nipples were hard—and went to touch the device. He put his hand on the touchpad, but the machine merely whirred and ejected its ZPMs. They came revolving up from their cylindrical slots, reminding John of a three-CD changer he'd once owned; it had seemed pretty high-tech at the time. Rodney had come up beside him, so John turned to him and said, "Okay, I give up. What—" except now he knew what, because three-CD changer. He jerked around to stare at the three yellow-orange cylinders. "I thought you said it takes..."

"Yeah," Rodney said softly, staring at the new baby ZPM with lovesick eyes, and then he turned to John and said, "Don't you see? We can do anything now."

---

That was when John had to fuck him. He shoved Rodney up against the wall and started undoing his pants. He had a million questions, but whatever; he could multitask. "Who else," John murmured, his mouth mashed up against Rodney's ear, "knows about this?"

Rodney let out a strangled-sounding moan; John was sliding a hand into his underwear. "No one. Zelenka. I needed him for—" Rodney's cock was long and thick and silky hot in John's hand. John gently ran his palm over the smooth, leaking head, gathering the wetness, slicking it down. John kissed him as hard and as deep as he could. "Oh God, oh my God, Jesus," Rodney said when John broke off the kiss; he was moaning more or less continuously now, and panting like he couldn't catch his breath. "Sheppard, I—"

"How many have we got?" John asked, breathless too. "How many can we have?"

"As many as—that was four, we've got nine, now," Rodney said incoherently, head lolling, "but we can have as many as you—anything you—tell me what you want and I'll—" and John slid to his knees and began to suck Rodney off.

It had been a long time since he'd given a blowjob, and he hadn't remembered liking it much. But Rodney's cock was pleasantly heavy on his tongue, and Rodney wasn't pulling his hair or suffocating him or muttering bad porn dialogue. Instead, Rodney was letting out soft, desperate-sounding sex noises that he obviously would have preferred to suppress, sweet and damn near addictive. He let Rodney's cock slide out of his mouth and caressed it with his face, turning his head so that the wet cockhead stroked along his cheek, and Rodney made a mangled sound and said, "Sheppard. John—" John sucked Rodney's cock back in just as Rodney shuddered and began to shove into John's mouth with short, sharp jerks; and that was it, he was coming.

Rodney's knees buckled as John swallowed and John took advantage, tugging Rodney down to the floor and crawling on top of him. John managed to open his own pants one-handed, and then he was pushing up Rodney's shirt and blindly rubbing himself against the soft strip of Rodney's belly. He groaned at the sweet drag of skin against his cock and strained to kiss Rodney's mouth because he was going to come any second, and he couldn't even land the kiss because Jesus, he was going to come right now. He closed his eyes tight and came on Rodney's stomach, which, okay, wasn't exactly suave, but Rodney pulled him down and kissed him anyway. Rodney could still land a kiss, at least. Rodney was a damned good kisser, it turned out.

---

Afterwards, they collected themselves as best they could, John shivering at the itchy-sticky feel of semen drying on his skin, mostly on Rodney's skin, Jesus. Rodney was reprogramming the door, reaching for John's hand, pressing it to the keypad, adding his genetic key to the lock. Around them, the city was silvery and silent, and John stood in the hallway with Rodney's hand curled round his wrist and tried to keep breathing. This was the last real moment of calm. The SGC had to be planning to take him out; Elizabeth either had already been or would imminently be ordered to use force against him. He took a deep breath; he was ready, he had—

Rodney let go of his hand and turned to him, his forehead creased with concern. "Let's go somewhere with a bed," he said. "I think you should lie down."

"I'm all right," John said absently, and then added: "Can I show you something?" and that was how they ended up camping on the floor beside his narrow mattress, pillows and blankets dragged down around them, with Rodney propped up against the bed and slowly scrolling through the file on John's laptop. John stretched out on the floor with a blanket pulled around his shoulders, put his head on Rodney's thigh, and waited.

"Hm," Rodney said, and then again, a moment later: "hm."

"What?" John said, lifting his head a little, but Rodney barely spared him a glance, just absently shoved him back down again, hand lingering to stroke his hair.

"Nothing," Rodney said vaguely. "Just—you can write. I don't know why I'm surprised."

John wanted to glare at him, but Rodney's hand was still heavy on his head. It felt good, strong and solid. "So it's okay?"

Rodney's voice was strangely hoarse. "Yes. Yes. It's—brilliant, actually," and John closed his eyes against the sudden, panicky pounding of his heart. "Though you could probably combine a couple of these shorter sentences, and—"

"Rodney. Are we really going to do this?"

Rodney stroked warmly through his hair. "Yes," he said, hand drifting down to touch his face. "We are. And also, I think we're about to secede from Earth."

9.

"I don't expect you to understand this. You can't love a city where you've never lived. But we are part of Atlantis now. Pegasus is in our blood. I don't expect you to understand that either: you would have to have walked through every gate with us. But I cannot leave these people, because they are my people now. "

—John Sheppard, "Declaration of Galactic Sovereignty," 35 April 4 A.T.

10.

The Uprising was an event of strange bedfellows and unforeseeable developments. Weir, the consummate diplomat and peacemaker, found herself turned military advocate; Sheppard, the career soldier, turned deserter for the sake of civilians. But perhaps most surprisingly, Rodney McKay, the defiantly Canadian scientist, abandoned the legal, internationally-recognized governor of Atlantis in favor of her usurper, the rogue American military commander. He also abandoned science, choosing instead to become the Richelieu—or perhaps, the Rasputin—to John Sheppard's lawless dictatorship.

—Tina Eber, The Atlantis Chronicles, Vol 1., p. 97

Otherwise sensible historians continue to spill ink debating how Rodney McKay—a scientist, and a Canadian one at that!—could possibly have given control of Atlantis to an American military officer. I shall save these historians any further wear on their quills: Rodney McKay didn't think of John Sheppard as an American military officer. Sheppard was his friend, his team leader for four years, and, if later events are any indication, very likely his lover. To see McKay's decision as pro-military rather than as an expression of the depth of his feelings for Sheppard is to mistake the situation entirely.

—Paul Dugan, A Political History of Atlantis, p. 105

Paul Dugan's claim that McKay took Sheppard's side over Weir's because they were sleeping together is as offensive and wrongheaded as the argument that he is trying to counter: that McKay somehow betrayed his civilian principles in his support of Sheppard. What this fails to take into account is that, in this particular contest, it was John Sheppard who represented the civilian interest. McKay's siding with Sheppard is therefore not an abandonment of his principles but a demonstration of them: McKay, no less than Sheppard, was ideologically committed to protecting the peoples of Pegasus. It was this that drew them together, not some imagined and unlikely sexual bond.

—Ronald Koble, From Rising to Uprising, p. 24

The familiar statistic regarding gays and lesbians is one in ten. Applied to the original 200 members of the expedition, this would mean a gay and lesbian population of twenty. But Atlantis was by no means a typical social order, its members having been carefully screened by the SGC. Because of the high-risk nature of the Atlantis mission, preference was given to those with few or no family ties. Not one of the original 200 expedition members was married; not one had had children. 82 percent had lost at least one parent; 59 percent had lost both. The goal was to select relatively unattached people in case the entire expedition was lost or killed, but there were unintended consequences. For one thing, the screening process produced a coterie of courageous, stubborn, self-motivated risk-takers who didn't belong anywhere in particular—or, in other words, a group of natural revolutionaries. But it also served as a filter for gays and lesbians, so we should not be surprised to discover that members of the Atlantis expedition swung heavily toward the top half of the Kinsey scale, with some estimates claiming that more than 65 percent of the population were bisexual or demonstrated clear homosexual tendencies.

—April Martin, Rising: A History of the City of the Ancients, p. 133

11.

According to Julia Kaye, the petite, dark-haired French beauty John Sheppard met and married in Boston, their brief marriage was frigid, her young husband cold and distant. "I tried to reach out to him," she explained, "but I didn't know how. We couldn't manage the simplest things. It would have been funny if it hadn't hurt so much." The couple moved twice during the first year of their marriage, first to New Hampshire and then to Nevada. Kaye found the life of an Air Force pilot's wife isolating, a situation that was only exacerbated by Sheppard's uncommunicative nature and tendency to spend long hours in the air. She began an affair with Captain Charles Bell after only ten months. "It just seemed easier to be with someone else. Anyone else." When Sheppard found out about Bell, he moved out of their small house immediately, transferring two weeks later to Geilenkirchen Air Base, Germany. He never saw her again, though it would be several years until their divorce was finalized. Sheppard pleaded no contest and didn't appear in court. Kaye married Bell in 1993. They have three children.

—Stanley Kairn, Flyboy: The Biography of John Sheppard, p. 67

"You know how they say, 'No man is an island?' Well, John Sheppard, he was an island. Completely detached, water on all sides of him. I never saw a guy who was happier to be working alone, in the middle of Butt Fuck, Nowhere. Sheppard didn't seem to need people; give him a solitary job and he was happy as a clam. But then, you know, he had this other side to him, because he was loyal like a motherfucker; if something happened to you, it wouldn't be your best friend or your co-pilot who came after you, it would be John Fucking Sheppard. He got nailed for it twice, maybe even three times. So, you know, it's really hard to say about Sheppard. On the one hand, he didn't seem to feel anything. On the other hand, he clearly felt too fucking much."

—Lt. Colonel Richard M. Porter, 19 July 2013

According to General Carl Wesker, the Air Force had long suspected Sheppard of homosexual proclivities, but hadn't been able to prove anything. As Wesker explained:

"He fit the profile: unsuccessful marriage, low-key personality, a loner. But if he was doing anything, he was discreet about it. It would have been an easy way to get rid of him, but there was never any evidence; Sheppard got himself into plenty of trouble, but never about that. People we asked—his friends, commanding officers—seemed to think he was more asexual than anything else. So if he had those tendencies, he had them pretty well buckled up."

It is worth noting that in the years since the Uprising made John Sheppard's name famous, no one has come forward to claim any prior association with him, sexual or otherwise. This may be due to the highly secretive nature of military culture, or it may be an indication of exactly how solitary a personality John Sheppard was.

—Mark Leredo, The Atlantis Uprising, p. 78

12.

If John Sheppard struck some as sexless, Rodney McKay could seem almost comically oversexed. "My brother crushed hard on people," Jeanne Miller admitted. "Not many, and not often, but hard." McKay frequently claimed to have a penchant for blondes, but his history reflects no such preference. In fact, his taste was spectacularly catholic: if he had any strong predilection, it was for brains.

"Rodney had a thing for smart people," said Mark Brutto, his lab partner at CalTech. "If he didn't think you were smart, he wasn't interested in you. But he could get a real hard-on for a high I.Q." This conflation of erotic and intellectual attraction can probably be traced to Dr. Richard Faraday, McKay's legal guardian and first advisor at CalTech. According to historian Lisa Ellis:

"It was widely known that Richard Faraday had affairs with his male students. This was an accepted part of campus life, and no one claimed that these relationships were anything but consensual; there were no reports made against Faraday, no claims of rape or harassment. But still, you can imagine the reaction when Faraday went to the International Physics Seminar in Boston and came back to California with a fifteen-year-old physics prodigy named Rodney McKay."

The Administration immediately launched an investigation. But the situation was legitimate: McKay really was a genius, and Faraday really had scored a coup by recruiting him. There was no way to protest Faraday's guardianship without referring to rumors and innuendo, so if some suspected that the forty-three-year-old Faraday had more than a strictly scientific interest in the fifteen-year-old McKay, nobody dared say so.

"I can't imagine that Richard wasn't having sex with him," said an unnamed source close to Faraday. "Faraday had done a minor in classics, and he had all these highbrow ideas about the ancient Greek educational-erotic relationship. McKay was his dream-student: young, brilliant, also very beautiful back then, all blond hair and cheekbones and huge eyes. I don't see how Richard could have resisted him."

But as Dr. Marcia Faraday-Wilson, Faraday's sister, explains:

"They say Richard took Rodney to Oxford with him, took him to CERN, took him everywhere; well, of course he did. He also brought Rodney up to the house in Vermont for Christmas. He was Rodney's legal guardian for almost three years; what was he supposed to do, leave him on his own? All these people are trying to insinuate something, but it was all perfectly respectable."

But according to one of Faraday's associates, "Marcia's being naive. Faraday definitely kissed and touched McKay inappropriately."

Whatever the relationship, McKay seemed to suffer no ill effects. "McKay did some of his best work for Faraday," said Dr. Jeffrey Keene, another of Faraday's former colleagues in the physics department. "Faraday gets credit for doing the theoretical groundwork underlying the development of the dark energy map at Princeton, but that was pure McKay." "I never heard Rodney say a negative word about Faraday," Mark Brutto confirms. "I mean, I'd heard the rumors, I tried to ask him about it. He just said that Faraday was a genius."

McKay parted amicably from Faraday when he won his first NSF grant, which took him to Princeton for a year. But while the eighteen-year-old was scientifically advanced, he faced serious social difficulties. He was a good ten years younger than his peers, and it didn't help that the arrogant McKay wouldn't even admit them as peers. The youthful good looks that had attracted Faraday were a disadvantage at Princeton, where they made him seem a kid. "Women in particular dismissed him," remembers Cheng-Ji Li, McKay's lab partner during this time. "And of course he wasn't interested in women his own age; he thought they were stupid."

While at Princeton, McKay became enamored of a young math Ph.D. named Lisa Fletcher, whom he pursued with the single-minded intensity he later brought to bear on Christopher Ethan, James Hansel, Anna Verbeck, Rachel Levy, and Samantha Carter. But Fletcher was just the first of many failed courtships. McKay's feelings were rarely returned, and what relationships he managed to forge were brief and ended badly. "At one point, Rodney convinced himself that he was going to marry Anna [Verbeck]," Cheng-Ji Li explained.

"They had this affair, you see, during a summer we spent at the Geophysics Division of the University of Iceland. It was 'Anna this' and 'Anna that' and how they were going to elope to St. Tropez and win his and hers Nobel prizes and have 2.5 brilliant children. Rodney was really almost delusional about it, but then again, I don't think he'd had regular sex for a long time. And then when we got back to the States Anna immediately went back to her old boyfriend. He was—well, heartbroken doesn't even begin to cover it. It really changed him. I don't think he really ever recovered, actually."

As McKay got older, as his hairline receded and he settled more comfortably into his frame, he became more hesitant in his sexual pursuits. Still, he continued to have a weakness for brains, and his early attachment to John Sheppard could be taken as a strong indication, had anyone been looking for one, that the understated Air Force major was a man of considerable depth. We cannot conclusively determine that the deep intensity of Sheppard and McKay's relationship indicates a sexual affair, but certainly when we look at Rodney McKay's past history it seems inevitable.

—Denise Chapman, Several Kinds of Genius: The Life of Rodney McKay, p. 78-81.

13.

"They were together; everyone knew it. From the first week, they were inseparable, always with their heads together, sniggering. It was obvious, and a little disgusting."

—Dr. William Kavanagh, 15 August 2013

"I've been asked that a lot: if they were lovers. I suppose it's possible that they were, though I never came to that conclusion. I mean, yes, they were close, but we were all close; you have no idea what it was like to live under siege in Atlantis. We all shared a kind of bunker mentality."

—Dr. Elizabeth Weir, 26 November 2010

"You'd be surprised to learn how many people made passes at Colonel Sheppard when we were off-world: tribal chiefs, alien princesses, killer robots, you name it. The colonel said he never saw it coming. Now, I don't know whether he ever got into a thing with Rodney McKay or not, but I'll tell you this much: you'd have to be blind not to see Dr. McKay coming. Rodney McKay was a fire engine with full siren and flashing red lights."

—Sgt. Theodore Harrison, 8 May 2011

"I think it's absolutely possible that John Sheppard got involved with Rodney McKay because, you know, John slept with him. I don't mean that he—I mean, I'm pretty sure they weren't sleeping together back then, but they did often sleep together, like on away missions and stuff like that. Our teams often doubled up on big assignments, so I got a sense of their SOP in the field. John slept next to Rodney, which only made sense: Rodney was an asset, and he was the most vulnerable member of their team. They all tended to organize themselves around Rodney actually, taking up defensive positions with him at the center. So that wasn't strange. Here's what was strange: John really slept with Rodney. Really slept and just, John didn't sleep, John was always—you know, right on the edge, one eye open, protecting his people, but with Rodney, you know, he went out like a light. And it would happen back on Atlantis, too; you'd go to see Rodney about something, and there would be John, sacked out on a cot at the back of the lab, and Rodney ignoring him, working and typing and, just—it was weird. And I remember thinking, 'okay, he must feel safe here', which wasn't—well, maybe it did make sense, because Rodney was the only other senior staff member on John's level, so that when the shit hit the fan, it was either John's problem or Rodney's problem or both. So maybe John thought that if he slept near Rodney, he'd know if something was wrong. The thing is, we none of us slept enough. There was always something going on, and then when you could sleep you still couldn't sleep because you were high on coffee or adrenaline or uppers or something. So, I mean, to see John sleep like that... I mean, it meant something. I don't know what but it meant something."

—Lieutenant Colonel Evan Lorne, 12 February 2011

14.

At 0800 hours on 35 April 4 A.T. (May 16, 2008 A.D.) the document later known as the "Declaration of Galactic Sovereignty" was sent by email to the SGC and everyone in the Atlantis expedition. Within minutes, the city was alive with gossip about the impending confrontation between Sheppard and Weir. People were thronging the halls, standing in worried clusters, whispering and watching to see what would happen.

When Sheppard walked into the gateroom, he was flanked by his team, several key scientists, and a number of Marines. By the time they climbed the staircase, Weir was waiting for them outside her office door. Weir asked him if he understood he was going against a direct order. Sheppard replied that yes, he understood that. Weir said that, in that case, she had no choice but to remove him from command by force, at which point she radioed for Sheppard's second-in-command, Major Evan Lorne, to report to the gateroom.

— Alfred Walson, Atlantis: Year One, p. 96

Evan Lorne is one of the unsung heroes of the Uprising; were it not for his level-headedness on the morning of 35 April, there likely would have been bloodshed. Lorne arrived at Weir's office with a complement of armed Marines; Sheppard, Emmagan, Dex, McKay, and the military personnel accompanying them were all carrying sidearms. Sheppard and his people were obviously under a lot of strain, as were the Marines, who had suspected that they would eventually be forced to choose between their allegiance to Sheppard and their allegiance to Earth.

But Lorne cut through this dilemma by taking a middle-way position of respectful disagreement: he would not join Sheppard's uprising, but he also refused to take up arms against his commanding officer. By setting this example, Lorne gave Sheppard-loyal soldiers a graceful exit strategy, and a day that could have ended in violence ended instead with the peaceful detention and orderly evacuation of those allied with the SGC or reluctant to live out their lives in Pegasus.

— April Martin, Rising: A History of the City of the Ancients, p. 141

Evan Lorne is as much of a traitor as John Sheppard; by failing to stop Sheppard on the morning of 35 April 4 A.T. (May 16, 2008 A.D.) Lorne practically delivered Atlantis into his hands. Lorne was also personally responsible for the overthrow of the legally appointed governor of Atlantis, Elizabeth Weir, who was led away from her office in chains. In her account of the event, April Martin describes the "peaceful detention" and "orderly evacuation" of personnel, by which I can only assume she means the rounding up and arrest of all Earth-loyalists, who were barely allowed to pack their bags before being placed under armed guard and summarily deported through the Stargate.

Based upon on the testimony of the Atlantis deportees, the SGC immediately arrested Lorne upon his return to Earth and kept him in custody during the investigation into his actions. Incredibly, despite months of depositions and an eventual hearing before a closed session of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Evan Lorne was never formally court-martialed. He was allowed to return to duty as of January 1, 2009.

—Thomas Lesso, The Lost City: Atlantis, p. 57

15.

"They're gonna fuck you over for this," John said, leaning against the door frame. "You know that, don't you?"

Lorne was bent over, and shoving stuff into a heavy canvas bag. "Yeah," he said, smiling tiredly. "Probably."

"No probably about it," John insisted. "Those guys, you know what those guys are like—"

"Yeah, I do," Lorne said, with deep patience. "The thing is, sir, I am one of those guys."

John was already shaking his head. "No way. You are not—"

"No, I am," Lorne said, straightening up. "And forgive me for saying so, sir, but you're not going to be on anyone's Christmas list this year, either."

"No, I know," John said wearily, and rubbed at his forehead with the back of his hand.

"This isn't over, not by a long shot." Lorne sighed, shook his head, and heaved his bag up over his shoulder. "I sure hope you've got a plan, sir."

"Oh, yeah. Sure I do." John's mouth twisted into a grin. "One of my extra-special patented plans." He laughed and then said, with a shrug: "McKay'll think of something."

"Yes, sir. I hope so, " Lorne said, and then he extended his hand.

---

They stepped out into the hallway, where Cadman took charge of Lorne and walked him down toward the makeshift holding cell they'd set up just off the gateroom. Cadman had her gun in her hand but that was just a gesture; really, she looked like she was trying not to cry. John steeled himself and turned away.

He ran into Rodney on the way to Elizabeth's quarters; Rodney was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring down at his tablet. "It's about 65 percent," he said to John, before John could even say anything, hello or anything. "A little more, actually, more like 67 percent, which is incredible; I mean, much, much, much better than I would have expected. Still, we're talking 33 percent attrition, call it 70 people, which, I mean—do you think we can handle it? I think we can handle it."

"We can handle it," John said firmly, not that there was any other choice; he wasn't going to keep people here against their will.

"Right. Okay, then," Rodney said decisively, but then his face contorted and his voice faltered: "Still, you know, we're losing a lot of nurses, and some of the soft scientists. Parrish is going; so is Feltham and Heightmeyer and Katie Brown—"

"We can handle it," John said tightly, crossing his arms; shrinks and botanists and Katie Brown; he personally didn't see the loss. "We've got a lot of Marines, most of the hard scientists, a couple of medical doctors; hell, I'd take my chances with Nurse Ko and a bottle of aspirin—"

"Yes, right, absolutely," Rodney said hurriedly. "She's very plucky," and then Rodney's radio beeped and he said, "No. No, stay there and don't let him touch anything. I'm on my way," and took off at a near-run without saying anything else.

---

Stackhouse had drawn the task of guarding Elizabeth. He was standing outside her door, his eyes fixed distantly on a point beyond Sheppard's shoulder, his face carefully blank. He seemed grateful when John relieved him of his post and told him to go help Cadman and Jefferson round up the emigres, except that wasn't the right word, was it. Expatriates. No. Repatriates. He opened the door.

Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her mouth drawn tight, and he felt the sudden panic of things slipping through his fingers.

"Hi," he said, in the quietest, most gentle voice he could manage. "Can I..."

She spoke without looking at him. "I don't know how you can do this," she said, and there was something warm and thrumming and barely contained in her voice. "We could have had Atlantis. We could have had Atlantis and gone home if only you'd—"

"It's not," he blurted, the word huge in his mind. Home. "It's not home, not anymore—"

Her eyes stopped him dead. "Oh, yes, right," she said, "I forgot to take your adolescent angst into account. You couldn't make friends in your own galaxy and so now you have to start a war over it," and Jesus, it felt like his insides were tumbling out onto the silvery blue-gray floor. "You know, it's funny," she continued with a shake of her brown hair, "but I've studied a hell of a lot of political history in my time: rebellions, revolutions, coups, uprisings, secessions. But this is the first time I've seen one from inside. Tell me, do you think they were all as petty as this? Do you think the whole history of the world has just been the story of one poor, unloved little boy after another?"

He wasn't sure what Elizabeth saw on his face, but suddenly she was on her feet, her expression crumpling. "John," she said, and that warm and thrumming thing was back, "John. I didn't mean it," and his eyes were stinging, and yeah, that was great: way to show Elizabeth how essentially weak he was. But then her arms were around him and he held her so tight he lifted her right off the floor.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and he felt her thin arms flex and try to squeeze his shoulders.

"No, I am," he said, and then, as he braced himself to let go of her: "You could stay."

She laughed then, a small, brittle sound. "No, John, I don't think I can. Not after this." She pulled away and wiped tears away with her fingertips. "I think I'm doomed to enter the history books as the 'weak-willed civilian who lost Atlantis.'" She cocked her head and showed him a tight smile. "I wonder how history will see you."

"I don't care," John said shortly. "I can't think about—" but then his radio buzzed, and he raised his hand to it and heard Rodney's voice, normal and reassuring. "Hey, I think we're ready over here," he said. "Everyone's been searched, nobody's got anything that isn't theirs, but if we wait much longer, we're going to have to start bringing in sandwiches and scheduling bathroom breaks—"

"We'll be right there," John said, and bent to pick up Elizabeth's two bags.

---

The mood in the gateroom was almost festive, despite the armed guards. Most of those going were late arrivals, replacements, reinforcements: people who had never really signed on for Atlantis, not like John had. John had flipped and flipped and flipped a coin and then signed his will and given everything away; everything; taken his life apart until he'd erased himself completely. These folks had been on an exotic tour of duty. Now the rules had changed, and they wanted to go home.

There were a few narrow-eyed Marines and a few angry scientists on the periphery, defiantly clutching their luggage. John could feel their eyes following him as he escorted Elizabeth onto the gateroom floor, almost hear their biting, whispered thoughts: Traitor. Deserter. It was something he was used to after three disciplinary hearings. If someone wanted to kill him, he was probably doing something right.

Rodney was noisily haranguing one of the departing scientists to contact someone about something, or to go to some restaurant where they knew him; John couldn't make out the details, but he knew that yelling was Rodney's way of caring. Teyla was smiling sadly and touching foreheads with one of the lady doctors; John had the idea that they went to the gym together. Ronon materialized behind him, one hand on his gun; he was watching the narrow-eyed Marines who wanted to kill him with a mean smile that said, "Try it."

John said to him, in a low voice, "We're gonna need more men."

Ronon never took his eyes off the Marines. "I can get you men," he said flatly. "So can Teyla. Galaxy's full of soldiers," and then, cutting off John's question: "You never asked." John opened his mouth to argue, but Rodney was striding up to them, looking like he'd worked himself up to a fine fit of indignation and was maybe about to cry.

"Can we get on with this?" Rodney demanded angrily, eyes suspiciously wet. "Or do we have to spend all day at this cocktail party of the damned? In which case I think we should bring out the canapes and the—"

"Let's get on with it." John turned to Elizabeth. "Do you want to give the order?"

She looked at him strangely. "No," she said.

"Okay," John said, and then, raising his voice, "Dial the gate!"

The room hushed to stillness, save for the soft metallic clangs of each chevron locking into place. Finally, the silence was broken by the kawoosh of the wormhole and the soft click of the radio: "Hello, Atlantis. This is Sergeant Allard of Stargate Command."

John gestured toward Elizabeth's radio and mouthed, "Go on." But Elizabeth just stared at him, her eyes wide and green in her freckled face. "Elizabeth," John said in a low, desperate voice; fuck, everyone was watching, "please don't make me—" She arched an eyebrow and tilted her mouth, and understanding slammed into him.

Rodney got it a second later and said, in a panicked whisper, "No, wait, don't; you can—" but no, no, Elizabeth was right. He pulled his sidearm, ignoring the muted gasps around the room, and aimed it at her. She nodded slowly, with what looked like grim satisfaction, and then raised her hand to her radio, staring down the barrel of his gun.

"Stargate Command, this is Doctor Elizabeth Weir of the Atlantis expedition," she said, and Jesus, anyone who thought Elizabeth was weak-willed didn't know her. "This is an unscheduled activation; we need to evacuate immediately," and John snatched the radio from her ear before he even heard the tinny reply: "All right, Dr. Weir; go ahead."

"Go," John said in a tight voice, waving her on with his gun. "Go on, get out of here..."

"If you say so, John," Elizabeth replied, and that was the truth. He was the man with the gun. He had always been the man with the gun, and she was making sure everyone saw it, cocked and loaded between them. Then she turned and walked through the event horizon. The others followed, walking three and four abreast, plop plop plop. Lorne was among the last to go, and he stopped in front of the gate, turned toward John, and saluted sharply before walking through. A moment later, the wormhole closed, and they were gone.

"Raise the shield," John said, staring after them. He felt a hand on his arm; Teyla was nudging him to lower his weapon. He let the gun drop and holstered it.

"You should say something," Teyla murmured, and that was when John turned and saw all the people standing and staring at him. His eyes moved over their pale, earnest faces: Biro and Stevenson and Porter and Tolen and Stackhouse and Filbey and Cadman and Ko. Palmer and Nelson and Jefferson and Zelenka. Wick and Yamoto and Simpson and Lock: this was everyone, now; this was all of Atlantis. 67 percent, 124 people, and while some of them were newcomers, most were from the original 200, who had stepped through the wormhole not knowing when or if they would ever return.

John cleared his throat and said, "Um. Thanks for staying," and then, willing his voice to be stronger: "I'm not...I can't pretend I'm a great leader. But I love this place, and I would give my life for it, and I know that any place you love like that is home. I think we're home, now," and he was a little freaked out when the cheering started.

Volume Two.

1.

In the first six months after the Uprising, John Sheppard demonstrated remarkable leadership, transforming Atlantis from a city of —

— empty corridors and abandoned rooms into the beginnings of a vibrant market town. This accomplishment is all the more remarkable for being so surprising: no one, not even Sheppard's closest supporters, had ever ascribed to him a talent for—

—statecraft. But in a mere six months, Sheppard managed to put into place the key structural elements of a working economy, making Atlantis the vital center of Pegasus by turning it into a hub for interplanetary trade.

This was a visionary, and somewhat counterintuitive, move for Sheppard, considering that the expedition's primary goal had been to isolate the city, to keep it invisible and closed off from the rest of Pegasus and its various threats. Even on offworld missions—

—Sheppard's team had identified themselves only reluctantly as inhabitants of Atlantis, fearful of bringing unwanted attention to the city and its—

—vulnerable inhabitants. Ironically, it was only after the expedition had secured enough ZPMs to power the city's shields that they developed the moral courage to throw open their doors. Sheppard opened Atlantis—

—to the many diverse peoples of Pegasus, making it, for the first time, a genuine economic and cultural center. Atlantis became recognized as the seat of interplanetary government, and Sheppard came to be revered as a ruler of near-unlimited power.

—Caroline Lambert, The Politics of Pegasus, p. 149

2.

John looked worriedly across the meeting table. "Rodney? What do you think?"

Rodney was nervously gnawing on a thumbnail. "I don't know!" he shot back. "Ask the Minister of Culture over there," he added, and flicked a hand at Ronon.

John turned back to Ronon. "How will we know who we're letting in?" he demanded. "How do we know we can trust them?"

Ronon shrugged, implacable. "Start with people we know. Get them to vouch for people we don't."

"Our new soldiers were selected in precisely this way," Teyla pointed out. "They were the sons and daughters of good families, or recommended to us by trusted village elders."

"Build up slow, and set up consequences for bad judgment," Ronon said. "Hold people responsible for who they bring in. If someone screws up, everybody goes."

John looked at Rodney again. Rodney's face looked tense and distant, the way it always did when he was working through a complex problem.

"It's a workable idea," Rodney said slowly. "Kind of a reverse pyramid scheme: he tells two friends, and she tells two friends," and so on, and so on. "I could design something that would monitor connections within the network: to record who recommended who, who's associated with who. That way we vet people once, put them into the system, and track them from there. It would be like granting a visa, or giving out a green card—come to think of it, we should probably build in some kind of credit system: one Atlantis credit equals 2 Mars Bars or something. Actually, we could just make the Mars Bar our unit of currency; it would make more sense than most first-world economic systems."

"Yeah, I like it," John said, sitting back.

Rodney jerked a sharp look at him. "You mean, I actually get to name something?"

"Just this one thing."

"Oh, well, fine. So an electronic identity card that serves as a provisional IDC, situates its owner within a trust network, and can be used to effect trades in units of Mars Bars?"

"Exactly," John said. "It beats the fuck out of Amex."

3.

The deciding factor was Rodney's reminder that Atlantis was already divided into zones, "so we could make a commercial district," he suggested, bringing up a three-dimensional map, "around the market, and lock it down if we had to. I mean, nobody needs to be given unrestricted access to the city except—well, you, and Teyla, and the Minister of Culture over there. I mean, we can take this as an opportunity to reorganize the city in a way that makes sense," and then they were marking out a commercial area and a military area and a medical area, and Rodney made a blissed-out sound and said, "Oh, yes, we can get larger quarters," and that was how John ended up, almost three hours later, standing on the balcony of a high-up apartment and staring out at the sea.

He had figured Rodney for the picky one, but Rodney just wanted more space. It was John who found himself not liking the way an interior wall curved, or how the windows faced north, or that a building was blocking his view. He liked these rooms, though: large and spacious with windows on both sides, giving out on the city and the sea.

He went back inside and found Rodney, who was leaning against the Ancient version of a kitchen counter and squinting at some foreign appliance. "I like this one," John said, and Rodney glanced up absently and said: "Okay," before turning his attention back to the machine; Rodney had actually been fine with the last three places they'd been.

"What is that anyway?" John asked.

Rodney shook his head. "No idea. It's probably a blender. I keep hoping we'll find one of those Star Trek machines that make any food you want," he sighed, straightening up, "because without regular supply runs—"

John pushed Rodney against the counter. "Fuck me," he said.

Rodney barked out a laugh and shoved back. "And people say I'm pushy."

"You are pushy," John said. "And we just picked a place, so let's christen it."

Rodney's hands slid up over John's black shirt and made loose fists in the fabric; he was obviously warming to the idea. "You could fuck me once in a while, you know. You're not the only one who likes it." Rodney's fists were tightening, tugging John closer, though he didn't seem to know it. "We're going to have to come up with a schedule or something. What did you do in the past: just trade off, or—"

Something about the way Rodney was touching him provoked John to honesty. "There wasn't," he said. "Before you. Not—exactly," he added quickly, as Rodney's face went somewhere between appalled and horrified. "You know, just that—" Just that nobody had ever fucked him before Rodney had, that first night they broke contact with Earth.

4.

It had been his idea; he had gone looking for Rodney and had found him in one of the too-too-silent halls. "Can we—?" he said in a low voice, fingers knotting in Rodney's sleeve. He had tried to put the rest of it on his face, unable to say more. "I want—"

Rodney had understood, though he seemed a little taken by surprise. "Yes. Yes, of course."

He didn't tell Rodney he'd never been fucked, because he didn't want Rodney to stop. He wasn't sure what Rodney would make of his limited experience: a handful of women, a handful of men. If he'd managed to make it work with Julia, that probably would have been the end of it: two teenaged girlfriends and a wife. But it hadn't worked with Julia, and for years he'd been too stupid to figure out why. Even then, he couldn't get what he wanted: his few encounters with men had been stolen from under the eyes of base commanders and bartenders and patrolling police officers. With women, he'd had all the time in the world to feel absolutely nothing; with men, he'd barely had time to spurt into a mouth or a hand before being shoved away, desperate, angry, still starving.

So he had been completely taken aback by Rodney's luxuriousness, the firm, casually-entitled way he'd pushed him down and taken his time. The weight and slow heat as he'd sprawled across John's body, tilted his head, taken his mouth. John had been breathless and boneless by the time Rodney slid down to suck him, and Jesus, Rodney's version of a blowjob was damn close to cock-worship. He had drifted in a haze of pleasure, like Rodney was sucking all the terror and tension out of him. Rodney's mouth had been slick and warm, the brush of his hair soft against his fingertips. And then Rodney had slurped off, stopping only to suck at the head of his dick, and John had opened his eyes and seen that Rodney was sweating and shaky and wild-eyed.

"Turn over," Rodney had said, fingers tight on John's hipbones. John had rolled over, had let Rodney shove him into position, and pull his asscheeks apart and—Jesus!—bend to lick and kiss him there, and it was all he could do to scrabble for a grip in Rodney's rumpled sheets and hold himself up on all fours. He had been too weak to lift his head, but he hadn't been able to stop himself from pushing back against Rodney's mouth, Rodney's twisting tongue. Rodney had groaned for a long moment, then pulled away and put his fingers in—fuck, almost too much, almost.

"God, you're tight," Rodney had breathed, but it didn't seem to be a complaint, and he had felt Rodney's lips kiss the small of his back, Rodney's strong fingers working inside him, pushing, stretching. Break me open! he had thought almost hysterically. Crack me open, I need—and then Rodney's fingers were slipping out of him, smoothing over and grabbing his hip, holding him hard, holding him steady. He began to shake as the slick, hard length of Rodney's cock slowly pushed into him, and he was glad that he and Rodney had never acted on their weird sexual tension before he made the decision to renounce Earth for Pegasus, because honestly, he could have gone to war for this.

5.

"Okay, it's ridiculously, impossibly hot that you saved your ass virginity for me," Rodney said, his face going strange as he tried to control it, "and I appreciate it, really, don't get me wrong, but you should have told me, because I sometimes get excited when I'm having sex and I could have done something stupid, been too rough with you or hurt you or maybe gone too fast and—"

"You didn't," John interrupted quickly, because Rodney would be onto anal bleeding in a moment and then John was pretty sure he wouldn't want to have sex anymore; like, ever again. "You were great. It was perfect," he said and Rodney puffed up like a proud bird.

"Yes, well," he said modestly. "People have said."

John nudged his dick against Rodney's hip, driving him back against the counter. "There's a pretty big bed in there. I'll do you, if you want." He slid two fingers into the waistband of Rodney's pants and prepared to override any objections, but Rodney just cleared his throat and said, "Yes. Please. I want that," and blushed furiously from neck to temple.

The bedroom was all space and sky: so much larger than John's narrow barrack, with a far wall made all of windows. On the other side of the room was a vast bed, rectangular in the Ancient style, wider across than it was deep. Rodney didn't hesitate: just kicked his shoes off, shoved his pants and underwear down into a crumpled heap. He crawled onto the bed, naked from the waist down, his shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. John unzipped his pants, and paused, torn: he was pretty sure that getting on all fours was the universal sign for "fuck me now," but it seemed wrong somehow, too fast. He climbed onto the bed beside Rodney and gave him a shove, knocking him off balance.

Rodney lay there in a tangle of limbs and blinked up at him. "What?"

"Nothing," John said, and stretched out over him, turning his face and taking his mouth. Rodney moaned and opened up to him instantly, and they kissed for long minutes. John wormed his hand up Rodney's shirt to stroke over his chest, smooth except for a small patch of soft hair, just over the breastbone. John kept expecting Rodney to get all pushy and take over, but Rodney just hooked an arm around John's neck and made out with him. It was nice, and maybe a little strange, to have this kind of easy access to Rodney's body: his strong arms, the warm fleshy softness of his middle, his thighs, his cock. Rodney's body was reassuring—hell, just feeling desire was reassuring—and he pushed his face into the warm and spicy skin of Rodney's neck.

When Rodney finally did get pushy, it was only to mutter, "There's some lubricant in my left pants pocket," and "or spit; spit works, too," but John had brought a small tube of the stuff, which he flicked open and squeezed onto his fingertips. Rodney immediately pulled his leg up and closed his eyes when John pushed fingers into him. "Don't worry too much about stretching me," Rodney said breathlessly, "not that I'm saying rush it," he added, "please don't rush it, just that—" and John slowly crooked his fingers and watched as Rodney's long eyelashes fluttered and his mouth went slack. John just stared at Rodney's flushed, fair skin, the way his chest heaved as he panted for breath. It was weird seeing Rodney enjoy his body instead of treating it as a problem, or an embarrassment: an unreliable machine. Rodney sold himself as a brain, but he was also kind of emotional and self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking, as anyone knew who'd ever seen him eat a donut. John twisted his fingers again and saw the stab of ecstasy cross Rodney's face.

Abruptly, John pulled his fingers out. Rodney's eyes opened. John grabbed the hem of Rodney's shirt and tugged upward, and Rodney obligingly squirmed and lifted his arms so that John could yank it up over his head. Rodney made to turn over the moment his head had popped through the neck, but John said, "No, wait," and grabbed him to still him. He slid his hands over Rodney's chest to his shoulders and pressed them back to the bed. "Like this," he said, and got on top of him, and Rodney's breath seemed to catch.

Rodney began to shake before John was even fully inside him, and John gasped and began to speed up, because Jesus, the sounds Rodney was making, not to mention that he'd never been anywhere so slick and tight. Rodney was losing it, jerky and out of control, and John strained forward, arms still curled around Rodney's legs, to kiss him, because he had the sudden, irrational feeling that Rodney wasn't there with him, that Rodney was lost in some other when with some other who. But Rodney immediately pulled his mouth down and kissed him and said, "John," and then he was convulsing around John's cock and John was coming inside of him.

"God," Rodney breathed, oofing as John fell on top of him. "God." He cupped the back of John's neck. "I missed that so much," he said, and softly kissed the shell of John's ear.

John bit his lip and tried to hold the question back, because really, yeah, not such a great post-sex question, but it was eating at him. "Have you been fucked a lot?"

Rodney didn't seem to mind the question, or maybe he wasn't really paying attention. "Some," he replied offhandedly. "Back in the day. Believe it or not," he said a moment later, sounding wistful, "I used to be almost pretty. I mean, not you-level pretty," he snorted, wrapping his arms around John, "but you know: not bad," and maybe it was mean, but he was glad that Rodney wasn't so pretty anymore. "The real question," Rodney continued, "is how someone as pretty as you got this far without getting fucked."

John sighed and closed his eyes, burrowing into the warmth. "No space. No freedom."

"Hm," Rodney said, thinking that over. "Well. We have both of those, now."

6.

John couldn't make himself work in Elizabeth's office, even though it was huge and central and had a great view of the gate. Instead, he snatched her laptop from her otherwise bare desk and decamped to the secondary command center in the Northwest Tower, where he set himself up in an office that had its own private puddlejumper and landing bay.

Slowly, his chin propped on one hand, he went through all of Elizabeth's files and procedures. He ignored most of the SGC forms and bureaucracy—call it a guess, but John figured they were all pretty fucking fired—but there were supply issues to think about. They now had a limited supply of antibiotics. They had only a six-month supply of MREs. He massaged his temples. Their P90s would be useless once the ammo ran out.

He brought these problems to the next senior staff meeting. Ronon went to scavenge bandages and drugs from Sateda. Teyla began rationing ammo and hoarding blaster weapons. Rodney freaked out and stole half the remaining MREs. "No, but seriously," Rodney said, desperately clutching his armful of foil packets, "it's not like I have time to cook! Not with the hours I keep!" and John rolled his eyes and stole them back.

7.

Teyla was standing in the doorway of his office when he looked up. "Do you have a few minutes?" she asked. "There is something I would like to show you," and John saw that she was suppressing a smile of almost Rodney-scale smugness. "I think you will like what you see," and so John followed her into the transporter, along a maze of empty corridors, and through a narrow door. They stepped out onto an upper balcony that overlooked a great, open square. Below, on the floor, were groups of gi-wearing soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat. John felt his mouth twitch with pleasure and leaned forward to watch, bracing his forearms lazily on the railing.

It was an amazing display of combatives: holds and throws, side kicks and knife jabs, blurring hands and twirling sticks. John recognized some of the people—his own Marines, a few vaguely familiar-looking faces from the Athosian village—but most of the people were new to him: a woman with a glossy black ponytail, spinning like a dervish; two tall men fighting furiously, hands and legs flying; a couple of guys with short dreads, dark twists of hair, circling gracefully with knives. John watched them, mesmerized, and when Teyla slid beside him, he shifted his weight and leaned into her, silently grateful. She leaned back, and he felt her warm, strong weight from shoulder to hip.

"Tomorrow," Teyla murmured, "we will be at the firing range. You are welcome to come and observe a display of our marksmanship," and John laughed and said, "Oh, hell, yes."

Ronon turned up at the firing range, too, and stood with John behind the glass in protective earphones while Teyla's army blasted the shit out of everything that moved. "Look at that," John said, feeling almost emotional as the Ancient targets dissolved into fragments and shrapnel. "I mean, would you look at that? Isn't that beautiful?"

"Yeah," Ronon admitted. "It's pretty beautiful," and then he turned serious and said, "You need to meet them. They want to know you. You're like a legend to them," and John rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, well, I've been kind of—" and Ronon put a hand on his arm. John looked down at it for a moment, then looked up at him.

"You need to know them," Ronon said seriously. "They're your army now."

"Okay," John said.

"And there should be a ceremony," Ronon insisted. "Ceremonies are important."

John took a deep breath. "Okay, Ronon, " he said. "Okay."

8.

The market space they'd marked out was impressive: a huge outdoor area on the flat of the northeastern pier, flanked on two sides by long, low buildings for warehousing merchandise. Teyla and two of the new Lantean Guards were testing security measures while another group of Guards built stalls out of timber brought from the mainland. Some other Guards were setting up transporters at key intervals to facilitate the import and export of goods. Everybody seemed to be working together seamlessly, Milky Way emigres and new Pegasus recruits, and there was a lot of shouting and laughter.

John drifted around the periphery of the square, trying to imagine it full of traders and goods from all the worlds they'd visited. For the first time, he thought he could picture it: it would be like the markets in Afghanistan, with street stalls and bright, multi-colored awnings. Except these awnings would be purely aesthetic: the force-field, thickened over the stands, was already casting patches of shade up and down the narrow grid of streets.

He touched his hand to his radio and said, "Rodney, you ought to come down here. It's pretty cool, what they're building," and Rodney said, distractedly, "Busy now," before adding, "I saw the blueprints. Call me back when there's pizza," and disconnecting.

Teyla smiled hesitantly as she approached, and John shook his head and grinned back. "Nothing," he said. "Rodney. Never mind; what's up?"

"I think that we have devised an adequate security plan for this district," Teyla said. "We have several routes for importing goods to Atlantis, all of which can be defended. Traders who come on foot or with small carts can transport directly from the gateroom; more advanced traders will be able to transport their goods into our warehouses from orbiting ships. Additionally, Dr. Zelenka has adapted the Wraith compression and storage technology to our jumpers, so we can fly large items ourselves, if need be."

John nodded and tried not to seem worried. "Great," he said. "That sounds great."

"We have also cleared several nearby buildings for residential use. In fact," Teyla continued, "the Athosians have already requested the east-facing quarters of tower nine, so that they may see the sun rise," and John stared at her for a moment before realizing what was itching at the back of his mind: the Athosians, she'd said, not my people. He was starting to do it, too; he could already remember telling her to house the Lantean Guards in the Earth people's abandoned barrack rooms. They stared at each other for a moment, then drew together instinctively to touch foreheads, cupping each other's arms in their hands.

"Yes," he said softly. "Of course. Anything you—"

"Yes, John, thank you," she said.

9.

John kept it together through the ceremony where Teyla formally presented the Lantean Guard to him and they all stood at attention and saluted, and he kept it together when the first traders began to stagger through the gate with their wheels of cheese and bolts of cloth, and he even managed to keep it together when some of these traders turned out to have brought their teenaged daughters as "assistants"—because he'd somehow gotten used to having attractive girls curtsy to him after four weird-ass years in the Pegasus galaxy.

But then he saw the growing pile of goods on the gateroom steps: some small casks of wine, bunches of orange and purple flowers, spools of thick red cable with strange, alive-looking connectors, some dried meat wrapped with string, a basket of dark red fruits.

"Okay, what's this?" John asked loudly of nobody in particular, because they couldn't have stuff cluttering the gateroom like this.

Ronon came up beside him and looked at it. "It's your tribute," he said, and it wasn't so much what he said as how he said it, with that low, deep Satedan undercurrent of, "Duh."

That was when John started yelling, and then Rodney was there and grabbing his arm and saying, "Uh, excuse us a moment," and dragging him out through a side door.

"What the hell was I thinking?" John shouted, nearly shoving Rodney into a wall, "Why didn't you stop me? You're supposed to stop me from doing really stupid—"

Rodney was staring at him, both hands raised. "Oh my God, you're getting hysterical. You can't get hysterical! You're usurping my hysteria!"

"—shit like this! Do you understand that we're trapped in another galaxy with a bunch of people who think I'm—I'm—"

"The king of Atlantis?" Rodney asked, and that's when John had to put both hands on the top of his head to keep his skull from cracking open and spraying his brains all over the hallway. He pressed down hard, and that felt good, so he pressed harder.

"Okay, come here," Rodney directed, and put John's back to the wall. "Sit," he said, and pushed on John's shoulder. "Yank your shirt up and breathe into it." Rodney crouched beside him, one hand warm and steady between his shoulder blades. "Do you need a Valium?"

"Nah. I'm—okay," John managed, even though he was suddenly so tired he couldn't keep his eyes open.

"Good," and then Rodney said, seriously, "Look, you're doing the right thing. That's why I didn't—it's the right thing."

John lifted his head and slumped back against the wall. "I don't know, Rodney," he said. "I think I lost my mind somewhere."

Rodney rolled his eyes and bent to pull John's arm over his shoulder. "I think you need a power bar and a nap," he said, heaving him up. "Believe me, I know the symptoms."

10.

John slept for what felt like forty hours but was actually, he discovered when he blearily grabbed for his wristwatch, more like fourteen. He hadn't realized he was so tired; he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept so long. Rodney was sacked out beside him in his boxers and t-shirt, face mashed against the pillow and a proprietary arm slung across John's body. He was sporting morning wood, and John was tempted to wake him up and see what he could get going. Except Rodney needed the sleep, too; Rodney tended to do this thing where he worked to the limits of his endurance, and then collapsed into a soft, snoring heap of limbs and warm cotton. And Rodney was still snoring softly.

So John carefully disentangled himself and got up to pee. Afterward, he went into the kitchen to make coffee and saw there was more "tribute" piled high on the table. Sighing, he went to sift through it: a gray machine with its own power-source (a household appliance, maybe?), a basket of strange-looking herbs (for medicinal use? for salad?), a solid cube of shiny reddish metal (?). John hefted up a large, pockmarked vegetable (fruit?) that looked kind of like an avocado and kind of like an eggplant, and wondered how you'd go about eating such a thing. Fry it in oil? Mash it with lemon juice? He turned it in his hands, and saw that it was eerily iridescent in places.

"Oh, coffee," Rodney said, stumbling out of the bedroom like a zombie. "Thank God."

"Thank me," John said absently, and then he heaved up the large, iridescent vegetable for Rodney's inspection. "What do you make of this?" he asked.

Rodney squinted at him through one eye, jealously clutching his coffee to his chest. "I saw that one. Donald Sutherland was in it. There were pods, they killed everyone."

John snorted and put the vegetable down. "Yeah, go ahead and laugh, but we're going to have to figure this out sooner or later. We're almost out of MREs—"

Rodney's spine went straight, like he'd been electrocuted. "We're not really, are we?" he asked, and then he was putting his mug down and opening their food cupboard and nervously counting foil packages, and before John could explain that, really, no number of MREs was going to be sufficient to see Rodney through to his disgruntled and crotchety old age, Rodney pulled a false bottom out of one of the cabinets.

"Rodney! You're hoarding MREs?" John said, and covered his face with his hands. "I don't want to be seen with you."

Rodney stabbed a glance at him. "I told you, I haven't got time to—"

"—to feed yourself? Because seriously, Rodney, there won't be enough, and there's no more coming. So unless you—" and the idea slammed into him so hard that John had to steady himself against the counter. He couldn't even articulate it: it was so huge. "You don't think we're going to make it," John said, and at least his voice sounded normal.

"No!" Rodney turned quickly, foil packets flying. "No, no, no; of course we'll make it, I was just—" and his empty hands flailed for a moment before dropping helplessly. "I mean, it can't be too long before somebody opens a restaurant," and John was torn between laughter and the need to commit some kind of violence.

11.

"Actually, my uncle owned a restaurant," Ronon said.

"See?" Rodney sat back, satisfied. "There. Like I told you, matter of time—"

John sighed and tried to get the meeting back on track. "Can we please—"

But this time it was Teyla who interrupted. "Ronon," she said, turning to him with unusual excitement, "does anyone know what happened to Jeslin Block?"

"No," Ronon said, frowning thoughtfully. "Though they say he made it out of Darfine."

Teyla nodded. "I have heard that rumor, too. They say he survived and has gone into hiding. If that is true, perhaps he could be persuaded to come to Atlantis."

Rodney clasped his hands together intently. "Tell me he's a chef."

"Better," Ronon said, slouching back in his chair with a grin. "He's a brewer, McKay; Block's Tavern was the most famous alehouse in the western quadrant," and then he turned to John and added, "Best brew in Pegasus. Makes your Coors Lite taste like—"

Rodney was looking at John in horror. "You didn't actually give him Coors Lite—"

John groaned and slumped forward onto his elbows. "Can we please get back to—"

"I mean, you could have brought Sleeman, or Harp, or even Guinness—"

"Block's Tavern did also serve food," Teyla told Rodney with a smile. "Simple food, but very hearty: mainly soups and stews—"

Rodney pressed a hand to his chest. "'Simple but hearty' is my middle name—"

"'Simple,' at least," John muttered.

"—or, all right, fine, 'Didn't cook it myself' is my middle name," Rodney amended, "but you say tomato, I say tomahto. God, what I would pay for a fresh tomato..."

"John, it would be wonderful if we could bring Block's Tavern to Atlantis," Teyla said. "It would remind people of the old days. It would be a symbol of our new position within Pegasus, as part of Pegasus, as defenders and preservers of Pegasus culture—"

"Symbols are important." Ronon stroked a thumb along his bearded chin. "So's beer."

John raised his hands. "Hey! Bring him! If you think I'm going to speak out against beer, you've got the wrong guy. And anything that shuts Rodney up about food is—"

His radio buzzed, and Stackhouse said, terse in his ear, "Sir, we need you in the control room. We've just picked up four hive ships," and there was a scrape of chairs and they were all on their feet.

12.

"How long?" John asked Rodney, who was staring at one of the scanner displays.

Rodney jerked around to look at him. "How the hell should I know? I was with you!"

John leaned over Connolly to peer at his cosmograph, which showed four hive ships in formation, maintaining course and speed. "How long?" he asked grimly. "Two weeks?"

Connolly looked nervously over his shoulder. "More like two days, sir," and before John could process that, Rodney had burst in with, "Two days?" and then he was shoving Connolly's chair out of the way and bending to tap frantically at his console.

John turned to Connolly and demanded, "What happened to our long-range sensors?" and when Connolly looked helpless, he tapped his radio and said, "Zelenka! What the hell happened to our long-range sensors?"

"Why are you asking him?" Rodney said, abruptly straightening. "Ask me."

John threw up his hands. "I thought you didn't know anything."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "That was 35 seconds ago," he said, and then: "It's sabotage; they've attached a device to our long-range sensors that's been sending a dummy all-clear signal, like the high-tech equivalent of playing the same loop of surveillance tape."

John cut to the chase. "So they're past the long-range sensors."

"Oh," Rodney said, with a hollow sort of laugh, "ha, yes, they are well past the long-range sensors. They're about thirty-one hours from ringing our doorbell. Trick or treat!"

"Oh, great," John muttered, and turned to look at the hives, coming closer.

"Colonel," Zelenka said in his ear, "I believe our long-range sensors have been sabotaged. The Wraith seem to have attached some sort of device which—"

"Yeah, thanks, we're past that," John said, disconnecting, and then, to Rodney: "What are our options?"

Rodney opened his mouth, then closed it and flailed his hands at the various consoles. "Options?" he repeated, his voice going high. "You want options? We've got options, Sheppard, Jesus, we've got fourteen fucking ZPMs—"

John figured Rodney'd be stuck on this theme for a while, and turned to Teyla. "What do you think?"

Teyla tilted her head thoughtfully. "It depends on whether the Wraith know we are here, or merely suspect it. Though in either case—"

John was already nodding. "Yeah," he said. "Cloak's not an option."

"I did not say that," Teyla said, frowning. "I only said—"

"It's not an option," Ronon said firmly. "We've got to show everyone that Atlantis—"

"I think we must consider safety first," Teyla said to Ronon, "and politics later—"

"Uh, excuse me," Rodney interrupted, turning to John, "but while the Generalissima and the Minister of Culture fight this out, may I just remind you that while the Ancients had all the power we currently have plus more natural ATA gene holders than you can shake a stick at, they still had to flee the Pegasus Galaxy and run for their lives—"

John turned to glare at him. "Gee, Rodney; thanks."

"No, no, no, no, look, I'm excited, believe me. Just don't get cocky!" Rodney was turning a little pink. "This is amazing, but nothing like a sure thing. The Ancients—"

"The Ancients ran because that's what they do; they run; call it Ascension or anything you like," John said, crossing his arms. "Us, we're not going, Rodney, so find me some goddamned weapons. Teyla, I want tactics in five, and you," he said, to Ronon, "go down to the marketplace and tell them to buckle up."

13.

"It is a risk," Teyla said, leaning forward and folding her hands on the table, "but—"

"—we can have the shield up within two seconds," Rodney said, flinging his hand at the holograph of the shield. "1.86 seconds, to be exact—"

"—and our cloak will give us a tactical advantage," Teyla explained, "for at least a few minutes. We should be able to launch our drones and destroy the first hive before—"

"— they even know we're here. Because the thing with invisibility is—" Rodney looked delighted, "—you never see it coming."

"We've got a boatload of civilians," John interrupted. "I won't risk us taking a hit."

"We won't," Teyla said firmly.

"We won't," Rodney agreed, "because one of the things full power brings online is a new defensive blast weapon that'll intercept anything the Wraith throw at us."

"You're sure?" John asked.

"We're sure," Rodney said firmly.

"Positive," Teyla agreed. "And then we will raise the shield, and I believe that you will have no difficulty destroying the other hives—"

"—presuming we have enough drones to do the job," Rodney said fast, but then, "which is the only potential catch, but I think we will; I do; I really do. We've got the power to make them, so we're making them, but manufacturing them takes time—"

"—which is why we should begin the attack while cloaked," Teyla said. "We must destroy the first hive with minimum firepower so as to conserve our drones for the other three ships." Teyla looked at Rodney; Rodney nodded approvingly. They both looked at John.

"Okay," John said, standing up. "Sounds good."

Rodney was instantly on his feet. "Wait," he said. "That's it?"

"Cloak, drones, shields, blow up the ships," John said. "Just get me those drones."

14.

The next day, everyone was preparing for the attack, but John couldn't sit still. He went from Rodney's lab to Teyla's office to the armory and back to Rodney's lab, but everything seemed to be under control. He didn't want to be one of those guys who was always staring over people's shoulders and micromanaging things, but it was hard not to stare at the readouts—shit, why weren't the drones coming together faster?—and when Rodney jerked around to glare at him, he raised his hands and fled the lab.

He decided to walk the two miles back to his office. There were more people than usual walking the halls; Atlantis was twenty square miles, and John was used to having most of them to himself. But now there was definite foot traffic along the north-leading corridors. Rodney had been asked to mark out and lock down the most direct route between the central tower and the commercial district, and he'd apparently done so: John realized that he was currently walking Atlantis's main road, like the Appian Way.

He smiled politely as two unfamiliar-looking women passed him on the one side, wrestling some large, wheeled object between them, and then a group of men came the other way, and John made a run for it, darting to the nearest door and sliding his hand over the lock, which was glowing a muted but forbidding orange. It changed to a soft blue for him and the door slid open to let him through. He stepped into the empty corridor with relief, because this was his Atlantis—dim halls and silvery walls and dust-motes spinning through the air. He moved steadily northward along these back halls toward his office, reached a T-section of corridor, and turned left, toward the restricted zone where his tower office was located. And then he stopped short, made a face, and turned again, heading down the other way, toward the market.

He opened another Rodney-restricted door and stepped onto the windy flat of the northeastern pier, about twenty yards from the first stall. The market was busier than he'd expected; more than a third of stands had been claimed, and unfamiliar people were clogging the narrow aisles, laughing, talking, making deals. The stalls were blanketed with merchandise: barrels of pickled fruit, rolls of colorful carpet, huge boxes of loose tea, as well as small machines that whirred or flashed or beeped softly. John felt himself drawn forward in a haze; he could almost believe he was back in Afghanistan, in one of the bazaars near Bagram Air Field. He walked down the first row of stalls, eyes sharp but keeping his distance: in Qatar the vendors would practically grab you by the arm to get you to buy, but thankfully, that wasn't the rule here. People were staring at him, but no one spoke to him, and a few people even lowered their heads and averted their eyes.

He became aware that someone had fallen into step behind him and asked, without looking, "Did you tell them about the hives?"

"Yeah," Ronon said. "Announced it over the comm. system."

John did stop then, turning to regard Ronon thoughtfully. "Nobody seems particularly upset. Business is booming."

Ronon licked his lip, a long slow swipe. "Yeah, well. Most of these people, Sheppard, have been facing the Wraith a lot longer than you."

"Well, good, then," John said, and continued down the street with Ronon following him. He slowed and then stopped before a display of brightly colored bolts of fabric. His attention had been drawn by some shimmering blue stuff that looked like the sky. He reached out, touched it, rubbed it between his fingertips. The cloth was soft, but didn't feel like anything familiar: not silk, not cotton, not wool.

It was only then that John noticed that the vendor, a dark-eyed woman with a heart-shaped face, biting her lip, was visibly debating whether or not to talk to him. "That is very good cloth, sir," she said finally, jerking back suddenly when he really looked at her.

"It looks it," John replied honestly. "I've never seen anything like it."

She swallowed several times before she spoke. "It's called Zephyr," she said. "It is woven from the long, soft hair of the creel."

John wasn't sure he wanted to know what a creel was. "It's nice stuff," he said. "I'd like to get a shirt made out of it." The words were out of his mouth before he'd realized. In the middle east, the fabric merchants had been great copiers of western styles: John had more than once brought them a favorite shirt or pair of pants and had it copied down to the collar or cuffs. But this wasn't there. "That is, I mean," he said stupidly. "Maybe you just sell the fabric. But I don't sew, so maybe you know someone who could—you know." He made a vague sewing-a-shirt-together gesture, and the woman's eyes widened.

"Yes, of course," she said. "Just tell me what you want, or show me the garment you would—" She fumbled for a coil of silky pink ribbon, which, John realized a moment later, was her tape-measure. "Sir. I would be so honored to—"

"It's not for me. It's a present," John explained, though he felt compelled to add a moment later, "Though I mean, I could probably use some new pants." He looked over at some heavy black cloth, and wondered if it would be good for uniforms. "If I brought you an example..."

"I am sure I can make a garment to your satisfaction," she said, bowing her head.

"Well, great," John said awkwardly, and then he tried on a smile. "Sorry," he said, going for charming, "I'm just new at this trading thing. I'm not even sure how to pay you. How much is—" and okay, failing at charm, because she looked horror-struck.

"Oh, no," she said, "sir; I could not possibly accept—" and suddenly he got it.

"Crap," John said, and then: "Look, lady, you need to stop this right now." Her face went from horrified to terrified and she let out a little moan of agony. "Aw, Christ," John said, feeling as pained as she looked, and then he took a breath and said, in the voice he used on people who wanted to kill him, "My name's John, and I just want some pants—"

"Yeah, she knows," Ronon said, and John turned to see him rolling his eyes. "Everyone's heard of you, Sheppard."

"Well—" John was at a total loss for words. "No one introduced her to me."

"This is Merce," Ronon said, shrugging, and behind the counter, Merce looked like she wanted to die. "She comes from Hessaya. They have very good tailors, Hessaya."

John reached over the cloth, hand extended. "Merce, it's nice to meet you."

Merce stared at him for a moment, then looked down at his proffered hand. Then she curled her hand around his fingers and gave them a tentative squeeze—and okay, yeah, that was really weird. John swallowed hard and tried not to look surprised, but she must have seen the look on his face and guessed that she was doing it wrong.

"Should I..." Merce began hesitantly, still tightly clutching his fingers, "kiss your—"

"No. Really not, no," John said, immediately snatching his hand back.

Ronon abruptly ran out of patience. "I'll have someone bring down some samples," he told Merce, obviously wanting John to move on, "so you can get to work—"

"I'll bring them," John said, feeling stubborn.

Ronon looked off into the distance. "Okay. Yeah. Good use of your time."

"Colonel," and John immediately turned to her; it was the first time she'd addressed him directly. Her face was serious. "I wish you every blessing in your fight against the Wraith," she said.

"Oh. Well. Thanks."

15.

"Don't get me wrong," Ronon muttered, trying to hustle him down the row of stalls without touching him. "You should come here, let them see you, but not like this—"

John slowed from a walk to a saunter to a stroll, feeling stubborn, wanting to see if Ronon would actually grab him or push him or something. Everyone was watching him, openly or with discreet little glances, and he could hear a low murmuring wave of whispers as he moved along.

"How, then?" John shot back. "In a parade?"

Ronon shrugged. "Thought about it," he said, and John pursed his mouth and broke away suddenly. Ronon sighed and jogged after him. People darted to get out of the way.

John stopped short in front of a stand of high-piled iridescent vegetables: the avocado-eggplants. "Hey," he said, to the guy manning the stand, "so how do you eat these?"

"I—" The man looked confused. "However you like!"

"No, I mean, do you cook them, or—?"

"You can certainly cook them. Or you do not have to cook them—" He picked up a giant pockmarked purple thing and thrust it into Sheppard's hands. "Please, sir; my gift—"

"Okay," Ronon said, and put a hand on John's shoulder. "I think we should go." John was going to protest, except he was holding a giant purple avocado, and the guy looked desperate for him to leave, and two women from the next stall were gaping, and there was a little kid peering up at him with huge eyes from underneath the tablecloth.

It was little kid who did it. "Yeah, okay," John muttered, and then he raised the vegetable a little and said, "Thanks," and let Ronon steer him out through the crowd.

16.

"Look, I just want to be normal," John said.

"You can't be," Ronon said. "You're not."

17.

He went back to his empty apartment, broke into Rodney's stash of MREs, and ate two of them while staring out the window at the sea. Then he put his hand to his radio.

"Teyla," he said, and Teyla told him she had briefed the Lantean Guards for tomorrow's attack; some would be posted to defensive positions around the city, and some had been dispatched to maintain order in the commercial and residential districts.

"Stackhouse," he said, and Stackhouse gave him an update on the progress of the hive ships; they were right on schedule, and Atlantis was set to cloak before they arrived.

"Rodney," he said, and Rodney said, "Busy now," and hung up on him. John sighed and went to make himself a cup of coffee. He stared down at the avocado-eggplant on the counter. It seemed to be mocking him.

By the time Rodney came back to the apartment, he had the fucking thing well and truly subdued. "What are you..." Rodney came up behind him and stared down at the pan.

"I don't know," John said; suddenly, he felt really stupid. "I just needed to do something normal."

Rodney looked up at him sharply. "