“You’re not serious, Annie!” Melody Simpson was saying. “You can’t leave me alone with Bates and Kavanagh! That’s just cruel and unusual. What if I talked to Dr. McKay about it? I mean, Calvin hates the Marines, and he’ll be even more of an insufferable ass that usual!”

Annie sighed, stirring her hot not-chocolate forlornly. “I know. Believe me, Melody, I know. But those are the major’s orders.”

“But if he’s punishing you, why punish the rest of us too?”

“I don’t think that not having to go out in the field with Kavanagh is even really a punishment. I think it’s more that he doesn’t trust me.” Rightfully so, after what she’d done. Annie didn’t even trust herself.

“Why does he not trust you?” Miko said eagerly, sitting down opposite and arranging her silverware perfectly parallel to her plate. Annie ignored the strange habit, like she did most of the science team’s odd behavior.

Melody rolled her eyes. “What were you doing when Annie got dragged off by that bastard, Kolya? Moping over Dr. McKay, again?” Melody had already made it clear what she thought of anyone who could possibly have a crush on McKay.

Miko blushed. “No. I was working on my project.”

“So was I, and I still heard,” Melody said, not particularly maliciously. She didn’t much care for Miko, but Annie liked her. She let her indulge her stupid little girly side.

Miko nodded. “But then why are you in trouble? If he dragged you off, there was nothing you could do.”

Annie shrugged. God, she hated lying. “I should never have given him the opportunity.” That, at least, was true.

“The military is so strange,” Melody said. “It’s completely irrational. They expect too much from you.”

“Dr. McKay expects a lot from us too,” Miko pointed out. Annie thought it was a good point. She knew that if she were a scientist and McKay demanded twenty impossible things before breakfast every day, she’d have more crying fits than even Miko’d had.

Melody ignored her. “And I thought Major Sheppard was different. He seems really nice. Smart. But, I guess, military is as military does. Sorry, Annie.”

She shrugged. By Melody’s standards, she wasn’t military then. Because Bates or Stackhouse or Bulter never would’ve done what she had.

“Hey, no problem. I get at least another mission Kavanagh-free.” She couldn’t let them see how much it really upset her to have lost Sheppard’s trust. A part of her said that she shouldn’t care what Sheppard thought, after what he himself had done. But she wanted his respect nonetheless.

Melody scowled.

“He’s not so bad,” Miko said.

Melody choked on her not-Jell-o.

Annie tried to stifle a laugh. In truth, she wasn’t all that surprised. Anyone who could fall head-over-heels in love with someone that spent all day pretty much yelling at them and forgetting their name, could definitely think Kavanagh was tolerable.

Then Melody nudged Miko a little and nodded over towards the entrance to the mess. Dr. McKay had just walked in. He charged over to the lunch-line, pretty much ignoring the other scientists who were waiting for their meals. Within a minute he was waving his hands emphatically at the poor cook, who looked helpless, dumping all sorts of things onto McKay’s plate.

Miko sighed. “He is so very take-charge.”

Annie frowned, knowing that she was staring just as wide-eyed as the short Japanese woman beside her. If it were true about Dr. McKay and Major Sheppard, then Miko would be in for a heartbreak. At least, in Melody’s opinion, she already was.

Annie watched McKay closer as he piled even more food onto the tray – way more than even his legendary appetite could consume.

She heard a snippet of his conversation, shouted in his high sarcastic whine. “ . . . thank you. Yes, I’m aware that I’m deathly allergic to citrus. I’m glad you bothered to remember after the twenty times I had to remind you before you almost killed me. I think I remember what anaphylactic shock feels like. It’s not for me, now just give me the damned orange juice.” He snapped his fingers impatiently.

“Look at him – how he is always so . . .” Miko began.

“Much of an asshole?” Melody finished.

Miko scowled.

Annie just kept staring. She didn’t have that much contact with McKay. He’d advise on some of their mission briefings, but pretty much everything she knew about him came second-hand, and she really didn’t want to judge on hearsay.

From what she could tell from briefings, McKay wasn’t the nicest person by far. But he was on Sheppard’s team, and had done a lot of amazing things. Annie used to think that Sheppard wouldn’t keep him on his team if he wasn’t a good guy beneath all the sarcasm and shouting.

But then again . . . if Aiden had been more right than he knew . . . . No, even after what she’d seen, Annie couldn’t doubt her commander’s every decision. He was sorry for it. He did it because he thought it needed to be done. Sheppard was just as dedicated as he’d ever been. She had to believe that.

Then McKay turned, his eyes meeting hers. His gaze was intense, calculating, focused in a way that Annie had thought you’d only see on the battlefield. It was mesmerizing. And then his mouth quirked up just slightly and he started walking towards them, huge tray piled high with food held awkwardly before him.

Miko made a strangled chirp and scooted closer to Annie, as though to hide behind her. Melody just laughed.

McKay dumped his tray next to Melody’s and smiled at all of them.

“Hi, Dr. McKay,” Melody said, unfazed.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Simpson.” McKay’s voice was stilted. Annie had never actually heard him refer to anyone as ‘Doctor’ when he was addressing them.

“Afternoon,” Annie said casually, trying to make like she hadn’t just been staring at him.

“Hello, Dr. McKay,” Miko squeaked, in a barely audible whisper.

McKay startled, like he hadn’t even seen her. He looked uncomfortable. “Um . . . hi . . . Dr. . . . erm . . . Karaoke.”

Miko blushed.

“So, if you ladies would . . . um . . . excuse me? I want to speak with Lieutenant Parker privately.”

“Oh, okay.” Miko sounded devastated.

Annie was filled with dread. What did he want to talk to her about? Maybe if she was lucky he thought that all the staring was just her coming on to him. What if he knew? What if he wanted to talk to her about what had happened? Could she even talk about it? No, Bates had been clear. Sheppard, too . . . she’d already screwed up so much.

She stood, smiling at her friends and following Dr. McKay out into the hallway.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Annie forced her voice to stay flat.

“Well, I was just speaking with Sergeant Bates.”

Oh, god, he must know. He must know and he wanted to ask her about it. That’s why he sounded so annoyed, so urgent. Annie couldn’t stifle the gasp.

“And I was wondering what I could do to get you back out in the field with Kavanagh.”

“Oh,” Annie sighed with relief.

“Wait. What did you think I was talking about?” He stepped closer.

Annie shied away. “Nothing. No, I was just thinking . . . something else.”

“No, you know something.” He jabbed a finger at her.

Annie made to step back against the wall, but she hadn’t counted on Atlantis’ self-opening doors, so she ended up falling back into a storage closet instead.

McKay reached down to help her up, door closing behind him with an ominous swish.

“I don’t know anything. Please.” She knew she wasn’t carrying this off at all. She couldn’t help the tremor in her voice. She couldn’t talk about it. She didn’t want to talk about it.

McKay was a tall guy, but she had never seen him as particularly menacing before. He intimidated people with his intellect, not his bulk. Even when she knew about fifteen different ways she could take him out, right here and right now, she was still scared of him, that crazy determination in his eyes.

He stepped right up into her personal space, glaring down at her over the bridge of his nose. “Tell me.”

Annie found the tears coming yet again of their own volition. “I can’t.”

McKay grabbed her shoulders, making her jump. “You can tell me. Please, you need to tell me. What did Kolya do to Major Sheppard?” There was a desperation in his voice, in his eyes, even though they were in shadow, that told her that Aiden had been more than right . . . that she had been telling the lie of lies when she told him that she was positive Sheppard wasn’t gay. It had truly been them empty deflection she it was. They were soldiers, they couldn’t afford to doubt. But she’d been wrong . . . it wasn’t just that Sheppard was gay and fucking his teammate – it was that they were in love.

Annie stepped back, leaning against a cold solid wall this time. She didn’t know what it would do to McKay if he knew that the man he loved had done something so horrible. Would he count it as cheating? Would he find it as disgusting as she did? Would he confront Sheppard about it? How much would that hurt her commanding officer?

She let out a choked sob. This was too much of a responsibility. She couldn’t . . . don’t tell. Don’t tell if your CO rapes you . . . don’t tell if you’re in love with someone you shouldn’t be . . . don’t tell if you see someone do something they shouldn’t. But how was one supposed to live without telling? How could you learn to love your reality if you couldn’t share it?

“Please,” McKay said. She could feel his pain, rich and raw and so much like hers. For all his arrogance, for all his genius, this was something they could share. Their pain was the bridge between them.

“I . . . I didn’t mean to see. Beckett wanted him back in the infirmary and . . .” she sobbed. The memories were too fresh. She didn’t want to think about them.

Then McKay’s hands were on her arms, strong and warm and supporting. He tilted her chin up so he could look into her eyes. His grip, though firm, was so much gentler than Kolya’s bruising compassion.

“Did Kolya rape John?” he asked, already looking broken.

Annie shook her head, feeling the tears warm against her cheek. “No. No . . . Major Sheppard . . . he raped Kolya.”

It was out there. And it felt like a great burden had lifted. Someone knew. Someone understood. The weight gone from her, she collapsed.

McKay held her. His body was soft, but he stood stiff and rigid, staring straight ahead as one arm came up around her, as awkward as it was automatic. His breath was warm in heavy panted breaths skimming through her hair.

She gripped his waist, sinking into the warmth of his body. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” he asked in a whisper.

And then she finally knew. She knew why Sheppard had done it. It wasn’t hate. It was love. He’d been so distraught . . . so worried . . . so angry at a man who had so wronged the one person in all the world he cared about that he was willing to do anything. Of all the reasons she’d come up with to explain why a good man like Sheppard would do such a thing, this was the one that would truly allow her to forgive him.

It didn’t excuse the action. It didn’t make it any less wrong, but it too could form a bridge between them. Even though she had never loved any man so passionately, not even Aiden, she knew love, as any human being knows it, even Bates and Kavanagh, knew what it was to care so much about something that rules did not apply, that you would forsake even atonement to do what you needed to do.

“Because he had to,” Annie said.

Rodney forced himself to calm. He forced himself to sit and watch John eat the now-cold meal he’d brought for him in silence.

John looked at him strangely, warily, like he’d never looked at Rodney before. John had always said that Rodney was predictable.

“Is something wrong?” John asked.

Rodney shuddered. “Just finish your Jell-o.” He wanted John to at least take good care of himself before he laid into him, if he was going to lay into him at all.

Part of him wanted to wait, to let John tell him on his own. But then he looked into John’s eyes, seeing a darkness there that he had never noticed before, and he thought, horrified, that maybe John would never tell him.

John shoved the Jell-o away. “What? So it wasn’t good for you?” he said angrily. John would never have said something like that. John never questioned that them being together was magic; even with John still weak and barely reciprocating, it had been magic. It always would be, for Rodney.

“It was great,” Rodney spat. “But I wasn’t the one who had to be practically forced into it.”

John leaned forward in bed, knocking over the tray of partially eaten food, and not stopping to clean it up. “You’re the one who’s so goddamned horny that he can’t even give me some fucking space!”

Rodney laughed, humorlessly. “I gave you space. I gave you time to tell me what the hell was wrong with you. But, if you’re not going to work with me here, then . . .” He ran out of steam. Then what? He’d leave John when John needed him now more than ever? It’d be easier to give up breathing.

“Then what? You’ll get out of here and leave me the fuck alone? I don’t want this . . .” John gestured between them. “I can’t handle this right now, okay? I have my own shit to deal with and I can’t . . . you just . . . you add to the problem,” he finished sadly.

How did he have the nerve to say that Rodney added to the problem?! Rodney wasn’t the problem. John was the problem. John was the one with all the secrets. John was the one that thought of sex as a tool, to be used for brutality or appearance or pleasure.

“Well, if you have such a big damned problem, then why aren’t you seeing Heightmeyer?”

“I don’t need to see Heightmeyer! I just need to be alone!”

“Being alone isn’t going to change what you did, John,” Rodney said quietly. Being alone would just give John time to make new masks to wear, to stuff the guilt back into the closet with everything else that meant anything to him, and it would make it so they could never be together again.

John stepped back, looking at Rodney carefully. “So you know?”

Rodney nodded.

“And you . . . you’re okay with it?” John sounded almost frightened, his eyes wide and almost innocent, even though John himself was guilty as charged.

“Of course I’m not okay with it! Setting aside the fact that it was actually you having sex with someone who’s not me, it’s . . . it’s not something you do!” It was wrong, wrong, wrong, as wrong as Kavanagh’s latest theory of wormhole physics, and even more dangerous.

John frowned. “He tortured me.”

“Torture and rape are different things.”

“Why? He used sex against us. All those things he said about me . . . those were torture to you.”

And yes, thinking about Kolya taking John . . . that had been a soul-deep hurt. That had been the thing that would have broken him. But John wasn’t Kolya. John and Kolya were miles apart. Kolya was the evil enemy and John was the knight in shining armor. John was brave and merciful and he wasn’t allowed to be like that. Because you couldn’t love a murderer or a rapist or an evil man and if there was one thing Rodney knew was right in all this, it was that he loved John.

Rodney threw his hands up in exasperation. “Yes, and I wouldn’t have blinked twice if you’d poked him with a branding iron or made him eat his own shit, or something like that. Because I hate him too! But it’s not about Kolya. It’s not about what he does and does not deserve. It’s about you, and how twisted you have to be to take something that should be beautiful and use it as a fucking weapon! So, my question, John, is: why?”

"You saw what he did to me Rodney! I needed to teach that fucking faggot a lesson."

Rodney's jaw dropped in disbelief. It wasn't anything that he hadn't heard before. But this wasn't some idiotic high school linebacker or an envious grad student trying to steal his grant money or some of those ignorant bible-beating Christians from West Virginia. This was John - his John, who purred catlike and cuddled against him, who brought Rodney coffee at two in the morning, who'd blown him under his desk during a meeting with the resident geologists, who laughed in bed and talked about sex in terms of Puddle Jumpers and wormholes. This was John, who loved him.

"I can't believe you just said that," he whispered, forcing himself not to cry.

But when he looked up he saw guilt and disgust and darkness in John's eyes. He was trembling. "Maybe I should go see Heightmeyer." It was quiet, defeated, forlorn, and Rodney was stuck between an angry, 'you think?' and the desire to reach out and embrace his lover, holding the pieces together.

He didn't move, breathing deep, paralyzed on the spot until long after John had walked out the door.

Teyla wiped her eyes again. They were blurred and puffy from exertion and lack of sleep.

She had killed again. She hadn’t thought. She had just done. It wasn’t a decision. It was an instinct, ingrained as deep as raising a hand to deflect a blow. Did that make her a natural killer? Did it mean that she really thought so little of life that she could pull that trigger without thinking it through first?

At night she saw faces. She heard bombs exploding like screams. She smelled and tasted and felt like she had never done in a dream before. The memories were engraved upon her like a scar. The faces . . . they would never leave her.

She saw Elizabeth’s face too. Sometimes it was frightened and smudged with grime and other times it was cold and calm – the face of a killer. Teyla had not seen Elizabeth for more than a few minutes since Dr. Beckett had let her out of the infirmary. Teyla still worried for her, hurt for her. But she could not bear to look at her face, to see both victim and killer lurking there beneath the surface. She could stand neither.

Teyla blinked back the clouds from her vision, forcing herself to focus on the ‘punching-bag’ before her. Normally, she preferred to fight real opponents and chided Major Sheppard for trying to improve his fighting against something that could not fight back. But now she saw why he liked it – needed it, even. Right now she was in no state to face a person, but she still needed to fight.

Lieutenant Parker had once told her that she saw faces in the punching bag, and that against them, she was ruthless. But when Teyla looked at the solid black weight, she could not recall a single one of the faces that haunted her. She could only see herself.

She was hitting it hard, muscles burning, but not at all caring, when someone reached out a hand to steady the flying bag.

“What’d the poor bag do to you?”

Teyla recognized the lazy drawl immediately. “Major Sheppard . . . are you sure you should . . .”

“Please don’t finish that sentence.”

Teyla smiled at the frustration. She also did not appreciate being treated like a sick child. “You are looking well.”

He gave her a smile for that, though it did not contain his usual radiance. “Thanks, Teyla. You’re the first person I’ve heard that from. Everyone else treats me like I’m about to break.”

“And are you about to break?” She had not seen the major much since her return. She had been worried about him.

“I hope not, though Rodney and Heightmeyer are doing a good job of convincing me that I might.”

“Heightmeyer?”

“She’s a shrink.”

“I was not aware there were any abnormally small women among your people.”

He laughed. “No, no Teyla . . . a shrink is . . . well, they’re a kind of doctor that you go to when you’re feeling off.”

“Are you not well?” Teyla was concerned. Hadn’t he just implied that he was fine?

He shrugged. “The cuts have pretty much healed. But I still have to see the shrink. It sucks.”

“If your cuts have healed, then why must you see a doctor?”

“To talk.”

“You may talk with me, Major.” It was a role that Teyla always gladly filled among her people.

He sighed. “I don’t know, Teyla.”

Teyla wanted to be helpful. She wanted to protect him, but in a way that didn’t involve killing or hurting others, a way she could handle. “I am a very good listener.”

He seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded, reaching out to take Teyla’s arm and guiding her over to a small bench set out against the gym wall. “Okay, but only if you tell me why you were bruising your knuckles against that bag back there.”

Teyla was tempted to say that it was because that was how Lieutenant Parker had told her to do it, but decided against it. He looked so open and honest and vulnerable, like she had never seen him before.

She motioned for him to sit first, ready to be there to provide assistance, should he need it. He leaned down slowly, wincing as he sat. And that wince . . . that brief look of pain shocked through her.

This time it wasn’t faces that she saw. It was bodies. She saw Major Sheppard’s face, his troubled green eyes and his dark mop of hair, staring back at her lifeless and dead. She saw his eyes wide and fearful as she pointed a gun at him and calmly threatened to take his life like it was meaningless. But his life wasn’t meaningless. He was a man who cared for her, who made her watch football and brought her popcorn and sang silly tuneless songs around a campfire. And he was cared for, by Teyla and Dr. McKay and Elizabeth. He’d lived a long full life, filled with joy and sorrow and moments that flitted away on the wind.

He was like any man. He was like the men she had killed. And what made his life more worthy? He was a soldier and a killer just as they were. She forgave those things in him, why should she condemn others to death for the same, simply because she did not know them?

Teyla stepped away with a gasp.

“Teyla?” he questioned, eyes so fearful. Teyla had never seen Major Sheppard that afraid before.

“I am sorry. When I looked at you just then, I saw someone else.” She took her seat beside him hastily, not wanting to insult him further.

He looked away. “You saw a monster.” There was so much hatred in his voice that she could not place it.

Teyla shook her head. She could never condemn those men as monsters, even if what they were about to do had been horrible. “No. I saw a man. I saw a man who had committed crimes and might again, but did not deserve the punishment he received.”

He looked at her quizzically. “What? Does everybody know?”

“Know what?”

“What I did?”

“I am afraid I do not know to what you are referring. I was speaking of a man that I killed.”

He seemed both surprised and almost disappointed. “What were his crimes?”

“He had . . . he had sex with women against their will. He was about to do so with Elizabeth.” Teyla did not know if she should be saying this, but she wanted someone to know. Major Sheppard looked like he might understand. He, too, had killed so many, and learned to deal with it.

“Is she okay?”

“She is not. But I believe she will be. He did not succeed, because I killed him.”

He nodded. “Then you did the right thing. You stopped him from hurting Elizabeth.”

“It is not stopping him that worries me. It is that I was so willing to trade his life for her honor.”

“He was a rapist! Didn’t you want him to pay?”

“There is no crime worth the price of a life. How can you measure the richness one life can bring? There is nothing so horrible that it cannot be forgiven.”

“But what if you know that this person would never atone for what he did in life? That he was not capable of earning your forgiveness?”

Teyla frowned. “Forgiveness is different than atonement. It is not something that must be earned. It is something to be given. It takes a generous heart and a kind understanding.”

“Even if someone killed your entire family and all your friends and destroyed your world, you would forgive them?”

Teyla smiled. “I do not possess that generous a heart.”

“And if that man had raped Elizabeth, would you have forgiven him?”

“I do not know. I ended his life. He never had the chance to seek forgiveness, or atone, or create all the joy and wonder that is every life.”

“And if I told you that I have raped a person, would you forgive me?”

She looked at him calculatingly, seeing both the darkness and the plea in his eyes and knowing immediately that this was no hypothetical question, that he really had. Perhaps this was her own chance to at atonement, her chance to forgive a dead man. “I would.”

He reached out, crossing the bridge between them and bringing their foreheads to touch in the way of her people. “And I forgive you for killing that man. Even if he didn’t deserve it – there was nothing else you could have done.”

She let her forehead rest on his, reveling in the touch. They were united by their guilt, but also for their desire to atone and their ability to forgive. In the end, they would always be united by their humanity.

“Then all that is left is for us to forgive ourselves.”