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Author's Chapter Notes: Title taken from "Ever the Same" by Rob Thomas.

Please be aware that this is essentially unbetaed. Ankareeda was kind enough to look over a not-quite-finished version and assure me that it makes sense and doesn't contradict canon thus far; Ro took the time out of her crazy busy schedule to do some quick betaing of a not-quite-finished version and offer suggestions and ask questions. Thanks, ladies! All errors are mine, and I reserve the right to come back and make changes once this fic is betaed. :)

Written before I ever saw Adrift and Lifeline, and with very little knowledge of S4 spoilers. I guess this is now officially an AU fic.

And yes, that is the end of the fic. No sequels planned. Deal with it.


John settled into the chair by Elizabeth’s bedside, reaching for her hand even as his eyes flickered over the readouts of the equipment constantly monitoring her condition. In spite of his hopes, everything was exactly the same as it had been for the past two weeks.

“Hey, Elizabeth. It’s me.” He forced himself to keep his voice light. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but Rodney’s finally figured out why the engines failed. He thinks he can fix them in the next couple of days.” He chuckled humourlessly. “Of course, the ZPM is nearly drained so we won’t be able to get very far. Rodney wants to start for Earth and hopes we’ll intercept the Daedalus, but Zelenka doesn’t think we’ll make it that far and that we’ll end up drifting in space without any way of letting Earth know where we are.” He sighed. “I don’t know what to do. Guess I’ve got a couple of days to figure it out though, huh?” He paused, half hoping for a response, but of course none came.

John scrubbed a tired hand over his face. “I can’t do this, Lizabeth. My job is supposed to be keeping the city safe. I can’t oversee repairs and mediate squabbling scientists and decide whether we should use the last bit of our power to search for an advanced civilization or try to reach the Daedalus – not alone. I need you to help me figure this stuff out. You have to wake up, Elizabeth.” He squeezed her fingers, resting his other hand on her forearm. “I need you to wake up,” he repeated quietly, letting his eyes fall closed.

Still no response. John was beginning to doubt he’d ever get one.

With a deep sigh he rose to his feet, brushing a non-existent lock of hair off her face. “I’ve got to go make sure Rodney gets some sleep before he starts making stupid mistakes – he’s been awake for more than two days straight now and the other scientists have cut off his coffee supply until morning. He’s not a lot of fun to deal with, let me tell you.” His mouth twisted into a small smile, as if he were sharing an inside joke with her. “I’ll see you a little bit later, okay?” With a final squeeze of her hand, he turned and headed for Rodney’s lab on autopilot, already mulling over the pros and cons of McKay and Zelenka's options.

“Colonel Sheppard?”

Startled out of his reverie, John jerked around to see Dr. Keller hovering by his side. “Doctor?” he said brusquely, hoping she’d take the hint that he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

She either didn’t notice or didn’t care; more likely it was the latter, because he’d been avoiding this conversation for three days. “Do you have a few minutes, Colonel?”

“Actually, I was just on my way to—”

“We can talk in my office,” she interrupted, and John briefly wondered what had happened to the timid doctor who’d been so reluctant to take Carson Beckett’s position. Trying to brace himself for what was coming – and knowing it was entirely futile – he followed her to her office.

“You’ve been to visit Dr. Weir today?”

He scowled at her. “You know I have. Stop stalling. What do you want?”

Keller took a quick step backwards, the nervousness he remembered from weeks earlier returning in the face of his angry impatience. Then she squared her shoulders and met his eyes head on. “As you know, there has been no change in Dr. Weir’s condition, nor will there be. She's brain dead, Colonel, and there's nothing we can do about that. She’s never going to wake up.” She paused before adding, “You’re listed as her power of attorney for when she’s not on Earth.”

John nodded automatically, his mind already jumping ahead to what she was about to say. God, he couldn’t do this. He was never supposed to have to do this. He was the one who was constantly on the front line, always putting himself at risk. Elizabeth was supposed to stay safe on Atlantis.

He was never supposed to have to make this decision.

**

Thanks to his conversation with Keller, John was already in a foul mood by the time he reached McKay’s lab. The argument he could hear from halfway down the hall didn’t help.

McKay and Zelenka were shouting at each other, and John could barely understand either of them; Rodney was using a bunch of technical terms he couldn’t follow and Radek was speaking half in Czech. Even his English was so heavily accented that most words were hardly recognizable.

“What the hell is going on?” John bellowed from the doorway. Inside the lab, both scientists halted their shouting match to turn and face him. The silence lasted all of a few seconds before John was once again contending with both of them talking at once.

“This uneducated hack—”

“Uneducated? Just because you are too short-sighted to see that—”

“Short-sighted? I’m not the one who wants to waste what’s left of the ZPM cruising the galaxy for a planet that might, despite astronomical odds, have a civilization advanced enough to tell us where we are!”

“No, you just want to head for Earth and cross our fingers that we will intercept the Daedalus before we run out of power and drift aimlessly through space!”

“Enough!” John slammed his hand down on a lab bench, hard enough that it hurt. Both of the other men quieted and turned to face him. Zelenka’s eyes were wide behind his glasses.

“What’s with you?” Rodney demanded.

John glowered at him. “What the hell are you two arguing about?” They started talking in unison again and John held up a hand to stop them before they could start arguing once more. “Ah! One at a time. Rodney?”

“We were discussing the best use of the remaining ZPM energy. Have you made a decision yet?”

John sidestepped the question. “Have you fixed the engines?”

Rodney turned defensive. “It takes more than a few hours to fix something of this magnitude, even if half my team weren’t morons. It’ll be at least three days before we can move under our own power.”

John scrubbed a hand over his face and then roughly through his hair. “I’ll have an answer for you by then.”

“You know, Elizabeth would—”

“Well, Elizabeth’s not here, is she?” John snapped at him, then regretted it an instant later as a hurt look flashed across his face. Before he could apologize, Rodney unexpectedly went on the offensive.

“You’ve been moping and stalking around here for two weeks now, and we’ve all had enough. I get that you’re angry or upset or whatever but so are the rest of us and we’re still doing our jobs—”

“Rodney—”

“—and seeing as someone thought it'd be best to put you in charge if Elizabeth's ever incapacitated—"

"Rodney—"

"—maybe you could stop storming around with your head up your—"

McKay!

“You’re not the only one who loves her!”

They stared at each other, and Rodney seemed shocked by his own words. Radek was looking from one man to the other, seeming ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. John’s hands clenched at his sides, consumed by the bewildering but undeniable urge to punch his friend, and then relaxed. “Keller says she’s not going to wake up. She thinks it’s time to let her go.”

He turned and left.

**

From the chair behind Elizabeth’s desk, John looked up at where Rodney was hovering in the doorway. “Are you coming in or are you just going to block traffic all day?” he asked, turning back to the report he’d been reading. He frowned as he realized that he hadn’t taken in a single word on the screen.

Rodney edged further into the room. “Zelenka and I have an idea.”

“About the engines,” John said distractedly, scrolling back to the beginning of the report.

“No. About Elizabeth.”

John jerked his head up to stare at him. “What sort of idea?” he asked cautiously. As brilliant as McKay could be when it came to astrophysics, by no means did the man hold a medical degree. As much as John wanted to believe that there was something the doctors had overlooked, it didn't seem likely.

Rodney looked uncertain. “You’re not going to like this.”

John fought to hide his annoyance. “What’s your idea, Rodney?”

“Do you remember when Elizabeth was infected by nanites last year?” John merely nodded; it wasn’t something he was likely to ever forget. “Well, nanites work on the molecular level. They can repair things that no other technology on Earth – or Atlantis, for that matter – can fix.”

John stared at him in disbelief. “You want to deliberately infect Elizabeth with the same nanites that nearly killed her.”

Rodney nodded. “I told you that you weren’t going to like this.”

John sat back in Elizabeth’s chair. “How will infecting her help cure her? She’s not strong enough to fight them this time, McKay. They’ll kill her.” Technically, according to Keller at least, she was already dead, but he still refused to accept that.

“Hear me out.” Rodney leaned forward in his seat, his hands beginning to gesture as he got into his explanation. “In spite of what she went through, Elizabeth came out of that ordeal in better physical condition than before she was infected. Why? Because the nanites repaired any defects they encountered. They seem to be pre-programmed to restore biological matter to its prime condition.”

“And you think that if we re-infect Elizabeth, they’ll be able to fix what’s wrong with her.”

“It’s possible.”

“What’s to stop them from killing her?”

“We do the same thing we did last time – draw them all to one area by planting a small amount of Wraith tissue and then hit them with an EM pulse.”

“Elizabeth was actively fighting the nanites last time and they still nearly killed her. She’s not strong enough to fight them. I don’t even think she’s aware of what’s going on around her.” It was the first time John had allowed the thought to surface. He wouldn’t have guessed it could hurt so much.

“We’d only introduce a few of them. It will take longer, but it’ll be safer.”

“Aren’t they self-replicating?”

“Zelenka thinks that if we periodically hit them with the EMP, we can keep the population under control.”

“And we still have samples of the nanites.” It was a statement, not a question; he, Elizabeth, and Carson had spent a lot of time discussing the possible benefits and dangers of keeping the nanites on Atlantis.

Rodney answered anyway. “In stasis, yes.”

John closed his eyes and leaned back. Rodney waited in uncharacteristic silence as he thought everything over, running through the possibilities. It should be such a simple decision – a chance at life versus letting her die – but there was so much more to it than that. This wasn't a choice to be made quickly.

He sighed, opening his eyes to look at Rodney. “I’ll let you know.”

**

He ended up on Elizabeth’s balcony.

John gripped the railing so hard that his knuckles cracked as he stared out at the stars far beyond the shield. This was Elizabeth’s favourite place, her favourite time of day to relax, and it seemed fitting to him that he make the decision that would affect the rest of her life here.

If he didn’t do anything, if he left her in the infirmary with machines keeping her body alive, one day months or years from now her body would simply… stop. From everything Keller had told him, nothing doctors could do with either Earth- or Atlantis-based technology could help her.

While Elizabeth had never talked in detail about the life she'd lived under the nanites’ control, John was one of the few people in Atlantis who had clearance to access her mission report. After reading her account of a world where everything she’d known had been taken away and declared a figment of her imagination, he’d well understood her reluctance to sleep for several weeks after. He couldn’t imagine putting her back in a similar situation.

Or he could do what Keller had suggested, and let her go.

John swore viciously, then dropped his head. “Why the hell did you have to come up here?” he asked an Elizabeth who wasn’t there to answer.

He didn’t know what Elizabeth would want him to do. He only knew that he had to give her a chance.

His hand went to his radio. “McKay, find Zelenka and meet me in Keller’s office.”

**

John sat back and let the scientists explain their idea to Dr. Keller, who looked more and more disturbed the longer they went on. He didn’t much blame her; it was hard for him to comprehend what they were proposing and he’d been there the first time Elizabeth had been infected. Keller had only been on Atlantis for a few months and a lot of the weirdness he’d begun to accept as a part of his everyday life was still brand new to her. This would be a lot to take in.

Keller held up a hand when Rodney and Radek devolved into their own shorthand speech. John had often gotten frustrated when they did that. “Let me get this straight. You want to deliberately inject Dr. Weir with a microscopic, robotic lifeform intent on killing her so they can replicate and try to take over the galaxy in their quest to eradicate the Wraith?” Keller looked like she thought they were all crazy.

Rodney frowned. “That’s an overly simplistic—”

“Yes,” Radek interrupted. John was momentarily thrown; usually it was McKay doing the interrupting. “That is, essentially, what we want to do.”

“From what I understand, when Dr. Weir was infected by nanites the first time she was actively fighting them. All the scans we’ve run have registered zero brain activity. She wouldn’t be able to resist them.”

Rodney still looked put out. “As I said, just before Zelenka so unceremoniously cut me off, the nanites should—”

“Should repair the damage to her brain as they’re replicating. Yes, I heard you the first time. Forgive me if I have a hard time accepting that.”

In spite of the seriousness of the meeting, John was tempted to smile. It was rare to find someone who could give as good as they got when it came to Rodney.

Rodney spluttered in the face of Keller’s dismissal. “It’s a novel theory,” Radek admitted, “but we believe it has a chance of success.”

Keller closed her eyes and breathed in, slowly and deeply. When she opened her eyes, she was looking directly at John.

“You want to try this.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Even though it will probably kill her.”

He spread his hands, palm up. “If we don’t, she’ll die anyway. Your diagnosis, remember?”

That gave her pause, but only for a moment. “At least this way she’ll go peacefully. With what you’re proposing, there’s no way to predict what she might go through.”

“I know.” God, did he know, probably better than anyone else; more often than not, he’d been the one keeping her company in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, because of either the nightmares or the fear she wouldn’t wake up. “But she deserves a chance. We owe her that much, at least.”

The small office was quiet as the three men watched the doctor, waiting for her decision. Outside, John could hear the normal sounds of the infirmary; it seemed out of place, somehow.

Finally Keller sighed, and John knew they’d won. “You’re sure about this?” she asked.

He wasn’t, not really. He was just out of options. “I’m sure.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Alright. How much time do you need to prepare?”

John could see the calculations happening in Rodney’s head. “Well, we need to set up a quarantine area, bring in the monitoring equipment, safely transport the nanites….” He continued to mutter to himself for a moment. “I’d say one—”

“Three.”

“Two hours ought to be enough time.”

Keller nodded. “Okay. I’ll prepare Dr. Weir.”

And with that, the meeting seemed to be over. At a loss, John followed Radek and Rodney out of the infirmary. “Anything I can do?” he asked as he trailed after them.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of heavy equipment that needs to be brought here from my lab….”

John sighed and thumbed his radio. “Ronon, meet me in McKay’s lab.”

**

Two and a half hours later the quarantine area was crowded, holding all of John’s team as well as Keller and Zelenka in addition to, of course, Elizabeth. She was already situated beneath the scanner, hooked up to the same monitoring equipment he remembered from the last time, and some other things he was pretty sure had never been in the infirmary before today. She looked so pale and thin lying there on the gurney, and John wanted to do something, anything, to help her. He was out of his depth here, however; killing a bunch of Asurans wouldn’t help her, as much as it would make him feel better. This time, he had to sit back and let the others do their jobs.

John took a quick look around the room. Everyone else was occupied, paying him and Elizabeth no attention.

He reached out to brush her hair off her face. “You can do this, Lizabeth, I know you can. Fight them. We’ll all be here when you wake up.”

He straightened to find Ronon watching him, but all the other man did was nod and turn back to Teyla. John couldn’t find the energy to be embarrassed, so he just moved to join the people in charge of this experiment.

Rodney and Radek were explaining to Keller exactly what to do over the next hours. John only half-listened, partly because there was nothing he could do and partly because he'd been here the first time and he hadn't understood it then, either.

"Are we ready?" he asked when the two scientists finally stopped talking. Rodney gave him a dark look but Radek cut him off before he could respond with some snarky remark.

"I believe we are, unless you have any questions, Doctor?" He directed the last to Keller, who shook her head.

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be." John watched her pull on a pair of HazMat gloves, and caught the slightest hesitation before she reached to deactivate the stasis chamber. From inside she withdrew a vial that, John knew, contained a sample of the nanites.

He stepped up to the very edge of the quarantine tent as Keller entered, using a needle to place the nanites in one of the many tubes keeping Elizabeth alive. His eyes moved to the screens monitoring her vital signs; though he knew that, logically, there would be no instantaneous reaction, John couldn't seem to stop himself from searching for a change, any change. But there was nothing.

At his shoulder, Rodney was surprisingly gentle as he reminded John, "It'll be several hours at least before we see anything, if we do at all."

John nodded shortly. "I know."

"You don't need to be here for-"

"Yes. I do." There was no room for argument in John's voice, and Rodney let it drop.

John snagged a chair from the outskirts of the room and dragged it next to the quarantine tent, positioning himself so he could keep an eye on Elizabeth and the monitors. Then he settled in to wait.

**

A sudden beeping jerked John out of a light doze and he snapped upright, his eyes darting from Elizabeth to the readouts on the screens. She was as still as ever, not appearing to have moved at all, but one of the screens was flashing something he couldn't make out. "What's going on?" he demanded as he rose to his feet. To his right, Keller pulled on the HazMat gloves before rushing into the room.

Rodney checked his own equipment. "The nanites have multiplied beyond what we set as the safe limit. We need to draw them all to one area and use the EMP to lower their numbers."

John stood back and let the doctor and scientists do whatever they needed to do. Before they had finished he turned and left the infirmary with the need to work off a sudden and vicious restlessness.

He went to the control room first; though he would have been paged if they'd needed him, he was in charge and it'd been close to a day since he'd last set foot there. After ascertaining that everything was running smoothly – as much as could be expected, given the circumstances – he paged Teyla and asked her to meet him in the gym.

**

"You are certain you feel up to this?"

John swung his stave in a tight circle. "I'm sure."

Teyla didn't look altogether convinced but she nodded anyway. "Very well." She rose slightly on the balls of her feet and that was the only warning he got before she attacked.

He just barely got his sticks up in time to deflect the blow, but she had him retreating from the first strike and he never managed to regain his footing. In less than a minute he was flat on his back, gasping for breath.

Teyla stood quietly off to the side, watching. "Again?" she asked when he sat up, and John nodded as he climbed to his feet.

They sparred for over an hour, John ending up on his back more often than not. By the time he was too exhausted to continue, he felt better.

"Do you wish to talk now?"

John took a quick step backwards, lowering the towel he'd been using to mop his face. "What?"

Teyla regarded him from halfway across the gym. "You've had a difficult few weeks, more so than usual. Have you been sleeping?"

"Not much," he admitted, then narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm not going to meditate," he warned her, only half joking.

She smiled. "I know better than to suggest meditation to you," she assured him before she turned serious once more. "But if you ever wish to talk—"

"Thanks," he interrupted. He gathered up his belongings and headed for the exit, pausing as he passed Teyla. "I do appreciate it," he said quietly, and accepted the gentle hug she gave him. "I'll see you later," he told her, filling the awkward silence, and bolted for the door.

Back in his own room, he ran the shower as hot as he could stand it and learned forward, bracing his hands against the wall and letting the water pour over him without moving. He didn't know how long he stood there, or how much longer he would have stayed, if not for the sound of his name over the P.A. paging him to the infirmary.

**

Rodney frowned at him as he entered the room. "What were you doing?" he asked, his eyes on John's wet hair, then shook his head. "Never mind. We've got something."

"What?" John demanded, straining to take in the various readouts.

It was Keller who answered. "There's brain activity." She held up a hand as if to forestall comments. "It's not a lot. There's weak activity in the brain stem, which regulates autonomic functions such as heartbeat and breathing, but it's not enough to sustain her body on its own. There is no indication of activity in regions used for higher-order thinking." Her voice softened. "That being said, regaining activity in the brain stem is unheard of. Whatever these nanites are doing, they might actually be repairing the damage her brain suffered."

That was a lot for John to process so he boiled it down to what he needed to know. "This is good, right?"

For the first time that John could remember, Keller smiled. "I think it is, Colonel."

And for the first time in more than two weeks, John smiled too.

**

It took nearly three more days before Keller announced that Elizabeth's brainwaves had returned almost to normal. Over the course of those days, John had split his time between the control room, the labs, and the infirmary, catching a few hours of sleep when he could. He was busy supervising everything but he felt useless nonetheless because he wasn't directly responsible for any of it; he just got the reports. John never thought he'd be jealous of scientists.

On that third day, John was present when Keller summoned Rodney and Radek to the isolation room to remove all of the nanites from Elizabeth's system. It took repeated pulses from the machine, enough that the scientists seemed worried that they'd never get them all, but eventually the two declared the procedure successful.

The doctor ran a ton of tests while John waited impatiently. After several long hours, Keller sat him down to walk him through the results.

"This," she began, drawing his attention to the computer screen, "is a scan of Dr. Weir's brain activity from last year. Dr. Beckett used it to confirm that Phoebus' imprint had faded completely."

"This scan," she continued, bringing up a second image alongside the first, "is from last week. There is no noticeable activity."

"And this one-" a third image appeared beside the other two, "-is from a few hours ago."

John sat back in the chair, studying the monitor. The most recent scan, while not exactly the same, closely resembled the one from a year ago. "So, she's better?"

Keller hesitated before answering and John felt his cautious hope sinking. "'Better' is a relative term, Colonel. Certainly there is improvement from just a few days ago and I would have thought this sort of recovery impossible if I hadn't witnessed it for myself. That being said, however," she added, and John braced himself for what was coming next, "we really understand very little about how the human brain works, and even less about the effects the nanites may have had."

"Just tell me where we stand," John ordered tiredly. He probably wouldn't understand half of this on a good day, and with as little sleep he'd had lately he didn't even have the energy to try.

Keller nodded, looking sympathetic. "If she wakes up, it looks like she should make a full recovery, or close to it. There's still a chance of brain damage, or other changes that wouldn't necessarily show up in a scan, such as a personality disorder. There's no way to know for sure until she's awake."

"And when will that be?"

The doctor shrugged. "Physically, I can see no reason for her to still be comatose. She'll wake up when she's ready."

John was growing sick and tired of all the uncertainty. Rodney's opinion of the medical profession was suddenly making a lot of sense. "Can I sit with her?" he asked, hearing the edge in his voice.

Keller nodded. "Dr. McKay checked for nanites less than an hour ago and found none. She should be out of the iso room by now."

**

John eased into the infirmary chair and wrapped his fingers around Elizabeth's, unexpectedly comforted by the return of a ritual interrupted by her stay in isolation. "Hi, Elizabeth. Sorry I haven't been around the last few days, but you were kind of infected by nanites and they wouldn't let me in to see you. Imagine that, huh?" The corners of his mouth turned up in the faint hint of a smile.

"So," he continued, carrying on with his one-sided conversation. "Dr. Keller says there's no reason why you can't wake up. Now, I'm not really convinced she knows what she's talking about most of the time, but I happen to agree with her about this. You'll wake up when you're ready; you just have to decide it's what you want. We all know how stubborn you can be when you don't want to do something, but you always take other people's opinions into account before making a final decision, and I gotta say, Lizabeth, in my professional opinion, you really should wake up soon. Right now, even, but I can understand if you want to take a few minutes." John squeezed her hand, carefully studying her face for any sort of reaction. He was disappointed but not especially surprised when there was no change.

He sighed. "Alright, we'll do it your way. But I can only stay for a little while; this city doesn't run itself, you know, and seeing as you've spent the last three weeks lying around in bed, I get stuck with the job." John made himself more comfortable, suddenly aware of how much he was rambling to an unconscious woman. He blamed three weeks of stress and sleeplessness and the sudden gratification of knowing that Elizabeth had a fighting chance. Whatever the reason, he'd never hear the end of it if Ronon or Rodney overheard him.

Still holding her hand, John waited.

**

"Sheppard?"

John jerked upright, apparently having dozed off. "What?" he grunted, scrubbing a hand over his face. His eyes instinctively drifted over Elizabeth's face and the monitors keeping track of her condition.

Ronon loomed over the end of the hospital bed. "McKay sent me to find you when you didn't answer the radio."

John's hand went automatically to his ear. Not finding his headset he scanned the floor, catching sight of it by the chair. "Must've fallen out," he said, retrieving it. "What does Rodney want?"

Ronon moved to the far side of the gurney, facing John over Elizabeth's prone form. "How is she?" he asked, touching her forearm with a gentleness that seemed incongruous with the large man.

"The same," John responded, stretching muscles that ached from being in the same position for too long. "Keller seems to think she could wake up any minute, or she could never wake up at all. There's no way to know." Ronon nodded, still stroking Elizabeth's arm. John blinked. "What'd McKay want?" he asked.

"Said the engines are fixed and it's time for you to make a decision. I assume you know what he means."

"Yeah," John muttered. He'd nearly forgotten about that. "I guess I better head down there before he and Zelenka start arguing again." Straightening his sleep-rumpled clothes, John headed for the exit.

"What's that mean?"

"What's what mean?"

"The change in the beeping."

John spun back around, eyes zeroing in on the monitors; he hadn't caught any difference in the sounds of the equipment, but Ronon hadn't evaded the Wraith for seven years by missing the small details. "Which one?" he demanded. Ronon gestured at one of the screens. John studied the readings, wondering if he was imagining the changes he thought he saw.


He strode up to the gurney, sliding his hand into Elizabeth's. "Elizabeth?" he prompted, his other hand coming to rest on her forearm. "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand." No reaction. "C'mon, Lizabeth. Ronon and I are right here, and you've got an entire city waiting for you to wake up. All you have to do is squeeze my hand." John held his breath, silently willing her to wake up, but there was nothing.

Disappointed, he was about to pull away when he thought he felt the flutter of her fingers against his. Not entirely certain it wasn't just wishful thinking, he coaxed, "Once more, Elizabeth. I need you to do that just one more time." It took a few seconds but then her fingers unmistakably pressed against his.

"I felt it too."

John looked across the bed to see that Ronon had taken Elizabeth's other hand. "Good enough for me," he said, then hollered, "Doc!" over his shoulder.

A nurse stuck his head past the curtain. "Is there something wrong, Colonel?" he asked.

"She's waking up. Get Keller in here." He leaned over her, his hand still in hers. "Time to open those eyes, Elizabeth. Just for a second. I know you can do it." Her eyes moved back and forth beneath her lids, eyebrows drawing together in a frown. She cracked them open the tiniest bit but immediately closed them again with a small sound that John took as discomfort. "I know that's got to be bright. We'll get someone to turn down the lights, okay?" She didn't respond but the frown faded from her face.

John glanced at Ronon as Keller entered and moved straight to the monitors, taking them in with one look before shifting attention to Elizabeth. "Can you let Rodney know she's awake?" John quietly asked his teammate as he watched the doctor. Ronon nodded and left the room.

John tried to stay out of Keller's way as she did some sort of assessment on Elizabeth, asking her to squeeze her hand and using a penlight to check her pupils. Keller then turned her attention back to the monitors for a moment. His eyes never left Elizabeth's face for more than a few seconds.

"Dr. Weir, can you open your eyes?" There was no response and John watched as the doctor frowned and checked the monitors yet again. Then she took her penlight and shone it in each of Elizabeth's eyes once more.

"What's wrong?" John asked sharply, moving closer and sliding his hand into Elizabeth's. He called her name but got no response.

"She's asleep," Keller reassured him. "It's just a normal, healing sleep. She'll wake up on her own in a few hours or so."

John relaxed, stroking his thumb over her knuckles. "It's good that she woke up, right? She's going to be okay?"

There was a moment of silence before she sighed. "That she woke up at all, that she responded to you... I don't know if you understand how incredible this is. By all rights, Dr. Weir was brain dead. This shouldn't be possible. If she comes through this with no physical or mental impairment it'd be, well, a miracle."

"But the nanites—"

"The nanites," Keller repeated, for all the world sounding as if she were agreeing with him. She held out her hands, palm up. "I don’t know what to tell you, Colonel. There's no precedent for any of this. I have no idea what will happen."

Rodney was right, John decided. Doctors were useless.

"Elizabeth's awake?"

Speak of the devil. McKay appeared, Ronon close behind and pushing the scientist further into the room. Rodney scowled at him as he stepped to the end of the Elizabeth's bed. "I thought you said she was awake," he accused Ronon once he saw she was unconscious.

"She was. She fell asleep a couple of minutes ago." John filled him in.

Rodney looked disappointed. "Oh. How long until she wakes up again?"

"It'll be a few hours. Though if you keep talking that loud I don't see how she could sleep through it."

"Oh, ha ha."

"If you two don't mind, my patient is trying to sleep. Either keep it down or get out." Keller fixed each of the men with a steely look.

John motioned toward the door. "Let's go talk in Elizabeth's office. You coming?" he asked Ronon, who shook his head.

"I'll stay here," he said, and John felt better knowing someone would be staying with her.

"Call me if she wakes up," he said, watching Rodney pat Elizabeth's leg before moving toward the door. Ronon just grunted in response, taking over John's spot at her side.

**

John dropped into Elizabeth's chair, Rodney settling more slowly into one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. "So?"

Rodney frowned at him. "So, what?"

"You were looking for me earlier?"

McKay perked up. "Right! I got the engines working. They're not one hundred percent because we don't have the resources on Atlantis to bring them up to full power, but we'll be able to enter hyperspace."

"For how long?"

Rodney lost some of his excitement. "There's no way of knowing for sure. A couple of hours at least, maybe as long as a full day."

"How long would it take to intercept the Daedalus?" Rodney squirmed in his seat and John became suspicious. "McKay? How long?"

"I... don't know."

John blinked at the unexpected response. "Best guess?"

"Don't have one."

John was confused, not to mention apprehensive. "What aren't you telling me, McKay?"

Rodney spluttered for a moment and then suddenly sagged. For the first time in quite a while John noticed how tired his friend looked. "We still don't know where we are. Without that information there's no way for us to know what direction to go and we can't exactly just pick a random direction and start flying."

John dropped his head into his hands for a moment. "Three weeks. We've been drifting through space for three weeks. How do we not know where we are?"

Rodney looked annoyed. "The universe is a pretty big place, Colonel. Not even the Ancients mapped it all. Add to that the fact that the computers still aren't working properly and I've had most of my team working on keeping the shields and life support stable in addition to fixing the engines, and excuse me if we've had to put figuring out our location on the back burner!"

What good do the engines do us if we don't know where to go? John barely refrained from snapping at Rodney, reminding himself that they were all tired and on edge. "So your idea of intercepting the Daedalus isn't even an option at this point."

Rodney looked as if he wished he could argue the point. "Not until we know our relative position in the universe, no. Which," he added, "we'll be able to focus on now that the engines are working."

John sighed. "I gotta say, Rodney, Zelenka's option is looking more likely." He held up a hand to forestall his protests. "Let's give it a few more days. No one knows we're here, including the Asurans, and we have working engines and shields. We're safe enough for the moment. A couple of days gives your team a chance to figure out where we are, and maybe by then Elizabeth will want to give her opinion."

Rodney seemed surprised. "She just woke up from three weeks of being brain dead, and she'll be back to work in a few days?"

"That's not exactly what I meant. She might be more alert by then and you know Elizabeth – she'll be wanting right back in the thick of things." He couldn’t help the fond smile, which Rodney shared.

The smile didn't last long, though. "How's she doing?" Rodney asked soberly.

John stood, prowling around the office. "I don't know. She woke up and squeezed our hands when we asked her to, and tried to open her eyes. But she didn't move otherwise and didn't say anything." He put down one of the Elizabeth's trinkets. "Keller says her vital signs are good but beyond that, she can't say what Elizabeth will... be like, once she fully wakes up." He stared out the window at the people working in the control room.

"Elizabeth's strong," Rodney said eventually. "I mean, she never should have made even this much improvement. If anyone can get through this, it's her."

"Yeah," John agreed softly, still watching the others in the next room. Pulling himself back, he cleared his throat and turned to face Rodney. "I want the people on your team who have had the most sleep to stay in the labs; everyone else is to get something to eat and then sleep. Eight hours at least. That includes you."

"But—"

"We're not going to get anything done if everyone's starving and exhausted. We should be safe for eight more hours."

"Are you taking a break too?"

John thought of all he still needed to do, and of the woman who would be waking in a matter of hours. He rubbed a tired hand over his face. "At some point. Sure."

"Go grab a few hours now," Rodney urged, unexpectedly sympathetic. "You won't do her any good if you're exhausted when she wakes up. She's going to need you." John narrowed his eyes at him but Rodney only waved a hand. "Oh, please. As much as she's relied on you the past few years and how much time you've spent in the infirmary the past three weeks? Like anyone doubts who's going to be by her side while she recovers."

If he weren't so tired, John thought his embarrassment might have morphed into mortification. As it was, he ignored the heat in his cheeks and glared halfheartedly at Rodney. "Shut up and get some sleep, McKay. You're rambling."

Rodney clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder as he left. John surveyed the office and the control room. Deciding to follow his own advice, he headed to his room to catch a few hours of sleep.


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