NOTES: The final chapter.

The Astonishing Persistence Of Memory: Past Time

Epilogue

John didn't feel 'back' as he stared out across the twilight ocean, watching the waves bounce back the sky's light in deeper colours. It was pretty, but it was reflected glory only, tinged by the sea's own darker shadows.

In fact, he wasn't really feeling anything, his emotions numbed as the chill breeze swept off the sea onto the cooling land.

Most of his life was back, from his first memory - an ice-block in the backyard when John was five, summery orange - to the last solid memory he had of being John Sheppard - the rock he stumbled on as the Wraith dragged him up the steps into the Stargate.

He didn't think too much about what followed. Not yet.

They didn't question it - either his memory or his command. At least, Lorne had fallen naturally into the role of subordinate, and if his backing had faint overtones of 'making it all legal', nobody protested.

Ronon had come to check on him, then clapped him on the shoulder, satisfied. "Good rescue." The broad mouth was a fierce curve as he said, "Good to have you back."

John wasn't so sure it was good to be back.

The last six months of his life yawned behind him, another life lived as another man. The psychotherapists would have a field day with him and the persona of 'Yan Stormborn'. Had 'Yan' always existed in his head, a secondary personality? Or was 'Yan' more like the id to John's super-ego, the part of John Sheppard that was unconstrained by his inhibitions and self-criticisms - the blank slate of John's personality, untainted by his history?

Did it matter, in the end?

Behind him, the doors into the outpost slid open and someone stepped out.

"Rodney says your predisposition for heights is a sure sign of a warped mind."

It was an infusion of humour into his spirit. "Yeah, and Rodney gets vertigo from crossing a rope bridge three feet above water! Besides, anything anyone does that Rodney wouldn't do is warped."

There'd been cleaning up to do, and explanations - a lot of explanations. John wasn't entirely certain what he'd done with the bugs, but a little poking and prodding of the outpost system had revealed that the bugs weren't immune to specific frequencies, which froze certain fluids in their bodies and paralysed them. The reason this hadn't been used against the bugs on the plain was that it was a very high signal, and too weak to be used in open spaces. Apparently the city was close enough quarters.

Nearly too close.

John wasn't going to think about that right now.

"Has Rodney been able to boost the transmission signal to the Stargate?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla rest her arms on the railing. "Apparently, and I quote, 'there is not enough power in the outpost to electrocute a fly without bringing down the shields, let alone boost the transmission signal to reach the Stargate.' We must wait for Atlantis to call us."

"So we'll be here overnight?"

"It seems quite likely. Dr. Gormley is finding us bedding and quarters."

Sleep was the last thing on John's mind right now. After his encounter with the outpost, after the afternoon's attack by the scorpions, after regaining his memories, he had no quietness to spare for sleep.

And yet, with Teyla standing beside him, her wrists slim and brown on the railing in front of them, John let his hands rest on the edge, adopting her pose, and let the wind blow through him in the sunset air. Sleep was beyond him. Silence was not.

For a while they listened to the wind whistling about the handful of spires, stronger than the sunset breezes in Atlantis, listened to the waves crash on the rocks out along the edges of the promontory where the outpost had been built.

It was only when the moon began to rise over the horizon that Teyla turned her head towards him and spoke.

"How are you, John?"

There were a lot of ways to answer that. He settled for, "As good as can be expected."

In the first light of the moon, her skin gained a polished, silvery cast over its rich bronze. "You remember all of it?"

"Yeah."

The hesitation was marked, as was her deliberate continuation. "I am sorry."

Out of all the people from Atlantis, only Teyla would have said such a thing. Then again, John reflected that she was the only one who really understood what it meant to be strung between two worlds and to yearn for both.

It had been easier being Yan Stormborn.

"I'm not." He said it like he meant it, but they both knew he lied.

--

When they returned to Atlantis the next day, John was still feeling blank. The night and new morning in the outpost had been difficult, mentally turning over everything he was and had been, everything he was and would be, and what wouldn't be.

He knew his team had run interference for him, managing the questions and the queries.

He was grateful for it.

By the time he roused to a cup of coffee, thick and black and tasting like the bottom of the pot - military coffee, none of this finest-brew shit - and the toast Ronon ate with him, the sky over the outpost was thick with 'jumpers ferrying new supplies and equipment across.

They'd waited until the outpost was fully stocked, then hitched a lift back on one of the 'jumpers.

Rodney protested at returning home. John gave him one wordless look and the man slumped. His grumbles were background noise in the 'jumper all the way back to Atlantis, with Ronon and Teyla managing him.

Elizabeth came up to meet them in the 'jumper bay, her smile warm and welcoming. Teyla had briefed her on 'the Sheppard status' (as Rodney had taken to calling it) and she'd spoken briefly to John when the initial connection came through. "It's good to have you back, John."

"Thanks." But his eyes slid past her, drifting off to the woman who stood to one side, out of the way. Apart, separate, different.

The marines still kept guard over her - a conceit that John recognised as ridiculous and small-minded, even if Yan had supposed it necessary. She stood motionless beyond the people moving through the 'jumper bay, one still island in a busy storm.

But John recognised that there was no haven there for him.

Dark eyes met his and she smiled, bittersweet. Something in him ached and was swiftly put away. His attention was being called elsewhere, but he held her gaze a moment longer. This changed things, yes, but it didn't have to be like this.

"The IOA will require a full physical," Edwards was saying with prim distaste. John regarded him with contempt. He hadn't liked Edwards before; he liked him even less now that he knew the full extent of the situation. "As well as an assessment by an approved psychologist."

"Oh, and Heightmeyer isn't suitable for the job?" Rodney glared.

"I'm sure Dr. Heightmeyer is perfectly good at what she does," said Edwards evenly. "But she's not approved by the IOA."

John felt a sneering retort slide effortlessly onto his lips. He closed his teeth around it. Now was not the time and here was not the place.

"Well," Elizabeth said, pointedly polite, "in the absence of the IOA, we'll just have to make do with what we've got here in Atlantis. John? Will you be ready for a debriefing in an hour?"

"If Carson's people have time to do the basic physical," he said. "Are they busy right now?"

"Not so busy we can't fit you in," said one of the medical aides briskly as she passed by them.

Elizabeth smiled. "As Sharon says."

His team stepped off the 'jumper ramp, flowed around him with smiles and glances and a brisk punch on the shoulder from Ronon.

Ivali had drawn closer. Now she interrupted. "Dr. Weir. Now that we know that Ya-- Colonel Sheppard and Teyla and Ronon are back safely, perhaps what we spoke of before...?"

The ache he'd stifled came back with a gasping vengeance. John spoke, but it was Yan's plea. "Ivali..."

Beyond Ivali, on their way to the door, John's team-mates had stopped, turned back. There was a momentary lull in the echoes of the 'jumper bay. Voices and tools paused a moment, heads turned, ears pricked, all the better to hear this drama unfold.

Yan wouldn't have cared who heard.

John had to care.

"I think that there'll be time to talk about that later, Ivali," Elizabeth said with a glance towards John. "Once we've gotten everyone sorted out and debriefed."

Her tone was light, but there was an inexorable note in her voice. In the face of that steel, Ivali acceded.

She accompanied John to his room, and John kept his thoughts to himself until they reached his rooms and the doors slid shut in the faces of the marines. He activated the privacy controls, just to be sure they wouldn't be overheard or interrupted.

Then he looked at Ivali, standing in the middle of his room.

It was exactly the same room he'd left this morning, the same room he'd left that morning all those months ago. The boxes of his things from storage had been put to one side and opened, inspected and wondered at by Yan and Ivali, but not unpacked and rearranged.

Yan hadn't been ready for the trappings of John Sheppard's life.

John craved the familiarity of them.

And the familiar and unfamiliar stood in the middle of the room, next to the mattresses where they'd been sleeping, cuddling, making love for the past two weeks. Six months that John still remembered, but which seemed dreamlike, distant.

Something twisted in his chest, just looking at her, knowing this was goodbye.

We are who we are, and we wouldn't have loved otherwise.

John Sheppard might have flirted with Ivali Weaverkin, but he'd never have caught her a katapi, asked for a dance at the moonlight fire, or let her lead him to her bed.

He swallowed hard against the ache. "You could stay."

Ivali turned with an almost broken half-laugh. The airy light of the morning sky tinted her hair with pale blue as the light slid off it. "For what, Yan? To watch you drift away from me?"

He didn't have an answer for that.

"I always knew you were missing parts of yourself," she said after a moment. "You would never have been whole without them."

It would have been nice to be able to deny it. But John knew it to be true; he'd never be whole without Atlantis.

It stung to have to hurt her like this. To not be able to give her what she wanted. Maybe it wasn't the first time he'd disappointed someone he loved - Nancy's face rose in his memory - but it still ached, a nebulous tingling in his hands, a hunch in his shoulders, rib-squeezing tension.

"Ivali..."

So many things to say!

Yan would have known what to say, would have said it without reservation.

John knew what he wanted to say, but actually speaking the words was beyond him. There was too much history, too much memory, too many hurts to be so easily healed.

He couldn't divorce himself from that, but he wasn't going to deny his links to Ivali, either. Yan Stormborn and his life was a part of John Sheppard and always would be, a time when he'd been someone else, when that other man had been loved and been able to love.

Still, he recognised that who he was now was no man for her.

The silence stretched too long with nothing to say.

In the end, Yan had been a man of action - just as John was - some things too fierce and strong for even memory to deny. And so John acted, crossing the empty room and tipping back her chin. The planes of her face were intimately familiar to his sight and his touch, the curve of her lips soft and sweet against his as he kissed her, long and tender, with regret.

Ivali tensed at first, uncertain of his intent. It took her a moment to relax, but when she did, her arms came up around his neck, clinging to him as though she'd never have to let go.

They both knew otherwise.

--

In summer, it was a warm afternoon room, filled with the setting sun.

In the Atlantis midwinter, it was somewhere to come in the middle of the day, to soak in the pale light on the handful of occasions when the sun was out. And, with a beanbag, a handful of cushions and a good book, it was a perfect place to sit and read in silence.

Teyla even had a pile of books in the corner, recommended to her by various personnel in the city - everything from the rather explicit romances that Dr. Houston enjoyed, to a detailed history of Middle Eastern culture that Elizabeth had brought her.

She was curled up in the beanbag when she heard the footsteps outside.

No need to look up; she knew that tread well.

She also knew not to protest when he tugged the book up off her knees so he could see the cover. His eyebrows quirked in disbelief as he regarded it and the pile that sat by her elbow. "Harlequin romances? Those books will rot your brain, you know."

It was an old tease, and Teyla responded as he expected. "No more than your action movies." They smiled, in brief concordance, before awareness intruded. His smile faded and he looked down and away.

For six months, he had been another man, lived another life. For six months, he'd had no memory of Atlantis or the people who'd lived in the city. For six months, he'd loved Ivali Weaverkin of the Orawi.

In the space of a day, he had regained his memories, regained himself, and said goodbye to a woman he loved but who didn't understand the man he was here in his city.

John's ordeal had changed him.

"You saw Ivali off?"

"Yeah." He glanced up, a brief meeting of eyes, a brief understanding. "She said you were kind."

As she ran her fingers along the smooth surface of the book, over words that held no interest for her at this moment, Teyla supposed that, compared to others, she had been kind. "I have...some understanding of how it feels to be a stranger in Atlantis."

"Is that why you were kind to me?"

Ronon, she reflected, was not the only one who 'fished' when he did not wish to address the question directly. She gave a careful answer. "You, too, were a stranger in Atlantis as Yan Stormborn, John."

And if Ivali was not alone in caring for John, then he would not hear it from Teyla.

"Come," she said, slipping a bookmark in between the pages of her story and putting it aside. "You have missed six months of television."

"I have," he agreed, something like relief in his voice. What he would have done had she answered the question with frank honesty, Teyla could not imagine. That was not the John Sheppard she knew.

It was good to have him back.

He stood easily, offering a hand to help her up. "So what are we going to start with?"

"Well, there is a new Doctor's companion," Teyla said as hand gripped hand, warm to cold, and she clambered to her feet. "You would not have seen it."

For a second, they stood close, her face upturned to his, his downturned to hers, their hands still joined, palm clasped to palm. Then he inclined his head still further, and their foreheads bumped gently. Through the window, the sound of waves washed the silent communion, otherwise unbroken by anything more than the sound of their breath and the beat of Teyla's heart in her ears.

It was good to have John back.

When she felt him shift, she lifted her head, saw the ruefulness in his gaze as he stepped back, re-establishing the space between them. The moment was gone and lost, put aside for other things - less personally satisfying, perhaps, but more necessary. And Teyla was not ready to permit him into that space, even had he not only just seen off his lover.

"So," he said, conversationally, "what happened to Billie?"

"I believe she went into a parallel universe," Teyla answered. The conversational tone was a relief, as was the querying arch of his brow, and the wry smile he gave. "I believe it will be best if you watch it and see for yourself. Rodney does not think much of my explanations."

"His aren't much better," John muttered.

At his wave, Teyla preceded him through the doors and out into the city, glancing over at him as he fell into step beside her with an accustomed smile.

She met his smile as they walked through Atlantis together.

There were still questions to be answered, injuries to tend, hurts to be avenged. Colonel Edwards was still the military leader in the city and the IOA was still to be placated regarding John's state of mind and body. And there was still six months of time lost between John and the people he cared for - people who cared for him.

Still, John was back in Atlantis. For the moment, it was enough.

- fin -

FINAL NOTES: And so the story ends...at least for the moment! Thank you so much to everyone who participated in this journey with me, and particularly to those who left feedback along the way to let me know you were enjoying yourselves! There is a sequel planned, although I don't know if it will come through - we'll see as the year goes along and my writing committments make themselves known.