Title: Alcmene's Husband
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. So not mine.
Notes: For the Dark Side challenge. 250 words. I tried this idea so many times, I swear.
Summary: It's an old story.

When Captain Sheppard got home on leave, his wife asked him where he'd been. She claimed he'd arrived the night before. He called her crazy and walked out.

When he came back from the bar, she apologized, told him she must have been dreaming. He took her to bed, then, and made love to her in the usual fashion.

Nine months later, he was on assignment on the other side of the world when the telegram came through - a healthy boy, name of John. It was another month before he met the child, and then...

Johnny was perfectly healthy, completely normal. There was even a family resemblance, to an infantile extent. And yet...

Whenever the Captain came home, Johnny watched him, eyes bright but wary. Then the Captain became the Major, and his wife and Johnny moved with him from posting to posting. Still, Johnny watched him, and it was oddly disconcerting.

And Johnny clung to his mother, more than Sheppard thought was good for a boy. An awkward, quiet child, not at all the sort of boy the Major had been; not really the sort of boy he’d hoped for. But it wasn't that. It wasn't anything.

If there was anything he could have put his finger on. If there had been any hint of guilt in his wife's eyes. If the boy's ears hadn't been classic Sheppard material.

Then the Major might not have been so torn about his private conviction.

"That boy is not my son."