“Well, I certainly hope you enjoyed your unscheduled vacation,” Elizabeth said, with a nervous smile.

John managed a lop-sided smile in return.  Their rhythm was off, as if they were still in two separate time fields.  “Too bad I didn’t have a book with me, I could have caught up on my reading.”

Elizabeth seemed to take the joke at face value as she climbed toward her office.  John found he was grateful.  The marines in the gate room were giving him confused double takes, you’d think they’d never seen a beard before.

Teyla smiled and gripped his shoulder.  “It is good to have you back with us, Colonel Sheppard.”

Her grip was reassuring, as was Ronon’s casual backslap as he exited the gateroom.  Ronon was easy to deal with, crisis averted, move on to the next thing. 

Carson gripped his arm and guided him out of the room, “I think it’s best to give you a full examination.  Who knows what mysterious beasties you’ve come in contact with in that place.”

John decided to forego his usual protests.  The nice, quiet infirmary might be a good place to soak in the fact that he was back in a home he never thought to see again.

He let Carson’s voice roll over him in comforting waves as they walked through the corridors.  It helped a little with the strange stares he was getting from the personnel they passed on the way.  He felt out of synch, like a misplaced tourist.

“Pay them no mind,” Carson whispered close enough to his ear that John had to tune back in.  “Most of them didn’t know you’d been gone.”

John was still trying to get his head around the fact that, while six months passed for him, he wasn’t even late for dinner back on Atlantis.  It wasn’t going to sink in very fast.

“Rodney whipped in and out of here so fast, only the people he thought he needed to help get you out even knew something was happening,” Carson continued.

That was an odd image.  Rodney hadn’t seemed in any particular hurry when he’d seen him.  In fact, he’d seemed remarkably subdued.  At least, that is, until the jumper landed in the bay.  Then he’d taken off without a word.  John’s head was spinning far too hard to try to fathom why at the moment.

“What, was Ronon holding a gun to his head?”

Carson’s disappointed glower told John he hadn’t put quite as much of a joking spin on the statement as he intended.  Now safely inside the infirmary, he jumped up on the bed Carson patted.

“He came back alone, Colonel,” Carson chastised, while readying his medical paraphernalia.  “If I understand correctly, he started barking orders the minute he dialed the gate.  Anyone he thought was slowing him down got the sharp side of his tongue.”

“That sounds like McKay,” John agreed.  He wasn’t sure Rodney had any other side to his tongue.

Carson shone a penlight in his eyes and he attempted not to flinch away.  “Aye, that wasn’t the strange part.  The strange part was, he seemed almost humble, well, for Rodney anyway.”

John was relatively sure Rodney and humility were complete strangers.  “Sure you weren’t imagining that?”

Carson readied a needle to draw blood.  Instead of answering the question he asked one of his own.  “He claimed you getting trapped was his fault.  Was it, Colonel?”

“Of course not.  I walked into the damn thing myself.”  Rodney had been his usual voice of caution, and, as usual, John had gone ahead anyway.

Carson made a noncommittal noise as he filled the first vial.

###

Teyla was waiting for him when Carson finished.  “Would you mind if I walk with you?”

The Athosian’s calm presence seemed like a perfect barrier to the curious stares of the rest of the Atlantis personnel.  “I’m just heading to my quarters to clean up,” he said, rubbing the beard that so clearly marked the passage of time for him.  Once he got rid of it, maybe the whole experience would start to fade.  “If you want to tag along for that, sure.”

“If I am not intruding, I would like that.”  She fell into step with him as he headed for the nearest transporter.  “You will think me foolish, but I feel a great need to keep my eye on you.”

“Okay.” He wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he hit the location nearest his quarters and headed down the corridor instead.  The blissfully empty corridor.

Opening the door to his quarters he swept an arm out, inviting her inside.

She gave him a composed smile and entered.  “I meant that I fear letting you out of my sight, having only now retrieved you.”

John pulled off his shirt and headed for the sink.  He pulled out a pair of scissors and started trimming the beard.  “Not like you had time to miss me.”  He couldn’t keep the note of bitterness out of his voice.

“Just because I did not understand the technical aspects of Dr. McKay’s explanation, does not mean that I could not grasp that you were slipping farther and farther from us with each passing moment.  That in a short period of time you would be lost to us entirely.”

John winced at the note of pain in Teyla’s voice.  He kept his face turned to the mirror, concentrating on the scissors’ snipping.

“You did not believe we would come for you.”  Talking didn’t seem to be necessary when one of your teammates was a damn mind reader.  He set the scissors down.  He couldn’t think of an appropriate reaction so he didn’t speak at all.

“I placed a note explaining the situation in the last bag we sent through,” she continued, a perplexed tone in her voice.  “The bags were gone when we arrived, I presumed you had received it.”

“I found the note,” he said, futilely hoping to starve this conversational thread with his non-answers.

Teyla trumped him with an arched eyebrow.  Trust Teyla to drag this out of him.  He concentrated on the freshly alien feel of the electric razor buzzing against his skin as he answered.  “I didn’t find the bags until the day before you showed up, okay?  They’d obviously been there for weeks, probably months.  I just wanted a little while to feel connected again.  I didn’t want to read the note and find out it said, ‘Goodbye and good luck.’”

He was so concentrated on his shaving that he was startled by Teyla’s hand suddenly resting on his shoulder.  “I am so sorry, Colonel.  If I had moved faster, or not delayed Dr. McKay with my questions, perhaps we could have spared you such awful thoughts.”

John abandoned his task to grip Teyla’s arm.  “Don’t even think that.  You all did great.  Two hours is a pretty quick save.  I just don’t have my head on straight yet.  You just have to give me a little time to process.”

Teyla nodded.  Given her propensity to meditate when she was troubled he’d probably struck a chord.  She stepped back and he let her go.  “You require solitude.”  It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t answer.  “Will you join us for dinner?”

John glanced at the clock.  “2100, okay with you?”  If he couldn’t get ahold of himself in the next three hours, it wasn’t going to happen.

“I will tell the others.”  She gave him an encouraging smile before leaving.

Dealing with Teyla’s guilt was not high on his list of fun things to do in the Pegasus Galaxy.  He was going to be happy and normal at dinner.  He was home, his team was safe, it shouldn’t be too hard. 

He finished up shaving.  Looking in the mirror he saw Lt. Col. John Sheppard peering back at him.  It beat the marooned outsider that had stared at him from the village fountain. 

He shed the rest of his clothes and hit the shower.  He nearly moaned as the water hit him at just the right temperature.  A proper shower had featured high on his list of things he missed from home.  Being back with his team had topped the list.

Every minute he’d been trapped, they had been working to get him out.  Reconciling two hours with six months was secondary to that bit of knowledge.  He was never abandoned.

###

Freshly showered and in a clean uniform John was starting to feel more like himself again when someone knocked at his door.  He thought the door open while seated on the edge of his bed, lacing up his boots.

Rodney stepped inside just far enough to allow the door to close behind him.  “Colonel, may I speak to you for a moment?”

John straightened.  Rodney was never this formal.  “What’s on your mind, McKay?”

Rodney looked like he’d been called into the principal’s office, back straight, hands clasped behind his back.  “I want to leave the team quietly, if I may.”

There went the beginnings of a perfectly fine good mood.  He’d just gotten his team back, they couldn’t start abandoning him now.  “What the hell are you talking about?” 

Rodney must have recognized his “don’t fuck with me, McKay” voice, because he stiffened even more.  “I realize I have no recourse to your friendship, but I believe it will have a deleterious effect on the command structure if my removal is too public.  That is, unless you were planning on relieving me of my position entirely.”  The panicked look that came over Rodney’s face at that thought was more than John could stand.  Everything about this conversation was wrong.  Rodney McKay did not beg for his dignity.

“Sit down, Rodney,” he ordered, waving McKay to his desk chair.  He wasn’t sure he had the energy for this conversation, but there didn’t look like any way to avoid it.  “You’re not leaving my team.”

“I’m not?” Rodney slid into the chair, obviously still tense.  His shocked tone rattled John.

“Why would you think I’d want you off my team?”  John desperately wanted something to do with his hands.  Honestly, he was the one who got stuck in the time dilation field, why did he have to nursemaid McKay?  While field stripping his weapons might relax him, it would probably make Rodney more nervous.  Time to pull out the big guns, he moved over to his footlocker.

“You’re kidding, right?”  Rodney’s tone was still incredulous, John recognized the signs of McKay certainty.  Whatever idiotic idea he’d gotten in that genius brain of his, wouldn’t be shaken easily.  “I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory since Project Arcturus, but today I almost got you killed.  Again.”

John handed one of the two beers he’d pulled from his footlocker to Rodney.  That should change the tone of this conversation.  Rodney stared at the beer in confusion.  “Seems you’ve been thinking about this quite a bit.  Care to fill me in?”  They had danced around Arcturus long enough, time to put it to bed and move on.  If he wanted his team whole there was no way around this.  He flicked the cap off his beer and settled in on the bed.

Rodney set the beer down on the desk unopened.  “I haven’t been able to regain your trust, that was clear on the Aurora.  When Ford captured us, I thought I had my chance.  Turns out, giving myself a massive dose of the enzyme made me too incoherent to launch a rescue in time.  It’s a good thing you managed to rescue yourselves.  Then today, I shove a video camera through an energy field, review the tape for thirty seconds, and because there isn’t some slavering beast on the other side, declare it safe.”

“It was my decision to go in, McKay,” John reminded him and took a swallow.

“If I’d looked at the tape a little closer, I’d have noticed the time discrepancy.”  Rodney snatched up the beer, twisted the cap off viciously and took a large swig.  “So, when I finally figure it out, I send a pack through without a note.  Teyla didn’t forget the note.”  His voice softened for a moment.  “In fact, she was amazing today, she sent her watch through and got me the exact time differential.  Elizabeth translated the fine print that said a trip through the barrier was one way.  Zelenka thought of the probe that showed the power source.  I thought I’d get to redeem myself by shutting it off and getting you back, but your new girlfriend put paid to that, didn’t she?”  With that Rodney downed half the bottle.

John fiddled with the bottle cap.  Damn, but he hated baring his soul, but nothing less was going to get the job done.  “I’ve just spent six months with a group of people whose primary activity was meditating.”  Rodney flinched at the reminder but John let it pass.  “Introspection isn’t my favorite activity, but I didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice.  I was furious with you after Doranda, and I deserved to be.  But, that wasn’t all of it.  Elizabeth told me there were times you had to be saved from yourself.”

“How nice, now I’m a toddler,” Rodney sniped, but his back had lost some of its rigidity.

“I told her I could do it, protect you from yourself.  Hell, I’ve been doing it for over a year now.  But this time was different.  When the time came, I failed her, I failed you, I failed myself,” John growled, clenching the bottlecap in his fist until he felt the sharp edges biting into his palm and fingers.

Rodney relaxed marginally back in the chair, rolling his eyes.  “Honestly, Sheppard, is it the martyr complex that gets you all the hot Ascended chics?  You’re not responsible for—“

John cut him off.  “Of course I am.  We hadn’t been here a full two days before I woke up the Wraith because I charged in without enough intel, because I thought I knew better than anyone else around me.”  He leveled a glare at Rodney.  “Sound familiar?”

Rodney looked away, just because John was willing to work past Rodney’s screw up didn’t mean he wanted him to forget it.  “You were saving our people.  It’s what you do.”

“And how many people are dead because of it?  Whole worlds obliterated by the Wraith, because of me, Rodney.  You told me you could make that weapon work.  A weapon that could take out a Wraith fleet!  A way to save this galaxy from what I unleashed on it.”  He threw the bottle cap against the wall and watched it rebound into his trash can.  Two points.  “I wanted it so damn bad, I believed you.  I knew you had Collins’ ghost sitting on your shoulder, and a problem you were determined to pummel into submission with your brain.  I knew you weren’t thinking straight, but I didn’t pull the plug.”

“I don’t suppose it would help to point out that you did pull the plug, would it?”  Rodney swirled the last swallow of beer in his bottle.  “You’re right, I wasn’t thinking straight.  I thought, if I could just make it work, Collins wouldn’t haunt me.  It would all be worth it somehow.”  He fixed Sheppard with a self deprecating smirk.  “I’m an idiot.  It’s not like it helped with Peter, or Gall.  I’m getting quite a collection of ghosts.”

Sheppard finished off his beer.  “Mine’s bigger.”

There was a moment of horror filled silence.  Then Rodney sat back and crossed his arms across his chest.  “Shall I get you a ruler, Sheppard?”

John chuckled.  It was too huge and too real for seriousness. 

If John thought they were done he was disappointed.  “We still have a trust issue to work on here,” Rodney declared.

“Do we?”  John figured he’d let Rodney do the heavy lifting for awhile.

“You didn’t believe we were coming for you,” Rodney said.  His outrage wouldn’t let him stay still any longer and he flung himself out of the chair to pace the small space, waving his arms in indignation.  “I can understand how you could doubt me, but Teyla?  What were you thinking?”

“It was a long damn time with no contact, Rodney,” John growled.  “What was I supposed to think?”

Rodney got that condescending smirk on his face that John hated to have directed at him.  “I know you have a brain under that hair.  Maybe you could have realized that there was something unusual going on.  Something more plausible than the freakishly asinine idea that we would ever leave you behind.”

John met Rodney’s glare as he tried to come up with the perfect scathing comeback.  Only there wasn’t one.  “You’re right, Rodney,” he conceded.  “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Mollified, Rodney sat back down, relaxing in his chair.  “Okay then.  As long as you don’t let it happen again.”

They smiled at each other.  John felt some unaligned piece of himself fall back into true.  His team was whole, which meant he was.  Suddenly, he was looking forward to dinner with the team.  He’d tell Teyla McKay said she was better on the last mission than he was, Teyla would smile that pleased/exasperated smile, Ronon would laugh that deep, rich laugh and Rodney would splutter before allowing that Teyla was adequate as an assistant.  Nice and normal.  He glanced at the clock.  “If we hurry we can beat Ronon to the chow line.”

That was enough to get McKay moving.  He hastily downed the last of his beer and followed John out the door.  Walking down the corridor McKay nudged his shoulder.  “Hey, we will find a way to stop the Wraith.  I promise.”

Against his better judgment, John believed him.