(when the pretty birds have flown)

but he swung by his own room instead. He rummaged in the niche that served as his closet for his bucket of golf balls and a zippered case, and then grabbed his favorite driver and a glove before jogging out to the East Pier.

There was no moon, but the stars flung across the sky like so much spilled glitter obliged him with light enough to let him sink the entire bucket's worth into the black sea.

When the bucket was empty, John sat down and pulled his PDA out of his pocket and flipped through to the window setting that let him track the golf balls. This brand floated, and for his birthday this year, Rodney had tagged them with tracking chips and then presented him with a working model of the RC AH-64 Apache.

"I tweaked it; it's got a range of over a mile, and with naquadah-enhanced batteries, it'll fly for three solid days. Oh, and see? I've rigged it with a grappling claw," Rodney had explained.

"That's cool," John had enthused. "But why?"

Rodney had blinked at him.

"So you can get the golf balls back," he'd said, his entire attitude saying he couldn't believe he was wasting his time speaking with simpletons.

John unzipped the case and set the Apache on the pier. This was only the second time he'd used it, and although the chopper had lights, it was difficult to judge relative distances at night, and John figured he'd lose more balls than he recovered, but it was fun as hell—maybe more fun than the golfing part, if John was honest.

He fished for over an hour, the tiny whir of the chopper blades rising and falling in the distance. Finally, he called the chopper back and carefully wiped down the claw mechanism and its cable with an oiled cloth so the winch and joints wouldn't freeze up, and carried everything back to his room.

Once there, he looked around at his posters, his stereo, the surfboard he hadn't even had a chance to use yet and wondered if he'd ever see this place again. The chances were fifty-fifty that he wouldn't. After a minute, John leaned the driver in the corner and stripped off the glove and dropped it on his neatly made bed. He set the chopper case beside it and backed away a few steps, closing his eyes.

He thought of Teyla's expression the day he'd met her: wary welcome, a willingness to give him a chance even if he was a fool. Waking up on the cave floor with her at his back and blinking into Ronon's face, set and desolate, smeared with cracking mud—but with eyes still hungry, still curious. Rodney's intense, breathless excitement, the way he'd demanded that John think about where we are in the solar system.

John didn't think it made much sense to be jealous of himself, but there it was. It probably went a long way to explaining why he and the other John kept going head to head over every damned thing. Checking his watch, John figured it was time to get back to the infirmary. On the way, he worked out how they could get into the jumper bay before anyone knew what they were up to.

END