Sir John lunged forward and thrust his sword directly into the evil heart of the black knight. Lord Kolya 's blade fell from his lifeless hand as he tumbled down the stone staircase and into the dark pit below. The swordplay between the two warriors had ranged far and wide across the dungeons beneath Kolya's castle, scattering the foraging rats and knocking over suits of armor containing fleshless skeletons that had long been denizens of this dank prison.
Without pausing to regain his breath, Sir John leaped up the slippery staircase and looked desperately from right to left. Spying the object he was seeking against a far wall, the brave knight skidded in the ooze covering the stones beneath his feet as he accelerated his speed. The tattered remains of his once white shirt fluttered in the breeze created by his passage and the look on his handsome face was one of both joy and terror.
With trembling hands he used his sword to cut the bonds securing Princess Elizabeth to the iron rings embedded in the wall. No longer a prisoner of the evil Lord Kolya, the princess sank gratefully into the arms of her savior.
Sir John's sword fell unheeded to the ground, ringing against the stones as he gathered Elizabeth into his arms. Her face was dirty and bruised and her emerald eyes looked wounded and shimmered with tears. But to Sir John she was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.
The princess clasped her hero to her bosom and secured him there with both hands grasping great handfuls of his hair.
He slid his rough calloused hands over the soft velvet of her dark crimson gown and buried his face against her neck.
“John, my love.” She tugged and lifted his head to stare into his amazing hazel eyes which were shining at her with all the love in his heart.
For a moment he just stared at her as if she were a vision, and then he crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss to rival the greatest kisses of all time. Her toes left the filthy ground as he lifted her, muscles straining to bring her closer before he...
“Colonel.”
“Colonel!” The annoying voice was getting louder and seemed to have a Scottish accent but that couldn't be right because they were nowhere near...wait a damn minute.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Well, that's not the first words I expected out of his mouth.” The accent was back.
Lt. Colonel John Sheppard opened his eyes and quickly closed them again. Son of a bitch. He was in the infirmary. On Atlantis. No Princess Elizabeth in that incredible dress that hugged her...son of a bitch.
Several faces surrounded his bed and now the doc was shining that annoying light in his eyes. Well this was familiar anyway.
“John? Are you all right?” Elizabeth was there. Not a princess in a red gown but his boss in a red shirt. With Rodney McKay right beside her peering at him entirely too closely.
“Get away from me, McKay.” John pushed at the scientist who turned to the woman next to him.
Rodney snapped his fingers and gestured rapidly with two fingers at John's face. “See, I told you. It's all in the eyes.” He leaned conspiratorially toward Elizabeth and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Brain damage.”
“What are you babbling about, Rodney?” Carson put away his little flashlight and fiddled with John's IV.
“Brain damage. It's obvious.” McKay repeated. “He's been babbling incoherently about princesses and knights and whatnot for hours. Either he's having a Monty Python delusion or it's brain damage. Pure and simple. Hit on the head one time too many. It was bound to happen sooner or...”
“Rodney!” Elizabeth finally spoke but didn't take her eyes off John. “What say we let Carson do his work? Now that we know John is going to stay around.” She discretely patted his arm and gave him a half smile. John darted his eyes at her and then got distracted by Carson's hand on his chin turning his head back and forth and prying his eyes open wider with gloved fingers.
The movement of his head sent shards of excruciating agony through John's already overtaxed brain and the last thing he heard before his eyes rolled back in his head was Rodney's voice affirming his previous claim. Brain damage.
The vivid red and blue latex suit hugged every muscle of his lithe body, outlining his biceps and emphasizing the well-toned lines of his powerful abs and glutes. He could feel the surge of energy vibrating through his lean form as he shot streams of silk from both hands and swung higher. John Sheppard scampered to the top of the giant crane that was suspended over the yawning chasm of the Grand Canyon and looked down.
Dangling far out over the gorge, hanging trussed up like a tasty treat waiting in a spider's web was the lovely Elizabeth Weir. Her long curls whipped in the wind as she swung back and forth. The rope securing her cut into her pale skin, abraded the soft fabric of her crimson velvet gown and began to fray.
Elizabeth screamed and John's heart froze in his chest. “Elizabeth, I'm coming to get you,” he shouted into the wind. But his words were flung back at him by the powerful currents of air lashing the canyon. Behind him, the crane bucked and twisted as the man at its controls attempted to maneuver it closer to the edge.
John turned and began spinning silk in the direction of his arch nemesis. As the cab of the crane rapidly became covered in layers stronger than steel, Lucius Lavin peered up through the windshield at certain death.
“Well this is not what I expected,” John thought but didn't pause in his endeavors until the man had vanished from sight and the machine was still.
Wasting no more time, John used his spider skills to weave a connection that would allow him to reach Elizabeth's twisting form. He swung out over the canyon and found himself staring into the upside down face of the woman he was there to save.
“Are you okay?” he managed to whisper as he reached out to steady her swinging body.
“Just hanging around waiting for you to save me,” she said. The relief in her voice made it tremble and she couldn't stop drinking in the sight of him.
“What do you say, we get out of here?” But her eager nod didn't spur him into action as it normally would. He was lost in contemplating the way her mouth was just within reach of his and as he leaned toward her she seemed to take a swing in his direction until their lips met. As upside down kisses go it was one of the best, starting slow and building toward something phenomenal as they turned gently in the breeze.
“Ow!”
“There we go, just a little prick.” The Scottish doctor was back with his needles and John was back in his infirmary bed.
“Lousy timing Doc,” he croaked around a dry throat. Gratefully he sipped from the cup of water someone held out to him. When the fog cleared he looked up into the eyes of the woman he had just a few minutes ago been kissing like his and her life depended on it.
Carson frowned at the sudden red flush on his patient's skin. “Colonel, do you maybe have a bit of a fever?” Reaching for his thermometer, Carson continued. “You seem a bit agitated lad.”
John stared at the ceiling and wished the doctor to perdition until a chuckle distracted him.
The big man at the foot of his bed reached out a hand and tweaked one of John's toes. “Maybe McKay's right. It could be brain damage,” Ronon said.
“Go to hell.”
“John.” Elizabeth scolded him lightly and looked at Carson with raised eyebrows.
Carson shrugged. “Temp's normal. I think the lad is just suffering a bit of a sensory anomaly.”
“A what?” Ronon again.
John scowled and shifted in the bed.
“Colonel, you appear to be having nightmares of a sort when you lose consciousness,” Carson replied, speaking directly to his patient. “Not unusual after such a sound blow to the head.”
“Yeah, that thing, whatever it was, gave him a good whack,” Ronon added helpfully
“Rodney says some sort of apelike creature,” Elizabeth affirmed.
“Well,” Carson went on, to John's continued silence, “whatever it was it addled his brains that's for sure. But he should be fine in a few...”
John Sheppard pulled up on the stick of the helicopter he was piloting just before it crashed into the tall building in front of him. Soaring into the heavens, he leveled out and looked down at the scene on top of the Empire State Building.
The giant ape roared up at him and shifted the woman in his paw to get a better grasp on her. She wiggled and squirmed to get away as she screamed at the top of her lungs. Seeing the face of her rescuer inside the hovering craft, she shouted his name and held on. Her scarlet velvet dress was torn and stained and had slipped off one shoulder bearing her smooth white skin. The pale column of her throat stood out against the dark fur of her captive as she pushed against the restraining arm that held her.
John skillfully maneuvered the small craft as far away from the marauding monster as possible and settled it with a gentle bump onto the rooftop. Ducking to avoid the still rotating blades, he pulled his weapon and approached the ape in a firing stance.
The 9mm bullet barely broke the skin of the enormous beast. John rapidly emptied his clip into the ape's knee which only irritated him slightly.
Kong, reigning King of his jungle, finally noticed the man who had come to kill him and shifted the woman to his other hand. His roar and subsequent blast of foul breath nearly knocked John off his feet.
“Put her down, Cheetah,” he shouted but the ape wasn't listening.
John scurried back into the chopper and grabbed his P-90 from behind the seat. “This oughta do it,” he thought as he raised the weapon and fired, hitting Kong squarely between his slightly crossed eyes.
Kong released Elizabeth and dropped like a two ton stone.
Screaming, Elizabeth fell into John's arms where she grabbed him around the neck in a death grip not about to let go any time soon.
The soft warm body in his arms molded itself to his chest as his shaking hands steadied her. Sweet lips that quickly erased the taste of fear in his mouth attached themselves to his and he was lost in her kiss.
“Dead monkey.” The puzzling words didn't surprise anybody standing around John's infirmary bed. They had certainly all heard stranger things that day.
“Yes Colonel.” The soft voice of Teyla Emmagen cut through the fog. “The creature that attacked you is dead. Ronon shot him quite thoroughly with his gun.”
John's eyes opened a crack as he identified the source of the voice. But there was something about the woman peering down at him benignly that reminded him foremost of his third grade teacher.
“Miss Prentice?” He said clearly, giving Teyla what was once his best I-lost-my-homework look.
Startled and surprised, Teyla looked at Elizabeth who was presently standing across from her on the other side of John's bed with her hand on his shoulder. Giving him what she hoped was a reassuring pat, Elizabeth shrugged and smiled confidently at Teyla.
“No John. You are here with us on Atlantis. It's Elizabeth and Teyla.”
John looked between the two women with growing awareness and then tried his best to disappear into his pillow. Something between a groan and a gasp escaped his lips before he closed his eyes again.
What happened next was a thankfully brief romp through Sherwood Forest in green tights where he rescued Maid Elizabeth from a Sheriff of Nottingham who looked suspiciously like Oberoth and got to see Ronon as Little John, also in tights. Then this was followed by a cruise on a pirate ship which was marginally better because cutlasses were involved. This time he got to shove a monster with Wraith hands and an octopus head overboard before releasing Elizabeth from the bonds that held her tightly lashed to the wheel. The sight of her soaking wet in the clinging shreds of her dark red gown almost took his breath away before he kissed her senseless.
When next he regained consciousness, John found himself alone except for Elizabeth who had fallen asleep with her head on the edge of his bed.
Just as he was reaching out the hand not attached to wires and tubes, unable to resist the lure of her tumbled brown curls, she lifted her head and sleepy green eyes met his.
“Hey?” It came out as a question because at this point he was never sure in what reality he had landed.
“Hey, you're back.”
“I think so.” John looked around and seeing the familiar setting of the Atlantis infirmary, relaxed a bit.
It must have been late because the lights had been lowered and a curtain pulled around his bed for privacy. The room was hushed with only the occasional beep from his monitoring equipment to break the silence.
Elizabeth straightened and gave him a quick once over. Seeming satisfied, she smiled a genuine smile and busied herself smoothing his covers. “You finished playing dashing hero for a while?” It was an offhand question.
John blanched. “Just how much talking did I do?”
“Enough.” She didn't seem to want to explain and he let her get away with it.
John was too relieved to be relatively alert and pain free to push his luck by engaging in a prolonged retrospective of his adventures while unconscious.
“You were there. A lot,” he couldn't help clarifying, but he had a feeling she already knew that part.
“So I gathered.” She had finished smoothing all the wrinkles out of the covers and clasped her hands in front of her to still them. Her eyes met his again and then slid away.
John looked at the ceiling. “Tell McKay my brain is just fine.”
Elizabeth didn't answer but after a long heartbeat, John felt her hand sneak its way over his. He flexed his fingers and entwined them with hers allowing the warmth of her palm to seep into his skin.
Her hair tickled his face when she leaned over him and touched her lips to his. As kisses go, it was not the greatest kiss of all time or even the second greatest. But to John's way of thinking, it was better than all the concussion-induced fantasies he had experienced while unconscious. Because this one was real.