kansas

John wakes up feeling groggy and cold, a burning pain in his fingers and toes, his muscles cramping. Everything hurts. His body feels like its being turned inside out.

He opens his eyes long enough to see that he's being thrown down onto the floor of a jumper before someone curses near him. John squints up and sees blurrily, a man struggling with a panel above him, taking out random control crystals.

The man looks down at John then, frowning. He kneels on the ground slowly, looking John over. "Think you can follow me a little better?"

John frowns. Better than what?

"Look, this section's about to be flooded any second. It'd be a shame if we both drowned after I played the hero to get you out of your stasis pod. Think you can tell me how to shut the door on this thing?"

John swallows hard, finding it difficult to breathe properly or force words from his mouth. He wants to know who the hell this man is. He wants to know why he's lying shivering on the floor of a jumper. He wants to know why the only familiar thing here is a jumper and the feeling of impending disaster.

"Hey! Come on! You with me here?" the man grabs John's chin, giving his face a shake.

John glares up at the man and thinks about the doors shutting, the shield activating. There's a familiar buzzing through the jumper and he sees it light up bit by bit before the door shuts with a healthy clunk. The stranger looks up in surprise and then grins, obviously relieved.

John turns his back on the man, rolling onto his side and curling up to stop the tremors. After a moment, he feels the weight of a blanket being placed on him and a pat on the shoulder.

"I knew I was going to like you," John hears humor in the voice, but ignores it, closing his eyes, shutting them tight as he tries to remember what went wrong.

The next time he wakes, he feels sluggish and worn out. He sits up slowly, shuffling back to lean against the bench. He's wearing a pair of white infirmary scrubs, no shoes.

So... something did go wrong.

Scratching his face, he finds a generous beard growth and quick touch to the head confirms that his hair is a little on the long side - just right for a cut in fact.

"It's okay. Everything's where you left it," a familiar voice says. "I swear I didn't touch a thing."

John sees the other man seated in the pilot's chair, grinning at him. He's dressed odd even for someone in this galaxy. Actually, perhaps not like someone from this galaxy at all. Not even from the same time.

"What the hell's going on here?" John croaks.

The man looks wounded and amused at the same time. "Well, it's nice to meet you too."

John pushes himself up to his feet, using the bench to lean on. When he stumbles and begins to fall, the unwanted guest darts out of his seat and grabs John, helping him to sit on the bench. He picks up the blanket from the floor and holds it out to John, a small smile playing on his lips.

John sighs, shaking his head. He's never felt this tired and old. He takes the blanket and clumsily wraps it around himself, looking up at the other guy. "Who are you?"

The man straightens slightly and says, "Captain Jack Harkness. And you're John Sheppard."

John looks at the clothes again and wonders where this man was a captain. Or rather, when. He looks past Jack to see the flooded bay outside the jumper. Atlantis is under water again. John knows his day is about to get worse. Jack follows his gaze and when he looks back at John, he seems unreadable.

John waits for answers, a part of him not wanting confirmation of the worst. However, Jack doesn't look as though he'll volunteer any information. There's going to be no easy way of pulling this band aid off.

"I was in a stasis chamber," John says.

"Yes. You were."

"Any idea why?"

"You don't remember?"

John looks up at Jack and smiles, unsure of whether he's conveying any of the amusement he should be feeling.

Jack smiles and nods. "Right. The data showed that you'd been infected by a virus your people couldn't flush out of your system. It was killing you, so they put you in stasis to slow it down." Jack fished around in the pocket of his coat and pulled out what looked like a silver pen with a sharp point. "Of course, they didn't have this."

"What happened to the city?" John asks.

Jack frowns at his gadget before shoving it back into a pocket. "Wraith," he says.

"My people?" John asks, knowing they wouldn't leave him in a dying city.

"Wraith attack. They Went down with the ship," Jack says flatly. "Sorry."

John takes five seconds. Five seconds to put the information in place, to mourn the passing of a city and the loss of his friends. Five seconds to believe Jack for as long as necessary before he decides what to do.

Then he looks up at Jack with an even stare. "What do you want?"

There's something dangerous about Jack's eyes. The way he looks at John is like a hunter that's found its prey. He steps closer, looking as though he's going to tell John a secret.

"How did you make the jumper door close?" he asks.

John tries to read Jack carefully. "You already know the answer to that."

Jack nods and smiles. "The gene."

John closes his eyes against the slow pounding in his head. "You're going to have to make more sense."

"Cybermen," Jack says quietly. "They take humans and turn them into machines. They're deleting humanity one person at a time. Earth's one of the last planets standing, but not for long. In the beginning it looked as though their choices for deletion were random, anyone that got in their way. That was until Stargate Comamnd's files were declassified. Of course, there wasn't much of the SGC left after the Ori obliterated the facility. It took a long time to make sense of the data we were able to retreive. What we did find was a pattern. The cybermen were taking anyone that had the Ancient gene."

"Maybe they're afraid of ascension," John says flatly.

Jack snorts. "or maybe they don't want people with a genetic key to powerful technology, The Ori and the Ancients went head to head, made weapons to finish each other. Weapons we might be able to use. But not without the gene. After years of systematic elimination, there's no one left to even turn on an Ancient lightbulb, let alone fire a weapon. Except... for you."

John thinks about the Ori and Ancients. Thinks about people being killed off for the gene. He thinks about all this happening while he was sleeping. How long?

"What happened to the Wraith?" John asks.

Jack leans back. "Out there somewhere. Not a lot of them left. Probably even less numbers than the Goa'uld."

"So... my people are gone. The city's gone. The Wraith are gone," John says. "One more question."

"Seventy years," Jack says. "You've been in stasis for seventy years."

John gives a nod. "Well... can't say I don't look good for my age."

A few seconds later he falls to his knees and throws up the contents of an empty stomach, Jack kneeling next to him.

"It's the medication," Jack says. "It'll wear off."

"Jack."

"Yeah," Jack answers a crackly transmission.

"We're in range for pick up. Do you have him?"

"Yeah, I got him."

John falls to the side and presses his forehead against the cool jumper floor, feeling a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Get us out of here," Jack says as John thinks of his friends in their watery grave, surrounding him like phantoms in a nightmare that lasted seventy years.

Once when he wakes up, he's huddled in a bed, folding in on himself, trying to catch voices around him. One of them sounds like Jack. Someone jabs him with something at the base of his neck, sharp and hot, but he's too cold to care. Jack says something about a sickness, lingering effects. Says John will be fine. But John thinks of life before Atlantis and the way he realised years later that he was never fine. Not until he came to Atlantis.

Next time he wakes he's in a small bunk in a dark room. His face is mashed into the pillow, his head heavy and for some reason his fingers are gripping the bedsheets under the blanket. Jack is sitting on the opposite bunk, watching him quietly.

"Where are we?" John croaks.

"On the way to Earth," Jack says. "Be there in a day or two."

"Can't wait," John says. "Always wanted to be a lab rat."

Jack sighs, like he's disappointed. "We've got a sample of your DNA."

"Just the one?" John asks, feeling the pinpricks of needles.

Jack's face is blank. "You'd be looked after well, if you decide to stick around once we get back to Earth. No one can force you to work for us."

John laughs into the pillow. "Sorry to hear that."

"We have Ancient technology. Maybe we'll be able to switch it on, but you might be the only person that can make it work." Jack is staring at John, his gaze intense though there is an odd tiredness around his mouth. John wonders how long the other man has been fighting. His guess is a long time.

John closes his eyes and shuts Jack out. He feels hollow, a part of him floating around Atlantis with the rest of the remains.

By the time they reach Earth, the shaking has eased and John's head has begun to clear. He remembers a mission. He remembers Teyla giving him an arched eyebrow and amused smile, Ronon grinning in the background. He remembers laughing at something Rodney said, something inappropriate and so Rodney. Only, it's fuzzier from there. There's a vague recollection of arriving home, stepping through the gate. He remembers feeling an odd unease, hot discomfort. Later, he couldn't keep up with Ronon when they went for a run. He zones in and out of a conversation with Teyla. Lastly, he remembers lying on the floor of his room, Rodney frowning down at him, checking for a pulse. Rodney's calling for Carson and trying to get John to respond to questions.

Then it's seventy years of sleep.

John silently replays the last memories as he's examined in a hospital wing of some large building. Jack tells him he's in the newLondon Torchwood headquarters.

John hears Jack explaining what Torchwood is, but the words pass through him like ghosts.

Jack remains a silent presence in the corner of the room while John is constantly told how something as simple as his DNA can change the tide of war. He gives them blood, pints of the stuff. It's the best any soldier can do in a war.

But John considers his war over. He couldn't save his people, there's not much else to fight for. And there's new blood to spill every day.

They don't need him.

Not the way Atlantis did. Or at least, they don't want him like Atlantis did.

His apartment is conveniently situated near Torchwood HQ and no doubt is also under watch. They tell him he's free to go, but John knows the definition of free is forever mutating.

Someone has gone to the trouble of furnishing the apartment tastefully and providing an ample wardrobe as well as stocking the kitchen with food supplies. Seventy years has added a whole bunch of new remote controls to everything and it takes a while for John to realise that even now, the best gadget is the phone and the best mode of food preparation is calling the local pizza place.

When the food arrives, he sits down in front of the TV and opens the pizza box.

So... this is the future.

John's buttoning up his shirt and walking out of the bedroom when he sees Jack sitting on the couch and flipping through the TV channels.

"Let me guess. People don't ring the doorbell in the future either," John says, going for the coffee machine in the kitchen.

"Nope. Just me," Jack says, getting up and following John. He stands there as John makes coffee, leaning against the kitchen units, arms folded across chest. "I hear London doesn't agree with you."

John shrugs, not explaining that it's him that doesn't agree with London. "I just figured I should go home."

"And where's that?"

"Not London," John says.

"The country you knew seventy years ago is different, you know? Not much different from being here," Jack says.

John idly scratches his bearded face. "I don't belong here."

Jack is quiet and it's almost as though he's shouting at John that he doesn't really belong anywhere now. John sighs. "Look... thanks for everything," he says.

Jack rolls his eyes. "Yeah, beause you're having a blast."

"Your guys know where I'll be if they need to stick a needle in me," John says.

"Mental component," Jack says. "That's what one of the files said. The gene can turn stuff on and off, but that's not the same as using it. Right?"

"Find another guy," John says.

"You're the only guy."

"I'm flattered."

"This is your planet we're talking about," Jack says.

"No. It was my planet," John says.

Jack laughs and shakes his head. "What's the deal here? You're sorry you're alive?"

John doesn't say anything, watching Jack instead. Wondering why he hasn't laid the other guy flat on his ass.

Jack steps away from the unit and points at John. "You're here. You survived. Live with it."

"You don't know a damn thing about me," John says, his voice so low he might not have spoken.

"No," Jack says. "I don't. But I know what it's like to lose a fight and I know what it's like to lose people. Again and again and again..." He grins at some private joke with sad eyes. "And again."

John looks away at the cold dark kitchen floor, thinking of all the dead, the people he couldn't save.

"Torchwood," Jack says. "Trust me, it's the only place left where you might still fit in. We could use you."

John turns around slowly, reaching for a cup, pouring his coffee, his shoulders feeling stiff and his chest feeling raw. Jack's hand reaches past him and places a small black cellphone on the counter.

"Let me know if you change your mind," he tells John from close behind. "If not, bon voyage, Colonel Sheppard. Send me a postcard."

When Jack's gone, the apartment goes back to being too silent even with the TV on.

Like most nights, John lies awake on the couch, watching the news channels. The Cybermen attacks are on the increase. Where one or two humans are taken, the town slowly follows before the government can come up with their usual strategy of turning said town into a ball of fire.

It makes John tired just watching. He feels like an old soldier that's seen too much war. But there's no place to run. One war ends and another begins.

John gets up and walks over to the window, peering out from between the blinds, watching a man and a semi-drunk woman laughing and stumbling down the street, like the Cybermen aren't out there, waiting to take away their humanity.

The phone is still on the counter and the only number it dials belongs to Jack Harkness.

John doesn't know what to expect when he meets Jack at Torchwood HQ. What he doesn't expect is Jack to be hidden away in a huge basement space, filled with all kinds of interesting junk, some of it looking new and some of it looking very old. Jack has a small office-like space in the corner and is sitting there with his feet on the desk and eyes on the TV screen.

John walks up the steps to the office area and walks into the small dark enclosure. Jack sees him walk in and seems surprised for a second before smiling with amusement, perhaps approval.

"You shaved," he says.

John scratches his chin. "It was beginning to itch."

Jack nods. "I like it."

John looks at the TV screen to find more news about Cybermen, this time launching an attack in China. The world's gone to hell and he's woken up just in time. Great.

"So," Jack says. "My guess is you're not here to ask me on a date... not that I'd refuse of course."

John arches an eyebrow at Jack's grinning face and sits down on the edge of the desk. "I figure I need a job if I intend on sticking around. This is a pretty expensive city."

"Should've seen it before the Cybermen. Besides, if you ever get sick of this place, there are other branches."

"And the perks of the job?"

Jack stands up and gives John a bright smile. "Well, you get to work with Mr. Personality himself."

"And the perks of the job?" John asks flatly.

Jack chuckles and sticks his hands in the pockets of his pants, while John sits there on the edge of the desk, arms folded across his chest.

"So... what made you change your mind?"

John shrugs. "Tossed a coin."

Jack snorts. "Sure."

John just shrugs again and slips off the desk. "Guess I'll see you in the morning then."

Jack nods. "Seven sharp."

John walks out of the office, nodding. "Seven sharp."

He's walking past a table loaded with odd looking objects when one in particular catches his eye. He stops and picks up the tiny globe with scratches of text, the metal oddly warm in his hand.

"What?" Jack asks, jogging down the steps and coming to stand next to John.

John frowns at the globe and wraps his hand around it tight, closing his eyes, feeling a strange vibration throughout his arm until it's all down his spine and something's whispering in his head.

"Whoa," Jack whispers.

John slowly opens his eyes and follows Jack's gaze up at the ceiling where there's a light show of stars, swirling around in bright colors. He watches them for a long time, one star shining the brightest before everything disappears.

Jack looks at him, awed. "How did you do that?"

John throws the globe up, letting Jack catch it as he turns to go, not telling the other man that all he had to do was think of home.

- the end -