BECAUSE I CAN!

Ahem. I apologize for that, I just had a brief desire to explain myself. Obviously I fail. Moving on.

SGA is not a new-new fandom for me, I just kinda took a four-and-a-half year break from it. Yeah, I suck. Also, I'm not normally fond of writing AU's like this, mostly because I live in morbid fear of screwing up completely. But I shall try.

This entire fic is dedicated to those evil people like me who watched Intruder and, upon the 'I shot him in the leg' line, were immediately swamped by images of Sheppard and McKay going at it like bunnies.

disclaimer: me no own nothin'. le sigh.

---

Chapter One- Thursday - a prologue of sorts

The day John Sheppard's life changed completely started out as one of the worst days he'd had in a long string of bad days.

It was a Thursday, and in the immortal words of Arthur Dent, he had never really gotten the hang of Thursdays. Had John honestly stopped to think about it, he probably would have realized that everything that had ever drastically changed his life always happened on a Thursday. This one started out miserably wet and cold- not rainy enough to justify staying inside, yet rainy enough to slowly but steadily plaster his clothes to his skin and suck every shred of warmth out of his body. A passing minivan, complete with Proud To Be A Soccer Mom bumper sticker, hit a muddy puddle at just the right angle and speed to soak him from shoulder to waist. A flock of those hateful little demons- known by most people as pigeons- used him as projectile-crap target practice. A kid down the street kicked a soccer ball at him hard enough that it probably would have gelded him had he not seen it coming and turned at the last second; as it was, he was going to have a nice big bruise on his left hip.

By the time he made it to the store, he was ready to chalk the whole day up as a lost cause and head back to bed, and it was barely ten am.

He stopped just outside the door, staring blankly at the hiring sign hanging crookedly in the window. Beyond the foggy glass he could see cases of gently-used books, shelved with an almost obsessive sense of order. The store itself would smell like old books and paper and ink and a faint underlying hint of whatever candle or incense the owner would be burning in the back, because that was how all used book stores were. John had only been in a handful in his life, and most times it was only to walk in, grab one particular book, and walk out again. He couldn't honestly say why he was here, except he needed a job and the store was hiring and it all somehow felt right. As if he'd been drawn here like a metal filing to a magnet.

The door opened just enough for a woman to poke her head through and pin John down with a look. "Are you coming in?" she asked pointedly. She sounded like a teacher taking the class clown to task for shooting spitballs. John immediately ducked his head and tossed her his troublemaker's grin- an instant regression to his high school years. She merely arched an eyebrow and pushed the door open wide enough for him to come in.

"Elizabeth Weir," she offered him as she circled around behind the counter. She produced a fuzzy towel- thankfully a non-offensive beige color- and tossed it to him. She was a few years older than him and carried herself with a surety that was almost overwhelming. Her keen dark eyes were direct and unwavering and made him instinctively pull out of his slouch and meet her gaze head-on. She would make a good mother, he thought abstractly. Or a good general.

"John Sheppard," he answered in turn as he scrubbed at his hair with the towel. He saved the drawl and the smile for a better time, as it was obvious Elizabeth wouldn't be impressed by his little-boy charm. "I saw your ad in... in the, uh, paper..."

Elizabeth folded both hands on the counter in front of her and studied him with a frank, assessing gaze. He felt as though she wasn't looking at him so much as through him, as though she could see straight through to the battered soul under the layers and masks.

"In the paper, yes," she said easily. "And you thought you'd stop by to see if we were still hiring. A stopover job, of course, nothing permanent."

"Uh," John replied intelligently. Before he could figure out how to respond to that, she continued.

"The job is only available for a few weeks. After that I have an out-of-town friend who might be able to use your help. Are you willing to travel?"

"Where to?" Here, an actual question. He'd been seriously starting to wonder if she even knew how to ask one. Vaguely he thought of Denver, or perhaps Colorado Springs. He was therefore understandably surprised by her answer.

"Vancouver."

"Vancouver? Wow, really out-of-town. Uh, well, we'll see." He shrugged and carefully folded himself into his familiar slouch, hands tucked into his back pockets. Had he been the introspective type he might have realized that he was, as he often did, using his poor posture as a sort of defensive barrier.

"Have you ever worked in a book store before?" Another question, although this one had the feel of being asked for company's sake. She already knew the answer. Hell, anyone who took one look at him knew the answer.

"Nope."

"Very well. If you'll follow me, in the back here there's several boxes of books. I need them sorted according to genre and alphabetized by the author's name." She led him into the back, pointing out three dishwasher-sized cardboard boxes overflowing with books. John tried not to whimper at the thought of sorting through all that. Instead, he turned to address Elizabeth, only to find her back out front again.

"Hey," he called up. She turned to regard him, one eyebrow going up again. It was a you're about to ask a stupid question and I'm being extremely patient by letting you look. John ignored it and forged ahead. "Don't you want me to fill out an application or give you a reference or something?"

"Do you want to?" she countered. He gaped at her, fighting off the sudden urge to bolt. There was something going on here, he could feel it. There was far more to Elizabeth than she was letting on. He just couldn't tell what it was.

Whatever it was, it was creepy as hell, but somehow she didn't seem dangerous. He forced himself to shrug it off- a job was a job. As long as it got him a paycheck he couldn't afford to complain.

"I'm fine," he said easily, turning to face the boxes. This was going to take forever, he thought wryly. At least the store was warm, although that only caused his muddy, clingy shirt to feel that much colder against his skin.

"John?" Elizabeth called back, and he started in surprise. "There's a box of shirts back there. If you want to take one, you can, I'm pretty sure there's one in your size."

He glanced at her, then at the towel he was still holding- beige, not some girly pink, which somehow felt wrong, somehow felt as if she'd had it waiting specifically for him- and then over at the box under the table in the far corner. The sweatshirts were thick and warm and dry and didn't even have some cute cat or something on them. He pulled out one in his size and stared at it.

After a moment's contemplation he peeled his shirt off and grabbed for the towel again. Just don't think about it, he told himself. Familiar advice. The towel passed over his dog tags, wet and cold like two chips of ice resting over his heart, and he forced his mind away from that path. Instead he thought about sorting books and wondering how he planned on putting off his current landlord until his first paycheck came in.

Thus began the Thursday that change John Sheppard's life.

---

That Thursday, more people than just John found their lives changing dramatically. In fact, of all the major players in this particular game, the only one who didn't find their life taking a sudden off-ramp into the unknown was Elizabeth Weir. She knew what was coming. She was prepared for it. That was, after all, the point of Knowing.

She had shooed John out at five minutes after six, sending him away loudly protesting both the shirt she insisted he keep and the twenty dollar bill she had given him. He had stood just outside the door, under the store awning, trying to get her to take back the money at least. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to get him to accept the gifts. Eventually she had told him to take the money as a down payment on what would likely be some of the most boring weeks of his life, as she had nothing but sorting and shelving for him to do. He'd looked vaguely horrified at that and Elizabeth, taking advantage of his distraction, had gently closed the door in his face.

If he came back the next day she'd make him fill out an application and the appropriate tax forms. He mistrusted her and she needed him to trust her if she was to help him. The familiar drudgery of paperwork ought to help in that department.

Before she could do that, however, she needed help. Knowing was all well and good, but it had taken all of her resources just to get him here. Protecting him, keeping him hidden, was well beyond her. Sending him off to a Keeper wasn't an option just yet, especially since Keepers tended to required several weeks' warning before random strangers were foisted onto him. The last thing she needed was her Keeper- normally hostile at best- chasing John away with his snarls and glares.

Elizabeth allowed herself a fond smile at the thought. Rodney McKay was definitely an acquired taste. If he wasn't so good at what he did, he probably would have been cast out years ago. However, not only was he the best Keeper in North America, he was also easily the most technologically savvy of their little group- an important survival trait in the twenty-first century.

The phone she was resting her hand on started to ring. She picked it up and answered with a crisp 'hello?' before it completed its first shrill cry. She had let it ring two or three times when John had been there.

"You said it would happen today," Evan Lorne said without preamble. He sounded doubtful. Everything worth having had a price, and Knowing came with the price of the occasional Cassandra complex. Even those who knew better sometimes doubted her. It wasn't a rational thing; it was more an instinctive denial that occasionally overpowered logical thought. She didn't begrudge them this, as instinct played a much larger part in their lives as they did in the unaware.

"It did. He was here. You missed him by three minutes." She tucked her feet under her chair and picked at the beige towel John had used. Normally the towel kept under her counter for emergencies was rose pink.

"The one who just left?" Lorne asked disbelievingly. Elizabeth stood and walked over to the front of her store. She hadn't realized Lorne was watching her store but his comment made it pointless to ask if he was. "That's what all the fuss is for? What do you know about him?"

"John Sheppard, age thirty-six, served in the Air Force," she answered calmly. "Other than that, I can't tell you much. He doesn't talk much and I don't read minds."

"And you didn't ask? The man was in your store for seven hours."

"Six. I sent him out to get Burger King for lunch." Elizabeth smiled serenely as Lorne grunted. They both knew Sheppard was no danger to her- even trained assassins were no danger to her, those who Knew rarely died premeditated deaths- but Lorne was also a military man and this whole scenario just rubbed him wrong.

"What do you plan on doing with him?" he asked finally. Elizabeth sighed and headed back over to the counter.

"Give him a few weeks for his power to settle. Then you and Teyla will take him up north to our Keeper. He'll be safe there until someone can train him."

"You're handing him over to McKay? What'd he do to piss you off?" Lorne snorted a laugh. Then he paused as realization sunk in. "Uh, wait- you're not expecting us to stay up there too, are you?"

"You'll be fine, Evan," Elizabeth said. "Just stay away from Rodney. He'll probably be having too much fun tormenting John to bother with you. It's been a long time since Rodney's had to deal with someone who's unaware."

That was due to the fact that Rodney McKay was easily the world's worst liar. They simply couldn't trust him to keep his mouth shut. So both their network- a group of the aware that had no real name and of which Elizabeth was one of the leaders- and Rodney himself had put a moratorium on outside visitors. His only contact was with people in the network, and even that was narrowed down significantly to the small handful of people who could tolerate him. Sometimes Elizabeth worried that he was becoming a recluse. Other times she admitted that there was no 'becoming'- he was already there and had made himself quite at home.

"Right," Lorne didn't sound convinced. "I'm going to see what I can find out about this Sheppard. You probably need to call Teyla. The store's wards aren't strong enough for this."

"I plan on it," Elizabeth replied. She briefly considered having Teyla ward Sheppard himself, then discarded the idea. Better to keep him unaware for as long as possible; it was the only defense he had right now.

"And Elizabeth?" He paused, trying to find the right words. "Just... good luck, all right?"

There was power in those simple words. Like her, Lorne couldn't actively control his power, but it always came through for him when he really wanted it to. It was a simple good-luck charm but it had strength; had she been a less ethical person, she would have taken advantage of it and gone to the casino. Naturally this would mean she would burn through the luck faster, but given the strength behind the words, she could easily end up taking home a couple hundred thousand. That was, if they let her through the door. Most successful casino owners had someone watching closely for those sorts of charms.

There were people like that, mostly politicians and police detectives; people who were half-aware. People who subconsciously knew of the existence of powers beyond the normal but never consciously acknowledged them. John Sheppard was one of them and as such had to be handled with care.

Elizabeth wished Lorne luck as well, her own words carrying no power save sincerity, and hung up. Then she dialed the phone for Teyla Emmagan, their local Warder. She needed to improve the wards, as Lorne had suggested. She also Knew, the moment she had said goodbye to Lorne, that Rodney would not be answering his phone.

The conversation with Teyla ended with the younger woman promising to set out for the store immediately. Elizabeth heated some chamomile tea and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic mug, gazing thoughtfully out into the drear beyond.

Things were in motion now, and even she couldn't tell how this would all end.

---

At six-thirty-two CMT, John Sheppard was buying himself a three-pack of instant ramen so he would have a spare five dollars with which to stave off his landlord, Evan Lorne was following him discreetly, Elizabeth Weir and Teyla Emmagan were chatting over lukewarm tea, and Doctor Meredith Rodney McKay was running for his life.

Actually, by that point, he was hiding. Not too terribly successfully, but still. One would think, he would have snapped at a nearby salesperson had he had the breath to speak, that there would be a good many places to hide in a shopping mall. One would be wrong. Obviously this was the mall's fault and should be rectified immediately.

This was why he rarely left his house. A Keeper was protected by his own power only as long as he remained within the domain of his power. In other words, he was all but useless everywhere except his own home, in which he was all but invincible. He had not achieved the status of most powerful Keeper in the western hemisphere for humanitarian reasons- oh, no. He'd gotten there purely through selfish motivation. He didn't want to die, and people with power, people who were aware, tended to die young and in agony. He didn't Know and therefore couldn't see his own death coming for him, so he had gone for the next best thing.

"Immature! And did I mention not funny?! You behave even worse than Madison, you big baby!"

And there she was: the reason Rodney was hiding in the first place. He ducked behind a shoe rack and rapidly backed away from the voice. He probably would have made it if not for the little she-devil that suddenly wrapped itself around his leg with an ear-shattering squeal of "Uncle Mer!"

Jeannie McKay Miller was aware. She'd had no choice. Not with her family. Certainly not with a brother like Rodney, who had become aware on his seventh birthday. She had never wanted to be aware, would go to great lengths to become unaware if such a thing were possible. She wanted a normal life with a normal family and a normal job. She wanted nothing to do with the power that ran thick in the McKay blood. Yet she was a McKay, no matter what her marriage certificate might say, and there was a healthy dose of respect and appreciation for her family in certain circles. People standing behind her in line would pay for her pretzel and Slurpee while she scrabbled in her purse for her debit card. There was a friendly policeman who kept making her speeding tickets disappear. The lady at the corner bakery always gave Madison a free chocolate chip cookie. They were only little things, a smattering here and there, little ways that the aware looked after their own, that they protected those who either wouldn't or couldn't protect themselves. Jeannie wanted a normal life, and she could have it; Rodney's people would still look out for her.

Unfortunately this didn't appear to extend to Rodney himself. Him she had to hunt down like some half-wild house cat, and once she found him, she often found herself wondering why she had bothered. This time he was in a shoe store, giving her a weak attempt at a smile. Her daughter was suction-cupped to his left knee.

"Huh," Jeannie said, picking a shoe up out of a nearby box and waving it at him. "Not really your style, Mer."

The shoe was moving too fast for him to properly see it, but he caught a glimpse of an ice-pick heel and straps and glitter.

"I didn't know you were in town-" Rodney began. Jeannie huffed angrily and smacked him in the shoulder with the shoe, thankfully turning it so she didn't stab him with the heel.

"I called you five times," she informed him angrily. She didn't even bother to point out his utter lack of skill at deception. He's well aware of his own failures, thank you.

"Oh?" He almost squeaked. Dammit. Bad Rodney. No squeaking. "Really? Did you call my house phone or my cell phone? Because some mailing company's got a hold of my phone number and I've been screening the calls..."

"Home or cell?" Jeannie demanded. Rodney paused and tried to remember which machine she'd left her increasingly irate messages on. Then he gave up, because he was screwed either way.

"All right, fine. I'm sorry I tried to avoid you, I've just got this big project-"

"You always have this big project, Mer," his sister sighed. She suddenly looked tired, and Rodney immediately felt like an asshole. Contrary to what most people thought of him, he really did care about others. Especially when those others happened to share his genetics.

"Look, I'm sorry if- I didn't mean to- If you want to- can you do something here?" He gestured to the dead weight still wrapped around his left leg, face buried against his hip. Jeannie smiled distantly at her offspring.

"You're her only uncle and she never gets to see you. Just let her cling for a little while."

"Like a leech," Rodney agreed darkly, carefully shaking his leg. The child may as well have used super glue for all the good it did.

"Mer," Jeannie said, carefully resting a hand on his arm. "I came out here to see you. I even brought Madison with. I know, you're not good with kids, but they seem to love you and I figured it couldn't hurt." She paused, removed the hand he was staring at. "I see that this was a mistake. I'm sorry we intruded."

"No, no, don't-" He took one faltering step forward and turned a death glare onto his passenger. "Do you mind? Your mother and I are trying to talk!"

Madison turned wide, frightened eyes from one adult to the other. Blue eyes, Rodney noted miserably. McKay eyes. She would have as much power as the rest of the family, except Jeannie didn't want that life for her daughter. Once upon a time Rodney had thought she was being foolish, stupid even, for thinking this was something she could walk away from. And to be honest, she was. They both knew it. It was more than just their heritage, it was what they were. It was how they defined themselves. Madison could no sooner ignore the power flowing through her than she could ignore an adrenaline rush. Sooner or later Jeannie would have to tell her and let her decide where to go from there.

Once upon a time, Rodney used Jeannie's apathetic approach to her power as the catalyst to drive them apart. The only reason he didn't regret that now was because he simply wasn't the sort of person who cried over lost years of personal relationships. Honestly, if it hadn't been that, they would have found some other excuse to hate each other.

"Something big's about to go down," he said apologetically to Jeannie. "Elizabeth won't tell me what, but she knows something. Or maybe she Knows it, I can't tell. She doesn't bother telling me anyway, why should she, I'm just the pet genius she likes to trot out at cocktail parties to make her look good."

"I'm sure if it were important she'd let you know," Jeannie answered soothingly. She shot Madison a concerned glance before continuing in a softer tone. "Let's face it, Mer, she's not going to tell you anything. You're a Keeper. All you have to do is stay here and stay safe."

"I would feel safer if you were closer. Or at least, I don't know, in the same country."

"There's nothing wrong with America. Nothing wrong, Mer, so don't even start. And we're fine. If someone really wanted to get to you through us, they're going to manage whether we live in Buffalo or just down the street. And no, I am not moving in with you."

"Fine," Rodney snapped, ignoring the way his voice wavered. Jeannie's lips pressed firmly together and her eyes went flat and honestly, he couldn't tell if it was the I forgive you for being a dick look or the I'll be on the next flight back to New York look. He didn't know which he would prefer either.

God, he sucked at this.

"Ice cream!" he blurted, loud enough that every head in the store swiveled towards him. "Uh, let's go get some. They have a decent vendor in the food court." Then they could get out of the mall and have a nice big argument within the safety of his own home, and come morning everything would be back to normal. Jeannie would dismiss her power and make sniping little comments about his utter failure at anything resembling a sex life and he would mock her white-fence-blue-collar life and show off all his fancy toys. Sooner or later they would wind up in his basement, where his network's entire information and communications database was kept, because keeping things safe was what he did, and she would nitpick and fix up little things and he would pretend to have already noticed that and had simply had more important things to do than look after every little detail.

It wasn't exactly normal brother-sister bonding activities, but show him something- anything- normal about the McKay clan.

Madison swung those accusingly blue eyes to her mother, who found herself on the receiving end of two pleading gazes. She knew better than to hold Rodney's pathetic attempts at interaction against him and recognized the fumbled invitation for what it really was: a plea of don't leave yet.

Rodney may be a condescending jerk and even a total jackass upon occasion, but anyone who could walk away from that quiet despair didn't even deserve to be called human.

"You have to let go of Uncle Mer's leg so he can walk, Madison," she said. Madison's face lit up and she immediately pried herself off. Rodney was relieved for an entirely different reason. At that moment he couldn't quite remember why he'd been hiding from her, although he was fairly certain he'd be reminded of it several times before she left.

"So what's going on anyway?" Jeannie asked as they headed out of the shoe store and down the wide hallway to the food court. Rodney snorted and shrugged.

"No idea. Like I said, no one tells me anything until all the sudden it's 'Oh, Rodney, help us, we've accidentally blown up half the city'."

Jeannie just smirked at him. He sighed. "Yes. Bad liar, I know. Fine, but this- this is just, y'know, hearsay, all right?" When she nodded he continued even softer than before. "Elizabeth thinks she's found a wild power."

"A wild- what!" Jeannie screeched, reeling away as though he'd just admitted to having some ridiculously contagious disease. She visibly forced herself to rein it in. "Those are dangerous, Mer. They've destroyed entire networks before. And even if you guys can tame him, and there's no guarantee you can, he's still always be at least partially an outsider. He'll never really fit in, even if he takes over as leader of the network himself, and trust me when I say being an outsider sucks."

"Yeah, because clearly I have no experience with social misfits," Rodney shot back. He stopped in the corridor and gestured wildly around him. "I know how dangerous wild powers are, believe me, I've done more research on them than- never mind. The point is, Elizabeth wants to help him, and she won't let anything bad happen. She Knows, Jeannie."

The last three words were delivered helplessly, Rodney unable to communicate the trust and belief he had in Elizabeth. He trusted her with his life, which was something of a novelty for him. Jeannie smiled softly at that.

"All right," she said. Then, "You do realize that, if she somehow does tame him, you're probably gonna have to put him up while they train him."

"The price of being a Keeper," Rodney sighed dramatically. "It'll be fine, as long as his power stabilizes before then. Now- ice cream?"

Jeannie snorted a laugh and shook her head. She turned and started walking in the proper direction, herding her curious daughter and making some comment about a one-track mind. Rodney took after her doggedly, complaining all the while.

It would occur to him, later, that that was the last few days of happiness he would have before everything went to hell in a big way, before the arrival of the living hurricane called John Sheppard.

---

The woman watched the two siblings as they walked away. They were bickering loudly, voices amplified by the high ceiling of the food court. The little girl was clinging to her uncle's hand, nearly yanking him off his feet when she suddenly charged ahead to the ice cream stand.

Her mission was only to gather information on the Keeper McKay. He was a virtual unknown even within his own network. Only a select few knew what power he had beyond those of the Keeper. That he had another power was a given- he was a McKay, after all, and his entire family had a nasty habit of pulling aces out of their sleeves when all else had failed. It had been a difficult mission to start with, since like most Keepers McKay stayed close to home and shunned visitors. Added to that was the network he belonged to. Led by Elizabeth Weir and some as-yet unknown Air Force brass, the network was tight-knit and closed off to outsiders. Not all networks had a Keeper- in fact, only a handful did- and those that did guarded them fiercely. She doubted McKay knew how many people there were keeping an eye over him even now.

She groaned tiredly and let her head fall back. Whatever plan she had been formulating had just gone out the window. McKay's home was impenetrable and now it looked like his sister planned on sticking around for a little while. A Keeper was nearly as untouchable when he had family nearby as he was when he was in his domain. Plus trying to take on both McKay siblings at once was utter suicide. Their combined power was eclipsed by their combined genius, which in turn was surpassed only by their unspoken fondness for things that go boom.

There was a young black man sitting across the food court. He had been surreptitiously watching the McKay siblings. Now he was not-so-surreptitiously watching her. She smiled at him and slouched provocatively, letting her legs fall open slightly. He sneered dismissively and went back to stabbing at his frozen lemonade. She got up and headed out of the food court, back in the direction she had just come from.

She would sit on a side road, see if McKay's sister was staying with him or in a hotel. She had plenty of time. Sheppard's powers weren't going to settle for another month and a half and Weir- wherever that bitch was hiding- wouldn't risk sending him out to her precious Keeper until then. Mrs. Miller was doomed to lose her patience with her brother and storm off long before that point.

The glass doors swung open with a cheerful ease. The Christmas season would be starting soon; already there was a little bunches of poinsettia artistically arranged in large planters throughout the parking lot. She had until roughly New Year's to get this done. Certainly Miller wouldn't want to be separated from her husband for that long.

She smiled into the chilly winter air as she searched for her car. Soon, McKay would be dead and Sheppard removed from their network. Soon, she and her people could go home.

---

And thus was the day on which everything started to change.