18. Matryoshka

Mer’s fury was incandescent. There was no way in ever-loving Hell Elizabeth would authorize Sheppard in the chair again anytime soon, if ever. In fact she had put a permanent guard watch on it and signed off disconnecting the room from the main power grid, effectively killing that line of research forever, if she so chose.

Mer thought it was just her wounded sense of pride at work; Grodin had literally picked her up and carried her to the gateship at a full run during the emergency, and Elizabeth had been bitching about being hauled around like a sack of potatoes from the moment she got back. The fact that Grodin was actually under orders from Lorne and Mer to do exactly that was something no one, even Mer, was willing to tell her, which basically meant they were leaving Grodin out to hang for the offense of injuring Elizabeth’s ego. At least Grodin knew better than to complain about it.

But the end result was the same: Elizabeth had cut Mer off from using the chair, and whatever her personal reasons for it, that outcome could be placed squarely at Sheppard’s feet.

Although, for the moment, they were elevated feet as the idiot in question was still in the infirmary.

They found Sheppard unconscious in the chair, white as death, blood and vomit splattered all over himself. Mer honestly thought the man was dead, but Carson checked for a pulse then started shouting. When Sheppard was hauled out of the chair by two Marines, he started seizing up so hard no one could hold him. It was a tense few minutes before Sheppard was able to be moved to a gurney and rolled out, Carson on top of him, pumping his chest. Because, of course, it was apparently the chair that had been keeping Sheppard’s heart going. Mer figured that it had some kind of small independent power source, like a watch battery, but it wasn’t as if Elizabeth was going to let him near the thing to find out.

The three days Sheppard was unconscious were three days of unremitting political warfare on Mer’s part. Lorne was just short throwing Sheppard’s comatose body off a pier, although Bates suggested they should shoot him first for form’s sake. Elizabeth actually looked interested in the idea. Heightmeyer was on Mer’s side, and Mer knew that even from a galaxy away O’Neill’s influence was strong, so he wasn’t without allies. What he was lacking, though, was a plan.

Mer rarely felt stupid but he did then, sitting by Sheppard’s bed and trying to figure out how to salvage the disaster.

His anger about the whole situation was mostly at himself; he should have known that Sheppard would do something extreme when backed into a corner. Sheppard’s files told him over and over again that the one thing Sheppard did not handle well was helplessness.

The irony was that John Sheppard openly abjured authority and rank, and always had, while believing himself responsible for everyone and everything. He was a born leader who inspired blind loyalty in the men under him—the legions of former subordinate officers and enlisted men who stepped forward voluntarily to vouch for Sheppard before his dishonorable discharge were testament to that. But he also kept people at arm’s length from his personal life and had a visceral hatred of authority figures, whether it was his father or his teachers or his superior officers.

Or Meredith Rodney McKay.

He realized with some chagrin that his plan to break Sheppard in order to build him back up had been fundamentally flawed: Sheppard was already broken. In fact he was still breaking, fracturing himself a little more every day, letting his guilt and shame crush him slowly to dust. He wasn’t going to get off the grindstone just because Mer told him too.

What Mer needed was an intercessor, someone with nothing to lose or gain who could fly in under Sheppard’s radar and get them a foothold on his psyche. Someone both Mer and Elizabeth trusted. Someone who really understood the value of fighting for lost causes.

It was time to call in the Emmagen.

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