NOTES: For those who wished a sequel to my 2008 SGA Big Bang - The Astonishing Persistence Of Memory: Past Time - here it is! Written for the 2009 SGA Big Bang, and, once again, 60,000 words, it's very much a John-centric team story, with a John/Teyla UST component. It didn't go as far as I wanted it to go - there's a third part to the trilogy that's yet to be written, the conclusion to everything that's been happening in these two stories! I hope to try to write it in 2010, but I'm afraid I can make no promises.

I'll try to post this through December and January during the holiday period, but things are pretty busy for me, so I may forget from time to time.

The Astonishing Persistence Of Memory: Present Tense

prologue

The sky over the sea was streaked with pale blue when John dumped his duffel at the foot of the bed and sat down to wait for the sunrise.

After the previous night's stress and action, the predawn calm was a relief.

John took full advantage of it, resting his elbows lightly on his knees and folding his fingers over each other as he watched the sky brighten by degrees.

He hadn't complained when Edwards assigned him a dawn departure. Every moment more he could have in the city was precious. Of course, he would rather have spent it with his team-mates, but they'd needed their sleep and he wasn't going to disturb that just because he wanted their company.

Heat exhaustion had Teyla out for the count, and while Ronon refused a bed, he was apparently willing to snooze in the chair beside her infirmary bed. Strictly speaking, she probably could have gone back to her own rooms, but Ronon had brought her to the infirmary and she'd flaked out in a matter of minutes.

Apparently Ronon hadn't been too far behind.

Rodney had tried to check that everything in the city was working before his stimulants gave out almost between one sentence and the next. He slumbered noisily on the stretcher bed in his lab that was kept for this very purpose. Zelenka, at least, had possessed the sense to find his own bed before his eyes sealed shut and had even come by to reassure John that Rodney was well and all systems were stable.

John would have been more worried if Carson hadn't indicated that he'd expected everyone to sleep a lot in the aftermath of the move.

"Frankly, Colonel, I'm surprised more of the city doesn't resemble the walking dead after the last few days. We're doing pretty well, all things considered."

All things considered.

Keller said Elizabeth had been lucky. Edwards' actions on the scene had been timely. To give the Colonel his due, he'd started the clean-up efforts even as John brought the city down. Whatever else could be said of him, he'd held everyone together, and kept command of the situation.

The infirmary had been busy with people – mostly cuts and scrapes – and John had argued hard to be allowed to look in on Teyla, and although Keller had granted him persmission, she'd warned him against waking her.

He'd checked in on everyone that needed to be checked on, then come back to his room to wait for morning.

It was morning now.

John clenched his fingers into a fist, shaking slightly with tension – the tension of the last week, of the last day, of the morning.

Atlantis had made it. They'd all made it. And now John would leave Atlantis.

He let the fist go and looked up, out past the dark shadows of the lower spires that the window towards the sea where the horizon sat. Pale as mist, the blue edges blurred to a haze of gold as the sky began to burn with the rising sun.

His time was running out.

John wondered if he should go see if Elizabeth was doing okay after her surgery. He could go past Rodney's lab and see if his friend could be woken up long enough to say goodbye. Maybe he could check in with Ronon by Teyla's bedside, and wait until her lashes lifted over eyes that understood too much and not enough.

What stopped him was the knowledge that if he went to see them now, he wouldn't be able to leave.

His gut twisted as the first rays of light speared over the horizon, touching the tip of one of the taller outermost spires of the city, turning dark grey to silver incandescence as the sun pushed back the night and brought the new day with its rising.

John closed his eyes against the tide of golden sunlight that crept down across his forehead to warm his face and body.

Around him, the city glowed with the first burnishing heat of the morning sun, cold metal steaming gently in the light. On the edge of his awareness, Atlantis stretched like someone just woken, rising and shining with the new day.

The last morning in his city.

He took a long breath deep into his lungs – sea air, brine, and the fresh scent of the dawn – held it, let it out. His doorbell chimed.

Time to get going.

John rose to answer the door.

--

Part One

It began as just another day in Atlantis, with no hint of where it would finally lead. John woke just before sunrise and turned over in the bed, pulling the covers with him. They came without resistance, and this time the surprise only lasted a moment before he shifted in the sheets and ducked his chin down into the warmth of the blankets.

After sharing a bed for two moons, getting used to sleeping alone again was more difficult than he'd expected.

But that could be said of a lot of things in Atlantis.

As the golden light of dawn slid in through his curtains to make its slow way down the wall, John swung his legs out of the bed and tucked his feet into the sheepskins that he'd left by the bed. They didn't do much for his military dignity, perhaps, but they were comfy and, more importantly, warm.

Not that it was that cold in Atlantis right now – the winter had been cold and wet, but mostly wet. Compared to the winters back in the US, it was barely anything to fret about.

Compared to Antarctica, it was practically tropical.

Orawi had been going into summer when he'd left it. The tava uololo had been ripening, the thick scent of the golden grains carrying on the wind. The villagers had been waiting for the last of the fields to ripen before they brought the lot of it in, harvesting, threshing, bagging, and taking it out to be sold at the open markets.

He could see it now, as though he stood at the gates of the village in the morning, the sun's light casting his shadow before him as he paused between the posts.

That last morning on Orawi, instinct had urged him to turn back, to take one last look at the place and the people who had been home to him; wings of delicate memory had beat lightly against his head – a woman who was warned not to look back, but had turned and been lost.

Yan Stormborn had chosen to set his face forward, to discover the man he'd once been but forgotten. But in regaining that forgotten life, John hadn't lost what Yan remembered.

It ached in him sometimes – the memory of a simpler life. Being John Sheppard was a complicated thing.

He rested his wrists on the edge of the mattress and put all thought of the village out of his mind. He wasn't Yan Stormborn anymore – a stranger who'd made himself a home among the Orawi, found a life he could be content in, found a woman to love. He was Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis, a descendant of the people who'd built this city and sunk it before returning to the planet from which they'd come, and the former military leader of the Atlantis expedition to Pegasus.

As he rose to his feet, John thought he'd never felt the weight of being himself before Kolya and the Wraith. John Sheppard had always just been who he was; he'd never actually thought about who he was.

He'd never had to.

It took him less than five minutes to change into a tracksuit. It took almost as much time to persuade his hair to pretend it had a claim to being normal, and in the end, he gave up and just went out to meet Ronon.

The big guy was already at their meeting point, stretching in a long, sinuous movement that he claimed loosened all his muscles in preparation for the run.

"Short, medium, or long?"

"Short, today." At Ronon's lifted eyebrow, he explained, "I've got the medical with Carson this morning and I don't want to run myself ragged. And Teyla's due back from New Athos."

"She's back this morning?"

"Yeah."

"Short trip." Ronon rolled his head and John heard the bones of his neck cracking with the stretching movement. "Ready to run?"

At this hour of the morning, the corridors were mostly empty – one reason why John preferred the early run to the midmorning or midafternoon one. Plus, he hadn't yet had breakfast, he could have a shower afterwards, and unless there was a crisis in the city, he could be pretty certain there wouldn't be any meetings scheduled.

Not that he was invited to too many meetings these days.

John put that thought aside and let his body take over.

Running was a rhythm that took his attention from whatever thoughts had been seeping through his head and focused it on the movement of his body, the stretch and tense of muscle, and the draw and hiss of breath in and out of his lungs.

He, like most of the rest of the city, had initially thought Ronon ran because, well, he was used to it. It had taken nearly nine months for John to realise that Ronon ran because he enjoyed running. It had taken him six months living as another man for John to realise why.

As Teyla would say, it cleansed the mind, readied it for the day.

"Didn't you offer to go to New Athos with Teyla?"

"Yeah. Edwards didn't like it." And Teyla had seemed a little non-plussed by the offer, although she'd seemed disappointed when John was forbidden to leave the city.

"Not much he does," Ronon rumbled with something that sounded like a huff. "When's the meeting with O'Neill?"

"After the weekly report."

"You'll get your position back."

"Yeah, well..." It was so much simpler to Ronon. Satedan society had been a lot simpler in some ways; the Wraith made a common enemy, and the military had operated without politics interfering in the way they commonly did in Earth societies. There wasn't much John could say as they pounded down a long corridor that curved gently past a series of storerooms. He wanted his position back, but it wasn't up to him. In the meantime, he had other things to do. "I'd like to get the team back, first."

Ronon's head turned, his dreads bouncing over his shoulders, the silver end-clasps gleaming in the sunlight streaming in a side window of the corridor. "You've already got us."

"Not officially."

"Do you need it official?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

John thought about it and wasn't sure he could explain. At one level, he felt Ronon should have understood – he'd been a team leader among his own people. But the Satedan military had carried a greater social orientation – people were assigned to units, and once they were assigned, the unit was their family, their home, their life. They might marry or take lovers, have children, leave the Satedan forces; but first and foremost, they would always be a part of their unit.

Ronon had transferred his allegiance from the Satedan forces and his former unit to John, Teyla, and Rodney. They were his family now, and even John's disappearance hadn't swayed that loyalty to the two remaining members of his team.

"It's...complicated." Like so many things in his life.

"McKay'll be mad if you take him off the Outpost Project."

"He'll live with it," said John unsympathetically. Rodney was always annoyed about something – it might as well be because John had gotten him taken off an Atlantis sub-project that was essentially a whole lot of boring punctuated by the occasional 'Ooh'. "Teyla said he's been complaining about being stuck in the lab anyway."

"Edwards?"

"Probably." There were fewer civilians going out with the military teams these days – fewer military teams that would 'put up' with a civvie. Rodney wouldn't stand for being considered a 'hanger-on', especially not after working with John. "I heard you've been eating with the new doc – Kelly?"

"Keller. Dr. Keller. Yeah. She's...interesting."

"Is it going anywhere?"

It was hard to see the shrug amidst the morass of bouncing dreadlocks, but John thought that Ronon might have shrugged. "Just friends."

"Tending to more?"

Ronon just grunted. "Maybe. What about you and Teyla?"

"What about me and Teyla?"

"You knew she was coming back this morning."

"It's in the schedule."

"You wanted to go to Athos with her."

"Haven't seen the New Athos camp yet." John felt nettled by the questioning. And it got worse when he glimpsed Ronon's smirk. "What?"

Ronon shrugged. "I always figured you had a thing for her."

John wanted to say that there was no 'thing' involving Teyla, but the words stuck in his mouth. Teyla was Teyla: ally, team-mate, friend. And even if he'd had a 'thing' for her, there were rules against John doing anything about it. Discomfort uncoiled in his gut, churning his nerves. His instincts were warning him this was a dangerous conversation to follow, and he should shoot it down now before it flew out of familiar territory and into dangerous airspace.

John forced a lightness into his voice. "Teyla? No. You know we're just friends. And," he added, "I've done the marriage thing before. It didn't go so well."

He couldn't imagine marrying Teyla. A house, kids, a dog, a settled, everyday life – that didn't belong to anything in his experience of Teyla. Even if he translated it to a tent, a community, and a hireni herd...

No. Teyla wasn't a woman for that kind of life – and John wasn't the kind of guy who could have given her that anyway.

He certainly hadn't managed it with Nancy.

Thinking of Nancy reminded him that he should send his family a message of some kind. They'd been notified of his MIA status, but O'Neill said that they'd held off informing them of John's return, mainly because informing them that John was back would necessitate their being given access to see him, which wasn't possible as long as he was going to be stuck in Atlantis.

As they jogged up a set of stairs, their boots slapping the grating with metallic emphasis, John wondered how long before the IOA started putting pressure on Elizabeth to have him sent back to Earth for evaluation. If Beckett gave him the medical all-clear, it would probably start tomorrow.

Something else not to look forward to.

Still, when looking at the final result, John figured he'd submit to their evaluations. He'd do their psych tests and their physicals. He'd jump through their hoops. And he'd get his team back, one way or the other, through sheer stubborn mule-assedness, if nothing else.

Up ahead of them, a group of Marines emerged from the transporter, headed back to their quarters after spending the night on duty. It was time for the changing of the guard.

They saw John and Ronon coming and split neatly down the middle, moving out of the way so the two guys could run on unhindered. As they did so, one of the younger guys with a shock of reddish-brown hair turned to follow their passage. "Hey Ronon, you gonna test-drive the newbies today?"

Ronon turned on one foot and jogged backwards for a few steps. "Busy today. Maybe a few days."

"Save it for our shift if you can."

"Will try."

"Good man."

The Marines fell away behind them, and a moment later, Ronon caught up with John, increasing his pace with little to no effort.

"Test-drive the newbies?" Once upon a time, John would have known everything that was taking place in the city as far as the military went. These days, he was kept carefully out of the loop, thanks to Edwards and his sidekick, Major Camberwell.

"Edwards wants the new personnel run through a survival skills course before they're allowed out."

"All of them or just the military?"

"Mostly military, but the important civilians, too."

"And he asked you to do it?"

Ronon's head turned look at John, and he bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "Nope. But Kirkegaarde back there persuaded Henries to let me have a go at them. Better to take a fall in Atlantis than out there." The grin faded a little. "I was going to tell you yesterday, before you headed into the meeting with Weir."

And this was the state of the city right now. With John out of the loop, what he knew of the military decisions in the city came from Ronon and Major Lorne, both of whom kept him updated on what was happening. But even they couldn't tell him everything – and sometimes they didn't know what was going on at a command level.

Edwards didn't exactly keep Ronon and Lorne out of the military loop; but he was careful of anyone in the city who might turn out to be an ally for John. Of course, that included most of the military personnel from back when John had been in the city, but it also included most of the scientific personnel – old and new.

John frowned a little as something occurred to him. "You don't mind being pulled off the general roster?"

"Why would I?"

"I just thought...you're pretty friendly with the Marines."

"So?"

"So you might prefer to keep working with them."

"I can keep working with them from your team." Ronon shot him a sharp glance. "Unless you're rethinking."

"No." He'd never rethink this. He upped the pace, just a little. "I just thought you might prefer to work with the guys you've been working with for the last few months."

"No. I want the team back, too."

It was what John believed – what he'd wanted to believe. But in quiet moments, he watched his team-mates in the lives they'd carved out for themselves without him and he'd wondered.

With Rodney heading off to the Outpost Project on a semi-regular consulting basis, Ronon involved in military activities John wasn't informed about, and Teyla going to see her people for days at a time – John had been left adrift.

It wasn't a case of fault or guilt; he didn't blame them. They'd kept going with their lives in his absence, and now he was back, it wasn't easy making a place for him to fit back in.

But they seemed willing to try and that was enough for him, at least for the moment, even if what he really wanted was for things to go back to the way they'd been before. Getting the team back together – officially back together – that was the start of it.

Getting the rest of it back – the life he'd lived as John Sheppard – that would be harder.

The main corridor they were in branched off, with one fork leading through doors out along another corridor that ultimately ended in a pier, and the other looping back towards the centre of the city.

John veered towards the city loop and increased his pace yet again. He wanted to push himself, give himself a challenge, but not so much that he arrived worn out for his appointment. He let himself fall into the rhythm of the pace, and tried not to think about anything much at all until he and Ronon were back near the personnel quarters, walking to cool down after their run.

"Dinner's still on?"

"If you're not busy."

"Don't have much to be busy with." Ronon shrugged. "You'll be able to make it?"

John frowned. "Why wouldn't I?"

Ronon looked up and down the corridor. "Thought you might be in meetings about Earth."

"Not until tomorrow – unless they changed the time and didn't tell me." Which Edwards might, but Elizabeth wouldn't. "There's a brief meeting after lunch but nothing otherwise."

"Sparring with Teyla?"

"That's not a meeting," said John without missing a beat. He'd started training regularly against Teyla again. Whatever time John could claim of her – or Rodney or Ronon – he did; in the absence of the duties he'd once performed as military leader in the city, he had time and to spare.

"Uh-huh." For a moment John thought Ronon was going to pursue that line of thought but the other guy just glanced down the corridor in both directions again. "There's a rumour that the IOA wants you to go back to Earth."

"It's not a rumour."

The thick brows furrowed. "You'd just go?"

"It's an evaluation," John explained, leaning forward against a wall to give his calves a good stretch. "Earth wants me to check out before they reassign me again. So they know that I'm in my right mind."

"Heightmeyer's not good enough to tell them that?"

"Heightmeyer's Atlantis expedition," said John.

"Isn't she accredited?"

"With the Air Force," John confirmed. It bugged him, too. Whatever he thought about shrinks generally, Doc Heightmeyer was an excellent psychologist. She was more than capable of working through whatever therapy the IOA decided he needed to have. She'd been in Atlantis from day one, and had a good grip on all the issues that the personnel faced, having faced many of them herself.

She hadn't ventured an opinion on the matter, presenting a calm, professional face to John even during the discomfort of their evaluation sessions, but John figured it would sting her to have someone else called in over her work. It would sting him.

"So, politics?" Ronon's growl made it pretty clear what he thought of that.

"It's always politics," John said, switching his legs and feeling the stretch in his left calf. He'd head back to his quarters for a shower, then breakfast, a quick trip up to the Control Room to see Elizabeth while he waited for Teyla to get back from New Athos. She'd arranged to come back today so they could all celebrate his medical clearance.

John was determined to look at this as a positive, however small.

"Never liked politics."

John grinned. "Me, neither." He was about to comment on the irony of that considering he'd once been military leader for the city, but stopped as a tall figure turned the corner and came down the corridor towards them.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ronon shift. Without looking, John knew the big guy had taken on a wary, watchful stance – not quite a fighter's challenge, but something very like it.

"Sheppard, Ronon."

"Edwards."

Ronon just grunted as the Colonel stopped beside them.

"I hear you've got a busy day today, Sheppard." Edwards sounded conversational, but his eyes were cold.

"Medical evaluation with Beckett this morning," John said, "and the usual in the afternoon."

"I see. Make sure you've left tomorrow afternoon free for the meeting discussing the results of the evaluation. The IOA's sent through advisory information regarding the execution of Stargate duties and the personnel carrying them out that's relevant to your situation."

John's eyes narrowed. "Advisory information? Or directives?"

"Advisory," said Edwards. "Although implementation is at the discretion of the expedition leader."

Which should have been comforting, since John knew that Elizabeth wanted him back on the active roster as soon as he was cleared. However, something about the way Edwards said it suggested he wasn't concerned about Elizabeth's personal stance on this matter.

"So, nothing much to worry about?"

It was a thin smile, gently edged with unpleasantness. "Nothing at all."

John made a note to ask Elizabeth about it while he waited for Teyla to arrive later in the morning. "Good. Then I can expect your reply to my request to have my team formally reassigned in the next few days?"

He watched the man's nostrils flare and his lips pinch at the corners and felt a small wave of petty satisfaction at the visible sign that he'd annoyed the man.

"You should be aware, Sheppard, that this fitness appraisal is only the first step on the road to you being returned to an outgoing Stargate team. The requirements of the IOA are fairly clear that a proper evaluation is required before you're deemed fit to go through the Stargate as a representative from Earth."

"More hoops," Ronon said, and John bit back a grin as Edwards' head jerked to the side, as though he'd forgotten Ronon was there at all.

"I don't know what kind of standards Sateda had for their military, Mr. Dex, but on Earth, we don't just send our people out to be slaughtered. We prepare them for what they're going to face."

Ronon tensed and suddenly all John's amusement fled the situation.

Sateda had been prepared against the Wraith. They just hadn't anticipated how far the Wraith would go against a threat.

"I'm aware of the requirements, Colonel," John told Edwards, cutting off any reply Ronon had been about to make. He'd rather this go down as a black mark on his record than see Ronon beat the shit out of Edwards for implying that the Satedan military had been sub-par by Earth standards. "And I'm willing to fill them as necessary to get back to work."

"Just as long as you are, Sheppard. We don't shortcut things around here anymore."

"Didn't know we shortcut them in the first place." Ronon's voice was almost a growl.

Time to disengage and get the hell out of dodge. These skies weren't safe, and John disliked flying blind – or with a reckless wingmate. "Thanks for the heads-up, Edwards," he said, using the man's name rather than his title or the honourific, knowing it would piss Edwards off – for whatever that was worth. "I'll see you at that meeting then?"

And without waiting for an answer, he walked away, trusting Ronon to follow his lead, trusting that he could make it to the corner and out of sight before Edwards called him up, trusting that he would keep his own temper on a leash until they were out of sight and home free.

But silently, he fumed. Using Sateda was underhand. Using anything against John's team was underhand. This wasn't about John's team, about Ronon – or it shouldn't have been. This was about Edwards' dislike of John.

In the weeks since John had returned to Atlantis, Edwards hadn't warmed to him at all. John supposed he couldn't be surprised – he wouldn't have been pleased either if he'd come into a position of authority only to discover that his well-loved predecessor had returned from the dead.

Initially, Edwards had reminded John of Colonel Marshall Sumner, whose position as military leader had fallen to John after his death – except that however parochial Sumner had been, he'd at least had a reason to distrust John's reliability based on his service record.

Lately, though, Edwards had gotten sharper, more petty in the face of John's return and the city's reaction to it. He'd started 'forgetting' to put John's name on memos, had left him out of significant military communiques, and dismissed any of John's ideas for change – passive-aggressive behaviour that was frustrating at best and obstructive at worst.

The crazy thing was that, so far as John could see, Edwards' animosity was based in his fear that John's return threatened his position.

In John's opinion, if the man had made an effort to be civil and polite, he'd probably have more people on his side. But he'd seen the expedition as a military base and tried to run it as though he were the senior officer. Which might work with the military, but fell apart with civilians.

And in Atlantis, the civilian population outnumbered the military two to one.

"I never liked politics," Ronon said, repeating his statement of before as they reached the next junction.

John grimaced. His mind was still on the conversation with Edwards, too. "Yeah, well, that's the way the IOA works. It's mostly politics."

"If they're sending you to Earth, you could talk to them."

"They wouldn't listen to me. I've got a vested interest."

Ronon snorted, "On Sateda, a vested interest is a considered good thing. Means you're not puffing the wind."

"Yeah, well, this being Earth, they'd worry that a vested interest meant you were puffing your own wind," John said without thinking. A moment later, he realised how that sounded and grinned as Ronon guffawed. "Teach me to think before I speak. I'll see you at breakfast."

They split to their separate rooms.

In the shower, though, John let the spray beat down on his skin at near-boiling temperatures and knew that it was more complicated than Ronon understood. Hell, he was from Earth, and it was more complicated than he understood.

The truth was that the IOA had good reason to distrust John. He'd been a prisoner of the Wraith for at least a month, and if he'd kept himself from telling the Wraith everything he knew about Earth, they only had his word for it. He'd been living in the Pegasus galaxy as a native for five months after that, oblivious to who he'd been and his responsibilities here in Atlantis, and while it had been obvious he'd lost his memory, the what and why of it had been more complicated.

Why hadn't the Wraith drained him dead? 'Because one of their number owed him a debt' was hardly a good explanation – they were Wraith. Why hadn't they tried to coerce him into leading them to Atlantis – or, better still, Earth? John refused to believe that they'd given up hope of finding such an abundant food source. How had he escaped unscathed? What had they done to him in those few weeks he still couldn't remember? Was he so sure that he was who and what he thought he was?

John remembered the green, tattooed face of the Wraith he'd allied with to escape Kolya, the rasping voice saying, You would do no less, were it in your power.

It hadn't started nagging him until the morning after he'd woken up in Atlantis in the full memory of who and where he was.

Why had they let him go?

He had no answer to that. He doubted that the IOA did, either, safely away on Earth.

But answer or not, they'd want to be sure of him before they let him back out into Pegasus. They'd want to rattle him, to shake him until they were sure he was empty, until they could be certain he hadn't been subverted somehow – although how they could prove a negative was beyond him, beyond John, beyond anyone.

Still, as he ran his face and hair under the pounding spray, John wondered if, maybe, this time, the IOA wasn't right after all.

--

tbc