Ronon stared straight ahead, his face contorted in pain, an arrow sticking out of his chest. John looked back, saw him fall forward, watched him die. John walked the city in despair that night.
Rodney looked so peaceful, like he was spending another nigh asleep at his laptop. One might notice the cup of water by his left hand, knocked over, and his other one on a device. But only if you looked close would you see the blackened fingertips, the charred nerves, and death. John sat on his bed, staring at the wall across from him, pitted with dents, that night.
John watched Teyla’s eyes slide shut, felt her hand slip out of his, watched as her chest froze, felt her pulse stop, her unborn child dieing with her. John cried himself to sleep that night.
Elizabeth’s eyes flickered. “Good luck,” she whispered, her aged, frail body wracked with its own set of ailments. John watched as another person died, and that night, he submitted his resignation.
The next night he stood on a balcony railing, ready to plunge himself into the waves. He still wondered what could bring a person to do this. John stepped off the rail that night.
A month later, John Sheppard’s last moments consisted of the inside of a jumper, an armada of ships headed towards Atlantis. This time, there would be no Daidalus. No one to save him. Just like there had been no one to save Ronon, or Teyla, or Rodney, or Elizabeth. He set his jaw grimly and sent his last radio message. “Goodbye,” he said, the nuke behind him already primed, the first ship coming up on the H.U.D. His world exploded in a flash of white. John died that night.
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