Title: Numb
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For sga_flashfic's Earthside challenge.
Summary: John goes home.

"Compassionate leave," Elizabeth tells him, and not forty minutes later John's stepping through the wormhole to Earth with his duffel on his shoulder.

The General returns his salute and walks with him to the elevator. "Your father was a good man," he says, shaking John's hand. "You just go home and don't worry about a thing."

The arrangements have been made already, and all John has to do is show up. It's a good thing, because he seems to have left his coping skills in another galaxy (and much good may they do there).

He spends two days in his hotel room, indiscriminately watching television and failing to eat the room service food he orders. The noise of traffic outside is nothing like waves crashing, and the hum of television and fluorescent lighting doesn't fill the hole in the back of his brain where the city should be.

The funeral passes in a blur, and afterwards, John stands around in his borrowed dress uniform and makes conversation about a man he never really knew.

That night, John sits in a bar with a bottle of tequila and a new leather jacket. He turns down three blatant propositions and several more subtle ones. At closing time, he staggers back to the hotel and falls into bed alone.

He stares into the mirror but he doesn't look any different, the next morning. Same pond-scum-green eyes, a little more bloodshot than usual; same untamable hair, marking him as a troublemaker; same pointed ears, from his mother's father's side.

But now he really is alone in the world.

He has to spend a few more days on Earth, because the SGC aren't going to dial Atlantis off-schedule just for him, but he makes use of the time. He helps clear out his father's house, claiming a few old photographs and his mother's wedding ring, and he donates most of his inheritance to charities that the old man would disapprove of.

Nobody's waiting for him when he steps through the gate, and John's glad of that. Still, by the time he reaches his quarters, John's spoken to all of his friends except McKay, who shows up at his door a few minutes later.

"I didn't even know you had a father," says Rodney, with typical tactlessness. "I mean, of course you did, you're human, but, uh, I simply assumed, because it's not as though you ever mentioned him. Though, come to think of it, you never really talk about yourself at all, which is... your call, of course, and it's not like I have any room to talk..."

John sits back and pretends to listen. It's good to be home.