Safety Glass

A/N: Sequel (or prequel, depending on how you look at it) to "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" by Knocknashee. Thanks for letting me borrow your idea!

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Lt. Colonel John Sheppard sat cross-legged on his bed with a blank notebook open in his lap, twirling a pen in his fingers. He was still recovering from his latest encounter with the Genii, both physically and mentally. To help with the latter, Dr. Carson Beckett had suggested that he start keeping a journal, to get all the crap out of his head and onto paper. A journal was the ultimate listener: it couldn't pass judgment or offer ineffectual advice, couldn't laugh or be falsely sympathetic, couldn't try to commiserate and end up making him feel worse.

Well, Sheppard thought, it can't really hurt to try. He put his pen to the page and began to write.

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I've always been strong-willed. Whether it's a good thing or not I have yet to decide; it's gotten me both into and out of more than my fair share of trouble. The former, I think, is due mostly to the fact that I act on my emotions, sometimes to the point of disobeying direct orders and getting court-martialed… but that's another story entirely. I just can't stomach the idea of leaving my friends behind without at least trying to rescue them. I don't just give up on my people.

My point is, I once privately compared my mental constitution to safety glass. It can take a beating, and though it may crack, will never shatter.

Of course, being tortured for information can entirely change your perception of… well, everything, but especially yourself.

Anyway, here's what happened.

I don't remember the designation of the planet Teyla, McKay, Ronon, and I 'gated to, or even why we went in the first place, just that it was swarming with Genii. The Stargate was surrounded, and I counted about eight or nine guns pointed at us. The odds were a little better than two to one in their favor, but, long story made short, we managed to fight our way out and dial Atlantis – I have to remember to commend Ronon. We probably would all have been captured or killed if it hadn't been for him.

As it was, I stayed behind while the rest of my team ran for the gate, holding back the remaining Genii. But before I could go through myself, one of them came up behind me and hit me in the back of the head, probably with his gun, knocking me unconscious.

I came to in a small, dark, windowless room. Well, dark except for the lamp that hung directly over my head. I was lying flat on my back, bound by my wrists, ankles, and neck to a metal table. My head was throbbing, and the light stabbed into my eyes like knives. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away, a small moan of agony escaping my lips. The sound caught the attention of the man standing in the corner waiting.

I forced my eyes open again, gritting my teeth against the pain. My efforts were rewarded by the sight of a face I'd hoped I would never see again.

"Well, Major Sheppard, our paths cross once more," said Commander Acastus Kolya.

I couldn't form a coherent enough sentence to correct him, let alone say something appropriately cutting. Whichever of his grunts had hit me had clocked me but good. I must've had one hell of a concussion.

Kolya didn't seem to be expecting a response, anyway. Yet. He almost sounded genuinely sympathetic as he told me, "I truly wish it didn't have to come to this, Major. But if it is the only way to get my people what they need… then so be it."

With a herculean effort, I shook off the fog in my head and gathered my thoughts enough to speak. "Name, rank, and serial number," I muttered.

Kolya somehow managed to look arrogant and perplexed at the same time. "What?"

"Name, rank, and serial number. That's all you'll get out of me." I could feel my strength returning somewhat. "And if your intel isn't even good enough too keep up with something that basic, you're all a bunch of amateurs."

Kolya's face darkened. "So you've been promoted, I take it. Congratulations," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "That would make you, what, Lieutenant Colonel? Well, you listen to me, Colonel Sheppard: you will find that the Genii have our own ways of extracting information. And not all of them are terribly pleasant."

I glared at him, wanting to dare him to do his worst, but I was too exhausted to speak any more. I was having trouble staying awake – definitely not a good sign.

Kolya went over to the room's only door and spoke quietly to the guard stationed outside, but I couldn't hear what he said over the pounding of the blood in my ears. My head felt like it was about to explode.

A few moments later, a man in a white lab coat entered what my somewhat addled brain had taken so long to realize was my cell, carrying a disturbingly large syringe. At a nod from Kolya, he jabbed the needle into my arm and pushed the plunger, emptying a huge amount of God-knows-what into my bloodstream.

I had managed to put up a tough façade in front of Kolya so far, but I couldn't bite back a cry of pain as what felt like liquid fire spread through my veins. God, it was horrific! I was burning alive from the inside! I don't know what kept me from passing out.

As my screams died down into whimpers, Kolya leaned in close and whispered, "The good doctor here has the antidote as well… if you'll tell me what I need to know. What are Atlantis's weaknesses? How can I gain control of the city for the Genii?"

I could only pray he would buy our cover story. "Atlantis is gone," I ground out. "Destroyed… in a Wraith attack."

Kolya looked shocked. Momentarily speechless, he motioned to the doctor, who took another syringe from his coat pocket. I hardly felt the stab of the needle, just the blessed coolness that followed. I could fight no longer, and fell asleep.

I don't know how long I slept, only that when I woke, my head protested against the light even more strenuously than last time. And Kolya was back – with his lab-coated flunky. I made good on my word: no matter what he asked me, no matter how my blood burned with the doctor's drug, I only repeated my name, rank, and serial number. It became a sort of mantra, keeping me sane as the hours stretched into days.

Kolya was growing frustrated. "You could make this much easier on yourself if you cooperate," he said. "You're a strong man, Colonel. I'd hate to see what would happen to you if I were forced to try and break you." Dimly, I wondered what he'd been trying to do over the past… three days? five? …demanding to know where the "survivors" of Atlantis had gone to regroup.

"Go to hell," I spat. I kept my eyes fixed on the doctor, watching for the needle.

"Come now, Colonel, can't we be at least civil with one another?" Kolya asked condescendingly.

"You're not the one strapped to the table, Kolya."

The Genii commander was starting to lose his temper. "Your freedom is yours for the taking, Sheppard! Just tell me where your people are now based, and I will release you!"

I chose my next words carefully, and spoke them slowly and firmly. "Over my dead body." It was an oddly liberating feeling, to realize that I meant it. I would die before I loosed the Genii on Atlantis. "Or," I added, "preferably yours."

"You are in no position to make threats, Colonel," Kolya growled.

Too late, I saw on the wall the gleam of light reflecting off metal. I'd been too busy looking for the doctor's needles to see Kolya's knife – until it plunged into my forearm, between the bones, the tip scraping metal on the other side. I gasped in shock and felt vaguely sick… and then the pain kicked in. I choked back a scream, but I'm sure Kolya could see it in my face, damn him.

"I am not a patient man, Sheppard, so I will only ask you one more time," Kolya said as he pulled the knife out of my arm. The doctor stepped forward and unbound my damaged arm to bandage the wound. I couldn't move my fingers. "Where are your people?"

"Sheppard, John. Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air–"

Kolya pressed the bloody knife to my chest. "If you repeat that one more time, I will cut your heart out."

I shut my mouth.

"Now, where are they, Colonel?"

I gave him my best defiant glare. "This galaxy is plenty big enough for both of us, Kolya."

I fully expected him to lean on the knife and end it there. Instead, he motioned once more to the doctor. Oh, no, I thought. Not again!

Once more, the white-coated man jabbed a needle into my arm, but instead of the fire, I suddenly felt sleepy, leaden. I grew rapidly weaker. He was killing me…

I woke up in Atlantis, with no idea how I'd gotten there. Dr. Beckett was there, and I really, really didn't like the look on his face.

I liked the news even less. "Leukemia?" I demanded incredulously. "You're kidding me, right?" When he didn't answer, I said more softly, "But it's treatable, isn't it?"

"John…"

"I mean, I'm not gonna die, right?"

Beckett sighed. "I'm sorry John, there's nothing I can do. Maybe if we were able to contact Earth, get you back there…"

In my mind, six months went by. I lived out the last days of a man dying of a radiation-induced form of cancer… It was a slow torture, worse than anything else Kolya had done to me before.

Because it was all a hallucination, from waking up in Atlantis to the moments leading up to my death. In the real world, only hours had passed, just long enough for my team to find me and bring me back to Atlantis, barely in time to save my life.

There are actually to kinds of safety glass. There's the kind that doesn't shatter at all, and then there's the kind that shatters into a million tiny, round-edged pieces. Both are harder to get hurt on than broken shards.

Now, as I sit here writing, I realize why I was so willing to die, and take Atlantis's secret with me. If I'm to be compared to safety glass, I'd be more like the second kind. These people are more just my co-workers, more than just my friends, they're like family to me, and I would rather be destroyed myself than hurt any of them.

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Sheppard put down his pen and closed the notebook, feeling no better than he had before he'd begun. He turned the light off and drifted toward sleep, resigned to the nightmares that still plagued him.