John woke from the deep, deep sleep of the highly medicated with a lazy slowness. It was a while before he figured out he really was awake – his head felt full of insulation, his right shoulder felt heavy and his legs were tingly, like when you were sitting weird and they were falling asleep, but hadn't gotten to the pins and needles part, yet.

The latter sensation pinged at his mind until the mild discomfort blossomed into a terrifying worry. He tensed with the thought and realized something else – a small, warm hand was tucked under his, returning his tight squeeze of anxiety.

"John? Are you awake?"

The question was spoken by an equally warm voice at his left side. He felt his cheeks go warm and he relaxed his hand.

"I think so," he said, or tried to. His voice was gravel on sandpaper.

"I think so, too," Teyla's voice replied happily. He hadn't managed to open his eyes yet. "We were beginning to wonder if you would sleep through another day."

"Another?" John had no idea what day or time it was, or even where he was, though the soft beeping of monitors and the cool, sterile smell of the air gave him a pretty damn good clue.

"Yes. We returned from Ahk-ho-lido two days ago this afternoon. You have been asleep since Jennifer closed your wound."

There was a long moment of quiet, and John almost dozed off as he tried to get the comment into some context that made sense. He had been hit by a singing bullet...two nights ago? No, three. Jennifer had yanked the Iron Man's virus transmitter out of his chest two mornings ago. He didn't remember returning to Atlantis, but he must have... The hand under his gave a little shake.

"Are you still awake? Jennifer wants to talk to you."

John didn't answer until he figured out that he still had his eyes closed and that maybe he'd be awake if he opened them. Doing it was harder than thinking it, but with a valiant effort – if he did say so himself – he raised his eyebrows high enough to crack apart his lids.

It took a few blinks and some effort to focus, but he finally saw Teyla standing beside him, one hand under his, the other resting lightly on the pale green sheets that covered him. Jennifer was fussing with the wires coming out of his other arm and he flopped his head in her direction.

"Mornin', Doc," he slurred.

"Welcome back, Colonel," Jennifer teased, giving him her full attention. "Can you tell me how you're feeling?"

John would have shrugged, except his body was way too relaxed and he was lying flat on his back, not propped up on comfy pillows. That realization bumped the worry up a notch further and he squeezed Teyla's hand hard before embarrassment again stopped him. He pulled away to scrub his face with shaking hands, hoping the women would think they were shaking from fatigue, and trying to figure out what to say. He felt the tug of tape and stitches in his right shoulder as the motion pulled on the dart wound, but it was a dull sensation, not pain exactly.

"Um...Feel really numb," he said, the single word expressing the best both the medicinal fuzz and the terrifying tingling in his legs and hips. He tried to shift his feet, and he felt an overwhelming surge of relief when he got them to rustle a little under the sheets, but they were still heavy and tingly, as if they were on pivots and he just didn't have the right leverage.

"No sharp pain in your chest or back?"

"No."

"No aches or discomfort?"

"No." He didn't count the discomfort of not being able to move his legs right in that answer.

"Any trouble breathing?"

John took a deep experimental breath at the suggestion and felt a twinge in his back before he stopped. "Deep breaths kindof hurt," he admitted. He considered asking more about his back, but Teyla's eager presence stopped him. He...didn't want any bad new in front of her.

...Or Rodney.

"So! The sleeping, comic book action figure has finally come back to life," Rodney bellowed happily as he walked up to John's bed, a tablet computer tucked under his arm.

"M'wake," was all John was willing to admit. "Did you figure out who the Iron Man is?" Jennifer opened her mouth at the change of topic, then sighed, resigning herself to visitors before she finished her verbal checkup. That suited John. He sort of didn't want any bad news in front of himself, either.

"Not a clue." Rodney's answer was cheerful, but the news bothered John. "Other than the fact that it was specifically seeking ATA gene carriers that would take its nasty little virus back to Atlantis, we have nothing."

"I thought Silpa said his 'metal man' was looking for a key of some sort," Teyla chimed in, her expression the smug look of someone who got to correct McKay.

"Well, yes, but that doesn't make any sense, so it still falls into the 'we got nothing' category." John disagreed, but Teyla spoke again before he could.

"And Colonel Carter mentioned something about the power signature looking familiar."

John grinned when Rodney's shrug of disgust pegged his 'Rodney's embarrassed' meter.

"But since we had to fry the device from Sheppard's chest and wipe the virus completely to keep it from attacking Atlantis, we have nothing to study to quantify 'familiar' into something more meaningful."

"Who opened the stargate, anyway?" John groused, suddenly remembering those terrifying moments of holding the virus back from the communications downlink. It was Teyla who answered, and John turned his head at the anger in her voice.

"Governor Silpa encountered your abductor in the forest on a hunting trip before the first bullets flew through the city. It told him that it was looking for the city of Atlantis and he told it he would lure us to Ahk-ho-lido to save his own hide. When he discovered that we had removed the device, he sent a message through the Gamma site requesting they contact us."

"Why?" That didn't make much sense to John.

"He feared that the metal man would punish him if we escaped its trap. He believed the metal man would reward him if he helped it."

"Great. Half the galaxy is asking us for help all the time, the other half is trying to find bigger friends to beat us up."

John closed his eyes, feeling beat up himself. "Just thank whoever got the gate closed again for me. The virus almost got through. If it hadn't shut down when it did, I would have had to...sacrifice the jumper to stop it." He shuddered at the close call.

"You're welcome."

John cracked his eyes open again to peer at Teyla. He was shocked to see tears sparkling in her eyes that she blinked away, her expression fierce.

"You shut the gate?"

"I ordered Banks to close it as quickly as possible. I was afraid I'd done the wrong thing, that I had shut down the only connection Atlantis had to Rodney's cure..."

John shook his head, "No! You did the right thing. Any longer and those pilots on the jumper in orbit would dead right now. You did the right thing." He hated the look of doubt in her eyes, wished he could do more than stare encouragingly from a bed. "How did you know what Silpa had done?"

Teyla took a calming breath.

"I grew suspicious after Silpa lied to me about a meeting he said he had to attend with Pulo. When Pulo came blustering into the Barter Room and had no knowledge of such a meeting, I also remembered something Silpa had said that he could not have known. He said: 'I am pleased you were able to remove the metal man's device from Colonel Sheppard'. But he never heard us speak of the 'Iron Man' as you and Rodney call it. I only heard the reference once, and Silpa was not present at the time."

"So you tracked him down." It wasn't a question. It's what he would have done.

"Yes. I grew terrified when we spoke with shoppers who had seen him on his way to the Stargate."

"With good reason," Rodney chimed in – butted in, actually. He was looking left out. "Silpa stunned our man at the gate, called the Gamma site and fed them some story about an explosion in the market."

"There goes his security clearance," John muttered.

"Ahk-ho-lido no longer has our favor," Teyla agreed. "Colonel Carter voided all their codes and has evacuated the Gamma site. We are simply fortunate that we arrived at the gate just as Atlantis was dialing in."

"You were there when the gate opened?"

"Yes."

"How long was the gate open, anyway?" John was enjoying the story, it kept him distracted from the worry, but this part didn't seem to fit what was happening on his side of the transmission.

"Perhaps fifteen seconds. Twenty at most."

"Twenty seconds!" he couldn't keep the shock out of his voice. Teyla cocked her head.

"At most."

"I'll be damned," he whispered, unable to repress another shudder at the memory of the battle within his mind to counter the virus's assault. He'd felt like he'd been fighting for days. He'd been sure he was holding off the virus for hours at least – which of course didn't make sense now that he thought about it.

"Felt longer, huh?" Rodney pressed, conveying curiosity and that trademark, Rodney, I'm-jealous-that-you-did-something-heroic-in-an-intellectual-way vibe.

"Felt like I was holding the tiger's tale," John admitted.

"Well, I killed the Tiger and you look like crap, so I'm going back to work. Get back on your feet, soon, Sheppard."

Rodney waved a jaunty farewell and left with a bounce in his step, his alpha-nerd status reassured. John appreciated the visit, but his words brought fear back to the foreground from where he'd almost managed to bury it. A spike of terror sped his heart and he heard Jennifer rustling at the machines. He closed his eyes again and tried to breathe through the panic.

"Do you need anything, John?" Teyla asked.

He just jerked his head, thinking that maybe if he pretended to fall asleep she would leave. He really didn't want anyone around right now.

"He's fine, but I need some privacy to complete my exam. Teyla, would you excuse us for a while. I need the Colonel all to myself for a bit."

John gulped. He usually hated any kind of exam that required privacy. That usually meant what the doc was going to do to him was anything but private.

"Of course. Feel well, John."

John lay still, a stiff mass of tension and waited for Jennifer to begin her torture. He heard Teyla's footsteps fade and a privacy curtain being drawn around his bed. Great.

"So what really hurts, John?" Jennifer asked, her voice firm but sympathetic. There were no cold devices being slapped against his skin. No covers being tugged off his scandalously underdressed body. He cracked one eye open, peered at the young woman. She waved a hand at the machines.

"Your blood pressure is through the roof. Your heart rate keeps spiking. Your skin is clammy and if you clench your fists any tighter, you're going to dig holes in your palms. Since you've been stable for the past twenty-four hours, those symptoms tell me you're either in a lot of pain that you're not admitting, or you're working on a first-class panic attack. Do you want to tell me which it is, or do I get to use this to find out?" She waggled a very cold looking stethoscope at him to emphasize the threat.

He laughed softly at the doctor's playacting, relaxed slightly. It took a couple of breaths and more courage to ask than it took to face down three hungry Wraith, unarmed.

"I...My legs. I can't move them...right. Feels tingly and I can't...move them...right." He heard his voice go desperate and he hated it. He kept his face fiercely neutral, determined to take whatever she told him without reaction.

Jennifer nodded, stepped close.

"John, listen carefully. You're fine. You're going to be absolutely fine. The singing bullet that hit your back broke a rib, in the back of the ribcage, and caused a lot of bruising and swelling. The tingling and sluggishness you're experiencing is due to inflammation pressing upon the spinal nerve bundle, but it will fade with the swelling. I've got you flat to keep pressure off the bruised vertebrae and rib, but there's no nerve damage. I've had you under the scanner twice."

She was so firm, and so confident that John felt the fear slide away with a feeling of relief so powerful, he couldn't suppress a gasp. He took several deep breaths, feeling shaky.

"Thanks..." he managed at last, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"Well, I didn't do anything but plug the hole in your chest. Ronon found the singing bullet that hit your Kevlar. Turns out, the bullets were flying versions of the same device that you had inside you. It was smashed into powder, but Rodney recognized a couple of pieces. Pretty evil. Considering the force it hit you with, if you hadn't been wearing your vest, it would have dug itself nice and deep in your chest cavity where you would have either died immediately, or bled out a few minutes later. We would have taken the virus back to Atlantis for sure...in your dead body."

John stared at Jennifer. "Are you trying to creep me out?"

"No, I'm trying to tell you that you're pretty darn lucky, so don't go complaining when I tell you to take it easy for several days for your back and ribs to heal from a little bruising."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, meekly. At that moment, after being saved from the thought of a life-time disability, he would do anything to prevent that from happening. He knew it would wear off, but for now, lying around sounded pretty damn good. "Just do me one favor."

"Anything, John."

He wished that was an honest answer, but he just went with the most relevant.

"Can I get something to eat? I'm starving."

Jennifer chortled.

"Heart rate dropping. Blood pressure leveling off. Demanding food. Yup, you're back. I'll send a tray your way. Just let me know when the pain catches up with you. You don't need to tough it out. You need to relax to keep your spine relaxed."

"Sure," he said, just to get her off his case and moving towards that tray she promised.

"Remember, I can tell," she said fiercely, tapping her machines. She gave him a pat on the arm and left him alone.

John squirmed a bit, still wary of the weird feeling in his legs, then tried to relax as the doc had ordered. He managed, somewhat, by repeating her comforting diagnosis like a meditation mantra. But as the worry of disability faded, a slow seed of dread settled permanently into his chest to replace it.

Who was the Iron Man?

And when would it come after him next?

Sam scrubbed her eyes and scrolled to the top of her report to read through one last time. It was late and quiet out in the control room beyond her office door, but she was restless, agitated. She flipped the scroll bar on her mouse with an angry zip and the text chased back up the screen. She must have also accidentally hit the Save button because a dialog box popped up with the words "Complete and File Report?"

That's what was bugging her. This whole incident with Silpa and Sheppard's Iron Man was far from complete. They had Sheppard back – and she'd been unable to even start on her report until she got the good news from Jennifer that he was waking up and responding well to rest and treatment – but everything else dead ended.

The two devices they'd recovered were useless in terms of analysis. The hyperspace signature turned up no hits. The list of dead ends went on. McKay had put a listening post on Ahk-ho-lido, but so far, they'd had no evidence that the alien ship had or would return there.

Somewhere, deep in the lizard part of her brain, she had a nagging feeling that something about the carrier wave and the hyperspace signature seemed...familiar somehow. But it wasn't Ancient. It wasn't Terran, or Goa'uld, or even Ori.

With a sigh, she swallowed her pride and hit the File button. The report wasn't complete, but it was as finished as it was going to get for now. She'd put everything she could think of in Atlantis's database for such a time as they might encounter the Iron Man's technology again. Silpa was cowering in his own world's prison, but he was a patsy. There was no lasting connection between him and this race they knew nothing about.

Definitely Wild West, she thought as she powered off her monitor and forced her feet towards bed. She just really didn't hope this was the part of the story where a new villain strolled into town.

Pegasus already had too many of those...

Epilogue – 1 Year Later

John pumped bullets into the soldier's shield, feeling his heart pound with fury and fear as nothing he did stopped the other two from hauling Rodney and Dr. Jackson out of Janus's not-so-secret-anymore lab and onto that damn circle platform. He grit his teeth in vicious satisfaction when the shield around the alien finally fizzled out and John's bullets pummeled the damn metal suit with sparks and pings. When it fell, he had to force himself to stop firing out of pure frustration.

This thing was down, but it still wasn't enough. Rodney was gone. Sucked up through the hole they'd made to get down here in the first place. Still holding the muzzle of his rifle on the prone alien, John slapped at his earpiece, half turning to fling himself back into the transporter towards wherever he needed to go next.

"Control Room! What's the status of that ship?" He'd fly a damn jumper himself just to make those bastards pay. Instead, Banks voice was choked with regret.

"I'm sorry Colonel, they're gone."

John froze. Gone? How could it just be gone? How could it get through the shield? DAMN! It was Ahk-ho-lido all over again, only this time, Rodney was the one missing and in that moment, John would have given anything, ANYTHING to trade places. He forced down a shudder with effort, suddenly flooded with long-forgotten memories of floating through a forest in the grip of one of those suits, of being stabbed in the chest...

"Colonel?"

John shook himself, waved his men to cover the fallen alien.

"Go ahead, Banks," he managed.

"Did you get a look at the aliens? Do you know who that ship belongs to?"

John threw a hopeless look at Teyla who was looking just as helpless as he felt.

"Yeah. I have a pretty good idea who that ship belongs to," he snarled. "Get Zelenka down here."

"Done, sir. Who?"

"Iron Man," John said and this time he did shudder. "He found Atlantis after all."

Fini

Author's Note: Thank you to those who stuck it out to the end!