Chapter Text
To be sure the appointment with Heightmeyer went as expected, John had a plan. He would avoid talking as much as possible and run out the clock. It worked with his team every time.
"So. I'm here. What do you know?" John asked the shrink. He stood at the slatted window, opened the shutters as much as he could, and stared out at the water. He very intentionally kept his hands in his pockets. It was something he hadn't been able to do for a couple of months and he had gotten rather attached to the habit now that he could again.
"I don't know much, really," said Dr. Heightmeyer. "Your mission went wrong and you disappeared for, what was it, eleven weeks, four days, by our records. And you returned injured. And you no longer appreciate being addressed as Colonel Sheppard. So there's a lot of missing information. But this isn't a debrief or report, John. I don't have to know everything."
"You know more than that." John glanced back at her, frown on his face. "Rodney's been talking to you every day since we got back. And I know how he works."
Dr. Heightmeyer shrugged and shook her head. "I know what Rodney has shared with me of his experience. And that is different than yours. And how he recovers is different than your experience will be."
Rolling his eyes, John stepped closer to the window and leaned his shoulder against the post that served as the frame, his nose just inches from the wide blinds as he looked outside. She knew well enough then. And like she said, John didn't have to tell her any kind of report about the trip off world. He didn't have anything to talk about. And so they waited in quiet for entire minutes.
"Well. Can I ask a question?" Heightmeyer finally asked. John nodded. It was a much better plan than waiting on him to talk. Preferably yes or no questions, but he wasn't sure how to suggest that, and he knew better than to assume he’d get them.
"Sure," was all he said.
"You asked not to be referred to by your rank. That's a title I think you'll find everyone here believes you earned and knows you by. So. Why do you no longer want to be known that way?" she asked.
At least that was an easy one.
"I didn't have it long and I don't get to keep it. So it might as well go away," he replied, shrugging. "I'll get out now before the Daedalus gets back. No discharge that way. So the rank can retire, too."
"Retire? You're, what, thirty-eight years old, Co- John. That's not old enough to retire," said the doctor. She softened the judgement with a smile. John didn't return it.
"The bastard nearly killed me. Nothing works right for me now. I feel like an old man," he replied. "They can't just clean up the blood and stuff it back inside and have everything pick up like it never happened again."
"With treatment and physical therapy, you'll recover. It will take time, but you were healthy at the start-"
"But I didn't stay that way, did I? Didn't even make it through the first day," John cut in, tone harsh as the stress hit. "And now I can't just... Wait it out. If I wait around on it long enough, Caldwell will be back, and I'll get the conversation about priorities matching policies and I either get kicked out dishonorably or I get reassigned. And nobody back at the SGC would answer to me voluntarily."
"All of those are potential scenarios, sure, but nothing you know will happen," Heightmeyer said. "You and Rodney have been friends for months and no one has ever said anything about it that risks your career."
John shook his head, his shoulders sagging from the stress and frustration. "I can't sleep on my own now, so I stay with Rodney. That, people notice. Me and him playing with RCs in the lower levels, nobody cares, but me never leaving his apartment, people start to care about."
"Could you stay with anyone else?"
Surprised by the question, John turned toward the doctor, away from the sunshine at the window to look back at her. "What kinda question- I know Rodney's talked to you-"
"If you're concerned about public opinion, there are ways around that, things you can do, or even different perspectives to approach the issue from, yourself," said the shrink, who Sheppard was slowly beginning to doubt the sanity of. "So what you're suggesting then is that you would rather be done with your career than work out some alternatives in your relationship with Rodney."
"Alternatives-? There's no - Yes, that's what I'm saying, then," John replied, frustrated and confused on top of offended. Whatever he and Rodney were working on, there weren't alternatives for any of it. It was theirs. He moved back to the chairs where the doc sat, paced in front of the seat he had avoided since he walked in. "Look. My career got me here, and it has nearly gotten me killed more times than I can count, and for the first damn time in over five years I'm tired of the goddamned suicide missions. I want to just... Stay home and stay with Rodney. The pay-off is better than starving and bleeding and getting shot at and everything else."
"So you have a reason not to sacrifice yourself now?" Heightmeyer asked. "And a few months ago, you didn't feel that was so?"
"A few months ago, I thought Rodney was fine without me. And the whole blaze of glory thing sounded as good as anything else. And now I know better, and you can't go out in a blaze of glory when just sitting in the cockpit hurts like hell and you can't see through the pain to fly," said John.
"That sounds remarkably grounded, John," the doctor observed.
"Yeah, well, when you've got nothing better to do than stare into pitch blackness for twelve hours a day, for a month, you get to figure things out to keep sane. And I went through stuff like this before after Afghanistan, and believe it or not, I learned things," he replied. "And I learned things from Teyla that I had to work on, the whole mediation thing came in helpful once I figured it out. And I learned shit from Ronon, about how to try to keep going and heal up. And I had to keep it together to keep Rodney going. Being home after it is just... weird."
The doc nodded briefly but didn't seem to agree. "Rodney is responsible for himself here. The only person you have to keep track of right now is yourself."
"Yeah, well, I don't think the guy who's afraid of the dark should be left in charge of himself, either, let alone anybody else," said John.
"What's scary about the dark?"
"Either the door doesn't open and everything stays dark. Or it does, and... Things hurt," John replied with a shrug. It sucked, but he was stuck with it.
"So you stay where you are, afraid of both options," said Heightmeyer. John just nodded and looked back at the window. He was tired.
"The good news is, there are things you can do to get over the fear of the dark. Relatively painless, too," said the shrink.
"Yeah, I stay with Rodney," John replied. "Simple. And he's where I want to be, anyway."
"That's one. But you can take care of yourself, too. It's not his or anybody else's job to make your head make sense to you. There are different approaches to try, to get you out of this dark box you find yourself in here. It's a matter of finding the one that works for you," said Heightmeyer. "And that requires patience. And a willingness to try. And if you're stuck for a while anyway, waiting to heal, you'll have the time on your hands, right?"
John stared at the woman, not liking the basic logic just for the fact that he couldn't argue it. Reluctant and annoyed with himself, he finally sat down in the chair. He might have had to do this therapy thing before, but he hadn't walked away from the last problem afraid of the dark. He didn't know how to fix something that his brain said he should be done with already, how to tackle a problem that most people - himself included, until a month ago - kicked when they were still kids. Maybe Heightmeyer could get him around the stupid small stuff for now, until he could figure out the rest.
Besides, like she had pointed out, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
"Fine," John said. "What have ya got?"
The eventual verdict was that John would survive. His blood work was a mess and Carson had him on a whole battery of pills to get him healthy again, but it just made him feel like an old man with a pill-minder in his pocket. The radiation problem stayed a far-out concern, with no immediate proof that he or Rodney had suffered for the added toxicity of their shared hell. John had been plenty sick, sure, but test after test since he had been home showed they were in the clear. From Carson’s data so far, it was all the mess of torn muscles, wonky blood transfusions, and the added bonus of starvation along the way. Two-months away from massive blood loss didn't mean much recovery happened with all the other shit going on. The wrong blood type mixed in somewhere and all-told, John should have been dead from that mess by itself.
He had wished it a few times, with the depression in the mix, because looking around the city and trying to remember normal overlapped with a few things he really didn't want to remember at all. Daily visits with Carson, every other day visits with a shrink, and all the physical therapy to get his back and arms to be more useful than a wet noodle along with everything else... It was a full time job just recovering and John hadn’t stepped foot in his office once except to retrieve the RC cars.
And watching Rodney try to get back to work with Zelenka was maybe killing him, because McKay walked around with a look of perpetual confusion on his face now. It thankfully had absolutely nothing to do with John, as far as he knew, but it was still there. And they hadn’t been back on Atlantis for very long, John had only busted out of the infirmary just a little over a week earlier. Rodney wasn't even technically allowed back to work, he just showed up every day and nobody told him he couldn't be there. He said he was trying to catch up on other people's projects and sorting through that mess of emails he had sent himself.
Which was all part and parcel to why Elizabeth had called John in for a chat about the email he had sent her even though he was off on medical leave, dealing with the mess that was his head. The idea of going running again with Ronon or Teyla was a far off pipe-dream according to his PT and Carson's testing, no way anything off-world was happening, and the notion of saying anything to a bunch of Marines that they had to listen to was laughable. No soldier should have to listen to somebody who couldn't sleep without the goddamned bathroom light on. Work wasn't happening and John was just going to have to get on board with that.
So would Elizabeth.
"What is this, Colonel?" Weir asked. John was hardly in her office, the doors only just sliding closed, as she pointed at her tablet on the desk in front of her. He thought about giving her shit for it, but she didn't look quite in the mood. John just shrugged and sat down in his old usual spot, slouching very carefully to miss the stripe across his shoulders catching the backrest.
"Pretty much what it says on the tin, 'lizabeth."
She stared back at him, incredulous. "It says it's your resignation."
John waited, glancing around the room to make sure she wasn't expecting someone else to answer that. When no one appeared, he looked back at her with feigned confusion. "Is there a punchline?"
Elizabeth was genuinely not appreciating his efforts at levity and looked... A little distressed, really. She frowned at him, still motioning at random to her tablet, which presumably had his resignation letter still up on the screen. "We just got you back. You just got back. There is quite literally no reason for this, from where I'm sitting. You've done nothing wrong-"
"I've done a few things wrong," said John. He probably could have laughed at just how screwed up everything was that she was calling nothing wrong. Maybe everyone else was fine ignoring how badly sideways things had gone, like everything would eventually fall back in line, but John didn't exactly see that happening any time soon. It had left damage that wasn't just going to go away, and that had consequences.
And the rumor mill on Atlantis was absolutely brutal, especially when it came to who was dating who, so some of those consequences couldn't just be kicked under the rug. John was very definitely staying with Rodney. They were involved and John planned to stay that way. Elizabeth and Carson hadn't said anything on the matter, but they both knew. Lorne knew. Heightmeyer knew. The ignoring-of-things wouldn't last very long. It was only a matter of time before it got to Caldwell, either through one of the Marines or just an accidental mention in a briefing update.
"You've been back for two weeks, Colonel," Elizabeth said. "That's not enough time-"
"That's plenty of time to see the writing on the wall. I broke the rules. There's a big one not to mess around with but I did it anyway right off the bat; Air Force Lt. Colonel definitely Don't Kiss the Chief Science Officer in front of their Second in Command," John went on, quieter. "So in the grand scheme of things, after the last few months, I would rather resign than get discharged for the trouble."
"Major Lorne-"
"As I've said, Lorne is a good soldier and I'm not even going to put him in that position. It's shit, but it's still my choice," John said, interrupting firmly on that. Even if he wasn't scared shitless about the idea of being discharged after everything else, he wasn't going to compromise another soldier's career by making him divide loyalties between the laws of his country and the practical inconveniences of life in another galaxy. Especially not that one. Nope. Not happening.
"More than that, how many of those eighty Genii Kolya loved to shove in my face, how many actually needed to be taken out?" John asked. It sucked, it meant Kolya and Cowen had psyched him out, but it was a screw up that weighed on him and wouldn't leave. "Yeah, that's my job, and I had my reasons for doing it, but maybe there were other ways it should have been done. How many did you take out with some bug trying to get us back? Some of those were kids..."
"That's... What we have to do out here. Even with the help of the Athosians and others, we're hardly four hundred people against an entire galaxy on our own. We protect our own. However we have to. We have to make that known. And anyone who wants to challenge that can handle the consequences. There is no room for second-chances. As the Genii have now shown us," she replied. And she was the diplomat.
John knew she was right, but the fact that he couldn't get his brain around it was a bigger problem for him when it came down to doing the job. He shook his head. Elizabeth folded her hands and watched him, the frown on her lips tightening up to a line.
"Your military status notwithstanding, it's my choice whether I can accept this resignation or not, John," she reminded him soberly. "And right now, in light of the last few months, I don't feel I can in good conscience."
Really, if John was any good at his job in the first place, he would have seen this coming. He sat forward to argue even as she shook her head at him. "Elizabeth-"
"It will be another two months before the Daedalus is back," Elizabeth said, talking over him. "Until then, take the time. Leave of absence. Do what you need to. We'll revisit this at that time. When I am absolutely sure this isn't just the shock."
"I'm not going to change my mind," John said. It was equal parts stubborn warning as fact. Elizabeth shrugged it off. "I didn't go through all this shit just to get hit with a discharge at the end of it."
"Fine, then you can train Major Lorne in what he'll need to know to take over at the point you hand this letter to Colonel Caldwell. In the meantime, your voice and experience are still valued and needed here, and if there's anything that's made that explicitly clear to me, it's the last three months," said Elizabeth. She also, very much, was not budging on the issue. And his attitude was wearing on her. She shrugged off his refusal. "So while you wage your campaign to prove to me otherwise, I'll need you to get with Rodney and Zelenka to figure out how to download the contents of your life experience into Major Lorne's brain so the rest of us can sleep at night. I'm sure it won't be that difficult. He's young."
John blinked at her, surprised by the unexpected joke as much as her assessment that two and a half months without him around proved that he was necessary. He kind of figured it proved the opposite. Elizabeth stared back at him, hands folded on the desk in front of her.
"So, Colonel?" she offered. "Leave of absence."
John shrugged. Not-at-work was still not at work, no matter what they wanted to call it. He would put the resignation letter in Caldwell's hand eventually. "Fine."
Elizabeth seemed to breathe a little easier for it. "Thank you. Did you tell Rodney yet?"
The question seemed out of left-field and John frowned at her for it. "What? Why? I don't report to him..."
"That's a no," said Elizabeth, shaking her head. She pulled the tablet off the stand and turned it to face him so he could see the file information - including the very obvious file name of JSheppardResignation.pdf - displayed plainly across the top. "You should do that before he sees it on the server."
John had written it on his tablet. Which Rodney had hacked two months earlier and done god-knew-what to while it sat without a network. And everything on the tablets saved to the network server if they weren't actively specified. "Oh shit."
"Resignation or not, you should probably get ahead of that," Elizabeth said, far too smug about it. Taking that as his dismissal, John shoved himself out of the chair and left to find Rodney before someone pointed out the filename to him. Someone like Elizabeth, apparently. God, the rumor mill in the city was gonna kill him.
There had been a betting pool among senior staff on how long it would take Rodney to get back to work. Apparently Zelenka had won. Eight days. There was some kind of math equation drawn up for it, too, and he had it up on the white board the day Rodney walked himself back into the lab and started to clear his desk of the flowers someone had been keeping alive for him. Zelenka made bank, while Rodney piled flowers on a cart to take back to his room because John had taken it to heart when Rodney had told him that humans had to see plant life to thrive, so there were now potted plants on all available shelving.
"I'm not entirely sure these aren't expected to be returned..." Rodney had pointed out. And John just scoffed and muttered something about no take-backs.
And so it was that the guy with the allergies lived in a semi-dark greenhouse half the day and hid from plants for the other half, in the lab and the control room and a few other technology-only rooms around the central tower. After two weeks back, and still sharing quarters, John probably preferred the plants. He had brought his guitar over and Rodney caught him once plucking strings in the flowers' general direction, though there had been no singing to confirm the intended audience.
So it was unexpected to look up and find John lurking in the doorway of the lab, well before lunch. Particularly considering John still preferred to arrive places on his own rather than risk an escort. As it was, his presence was almost instantly announced by a handful of "Good morning, Colonel!" greetings from behind laptop screens and John played it off with a tight smile and his hands in fists in his pants pockets. He looked to Rodney, lingered in the door a little, before finally walking over to him.
"What's wrong?" Rodney asked, automatic from the look on the man's face.
"Nothing... I just need to borrow you for a minute. 'lizabeth thing," John replied, though he glanced around the room when he tried to blame the director. He caught sight of the tablet next to the laptop. "This yours?"
Rodney nodded as he shut the laptop. John snagged the tablet and tucked it against his side as he turned to lead the way out of the room. They made it down the hall some in quiet as John started messing with the tablet. He managed to unlock it with the biometrics scanner and then narrowed his eyes at Rodney.
"Apparently this is my tablet."
"Possible. I cloned them back in the other lab. Haven't bothered to keep track since we got home," Rodney said. "Now what is this about? Not that it's not lovely to see you, of course, I just-"
Stopping where they were in the hall, John held the tablet up so Rodney could see words on the digital screen. A letter, addressed to Elizabeth Weir was open and readable. A resignation letter.
Rodney had been expecting something to happen along those lines for the last week and a half, but for some reason seeing the words in black and white hurt a little.
"Oh. Right," he managed. He took the tablet back from John and closed the letter once he had scanned it. Nothing said anything about going back to Earth, nothing about leaving. Just Sheppard's notice to resign from the military, which would impact his availability for duties for the Atlantis expedition. Rodney didn't like it. But it made sense. He had been planning on something like that. So he switched to another file, double checked the words, and then handed it back to John.
"Check and mate," Rodney said. Sheppard's eyebrows went up and he accepted the tablet back like he expected it to bite him. But he read the file he was presented with. Then he looked back up at Rodney.
"What is this?" he asked, as if he was a moron with no reading comprehension skills.
"You promised you wouldn't leave. And given that the only thing that I believed could make you break that promise was at least half my responsibility, I found a contingency plan to keep you on Atlantis if you chose to leave the Air Force," said Rodney. "You know the way around the labs. The science geeks are mostly afraid of you, or your hair, I have never figured out which, and you know the way around the damn paperwork Elizabeth is constantly expecting me to stay on top of in amongst crises. And that's all not to mention the freakishly high ATA which we regularly need to gain access to certain systems. I think an administrative science department liaison is necessary at this juncture, because I can't otherwise be expected to keep up. I can't put in the hours that I could before and have to prioritize my workload to city operations and the minutia will never get done."
"Admini- This is a secretary, Rodney. You're asking for a secretary." John's lips tugged up in a mildly amused grin. "And you happen to think I would be a good fit for this made-up new job."
"All job titles arise out of necessity," Rodney replied. "And it is not a secretary. I don't want one of those. The bad ones cry."
John let out a surprised laugh and then quickly controlled it. "Don't make your secretaries cry, Rodney. That makes you a bad person."
Rodney raised a hand and flicked his knuckle against John's forehead, right between the eyes for the taunt, and John swatted him away even as he started in with the quiet snickering again.
"If we can keep you here as a secretary, fine, you can be a secretary if that's what you want," Rodney said. "Otherwise we have to go back to the SGC and that would be miserable."
John's humor fell almost instantly. "Look, I don't know what's going to happen. Elizabeth won't accept the resignation. I'm still on medical leave. It's two months before I can get it to Caldwell. I just... Figured you needed to know. That's... That's my call on this. I'm not going back to work, and I’m getting out before they kick me out."
Rodney nodded acceptance of it but still tapped the tablet screen. "Maybe you don’t have to work for the Air Force, but you're still going to work for Atlantis. I need you here. And you need to sleep, so I have the advantage in this argument."
John smirked at him. "If this is an argument, this is the most civil one we have ever had."
"Well, it helps that I've had two weeks to get used to this newest dumb idea, so if it's what you want to do, fine. I have five more backup plans if Elizabeth doesn't accept this one," Rodney replied.
"What if I had my own backup plans?" John asked, frowning at him.
Rodney waited a beat for the brilliant idea he had apparently skipped over. "Well, what is it then?"
"I didn't say I had one, I just said what if," John pointed out, grin back in place. Rodney rolled his eyes.
"This is why I do the thinking. You do the shooting things. MENSA drop-outs don't have the follow-through."
"Ouch! Kick a man while he's down, sure," said John. But he was smiling as he dodged the blow.
"Or I could kiss him since he's out of the Air Force anyway," Rodney replied. John's smile finally lit his eyes again and he nodded.
"Yes. You could do that."