Carson slowly shifted onto his side, keeping hold of Rodney as he looked over at John. The Major was waking up, grimacing as the inevitable pain hit. Carson was still woozy, however, and ended up slumping against Rodney, who didn't stir.

John heard fabric shifting and turned his head to the side. Carson was barely visible on the other side of Rodney's body and John didn't remember that being the way they'd been laying before. He propped himself on one arm and checked out Rodney. He was breathing and Carson wasn't freaking out, so John decided that Rodney was still okay.

Having figured that out, John also decided that Carson had a good idea so he let himself fall forward. Rodney's chest was conveniently located and surprisingly comfortable, providing just the right amount of cushion for John's head. As an added bonus, he didn't have to move any to see Carson.

"So, violent death," John whispered to Carson. "I could've gone my whole life without that knowledge."

"Seconded," Carson murmured. "Do you think we're going to die?"

John let himself wrap an arm around Rodney's midsection, laying his hand on Carson's side. "Don't, okay?" He asked quietly. "Just..."

Carson moved closer to Rodney, feeling tired and old and nearly out of optimism. "This is very odd," Rodney said hoarsely. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Be quiet," John ordered from his position on top of Rodney. "We're trying to rest here."

Rodney managed to laugh, even if only for a few seconds. "If I'd known that all it took to get the two of you to climb on top of me was getting trapped in a homicidal temple, I'd have done it months ago."

"And even in near-death, his ego is marching along proudly," John snarked.

"You're the one laying on him," Carson pointed out. "I was just monitoring his heartbeat."

"Basking here," Rodney muttered. "Although I think I should feel better; there's something wrong about still feeling bad right now."

John smiled. "Wait 'til we get out of here."

"What, you'll come curl up in Rodney's bed?" Carson asked skeptically. "Just to see if he's still alive?"

"Maybe," John shot back, ignoring the way his stomach clenched at the thought of doing just that. "Why so curious, doctor?"

"Are the two of you fighting?" Rodney inquired lightly. "Because it's very flattering."

"Or we could leave him out of it completely," John suggested. "And you could come see if I'm still alive."

"Not nearly as good an idea," Rodney huffed. "I liked the other one better."

"You would," Carson pointed out. "Why did you do it?" He asked, suddenly feeling very serious.

John remained silent for several minutes. He knew what Carson was asking; John was surprised it had taken them this long to come back to the topic. After all, they were probably going to die and imminent death made people obsess over the strangest things. "I was scared," He admitted haltingly, voice embarrassingly shaky.

"Of what?" Carson inquired, honestly curious. That he'd gab to everyone, or expect more than what he got?

"Fucking up," John replied, closing his eyes against a fresh wave of pain. "I've got this knack for fucking up friendships."

"That you do," Rodney said, reminding them he was still present. "But I don't think it was the fucking that fucked things up, John." If he was right, and Rodney was pretty sure he was, then John thought they were pissed that he'd slept with them. That wasn't it at all.

"Yeah, it did," John whispered. "You don't fuck friends."

Carson laughed harshly. "And I suppose you don't make friends of your lovers either?" He accused. "Piss-poor way of going through life, John. I wouldn't have minded if you'd said it was a one-time thing--if you'd actually said it and not skulked off like you did."

"We're grown men, John," Rodney murmured. "Believe it or not, we can handle things like that. And we can both say no; if we hadn't wanted it, we'd have let you know."

John sighed, knowing both men were right. He wasn't sure how to explain it, though, the sense that he'd absolutely screwed up in a very irrevocable way. "I just wanted..."

"Wanting's fine," Rodney told him. "But be honest about it, ok? I'm no mistake, and neither is Carson."

"That's not what I meant," John said, tightening his arm around Rodney. "I don't think that. I...I always fuck this up, ok? Always."

"Surely you've had help," Carson reminded him. "Nobody ever makes such mistakes on their own."

"I'm really good at it," John insisted. "Trust me."

Rodney shook his head and decided that they'd talked enough--and that he felt well enough to go on. "That's something I'm not taking on faith," He declared as he sat up and dislodged John. "You're a supposedly intelligent man, John, so I don't buy it at all. If you're scared of something, that's fine. If you're shitty at relationships, that's fine too. But be honest about why, at least with yourself. Don't just reflexively dump it on some wonderful quality you have for fucking up."

John was a little confused about what Rodney had just said, but he chalked it up to their mutual exhaustion. The three men slowly got to their feet, amidst more than a little grumbling and clutching at arms. "What I wouldn't give for a snickers bar right about now," Rodney said as they looked disgustedly down the hall. "Or a power bar, for that matter."

"I'm with you on that one," Carson agreed, pulling out his map. "Okay, we were going that way," He said, pointing. "Before we were rudely interrupted by evil, mean alien things with nasty teeth."

"Right," John murmured, leading the way. The hallway quickly opened into another, wider one. It was at the juncture of the two hallways that the script started moving again, but none of the men gave that more than passing notice. It was the hallway itself that drew their attention.

"Those are really impressive," Rodney noted, awe making his voice faint. Sweeping, concave ribs sailed upwards, as far up as they could see. One after another they marched, arranged in a gentle arc stretching in either direction as the hallway curved around out of sight. The script covering those arches was finer, smaller and more detailed, moving so quickly it made Rodney dizzy.

"Which way did we go last time?" Carson asked absently. He listened to the gurgle and sputter of water, but it wasn't any stronger one way than the other.

"Right," John replied. "Left this time?" He inquired to nobody in particular. "Anyone wanna bet this is it?" John had this feeling, deep in his gut. They were close to wherever they were going.

"Close, but not quite there," Rodney replied. "Come on." He moved in front, lurching slightly as his body protested the movement. A hand appeared on either side of him, clasping his upper arms. They remained for a moment, until he was steady once again.

Carson and John kept their holds on Rodney while they walked down the hallway. It was a testament to his condition that Rodney didn't protest the treatment; he simply kept pace with the others and let them think he needed their help. In truth, he might have--the world was moving in counterpoint to the script around him and Rodney worried that it wasn't supposed to be doing that.

"Doorway," Rodney murmured as they approached a gap in the rib-like arches. Indeed there was an opening, one that stretched the height of the columns. As one, they peered inside.

"Or maybe we're there after all," John said. What they were looking at was an enormous, column-filled room similar to the one they'd been pitched out of early on in their journey through the temple. Huge, fluted and script-covered columns rose up from the floor, mapping out complex patterns of walkways and alcoves. Windows lined the walls, carved in the spaces left by the ribbed arches they'd walked along in the outer hallway. The effect was distinctly surreal; from the hallway the wall was solid but sunlight streamed into the central room.

"No time like the present," Rodney said, urging them forward. They entered the room together, heads craning to take it all in. The faintest breeze brushed past their faces, but it wasn't chilled in the way the temporal disturbances were. The sound of rushing water was stronger than before, but they couldn't see any source for it.

They were so caught up in looking at the room that the first signs of in impending vision didn't register. It wasn't until Rodney's weight fell heavily on John and Carson that they took notice. "Get him down," John hissed, his own knees beginning to give way. Carson followed him as carefully as he could, but they all ended up in a pile together, propped up by a tangled mess of limbs.

They were primitive, but amusing, John decided. Short and hairy, monophasic little creatures that scurried around on four feet, sometimes standing for a moment to peer at each other in wonderment. He was taken aback by the disdain and superiority he felt; knowing it wasn't his own emotion only went so far. The things, while not exactly attractive, weren't all that bad. After all, they'd built an impressive civilization for themselves.

Still, John's host held the beings in very low regard. He stood, in the form of a rock, observing them move about completely unaware of his presence. They didn't even know his kind was there, watching and enjoying their deception. He watched, just as thousands of his kind watched, for the simple pleasure of seeing how this civilization's future would play out.

Traveling into the stars had been enlightening, to say the least. Solar systems rife with new species, intelligent and primitive, waiting to be discovered. This one had drawn their attention for one distinct reason.

The only inhabitable planet contained not one, but two independently evolved intelligent species. Two species that each swore they were the sole legitimate residents of the planet. At the moment, each species occupied approximately thirty percent of the available landmass, and controlled about the same amount of coastline.

It was only a matter of time before war began, and they would be there. Watching, observing and recording. But not interfering. John was transfixed by the morbid curiosity that consumed his host, the utter lack of empathy. It was amused by the idea of the two species killing each other en masse.

•••

Carson walked along the crowded marketplace, studying the way this primitive culture bartered and bantered. His host was completely focused on how cohesive the people were, how they bonded with each other so quickly and had such a unitary sense of self. Carson was simply enthralled with the appearance of them, feathery and light and completely birdlike.

He'd have indulged in simply looking at them, except that his host was insistent on paying attention to specific details. It dragged Carson's overextended mind along for the ride. He found himself walking out of the marketplace and outside the small, seaside village. Once he was well away from the place, Carson's host shifted out of its disguise and into a swirl of powdery dust. Carson was thrown off by the transformation, one he hadn't felt before. By the time he recovered, his host had moved through the air and into a shallow valley. He coalesced into the shape of a rock, directly beside another stone. Where they touched, Carson felt a spark of familiarity. Not John or Rodney, though; it was simply another of his kind.

::They are so confident,:: Carson said, ::And their hatred is quite intense.::

::They're jealous of the others, of their technology and their wealth,:: His companion noted. ::Despite the natural abundance of their land.::

Carson forced himself to let the conversation fade into the background, making a considerable effort to keep himself from being drawn in as an actor, albeit a passive one. The two observers continued to comment on the rival species, making estimates on how long it would be before war broke out.

From what he could tell, all the two species needed was common ground--something he admitted wasn't always easy to find. Still, even his untrained mind could figure out that war wasn't inevitable, that these two species didn't have to go through the kind of genocide and destruction his host seemed to predict, even welcome. It was as though it wanted to see the planet's population self-destruct in a whirlwind of intolerance and hatred.

•••

"The tree-dwellers are migrating south, starting their encroachment."

Rodney turned towards the voice, focusing his gaze on a large display. The largest continent of the planet they were orbiting was projected there, with density plots of each species' population. Rodney marveled at the technology, fascinated by the way it so quickly updated to reflect the movement of such a small number of individuals.

His host was fascinated by the possibility that years of observation was about to culminate in war, a hope that made Rodney stop daydreaming about having that kind of technology at his disposal. Bits and pieces of information on what he was observing flitted through Rodney's mind, filling in the gaps in his knowledge. His host, however, was more focused and Rodney soon found himself taken along for the ride as they intensely studied the increasing movements of the people below.

"And the mammals?" Rodney inquired of his fellow observer. "Have they responded?"

"Yes, there is an increase in the population density at their closest military base," The other reported, zooming the display in to focus on a clearly marked border region. "Still, they have only half the numbers the tree-dwellers do."

Rodney's host studied the map with an appalling amount of glee. "And the other continent?"

"Our observers report that the news is moving slowly, but the governments are reacting in the expected manner--with increased focus on security and intelligence-gathering."

"File the report," Rodney ordered, "The others will want to observe this development with care."

Once the other was gone, Rodney went back to studying the maps. His host traced the migratory paths of the two species, marking likely locations of conflict. War, Rodney thought harshly. They were observing the beginnings of a war that could cover the entire planet and he was taking notes about where it might happen.

Carson struggled into wakefulness, wishing he could just stay under for a little while longer. If not for the fact that doing so wouldn't get them out of the temple, he'd have let himself slip back into oblivion. Every part of him hurt, as though he'd run a marathon and then gone off and done another one without resting.

If he felt like this, then Rodney had to be right on the edge so Carson made himself sit up and check on his friend. Rodney was pressed against his legs, sandwiched between himself and John. The Major's eyes were closed, but he appeared to be conscious. Carson studied Rodney, who was much to his relief still alive.

"I was sure this would be the last one," John grumbled. "This place is just so obvious."

"I know," Carson replied quietly. "I was hoping the same thing. Rodney can't take much more of this."

John levered himself into a sitting position. "None of us can," He said, wiping a drop of blood from his nose. "Um, is it just me or is the water sound louder?"

Carson looked around at the now-static carvings and the sweeping columns. The noise was louder, but it was all around so Carson couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

"Hey, Carson?" Rodney whispered softly.

"Yeah?" Carson replied, checking Rodney's pupils now that the man was awake.

"Why is the ceiling all wavy?"

John and Carson looked up together, just in time to see a flood of water rush downwards onto them.

Carson felt his back slam against the floor with the force of the water crashing upon him. He tried to hold his breath, but his chest was crushed and he reflexively gasped, drawing in a deep breath of salty, cool water. He waited for the burning, suffocating sensation to begin, but all he felt was the ache of sore muscles and the swirl of liquid around him. His body floated up off the floor but didn’t really approach what might have been the surface of this sudden flood. Carson thrashed wildly, unable to see anything or feel the others around him.

Then he felt a faint tingling, followed by a slippery slither against his skin. After that, things started to get a little bit fuzzy. An almost-sound caught his attention and held on to it; Carson found he didn’t have the energy to fight the seductive pull of letting go, so he didn’t. Lovely, numbing oblivion shrouded him and Carson’s mind slid into nothingness.

•••

When Rodney was younger, he used to dream of being a shark—swift and deadly as he cut through warm ocean waters. That was, of course, before he discovered physics but the dreams still held a special place in his memory.

Rodney thought maybe he knew now what it felt like to be a shark. He was breathing water; with every inhalation cool drafts of the stuff passed over his tongue and down into his body and Rodney suspected it wasn’t water at all. After all, if it was, he’d be well drowned by now. Instead, he was breathing it and idly kicking his feet. There was no way to tell if he was getting anywhere; the water swirled randomly so he couldn’t feel it sliding as he passed through it. Something tickled his eyes and his ears, making his skin twitch and his nose wrinkle.

Rodney swore he felt something brush against his hand but when he closed it, nothing was caught. Then he heard a voice, tinny and distant in the water, but then it was gone. Perhaps, Rodney thought, this was what drowning was like; painless and fascinating as his senses fell prey to oxygen deprivation.

But when the voice returned, speaking a language he’d only heard during recent hallucinations, Rodney knew he wasn’t dying. Yet.

•••

“Rodney!” John shouted, immediately feeling very foolish. His human vocal chords weren’t designed to work in water, so nothing happened when he tried to speak. Water rushed past them and for the first time John really felt the chords in his throat, constricting the flow of water and making it jet in eddies as it reached his mouth.

The fact that John couldn’t locate either of his men made him panic, though. It was inky-dark in the water, and cool but not unpleasantly so. The liquid was saline but it didn’t bother his eyes and had a faint taste of minerals to it that reminded John of well water. He fell still, hoping that somewhere in the constantly moving water he could sense one of the others—maybe this was another vision and they could detect each other like before.

All John got was the distinct sensation of millions of tiny things invading his body, like ants moving through loose soil. He jerked and flailed about, running his hands over what skin he could reach through his clothes but it made no different. The feeling was inside him as well as out, wherever the water was—and that was everywhere. It didn’t hurt, but he couldn’t really tell what was going on except that the pain and fatigue he felt from their recent ordeals was fading. What few other senses he had were also misfiring and disappearing too, though, and John suspected that it meant something very important.

Just before he slipped into a panic attack, a thready voice began murmuring, telling him that he was safe, that he would be taken care of, that nothing would harm him. John hoped the owner of the voice wouldn’t be offended if he decided not to believe what he’d heard, though. The temple had provided far too much evidence to the contrary.

•••

Rodney woke up feeling very claustrophobic, as though his world had just shrunk into an incredibly small space. He was somewhat confused, since he wasn’t by nature afraid of enclosed areas. Maybe it was because the puddle of water he was currently inhabiting wasn’t particularly large and as a result, he took up a good portion of the surface area, not having room to submerge himself completely.

After a few more minutes of the uncomfortable sensation, Rodney decided he’d rather be free of the feeling and thus in some kind of form, he shifted back into a shape he found more suitable.

“Fuck.” Maybe he should’ve shifted into a standing form, as now Rodney found himself sitting in a puddle of water, his uniform trousers immediately soaking up a considerable amount of the stuff.

“Wait a min…” Rodney looked down at himself. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that; they didn’t have control over their hosts during visions. This didn’t feel like a vision, though; his mind was housing only his own thoughts and he didn’t have the urge to do anything other than what he himself wanted to do.

As a test, Rodney tried shifting back into liquid form and watched, fascinated, as his body shimmered and melted back into the water. Well, that’s new, He thought to himself. Rodney refocused his mind and tried to remember something from the last vision they’d had, where the water had consumed his body and remade it anew…

And upon its retreat, had taken his identity with it. For the first time in his life, Rodney found the shining, singular moment of realization to be excruciatingly painful.

•••

Floating around in a pool of water wasn’t as much fun as flying, but it had its moments, John decided. It was certainly better than waking up after a vision with a pounding headache. He didn’t feel all that bad, although he wished he could feel his legs. Or his arms.

Thinking appeared to make it so, which made John wonder if he was still in a vision, and all of a sudden, John could feel his feet and his hands. He could also feel his face and his lungs and his chest, because he seemed to be lying face down on the floor in a pool of standing water that came up to his ears. Yeah, definitely a vision.

He shrugged at the apparently psychedelic nature of this vision, choosing to go with the flow of not having someone else’s mind running the show and pushed himself out of the puddle. He made it to his knees before realizing that in this reality, some laws of physics applied themselves with ruthless force.

John’s lungs had been full of water—not unreasonable given the fact that he’d been in a puddle of water until just a moment ago—and when he tried to breathe in air, something had to give. There was space for either water or air, but not both.

The water was expelled rather messily and all over his strangely pristine uniform. It hadn’t been that clean since they’d arrived on Atlantis, excepting of course the wide wet streak that ran down the front. Then there was he fact that his knees and shins were wet from the puddle, which was quickly soaking into his boots.

“Okay, this is fucked up,” John said, his voice a bit croaky from the water as it echoed off the damp, stationary walls and columns of the great hall. He struggled to his feet and looked around, seeing that most of the water from earlier had dissipated. All that was left was a half-dozen or so puddles of varying sizes, collected in areas where the floor was slightly depressed. He walked over to a largish one, drawn by the iridescent film that glistened on top.

The glaze reminded John of something, so he knelt down at the edge of the puddle and let the fingers of his left hand brush the surface of the water.

The hand that formed out of the puddle and clamped down on his scared the hell out of him.

•••

Carson groaned as he went instantly from blissfully unconscious to wet, awake and, oddly enough, holding John’s hand. “Er…” He mumbled, feeling a little chilly and wet, at least partially wet. John looked confused and scared, which Carson felt both in himself and in John.

Both men blinked and stared at their still-clasped hands and the sensation strengthened until Carson forced himself to pull away. His own fear and shock he could handle, but combined with John’s the emotions became overwhelming. “Why,” Carson began shakily, “Am I sitting in two inches of water?”

John seemed to ponder the question very deeply. “Because that’s where you were when you woke up?” He replied, frowning. “I was face-down. Don’t do that. Trust me.”

Carson nodded very slowly, confused until some part of his brain supplied the helpful information about water, air and breathing issues. “Oh,” He said. “How do I know that?”

John tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “I think,” He murmured, wondering idly where Rodney was, “I think I know a lot of things but I’m not sure how I know them.”

“We need to find Rodney,” Carson decided. He also decided he needed to stand up, so he tried that. Once upright, Carson found that while he still felt a bit tired and overworked from their exertions earlier, his head didn’t hurt like the devil had been gnawing on it. He wanted Rodney; the physicist would know what was going on. Carson ignored the bit of his brain that said he knew what was going on; it made no sense to him, what he knew, so he ignored it for the moment.

John stood beside him, studying the various puddles with some degree of thoughtfulness. Finally he saw what he was looking for—that same sheen he’d seen on the puddle containing Carson. “That one,” He murmured, pointing. Carson followed John over to the pool of water, which was rippling in a way that couldn’t be explained by their footsteps or the air currents in the room.

“Rodney?” Carson whispered at the water. “Are you in there?”

John rolled his eyes and reached down, slapping his hand into the water. Rodney immediately came up out of it, a glistening flow of translucent liquid that didn’t look anything like Rodney until it was mostly vertical. It also shifted to one side, starting to become solid as it found the edge of the puddle.

“Show-off,” Carson grumbled when Rodney finally took shape and once again looked like something recognizable.

John, having been satisfied that in fact Rodney was somewhat coherent, or at least together enough to look the part, let his impatience show. “What’s going on?”

Rodney’s expression quickly turned into a mixture of pain and confusion. “I think—

“Mckay! Sheppard! Beckett!”

The three men turned to the left, orienting on the sound of Lieutenant Ford’s voice. Before they could decide exactly where it was coming from, Teyla began to shout as well.

“Major Sheppard!” Her voice rang, closer than Ford’s.

“We’re in here!” John shouted back, not realizing how useless the statement was until after he’d said it.

“Look for big columns,” Rodney offered in his loudest voice. “Did you get our note?”

“Yeah,” Ford said as he and Teyla ran into the room. “We saw you, or I think we did. It was kinda freaky, not being able to move.”

Carson visually inspected Teyla and Ford, who looked to be in much better shape than the three of them. “The distortion didn’t hurt, then?” He asked, stepping a little closer.

Teyla shook her head. “No, not at all. We were only in it a few minutes.”

John, Carson and Rodney shared a look. “I think maybe it was longer than that,” Rodney replied.

Ford shrugged, not really understanding how temporal distortions worked. “Why are you wet?” He asked John. “And you all look like hell.”

John blinked. “It’s a long story, but right now we need to get out of here.”

“Can we?” Teyla inquired. “I see that the walls no longer move, but that doesn’t mean there is now an exit.”

“We know,” Rodney muttered cryptically. “Believe me, we do.”

“I think we’ll be able to leave now,” Carson added. “The temple has served its purpose.”

John and Rodney nodded, knowing that Carson was right. They were still pointedly not thinking too much about exactly what the temple’s purpose had been; if they did, they’d probably end up going more than a little crazy. “Ok,” John said, taking command. “This way.”

Rodney and Carson fell in step automatically as they, like John, knew the way out of the temple. How they knew that information was disturbing; it was just there, although they didn’t know it until they tried thinking about ways to leave the building.

Teyla and Ford looked both shocked and worried at John’s confidence, but they followed anyway, keeping wary eyes focused on the sinister-looking walls. The last thing they remembered about the temple was its aggressive tactics at trying to kill them.

John walked briskly through the great hall, exiting through the largest doorway, which faced a row of windows. They came out in a long, narrow hallway that ended in the very same set of doors they’d began at when they first entered the temple. “See?” He said, nodding at the doors. “Let’s go.”

The doors slid easily when Carson and Rodney pulled them back, letting in a shaft of bright, clean sunlight. The group stepped out of the temple, immediately moving several steps clear of the door. What they found, though, kept them from moving much farther.

“I thought it was late summer,” John commented as he looked down at the knee-deep snow he was standing in. “You know, warm and green?”

“It was,” Rodney confirmed. “And it still is, over there,” He said, pointing into the distance. Sure enough, one of the hills rising above their current location was still verdant. “Huh. I don’t get it.”

“Temporal disturbance?” Ford offered. “If they were inside the temple…”

“Someone would’ve mentioned if they were ever outside,” Rodney countered. “Let’s get back to the village. We still don’t have any idea how long we’ve been in there.” He didn’t add that they still weren’t entirely sure of what had happened in the temple, but that was because neither Rodney, John nor Carson wanted to think about it too long.

It wasn’t every day a man walked into a building, damn near died, and walked out a new species. It was a first for Rodney, anyway.