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“Do you ever get the feeling you’ve forgotten something really important?” Rodney said to Radek, the feeling of unease that had been creeping up on him all day finally making it through to words.
“All the time,” Radek said, “because there is too much to do, and something always gets forgotten.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Rodney mused as he wandered listlessly out of the lab.
It was pizza night at the mess. He grabbed enough for him, Teyla and Ronon and joined them in Teyla’s room for movie night. Teyla had picked Steel Magnolias, which Rodney declared a chick flick, to both Teyla and Ronon’s consternation.
Rodney looked around himself vaguely for backup, feeling a moment of confusion that pinched at his heart.
By the end of the film, Rodney had tears in his eyes as much as Teyla and Ronon. He pressed in close to Ronon, a strange sense of shared loss welling up in him, like his heart was being broken by unseen forces that weren’t entirely related to the tearjerker of a film. Ronon put an arm around him in that easy way of his, pulled him closer.
“I liked the movie,” Teyla said thoughtfully, “but is it me or are we three not as we usually are? I cannot place what is wrong.”
“Yeah,” Ronon said. “Something’s off.”
So it wasn’t just Rodney, then.
By the end of the week, the feeling had grown. Teyla and Ronon were listless, Elizabeth was quiet, Lorne was tight-lipped at senior staff and Rodney? Rodney felt this constant, horrible sense that the universe no longer made any sense.
Tears filled his eyes when he went to see Kate about it.
“Something’s wrong, I just don’t know what it is,” he said.
“You’re just overwhelmed and overworked, Rodney. I’m going to ask Carson to give you some sleeping pills and a mandatory rest day.”
“No, this is… it means something. I’ve lost… I’ve forgotten… oh, never mind,” he got up and left because he was sick of Kate’s bland platitudes.
“Rodney!” a man’s voice woke Rodney from a fitful sleep.
The voice was achingly familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He sat up, looking around the dawn-lit room, but there was nobody here.
Just a dream, then.
He remembered dreaming about a man with messy dark hair. The man had wanted Rodney to rescue him, though he didn’t know why or from where or even who this man was. But now, when he thought of the man, his chest ached enough for him to momentarily wonder if he was dying. Tears were in his eyes again, and this time he couldn’t hold them back. Grief welled up, but he’d no way of knowing where it came from.
“Who are you and why do I miss you so much?”
“Oh god, Rodney,” John said, kneeling by Rodney’s bed and looking into eyes made bluer by tears.
His own eyes were leaking too. He kept reaching for Rodney, but his hand passed straight through.
At first, he’d wondered if he was a ghost. Or if the weird glowy being from MX9-351 had put him out of phase, like Daniel Jackson that time. But it wasn’t just that his team couldn’t see him, could walk straight through him. No, it was as if he’d never existed to them. All memory of him wiped.
“You have failed the test. Your penalty is to face your worst fear.”
John had been steeling himself for giant bugs. Not this. Not comprehensive, unrelenting abandonment. The creature had looked like an angel, all white light and soft edges. So maybe John deserved this, his own private hell. But what this was putting his team through? Putting Rodney through? It was sadistic and cruel, and they didn’t deserve such unfocussed, draining misery.
Rodney lay back down, his face unhappy, tight. John stretched along the bed next to him, close enough to feel his warmth. He could still feel, and touch, he just couldn’t be touched back. He reached out and brushed Rodney’s tear-damp cheek.
John didn’t do romantic relationships. He’d tried, but it wasn’t in him. For years he’d felt lonely and wrong because he couldn’t connect that way. But then Atlantis happened, presenting new ways of weaving himself into the fabric of other people’s lives. The bonds he had with his team? Closer than a marriage. Just… different.
“Where are you?” Rodney said miserably.
“I’m here, I’m right here,” John said, his voice choked.
When he’d left his family behind their world had closed behind him with a snap like he’d never been there. This? This should have been cleaner than that, yet it was anything but. John almost hated that he still mattered, had left a visible gap in their lives, but at the same time he needed not to be forgotten. It was his only tenuous thread back to life.
“Rodney, please remember. I need you buddy.”
The last time John had felt this abandoned, he’d been in the time dilation field, and Rodney had been working so fast to save him. But how could Rodney save him if he didn’t even know John was missing?
“Don’t you think it’s odd that we’re the only gate team that has three members? And none of us military?”
“I’m military,” Ronon supplied, but he didn’t look convinced.
“Guys, I’m right here!” John pleaded, just like he’d been doing for the last ten days. They didn’t so much as flinch.
They were back on MX9-351. The place where the angel-thing had tested John and found him wanting. Had sent him into hell.
A part of John believed that by this point in his life, he’d sinned enough for eternal damnation. Another part of him knew he’d felt that way since he was too young to really be a sinner at all. When you’re a stranger in your own home, when there isn’t any love to be had, it’s hard not to feel like it’s something terrible you did.
“I have the strangest feeling of having been here before,” Teyla said, as they approached the crumbling ruins of the alien city.
“Me too,” Rodney said.
Ronon nodded, and unholstered his gun.
“This is where the off feeling comes from,” he said. “I know I’ve been here before.”
John was there with his team one moment, and the next back in the weird, glassy sphere he’d been teleported into ten days previously. His tormentor stood before him, too bright to fully see.
“You’re no fun,” the being said, sounding bored and anything but angelic.
“You,” John said, narrowing his eyes.
“Me,” the alien said.
John was trying to remember just what the test he’d failed so badly had been. It eluded him. And then the truth dropped into his brain, clear and sharp as broken glass.
“Your test was unwinnable.”
The deception was suddenly so clear to him, even though he couldn’t get a hold of the details.
“True,” the alien said simply.
“So what was the point of this? A punishment? A lesson?”
“Entertainment,” the bored voice came from a mouth too dazzling to clearly see.
John shivered.
“Our lives are a game to you?”
“You’re insignificant, lesser. Why shouldn’t you be my toys?”
Just like that, John was back in the alien ruins, surrounded by his team. His heart surged with hope.
“Rodney? Teyla? Ronon? Can you see me?”
“Something is wrong, I can feel it,” Teyla said, oblivious to him.
“Yeah,” said Ronon, dialling up his gun.
John crumpled inwardly. There was no way out, and no meaning to this, just the casual cruelty of an uncaring creature with total power over him. The creature oddly reminded John of his father. He didn’t deserve this, he finally knew. Nobody did. His team certainly didn’t. But they would move on, and for all the bonds he’d forged, the universe would get along just fine without John Sheppard.
John wasn’t sure if he could die in this state, because he hadn’t eaten or drunk in ten days and he was physically fine, but this loneliness… if he could die at all, he might die from that.
“Who are you?” Rodney’s voice came sharp as the being appeared before them.
“Oh, you can call me… Lucy,” he gave John a wink.
“Yeah, so funny. You’re not the devil, just an asshole with too much power,” John retorted.
“I’m your devil though, aren’t I, my little amusement?”
The voice was in his head, for him alone.
“We want him back,” Rodney said, lifting his chin and crossing his arms.
“Who?” the being asked innocently.
“The man with the messy hair. He belongs to us. We want him back.”
“Sucks to be you, then,” ‘Lucy’ said.
“Take me instead,” Ronon said.
“No!” Rodney and Teyla chorused.
“What if one of you took my test?” Lucy said thoughtfully.
“I will,” the three of them said in unison, just as John impotently yelled, “don’t!”
The glow of the creature was fading. Huh. Maybe it didn’t have infinite energy to pull of its tricks after all. There was a long silence, in which nothing at all happened.
“You’re weakening,” Ronon observed.
Rodney pulled out his LSD.
“The energy signature is diminishing fast. Maybe whatever it’s doing is draining it.”
“Stop this,” Teyla said commandingly.
The being’s light diminished even more.
“You’re all so boring,” it said, its voice thinner somehow. “I’m going to go play with my old friends the wraith.”
The being promptly disappeared.
John sank to the ground, his body bereft of energy. This was his life now; alone, hopeless. No way back.
“John?” Teyla’s voice came from above him. “Oh, John.”
She knelt before him. She could see him! Her forehead tipped to his and her hands on his head felt like anchors. John let out a sob.
“Oh god, you were here this whole time, weren’t you?” Rodney sank to his knees next to them, “I can’t imagine, I just… oh god, John.”
Rodney gripped John’s bicep, another anchor.
Ronon knelt on the other side, threw his arms around all of them.
“We’ve got you,” he said, oh so gently.
There was nothing holding John up but his team right now, but that was all he needed.