Displacement [SGA/SG-1 fic] (original) (raw)

Title: Displacement
Characters: John Sheppard, ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3500
Summary: John isn't really sure how to feel about the fact that he seems to have been unofficially adopted by SG-1. [tag to The Return]

After they are unceremoniously turfed out of Atlantis, John is at loose ends waiting for the SGC to place him. For the first few days, they mostly send him down to the labs where Samantha Carter and her team of scientists are working on bits of Ancient technology the expedition was permitted to bring back to Earth. There isn't all that much, and there would be a lot less if Rodney hadn't bitched at and guilt-tripped the newly returned Ancients and hidden things in the secret pockets he'd sewed into his uniform.

Most of the tech is dull and dead. John can tell when something won't work before he even touches it. Carter makes him pick up just about everything anyway, and the way the artifacts stay resolutely cold and dark in his hands makes his fingers ache.

"Can I go?" John asks after seven failures and one sluggish activation of something that resembles –and quite possibly is– an Ancient fish tank.

Carter seems surprised at the rasp in his voice. "Sure," she says, looking at him closely. John turns to walk away before she can read him.

The next time he comes into the lab, Carter hands him something right away. It is small and rounded, with one flat side, and it lights up immediately, warm and green-blue. John feels something inside him uncoil, just for a moment.

Carter smiles at him and he is suddenly sure that she knew it would work. John wonders if she'd already had O'Neill or someone else with the gene test it. He wonders if she talked to Rodney about him or if everything is just so close to the surface she can see how close he is to cracking.

In any case, it's a kindness.

John doesn't know how to express exactly what this means to him, and he has never been good with words, so he simply smiles back at her and submits to being a human light switch with a grace he has probably been lacking during their past sessions. Two unknown devices activate for him easily and a hologram capture stutters on when he puts almost all of his will into wishing for it. John can tell Carter is pleased, but four other devices stayed dark and silent in John's cupped palms and he can feel the sense of loss sweeping back down on him.

"Here," Carter says, when John is about to leave. She presses the first device into his hands. The feel of it is reassuring and John fingers the whorls etched on the glowing surface carefully. "Keep it," Carter says ruefully. "As far as we can tell, it's a decorative paperweight."

Her hand is warm on his arm, the way the device is warm in his hand, and John thinks he can understand a little now why Rodney carries such a torch. "Thank you," he says, closing his fist around it tightly.

John sets the paperweight on his nightstand in the stark, spare quarters he keeps in Cheyenne Mountain. It glows comfortingly, like a tiny piece of the home he's lost.

About an hour before they were set to leave Atlantis, Teyla had found John on the East Pier, staring out over the ocean. "John," she'd said softly, and when he'd turned to face her, she had been holding out something wrapped in a colorful Athosian cloth. "It is a gift for you," she'd explained. "I had meant it for the anniversary of your birth, but..."

"I don't suppose I'll see you for that," John had finished for her quietly. She'd bowed her head sadly and John had reached for the parcel. "You really didn't have to-" he'd begun, dropping off as the folds of cloth parted to reveal a pair of intricately carved bantos rods. The tops were patterned with soft curving lines that resembled breaking waves and the handles were inlaid with what looked like gold leaf. John knew from Teyla's own bantos that the gold leaf was extremely durable and didn't flake off.

"They're beautiful," John had said sincerely. "I promise I'll keep practicing." Teyla had just smiled –she always knew what he meant to say _(I’ll remember you)_– and pulled his forehead to hers before they walked to the gateroom together.

In the SGC, John spends a lot of time in the gym. He doesn't have a permanent assignment, and is quite frankly bored out of his skull. He grips his bantos rods and goes through the motions Teyla taught him, like Japanese katas. People look at him funny, and John doesn't hold much hope that he'll find anyone to spar with.

A week or so passes before John sees Teal'c. He notices him almost immediately, because Teal'c is a pretty noticeable person what with the giant muscles and gold forehead tattoo and the sheer presence he carries around. What makes John go over to speak to him is the fact that he is twirling a wooden staff.

John waits patiently a few feet away as Teal'c does some stretches. "May I help you?" Teal'c asks when he straightens up, and he sounds curious rather than sarcastic so John forges ahead.

"Would you spar with me?" John asks. One of the men near them gasps in what might be horror and Teal'c frowns at him forbiddingly before turning his focus back to John. "I'm learning bantos," John continues blithely, holding out one of the sticks for Teal'c to inspect, "and I was thinking it might be okay to practice against a staff."

"Certainly," Teal'c says, inclining his head regally.

"Great," John replies, feeling more enthused than he has in a while. He smirks crookedly and points toward where the practice mats are thickest. "Maybe over there?"

Teal'c's lips quirk and he follows John over to the mats. They take a few minutes to ease into the fight, learning each other's styles and footing. Then Teal'c jabs John in the side, hard. John winces and starts an attack of his own and everything is quick movements. Even though he can sense Teal'c is taking it easy on him, John ends up on his back a lot. Somewhere around the tenth time, he stays down, breathing heavily and smiling at the familiarity.

Teal'c looms over him. "Do you require assistance?" he asks with a concerned eyebrow tilt.

So much of it reminds John of Teyla: the ass-kicking, the steady presence, the formal diction, even the words. "No," John says, smiling upwards. "I'm good. But thanks for, you know, kicking my ass."

"You are welcome," Teal'c says seriously, and John thinks that Teal'c knows what he means.

General O'Neill finds John in his makeshift office, which is really a concrete cube with filing cabinets and some model planes. O'Neill opens with, "I heard Teal'c kicked your ass today."

"Yes, sir," John replies happily, putting down his model F-16 and standing up. O'Neill waves him back down into his chair and then seems to realize that there is no other chair for him to sit in. He props himself against the wall instead.

O'Neill opens his mouth, then closes it, looking around. "You know, this looks disturbingly like my office when I worked down here," he says.

"I hope you had a phone at least," John says dolefully. "They promised me one by Tuesday." He wants to call Rodney and ask about Area 51 and whether they actually have the Ark of the Covenant. He wants to ask if Rodney feels this hollow sort of disconnect. Mostly he just wants to call Rodney.

O'Neill nods. "I had a black phone," he says. "Now I have a red one. So do you want to get out of the mountain for a while? Mitchell and I are going for steak and beer at O'Malley's and he's less likely to hound me about every SG-1 mission that made it into the reports if there's someone else there as a buffer."

"Sure," John says.

He regrets it later when he wakes up on Cameron Mitchell's couch, incredibly hung-over and grasping at the threads of the night before.

He thinks he told General O'Neill, "I hate you for doing this to me," and meant it in two different ways.

He thinks he said, "I want to go home," and meant it in only one.

John is on Mitchell's couch, hung-over and humiliated, and he appreciates that when Mitchell walks into the room he doesn't say anything. Well, he does say, "Hey, how do you like your eggs?"

John almost answers, "Powdered," because that's the only way they were ever served on Atlantis, but he remembers Mitchell patting him on the back sympathetically sometime last night, and he doesn't want the disappointment of losing Atlantis to have turned him into an asshole. So what he actually says is, "Scrambled would be good."

Mitchell brings two aspirin along with the promised eggs to where John is still sitting on the couch. He hands them over and turns on the TV. "Georgia's playing South Carolina," Mitchell says. "SG-1 is on stand down for the next three days. Want to stay and watch with me?"

"Sounds good," John shrugs. "Considering I don't have an actual position at the mountain, I don't think anyone will miss me on a Saturday."

It's a good game, with neither team leading by more than seven points at any given moment, and John and Mitchell both end up screaming at the screen as McKinley runs a 40-yard touchdown to win the game for Carolina while the clock counts down the last minute.

John finds himself smiling and Mitchell beams back at him, clapping him on the shoulder and getting up to fetch more beer from the fridge. They order Chinese takeout for dinner and spend most of the rest of the day watching an X-Files marathon and making fun of the alien phenomena.

Around midnight, Mitchell gives John a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt to sleep in, and John's second night crashing on his couch is a lot more dignified than the first.

The next day, John goes to a carnival and rides the Ferris wheel around and around and around, tries to remember that there were things he loved before Atlantis.

John runs into Daniel Jackson in the supermarket after he's resigned himself to getting an apartment in Colorado Springs and eating food that doesn't come from the mess hall. He is staring at the almost limitless supply of coffee and thinking that this would have been like Rodney's Nirvana back on Atlantis, when Jackson appears beside him and reaches for one of the more expensive coffees on the highest shelf.

Jackson doesn't get a firm grip on the container and it tips off the shelf, falling inevitably toward the ground. He curses in Arabic and makes a grab for it, but his shopping cart is in the way. Instinctively, John turns and snatches the container out of the air. Jackson blinks, looking surprised not to hear the crashing sound of glass.

"Very smooth, Dr. Jackson," John says with amusement, smiling to take out the sting. He puts the coffee safely into Jackson's cart and offers a hand. "I'm John Sheppard. I work at the mountain," he introduces, figuring someone as important as Daniel Jackson won't remember a three minute acquaintanceship with a helicopter pilot in Antarctica.

Jackson shakes his hand absently. "Sheppard," he says quietly, his eyes a little distant, like he's searching for a memory. "Oh, Sheppard," he says again, his eyes going brighter. "From Antarctica. Jack was talking to me about you earlier."

John winces, thinking of the great impression he must have made on the general by getting drunk and maudlin.

"Nothing bad," Jackson hastens to reassure him. "He was just telling me you were back from Atlantis. I'd love to hear about it sometime from an actual person instead of the reports."

John smiles a little wanly. "Maybe if you share some of that coffee with me," he says, pointing at the rescued container in Jackson's cart. "The stuff in the mess tastes like the ceremonial sludge on P3X-144, and Rodney turned me into a coffee snob anyway."

With the kick of caffeine in his system and Jackson's earnest enthusiasm, like he loves Atlantis without ever having been there, John minds sharing his stories less than he thought he would.

John doesn't know why anyone thought attaching him to one of SG-1's missions wouldn't end in disaster. Between SG-1 and John's team on Atlantis, they've gotten into more trouble than the rest of the gateteams combined.

It's supposed to be a milk run, with the premiere SG team showing John the ropes in the Milky Way to prepare him for taking over SG-15. Of course, it turns into a massive clusterfuck with natives who are startlingly well-armed in comparison to how primitive the rest of their society appears to be. Their guns look very similar to Genii weapons, which really pisses John off.

"They seem to have placed an incredibly high priority on military and weapons technology, to the detriment of the rest of their culture," Jackson explains before the whole team turns and starts sprinting back to the gate.

John makes it there first which he finds surprising, but considering he's always compared himself to Ronon maybe isn't so much. When he punches the address for Earth into the DHD, the symbols stay frustratingly dark. Not good. "Rodney!" John calls automatically, but it's Carter who appears at his shoulder and he has to turn away from the compassion in her eyes, start shooting things.

Carter opens up the DHD and begins fiddling with the crystals as the rest of the team sets up a perimeter, protecting her exposed back from the rapidly advancing natives. The clearing echoes with gunfire and the pulse noise of Teal'c's staff weapon.

"Got it!" Carter yells, pulling out her GDO as the blue wormhole rushes outward.

"Go! Go! Go!" Mitchell shouts and Carter, Jackson and Teal'c jump through the gate. John turns to follow and ends up getting hit with a bullet. His side burns and John wishes that Ronon was there to catch him when he staggers. Mitchell does it instead, dragging them both through the wormhole and calling for a medical team.

John is hoisted onto a gurney and wheeled quickly down the cold, gunmetal halls and into the infirmary. "Hey Carson," John says, the words slippery and red in his mouth. "Just thought I'd visit."

"Bloody hell," Carson replies, snapping on surgical gloves. "What in God's name happened?" John's hearing is sliding in and out and he has the sneaking suspicion that Carson isn't talking to him.

"Angry natives," Mitchell says succinctly. "Sheppard took a bullet to the side."

John feels a needle pinch and loses a little time. "Wow," he says dreamily, when he's back inside himself, staring up at the familiar white of an infirmary ceiling and half-aware that Carson must have given him the really good drugs. "This is almost like home, except that Rodney isn't screeching at you to use your voodoo to fix me, and Ronon isn't being stoic while surreptitiously touching his gun and Teyla isn't looking like she wants to perform that Athosian rite of death for me."

"You'll be hard pressed to get that many words out of the colonel at once if he's not on morphine," Carson notes to Mitchell, prodding gently at John's injured side. He lets out a sigh of relief. "Not to worry. The bullet looks like it's lodged between the ribs, which means it hasn't more than nicked the lung. We'll take him to surgery to get it out and he'll be right as rain in no time."

John blacks out.

When he wakes up, SG-1 is ranged around his infirmary bed. Mitchell and Teal'c are playing cards and Mitchell is making rather pathetic groaning noises. Jackson and Carter are reading thick books. "Umm, hi," John says, trying to prop himself up.

They all turn to smile at him, except for Teal'c who doesn't smile so much as look pleased. John isn't really sure how to feel about the fact that he seems to have been unofficially adopted by SG-1.

Carson steps up to his bedside and takes his pulse. "How are you feeling, Colonel?"

"Well, I might be hallucinating a little," John admits. "I swear I hear Rodney over there, Carson," he says, pointing off to the right.

Carson looks a little sheepish. "Actually, I left him on speaker-phone in my office. He's been going on by himself for quite a while."

John pricks his ears and he can just make out, "I can't believe you waited fifteen whole minutes to call me, you witchdoctor! When I..."

"Can everyone put their hands over their ears for a sec?" John asks, miming the motion. They look at him oddly, but humor him since he just got a bullet removed. John takes a deep breath and shouts, "Rodney, I'm perfectly fine!"

The phone in the other room goes quiet for a second before Rodney yells, "Sheppard! What group of idiots let you get shot? I'll kill the entire team! You know I can!" so loudly that he might as well be standing beside the hospital bed. John grins. Mitchell looks a little shifty.

Carson uncovers his ears and rolls his eyes. "I'll go fetch the phone, shall I?" he says and brings the handset over to John.

"Hi, Rodney," John says calmly and lets Rodney's words explode all over him. "It was just one bullet," John soothes.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, do you even listen to yourself?" Rodney yells.

There is a pause for almost three whole seconds and John thinks the line might have cut. "Rodney, are you still there?" he asks.

"Yes," Rodney says, sounding choked. "Yes, I'm here. Look, I know how depressed you are about Atlantis, but please, please don't try to get yourself killed like this."

"I'm not trying to get myself killed," John replies, surprised. "If I was really that far gone, I'd just drink the pipe cleaner under my kitchen sink." SG-1 has been trying to give him the illusion of privacy by pretending to teach Teal'c to play poker –a very transparent illusion considering John woke up to Teal'c schooling Mitchell at it with four aces and a king– but they all glance over quickly at that.

"Put Carson on the line," Rodney orders.

"Okay, here you go," John says, keeping the phone firmly against his ear.

There is a beat of silence before Rodney hisses, "Carson, please tell me Sheppard doesn't live by himself."

John rolls his eyes. "Yes, Rodney, I do live by myself." Rodney squawks, startled to hear John instead of Carson, and annoyed by his answer. "Relax, its fine," John says, because he really doesn't want Rodney to worry about him committing suicide. "Here, talk to Sam Carter. She and the team are looking after me."

He hands the phone over to Carter a little apologetically, but she just smiles. "Yeah, McKay, this is Sam," she says, then pulls the phone away from her ear hurriedly.

"You let Sheppard go on a mission with SG-1? Oh my God, I thought you were smart!" Rodney bellows over the line. John can practically see everyone in Area 51 flinching back, lab techs scurrying for cover under their desks.

"He's going to be fine, McKay," Carter replies. "We're taking care of him for you."

John can hear Rodney sputtering, “…taking care…_shot!_”

He holds out his hand to get the phone back. "Okay, Rodney, I appreciate your concern, but everything really is fine. I'll call you again tomorrow," John promises, and he feels for Rodney’s research team –he really does– but he still hangs up. "You know, it's kind of amazing to be able to just turn Rodney off like that," he muses. But it kind of sucks too.

John glances over at the thick books Jackson and Carter were reading previous to the insanity provoked by John’s return to consciousness. He can’t even read the title of Jackson’s; a mess of symbols, birds and cups and men. Carter’s is incomprehensible in a different way. John doesn’t want to know what a Multifluous Thermoradical Adaptor is, let alone the theory behind it. He looks at Teal'c and Mitchell hopefully, "Did anybody bring me War and Peace?"

He gets through two extremely subpar missions with SG-15 before word comes through about the Replicator attack.

John wishes he could say goodbye to SG-1 before he, Rodney, Carson and Elizabeth go on their cannonball run at Atlantis, but the team is off-world, searching for the mythical Holy Grail.

John thinks of O'Neill, trapped in the city with the Replicators. He thinks of how Carter gave him an Ancient paperweight and how Teal'c kicked his ass, how Mitchell watched football with him and Jackson loved Atlantis vicariously.

He thinks they would have said, "Good luck."

Comments are loved.

Also, does anyone know whether there is a comm specifically for SGA/SG-1 crossover fic? And if there isn't, would people be interested in one? (Or am I the only person who even considers it crossover considering it's in the same universe...)