Fic: "Revelation", by kyrdwyn, G [Left Behind Challenge]

Title: Revelation
Author: kyrdwyn
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: "Epiphany", "Rising", "Sanctuary"
Summary: The didn't come.
Betas: rosewildeirish, mspooh, qwirky

Author's Notes: Alternate ending to the episode "Epiphany".

---

He'd spent six months with Teer and Hedda and their people. Six months waiting for his friends, his family, to rescue him. He kept himself apart from the others, friendly but not part of them. It would only hurt more when Rodney and the others came for him.

But they didn't come, and John found he couldn't stay too much apart from the others. So he gradually let himself open up to them, becoming Hedda's friend and a good hunter for some of the wild fruits.

Then they Ascended.

Teer all but begged him to Ascend with them, but John couldn't. He still held out hope that his friends would come. So he watched as they all glowed with the light of their ascension, and disappeared, leaving him alone in the village.

At first, it wasn't unlike being back at McMurdo. Despite the people living on the base, John had been isolated, set apart by choice and by reputation. A pilot who wouldn't follow orders in combat wasn't someone people really wanted to get to know. He did miss the cold biting winds of Antarctica, though. The unchanging weather in the sanctuary was more likely to drive him insane than the solitude would.

Two months after Teer and the others left, John wandered back to the cavern where the portal was. There was nothing new from Atlantis, nothing to say that they were still trying to find him. Atlantis had left him for dead, he surmised. With no one else around, he broke down and cried at the loss of everything.

Eventually, John picked himself up and went back to the village. If no one from Atlantis was coming for him, he had two options. He could live out the rest of his life and die in the Sanctuary, or he could try to Ascend. There was a third option, but John knew he wasn't so depressed that he'd willingly take his own life -- yet.

He thought about his choices for a while as he went about the daily business of tending to crops and repairing his tiny house. He kept up with the house houses in the village, to ensure that others who came wouldn't find themselves without shelter.

Over the next month, his life took on a routine. John worked in the mornings on the small farm for his food and on the repairs to the village. After lunch, he wandered out into the grass plain and lay on his back, looking up at the sky, thinking of his past and forcing himself to deal with both things he had and hadn't done in his life, as well as what had or hadn't been done to him.

He'd been in the Sanctuary for two years when he realized that he'd unconsciously chosen the Ascension path. His afternoon cloud watching had turned into a more comfortable form of meditation than the formal method of Teer's people. Ascension no longer scared him, he realized. That was why he had held himself back when Teer and the others had gone - he had been afraid of what ascension was, of who he would be when he was merely a glowing ball of energy.

That revelation - the releasing of his fears, energized him. He worked harder on the village and the crops in the mornings, and enjoyed his afternoon meditations more, finding himself able to, like Teer, send his mind out to various places within the Sanctuary, to see the portal cavern without having to physically go there, or to determine if a house needed repair without entering it.

John didn't resent the sameness of the days anymore. He appreciated them, appreciated the time he had to meditate, to learn more about himself, about who he was and what he could do. He almost looked forward to Ascension. But he knew there was a part of him that was still holding back. The part of him that still hurt from being left behind by Rodney and Elizabeth, Teyla and Ronon, Carson and Caldwell and everyone else on Atlantis. He'd considered them family, the first time in years that he'd let himself care about others so much, and he'd been cast off like a piece of driftwood.

Almost three years after he'd first stepped through that portal, John lay in the field and enjoyed simply being. He felt like he was everywhere - in the sky, in the earth, in the water of the well and the flames of the hearth fire in his house. Ascension seemed within his reach, but just out of grasp.

Casting his mind around the sanctuary, he paused in shock when he found Rodney McKay in the portal cavern, He was typing on a laptop, and as John watched, the cavern shook and Elizabeth Weir stepped through the portal.

In disbelief, John continued to watch from afar as eventually Ronon, Teyla, and Carson came through the portal. He listened as Rodney explained that, judging by his calculations, although just over a day had passed for them, it was likely that several years had passed for John.

John withdrew his mind in shock, letting it snap back into his body as he lay in the sunshine. They hadn't forgotten him. It made sense, now - why it had taken three days for them to send through food and water, and weeks to send through medical supplies and more provisions. It also explained why there were no Wraith attacks for the entire three years he'd been here - because it had only been a day for the Wraith.

Sighing, John closed his eyes. His family hadn't forgotten him. The knowledge made him feel weightless, and he reveled in the feeling. Opening his eyes, John realized he was weightless, because he was floating above the ground, and glowing.

John smiled as he Ascended. Though his friends had come, he wasn't the same person he had been when he stepped through the portal. He couldn't go back to Atlantis now.

Passing over the fields and to the cavern, John opened the portal and formed himself on the other side, in the world where time ran at its normal pace. His friends spotted him and ran toward him, and he closed the portal behind him. Elizabeth's face fell when she saw the portal, and she turned to John, stating out loud that John had Ascended. He nodded, but didn't say anything. He watched them until they went back to the jumper, and took off through the Stargate. Then he let himself fully Ascend, looking forward to his new existence.