Mythic Classics 1

Anteus In Atlantis

by Elfkin

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/ase/elfkin/mythic01.php
Summary: The beginning of discovery. A new weapon against the Wraith, a new understanding, and maybe a new relationship for John and Rodney

Teyla walked up to where John Sheppard was sitting on a balcony overlooking Atlantis. She often found him here when he was spending time alone. And though the beauty of the view could not be denied, she never seemed to find him here actually looking at it. Rather he was always doing something else.....reading as he was today, napping, listening to music...sketching in his paper pad that he kept hidden.... Everyone must have their retreat, and this place, she knew, was the Major's.

"Hey, Teyla." John Sheppard closed the book, carefully marking the page.

"What are you reading, John?" She came and sat beside him, folding one knee under her. She was not surprised that she was unable to come to him without his notice. Quiet as she moved. John was a warrior of sharp senses.

"It's nothing much....just some light reading."

"Light reading?" She smiled quizzically?

"Uh, yes. We have a saying where I come from. A man does not live by football alone." And he grinned that disarming smile that seemed to Teyla to hide the majority of what the Major was actually feeling. A pleasant mask withal. But still a mask.

"Ah. But I thought you said Football was the great analogy." She nudged him with her elbow.

"Well, Yeah. It is." John notched his chin in the air a bit in mock indignation. "But you can have to much of a good thing."

"Like Dr. McKay?" She slid in quickly.

"Yeah, Like Dr McK... Hey now!" John frowned at her boldness, and frowned deeper at his own slip. "Listen Teyla, you can't go around saying things like that. We're a military operation as well as an expedition of explorers and on my planet...."

"Yes, yes." She laughed and waved a dismissive hand. "Your scientific community here has already explained 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I find it an archaic concept, but I'm told it is an improvement over the way it used to be for your kind." She patted him on the shoulder.

"My kind?" John scrunched his face, amused. "I wonder if I should be insulted. Exactly what do you think my kind is?"

"Do not be alarmed, John Sheppard. My people are familiar with the concept of men who love other men. But we are not unkindly disposed toward the idea, unlike the military you serve. " John was sure he heard a gentle sniff of superiority from the Athosian leader.

John relaxed a bit. "Actually, I am not what you think. I'm a bit.... open-minded about that sort of thing, rather than having a preference for one or the other."

"Ah, I see. And does this make it easier to bear with your career...this open-mindedness?"

John snorted softly. "Actually no, it's considered pretty much all the same in my line of work. Even if you appreciate women, that you like men as well is a problem still."

Teyla frowned. "You know John Sheppard, one day, the warriors on your Earth will have to realize that who one chooses as a mate has nothing to do with one's ability as a warrior."

"Yep. But the issue is not ability as a warrior, Teyla. I think it's a matter of seeing worth there. It's considered unmanly to engage in a relationship like that with another man."

"Why?"

"Hey, don't ask me. I don't make the rules. I just break'em." Again, he grinned widely, skirting how uncomfortable the subject and the conversation as a whole was making him.

"But what does manly have to do with it? Do you not have female warriors?" Teyla was honestly trying to understand, but this prejudice she was learning of in their culture seemed to make no sense.

"Uh...yes. But soldiering is still considered a masculine pursuit even if it is done by a woman.""And do these woman in the military get treated with disrespect as well....for being unmanly?""Yes, but in a different way. You see, many also think that....a pairing.... between two men defies nature. That only men and women were meant to get together and they are afraid of anything else changing that."

"But if the men who love other men already exist and have not yet changed or harmed what is considered natural joinings.... Then how could it be an issue?"

"That, Teyla, Is a very good question. Unfortunately I am not in a position to ask it. I have a responsibility to lead here, to protect. And that requires the loyalty of my men. And if they think I am..... Well... if they thought McKay and I were together, there would be problems at every turn. Every aspect of my ability to lead would be questioned and that would leave Atlantis at risk. I can't my desires above the safety of this mission and the people who rely on me. I just can't."

"I see...." She patted his arm empathetically. She knew John Sheppard to be a man of honor.... a worthy friend. And this was just more evidence. But she was sad for him. "It is much as Dr. Beckett and the other scientists explained to me then."

"What! What exactly did you discuss with them?" John was not sure he was at all comfortable with the kinds of things the scientists seemed to discuss about him. "Something called.....a pool?" Teyla was having fun now. Probably too much though, given the chagrined look on John Sheppard's face.

"I see." John was going to have to have a talk with the good doctor later.

They sat in companionable silence for a while before John picked up his book and marked the page with a sliver of paper. Then he sighed and suddenly the pretense was gone. "I come up here to think, you know. That isn't why you were talking to the scientist's was it? Me being up here? I just didn't want..."

"You didn't want Dr. McKay to find you." Kayla grinned reassuringly, stating it rather than asking.

McKay could get under anyone's skin but the Major was usually up to sparing with the scientist on his own terms. Lately though, she had noticed something...some tension going on between the two and in truth it had been that which was the cause of her inquiry with the scientists.

John's very expressive brows climbed high on his forehead for a moment and then laughed. "That obvious, huh?." Tayla shrugged, never surrendering the knowing smirk. "You nailed it, Teyla. McKay is being a pain in the ass." He left the word 'again' unsaid.

"So you are hiding." She smirked again.

"Okay...now I think hiding is a little harsh." Like he was ever going to admit to that.

"I think it is not." And Teyla tilted her head with that thoughtful look that tended to make a person feel like she was seeing right into them. And in this case she was.

"You never told me what you were reading, John Sheppard." She diverted the subject then. John Sheppard looked tired, and a bit... resigned? She wasn't sure what else she saw, but it seemed to her that John needed simple conversation at this moment. "John?"

"Huh?" John had drifted a moment into his own thoughts. "Sorry. I know you asked something...."

"I asked you what is your book about. What story does it tell?"

"Oh. Well, uhm... This is a classics compilation. It means the stories in here are very old."

"Like your 'Nightmare on Elm Street' story?"

"Uhhhh....No. Not precisely." He grinned sheepishly.

"But you said that was a classic." "Different kind of classic, Teyla. Anyway.... Uhm.... The one I was reading was about this guy named Hercules." John settled in with his pleasant mask back in place. The face Major John Sheppard put on for audiences. The instant charmer. She was wishing he would not.... But all the same, Tayla knew instinctual behavior when she saw it.

"Hercules?" She asked, playing along.

"Yeah. He was this mythological guy....you know... he never really existed. He was just a hero in a story. But if you ask me, he listened to his step mom too much."

"Step mom?" This was not a term Tayla was familiar with

"Yeah....You see, he was the son of a human woman and a God... the King of the Gods to be exact. Zeus. And Hercules was supposed to be King of Argos when he grew up. But then Zeus's wife, the Goddess Hera, got a bit pissy at Zeus' infidelity and prevented Hercules from being born until another, mortal son had been born first....You know....to be king instead of him. Well, when grown up, Hercules did his own thing for a while until Hera, made him actually do what his older brother King Eurystheus wanted. And Eurystheus was kind of a whiney jerk who was jealous of Hercules 'cause being the son of a God gave Hercules all this power and strength. So Eurystheus sent Hercules off on these jobs.... Quests really. They sucked... and most of them made no sense and made Hercules out to be this patsy for Hera and his dork older brother, the King. Except this one trial....with a giant called Anteus. "

Tayla was totally lost. John was many things, a good story teller he was not. But he enjoyed trying so she just nodded. She had the feeling that this was going somewhere anyway. "And what made this Anteus so worthwhile?" she prodded.

John grinned wryly. "Well.... Anteus was the son of the Earth. And so he had all the strength of the Earth. The only way Hercules could defeat him was to separate him from his link to the place he drew his power from." John looked at her sharply for a moment. Then he sighed and sat back, looking out over the city and sea.

"Ah.....John?" Tayla knew he was saying more than was obvious, but she was unsure what.

"I'm a bit homesick." He finally answered her unasked query staring at his lap. His voice suddenly held a weariness that John did not often reveal to others and Tayla felt the unsure how to proceed other than to continue to lend him a willing audience. "Anteus had all that power, all that strength. And all it took to defeat him was separating him from the Earth..... I'm in over my head out her, Teyla. I've set them on us, the whole collection of Wraith ships and everyone they kill is my fault. And here I am countless light years from Earth with no supplies for our people, no back up. We need armies out here or we are just pissing on the inferno...." He hadn't meant for all of that to slip out. But he was so sick of holding it in, bound inside him by the guilt of knowing that the blood of every man woman and child killed in the culling was on his hands.

"You aren't Anteus, John Sheppard."

He let out a derisive snort at that. "You're right. I'm actually thinking I am maybe I'm Sisyphus. Another Greek figure. He was doomed to spend eternity pushing a boulder up one side of this mountain all by himself only to have it roll down the other side and he have to push it back up again. You see, he never gets anywhere, he'll be rolling that damn boulder up one side of the mountain or another, forever."

"A lesson in futility?" She was genuinely worried about the Major now.

"I think so." he brought his gaze up to meet hers an she could see the guilt and hopelessness there. This was about more than just his problems with Dr. McKay.

"I see." Teyla whispered. "And who else are you reading stories about, John?" She could let him voice his fears to her... even if he could only admit them in terms of his stories. She would listen.

"Do your people know the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu?"

And that was how they spent the next hour.

~~~

The mezzanine over Operations was much closer to the action than the balcony John had sat at last evening, talking to Teyla. And it allowed John the opportunity to keep watch on the Stargate Jumper Bay, the control center and several other goings on. It wasn't his official office or base of operations, but it allowed him some quiet time while being able to see most of what was going on with all the central levels at a mere glance. It was a place where he could be found fast, especially by Weir, but where he was likely to at least get a little break from Rodney since the only access to it was stairs.

It's not that he was hiding... Alright he was hiding. There was attraction there. And so trouble. Neither he nor Rodney was stupid. In a fish-bowl like Atlantis, it wasn't like he could do anything about it and not have it feature as the latest gossip du jour, or worse. Besides, though he knew McKay felt it, he was not sure the scientist was comfortable with it. He had no indication that Rodney had ever had a male lover.

Besides, even if McKay were amenable to the idea, how were they going to pull it off and not ruin his ability to command? The situation was totally impossible.

And while Major John Sheppard leaned there looking at the hustle below, he contemplated there were definite days when he longed for the solitude of McMurdo. The talk with Tayla had been nice, they usually were. But he really just needed to take a couple of days off. It tended to be a bad sign when he started indulging in classic literature as analogous to his life. The Greeks didn't write happy endings.....for anyone.

And as he looked down on the control bay where Rodney was waving his arms around exasperatedly, he realized there were also days when he wanted to treat Dr Rodney McKay like an errant child. With patience and a heavily leavened sense of humor. Then he saw Peter gesture up to where John was up above and he pondered with a resigned sigh that there were days when he wanted to shake the hypochondriac scientist until his teeth rattled for any number of reasons.

Today John really just wanted to wring McKay's neck.

"Major!" And speak of the devil. McKay trotted up, huffing and wheezing, propping himself heavily on the pillar John Sheppard was casually leaned against.

"What is it now McKay?" John was proud of himself for not growling. Instead he looked over with an expression of marked annoyance, his arms crossed. It had been one thing after another lately. Touch this, Major. We need to know how the Ancients activated it. Touch that, Major. We need to know what the Ancients used it for...

"I ....Uhm." Dr McKay held up a finger gesturing for patience. "Give me a second to catch...my....breath. Won't......you?" Sheppard rolled his eyes as he waited for McKay to quit wheezing and get to the point. A few moments passed and then the scientist's breathing was back under control.

"Okay. I can talk now." Rodney huffed.

Too bad, thought John. But he just leaned there against the pillar, waiting.

"The second team just came back from the far East end of the city, from another one of those labs, with something I can't identify yet. Okay. Alright. Actually several somethings I can't identify and I'd like your help...."

"Uhm.....No." John said flatly in a quiet tone.

"What?" Rodney yelped. "What do you mean, 'No'? You didn't even let me finish!" He stared at Sheppard leaning there with an odd look on his face. Rodney hated guessing what the Major was thinking. He was always so embroiled with distracting thoughts about the man that he could never seem to intuit what Sheppard was actually up to. And yet he felt totally transparent before the Major.

"No, means no, McKay. I have been doing this for days solid now and I want to stop. I need a break. I'm not getting my job done."

"Oh, so your job is playing Billy goat's gruff on the top of the mountain!" Rodney gestured at the mezzanine alcove they were standing on.

"I can watch more than one place at a time from here, Doctor. Which I can't do tied up in your office"

And McKay cursed his head for filling with images of the Major tied up in his office, at his mercy.....naked. He really needed to wash his brain. Instead he tried to get back on track and ignore the mutiny in his pants.

"But! It's not like you don't have a bunch of grunts to watch things for a few hours. And all you have to do is touch the stuff and think! Surely even you can do that!" It was not meant to come out sounding so insulting, but it did. With Rodney it usually did.

"Rodney, don't be a bigger asshole than you have to be."

"But! God! Do I really have to get Weir to send you to my lab?" Lately the Major would not come to his lab unless he sent Elizabeth to talk him into it. Which was just beyond belief. Rodney couldn't fathom how Sheppard wouldn't leap at the opportunity to work with Ancients technology rather than play guard dog all day.

"What does that have to do with it!" John howled, finally loosing his composure.

People from below were now looking up at them and whispering. Peter, grabbed Dr. Beckett's elbow as he walked by with a report for Weir and pointed upwards at John Sheppard and Dr. McKay argued. Money changed hands.

"If I want you to cooperate anymore, I have to go get Elizabeth to sweet talk you!"

"Maybe I just don't want to be walled up in your damn lab anymore for a few days and so it takes an order from my boss to make me do it!" The moment John said it he wished he could take it back.

A split second of hurt flashed across Rodney's face and then was replaced by a rather un-McKay-ish look of hesitancy. "Ah... I see. Well..."

"Look.. Rodney, I'm sor.." John offered softly. He reached out to stop the retreating scientist only to withdraw quickly when Rodney yanked out of the way.

"No. You're right. You have been spending too much time in there of late. How...How about I leave you alone. I'm gonna go get lunch.... And then I can always get Carson to try to activate the stuff without killing himself.....or one of us." And then McKay beat a hasty retreat down the stairs.

"Rodney, wait!" But he was already gone. And now John felt like he'd kicked a puppy. A multiple degreed, arrogant, genius, geek puppy, but still a puppy. "Damnit!" And he kicked the wall, only succeeding in making himself have to limp down the stairway.

~~~

John walked into the lab and waited for the whoosh of the door to close behind him. Then he wrapped his knuckled against it. "Can I come in?"

Rodney looked up a little annoyed, and very surprised. Though if he had to admit it, he was also sort of relieved. He and John traded barbs all the time, but when John had refused to help him with his work, it hurt. It was also insulting because even with the gene therapy, Rodney was not able to operate half the things John was....no one was. And John knew it.

"I thought you wanted to get away from my lab." Rodney said in a clipped tone, deciding not to point out that John already had come in.

"Yeah, well. I was wrong" John fidgeted for a moment like some embarrassed errant boy that was about to reclaim the baseball he'd hit through the front window. "I got out there in all the open air and realized I was missing the smell of fresh coffee and stale geeks." John reached for some gadget to fumble with, avoiding Rodney's eye. "Or was that the other way around? Stale coffee and fresh......"

"I get it, Major." Rodney cut him off, seeing where that was going and knowing it would only leave him with unwelcome pictures in his head again. For a genius, he had very little mental control.

Silence stood between them for a moment and then Rodney snorted derisively, breaking the tension. "That was lame, Sheppard."

"Was it?" John quirked a lopsided grin. "Huh! And here I thought I was offering an olive branch." He tossed the gadget at McKay and Rodney had to drop what was in his hands to catch it.

"Well, you were offering an olive branch." McKay growled at John, replacing the tossed object to its home, sparing a dark glare at John. "And it's accepted, if you can promise not to break anything while you're here."

"Yeah?"

The grin on John's face was worth all the annoyance for Rodney. God he was frustratingly smitten! "Yes. But....Uhm.... Major? That was still prescription strength lame."

"That bad, huh?" John arched a brow.

"Yep, that was definitely not just over-the-counter Lame. That was..."

"Now I get the point, Rodney." John snapped. But they both knew it was just a game. The same game they always played. Trading barbs instead of something more dangerous.... More satisfying. "So what am I supposed to touch."

"Well, I.. Uh... have this 'thing' over here." McKay gestured toward another table beyond the central island work counter in his lab.

"Thing, huh? You guys learn to label this stuff in college?" John sauntered over with his hands in his pockets.

"Are you gonna help or make smartass comments?" "You mean I get to choose?" John grinned even wider. Round one to Major Sheppard.

"Jesus! Just get over here!" It seems to be solid when John cautiously picked it up.

Rodney started jabbering. "I can't tell if it's a puzzle box, or if it's some kind of energy source or weapon!"

"Maybe it's a present that they really didn't want the kids to open early."

Rodney just sighed. He couldn't figure out how he wanted this so badly and then when Sheppard actually showed up, he dreaded it. "It's resisting most scans. We know the outside is made out of the same thing the gate and most of Atlantis is made out of. Naquada."

"Is that all?" John asked acerbically, concentrating on the twelve inch box in his hands.... extending his mind, feeling for that familiar link with Ancient technology.

"No, I also have this, it was found in the same room." And he yanked the box away and handed John something shaped kind of like... a small jointed boomerang. "I think I can figure the others out but these two have me stumped."

"Hmmmm...." John ran his fingers over the object, a look of deep concentration furrowing his brow.

"What?" McKay nosed in close, excitement lighting his face.

"Nothing, I just always wanted to do that 'hmmmm' thing that Doctors on TV do." John shrugged.

"Major!" This is what Rodney McKay called irony. The one man in the world they had been able to find for whom the working of Ancient technology came as a natural thing and he was a smartass, military grunt. An attractive military grunt, Rodney mused for a moment, but a total pain.

'It's not got instructions on the outside. No writing or pictures." John observed with a cocked brow.

"That is one of the reasons we are having such trouble. I had the linguistics team look it over while you were out missing the smells around here." Rodney deadpanned.

John wasn't rising to that challenge, he was smarter than that. "And it didn't blow any of them up or attack them with lazers or anything?" John faked disappointment.

"Ah...no." Rodney took a moment to wonder why the Universe hated him.

"Hmmmmm....." John had to fight to suppress a grin this time.

"Now don't start that again!" Rodney nearly winced at his own tone. Though he had been hurt by John's previous refusal at help, he couldn't deny it had struck a cord. He was heavy handed to work with. He knew it. And despite hating making nice with people just to get a job done, he didn't really want to run John off again.

"I'm tired. The crew hasn't gotten anywhere with this today and I am going to go to fall in the floor soon if I don't break for dinner. You...uhm....You joining me?" They could go back to the mystery cube after a meal.

"What? Oh. Uh, yeah. Just give me a minute here." The distracted tone in John's voice and his keen expression got Rodney's attention at once.

"You got something. Major?"

John could feel some palpable link between the two objects, McKay having put them both in his hands one at a time. They went together if he could only figure out how. It was like they were related in a family.... John was still getting used to inanimate objects communicating with him subliminally and this was something different yet than he was used to experiencing. "Not sure. I keep looking at them separate. Then I look at them together. I'm missing something simple."

"Can't be that simple. I missed it too." Rodney snorted.

"Thanks, Rodney." John's concentration was ruined by a sudden burst of irritation at the physicist.

"Just sayin'" Rodney quipped defensively.

"Yeah, well don't." John groused. If he was gonna be here all evening helping, it did not bode well if they couldn't refrain from insults for five whole minutes.

"Fine, I'm off to dinner. You can come or not." McKay stomped toward the door to his lab.

"Naw, I'll pass." John called over his shoulder, engrossed in studying the objects and not wanting to break off from it to have dinner with Rodney while he was pouting. But he was hungry. "Maybe you can bring something back."

McKay frowned at Sheppard's back for a moment and then shrugged. "Careful, Major. You might get a reputation for being a geek."

"Not." John called over his shoulder and then the door whooshed open and Rodney was gone.

~~~

"Here you go, Major?" Rodney walked in and expected the Major to be sitting at the work station still in deep thought.

"Sheppard? Hello, Major?" Great, Rodney thought. He's abandoned the project after only working on it for little over half an hour. Then dr. McKay noticed the objects weren't on the table in view and he walked around the island countertop in his lab to the other side where the objects had been when he left them and the Major to go get dinner.

And what he saw made his stomach knot up and his heart race painfully. "Oh, damn! John!" Rodney quickly set aside the dinner he'd brought for the Major and skidded over to kneel down next to him. Major Sheppard was lying on his side, slightly curled up, unconscious. Rodney froze with fear for a moment before quickly turning John onto his back and feeling for a pulse. His relief was short lived as he tapped the Major's face trying to wake him, only to get no response. John's pale, damp face and the trickle of blood seeping from his nose in a sluggish trail scared McKay back to action. Collecting his wits, Rodney slapped his com button hard. "Infirmary, this is McKay! Beckett, Get down to my lab! YESTERDAY! Something's happened to Major Sheppard!"

"Oh, God....Oh, God. Chill Rodney! You didn't know he was going to hurt himself while you stepped out to take care of your blood sugar." He pulled John's head onto his lap and waited for the medical team to get there. "John, damnit! How the Hell do you manage these things!"