6.

"I told you nothing would happen," John gloated, looking over at Ford.

"I never said anything would," Ford said defensively, though he was grinning. Just like a little boy. John was beginning to think it wasn't innocence - that Ford did it on purpose. Why he did ... well, that was another question entirely.

He was quick to make the jumper invisible as it sped out of the gate. He just hoped that the Wraith hadn't noticed the gate activity - though he doubted it. The second they were on the other side he 'wondered' where the rest of the scientists were. In truth, it wasn't as effortless as he had made it sound. It was a relaxed concentration, sort of like meditation. He loosened the ties that bound his soul to his body and allowed it to reach out to other senses - the sensors, his eyes, the jumper, his body. He had been doing this with his planes for years; it was only now that it was verifiably real.

But suddenly he felt blind. He could detect the Wraith, moving in what he recognized as a Wraith standard search protocol, out from the gate, but there were no scientists. "Come out come out, wherever you are."

"Sir?"

"I lost the research team."

"Oh. You don't think they're ..."

John clicked his radio on. "Lieutenant Parker, this is Sheppard. Do you copy?"

"Parker here, sir."

"Status."

Again, he heard Kavanagh in the background, "They're getting closer. We need to do something." Why hadn't someone just punched the guy? John knew he would have if he weren't too busy going through the gate, getting zapped by alien bugs, or playing touch football in one of the storage rooms. Perhaps the pompous bastard just wasn't worth anybody's time.

Parker ignored the slimy ball-less scientist and answered. "Same as before, Sir."

"Hold tight. The cavalry's on its way. Sheppard out."

"Something in the cave network must be blocking our life-signs detector," Ford informed him.

"I told you not to call it that, Captain Obvious. Now, I'm going to fly over the ruins in the direction Parker gave us, try to get visual confirmation."

"Yes, sir."

The ground was a dusty grey, covered in a dense network of bushes and brambles, scattered about in an almost deliberately mazelike pattern. They had stumbled upon the ruins by luck, because their layout and near-obsidian coloring were ideal camouflage in this environment. John hated this: Aerial Survey. He hated flying on by, watching the violence bellow, watching men die while he could be saving them, but knowing that if the generals didn't get their battle data they could make stupid and even less informed strategic decisions.

"Is that not the site of the ruins?" He heard Teyla's serious tones from over his shoulder. That girl was so ... intense - sometimes to the point that it scared him. No matter how nice the packaging, he didn't think he could risk getting involved with a woman like her. You make one mistake (in a rulebook invented by a completely ... well, almost completely ... alien society) and she'd flatten you like a pancake. Not that John wasn't attracted to strong women, because he definitely was ... it was just that they tended to make too much of a thing of it when he wouldn't open up, or he left for no reason, or he inadvertently strayed. They acted as though he was out to get them when he definitely wasn't, and none of them believed 'it's not you, it's me,' even when he knew it to be true in his case.

John turned his head to follow the hand that pointed out from over his shoulder. Even in the microseconds as his eyes skipped from the tips of Teyla's golden fingers to the mandala of vegetation and dusty pathways on the screen, he knew this was one of those moments. Everyone had defining moments in their lives, but not all had the skill to recognize them. John did, however. He felt this calm, almost preternatural, assurance drop over him, almost like the slow-motion intensity in the haze of battle. Lock and load, aim and fire. Dust down, dust off. It was almost an outside presence, buoying him up, giving him hope, telling him that whatever choice he made would be the right one.

Then he looked. And he was no longer looking down detachedly from above, but standing there in the clearing among the obsidian glyphs.

He watched her with rapt attention. Her hair was piled atop her head in an elegant plait, amber curls hanging down to kiss her slender neck. He loved it when she wore white - it made her skin glow, as if everything were new and still untarnished. She looked as though she did not belong in a warzone or even in a universe where war existed.

Her eyes were alight, studying him as though she knew what he was about to say. He supposed she did. Ever since they had met, she had an uncanny ability to read him. He wished he could do the same for her, but he fumbled through their relationship - his only saving grace being that he believed in their love above all else.

The text of the ruins around them was glowing white, illuminating the symbols of vows passed down for generations - sacred, binding, full. The universe knew that it was time. Why should he hesitate?

He moved to the great grey chest he had brought with him. It was decorated with a jeweled eye, in the same amazing color as hers. He had chosen that symbol because the first thing he noticed about her were her own. He could get lost in them. He had gotten lost in them.

She shifted slightly in anticipation, disrupting her usually self-assured calm. He smiled and opened to box, removing a beautiful silver choker, encrusted with the same worthless jewels. He had chosen them not for their value but for their sentiment. She was not one to care about material things.

Her eyes lit up. She knew what this meant. Though it seemed almost like a collar -a device of restraint and possession- she knew that he would place it on her as equals. She smiled demurely - the first time in a long history of smiles. She was not frightened, but she stepped into the unknown with the same wary calm as she did anything.

He clasped it shut around her neck, allowing his hands to linger. Her soul exploded through his fingertips and he felt more complete than he ever had before.

... Somewhere far away, someone was shouting. He could feel the panic stir in the air, but he could not hold on to it - locate it in time and space. He was too transfixed by the teal brightness of her eyes as she consummated this newfound glory with a kiss.

Then he was flying across the sea ... skimming the waves with the salt wind whipping through his hair, and the sun warm on his back. The teal sea extended out to the virgin white strip of coast where he could just see smoke rising from a stilted thatch hut. He heard his companions shouting beside him. Turned to see Dodger in his cutoff army pants and 'Yankees Must Die' baseball cap, skimming the waves and screaming like a Wildman. He turned away and sped parallel to the shore, beneath the curl, surrounded by a wet cool cave of teal. Then it broke, and there was no escape. He plunged into the depth of the sea, board lost somewhere in the current. He slammed hard against the sharp rocks that lurked jagged and menacing beneath the surface, watching idly as blood fanned out from his shoulder like a dark cloud blowing through the tranquil waters. He knew he should be doing something, but he had forgotten which way was up, favoring the sparkling lights the flittered down to these depths, but not knowing why. Darkness pulled at him, but, for a second, he thought he saw a pair of eyes ...

John screamed in pain. It was definitely not a migraine. He used to get them when he was a kid, before ... before he released his burden. Migraines traveled, sharp stabbing pain like a nail pounding into the skull. But this pain seemed to radiate from within, as though something was trying to break out, not in. And it didn't just hurt in his head - it hurt in his very soul. The memory of every injury, emotional as well as physical, flooded back all at once. Old scars cried out, sometimes layering on top of each other, intensifying the pain - broken bones, burns, exhaustion, poison, a bad LSD trip. He remembered night after lonely night. Leaving. His parents leaving him. The nerds who'd been picked on all their lives beating him up just because it felt good to be on the other end of it for once. The rows of eyes, watching -hopeful, but accusing: Why didn't you save us? The hand on his chest and the darkness burrowing into him. Seeing her eyes for the last time - knowing the limits of infinity.

Darkness ... he didn't know for how long. Floating in a haze of colors and pain and memories blurring so quickly together that he couldn't remember them a second after they flashed by until ...

He was sitting with Father, watching football, playing guess the play. Father said that any key strategist could anticipate the enemy's move. Making football like a human game of chess was the only way he could get John interested. Father said he would make a good quarterback one day - he had the speed and the brainpower, but they both knew that skipping so many grade levels meant that he would never have the bulk to take even a single hit. And everyone had to take a hit sometimes - that was part of the strategy too.

The TV stopped, flashed back to instant replay, white lines mapping themselves onto the color like marionette strings, moving the players down and across and over.

He was in chopper, Black Hawk by the sound of it. He could just see the flicker of light created by the blades as they swung around - decapitation speed. A white line traced itself to the left across the horizon. Play: Return to base. Sacrifice three pawns to safeguard the White Knight in Shining Armor. He saw the lines, unnatural and grainy against the intense color of reality, beckoning the Knight home. But his hand moved to the right, as if of its own accord. He watched the white line fade into the distance, as insubstantial as chalkmarks in the pouring rain. Save three pawns, sacrifice the Knight. Turn his white heart black. Then he felt it ... the upwelling of confidence that told him this was the right thing ... there were paths not marked in gritty white lines.

Then the pain returned, burning into his skull like hot acid. Oh, God, it hurt! Someone was cracking him open, sifting through his insides, tearing down walls and tearing him apart in the process. He could not let anyone in. This was his pain - his life - his burden, but also his freedom. But the force was relentless.

"It hurts." He reached out.

She held him in her arms, close to her bosom. His father did not tolerate weakness, but she told him it was okay to cry. She sang him lullabies and told him stories. She held him when he fell off his bike and scraped his knee, when the other kids beat on him until he felt he could barely move, and now, when he suffered his worst defeat of all. This was a time when John Sheppard did not lose. So many times since then, after he'd grown to understand that life was rarely a battle to be won or lost, he'd lose willingly. Sacrifice the Knight ... . But now, he had lost a match, versus that brat from Japan. It was a lucky break, John was tired from the flight, and he had let his attention slip just a little. Father was disappointed. But he would not let it happen again, that much he promised himself as he clung to her desperately, as though she could change all the world around him.

He was in the great amphitheater, so many faces looking down on him, adding weight to his shoulders with something as insubstantial as a glance. He wondered how many people were watching, and his mind did the calculations for him. Twenty seven rows, six seats per row, twenty three columns, an approximate attendance rate of seventy-five percent ... 2,794.5 ... he'd round up just because he was paranoid. 2,795 hopeful spectators, waiting with baited breath for him to make the next move. He inhaled deeply.

Knight to D-4. He moved through the wreckage, swimming through smoldering metal, grasping his broken arm. It hurt, but not as much as knowing he had survived and the others had not. He felt their dog tags jingle in his pocket. He should have been first to go. The pilot should have the luxury of dying on impact when the nose hits the cratered Earth with a force of ... mass of a huey (approximately 17,500 lbs if you counted men and artillery) times acceleration (gravity: 32.2 ft/sec - ignoring air friction) ... 563,500 ft-lb/sec or 77,910 Newtons. That's an energy of impact of force times distance (65 feet) of approximately 1,543,552.92 Joules. That was more than enough for the aluminum control panels to crumple, crushing his heart against his spinal column, tearing through his insides, while he sat strapped in like fish in a barrel by the safety harness. But he survived . . why? He felt a tickle on the hairs of the back of his neck. He was being watched. He whirled around, looking for a sniper ...

Another wave of pain exploding like a new galaxy forming, this time accompanied by nausea. He bent double to try to expel whatever was tearing through him, bringing him through so many memories of suffering, but found something preventing him ... choking him. He heard a rustle and harsh whispers ... like the sounds of the jungle ... but he refused to let the sea of memories take him yet again. He gagged, but then, rough hands on his shoulders, supporting his head - had it been resting against something hard and cool and too lumpy to be the jumper wall? ... a voice telling him to calm. He obeyed - trusted that voice. The foul thing in his mouth was removed, but when he went to throw up, there was nothing left to release. He opened his eyes slowly, but not cautiously, the way a baby might take it's first look at the world. He could make out shapes in blurs ... a dark face, barely lit by the glow of a flashlight, next to him. He could read the concern in the deep penetrating eyes, but not make out the lines of the face.

"Are you alright, Sir?" Lieutenant Ford.

"Right as rain." That seemed appropriate. When it rains it pours ... He must really be sick to be making half-baked puns.

He felt Ford's hands gently laying his head back down. He winced when it made contact. He didn't remember getting a bump on the back of his head. "Ford. Why does my head hurt from the back now too?"

Ford just smiled sheepishly. Too damn innocent. "Sorry, Sir."

"What's the situation?" Since when did his voice sound so weak?

"We have to move, Sir." He let Ford wrap an arm around him and pull him to his feet. Why did the boy suddenly smell?