Fic: Future Imperfect
Or, The Kind Of Atlantis Plots One Writes When One Has Been Watching A Lot Of Doctor Who.
The first time John Sheppard wakes up in Elizabeth Weir’s bed, it’s eleven days into the expedition.
He doesn’t know where he is at first. The first thing he notices is how relaxed he is - a bone-deep bliss so complete that his groggy brain wonders for a second if he accidentally took heavy drugs without noticing. But no, he realizes, this is just the almost-forgotten sensation of a good night’s sleep.
After that, he spends an endless few seconds cataloguing other sensations. A cloud-like comforter cocooning him in warmth. A silky strand of hair tickling his nose. His fingers twitching against the soft, warm thigh flung across his hip.
Whoa. Back up.
Before he can wake up enough to figure out what’s wrong with this picture, the warm body in his arms stiffens and an ear-splitting scream pierces the air.
“What the -” John opens his eyes and finds himself staring into the wide, panicked ones of his boss. “Jesus! Dr. Weir? What the hell?”
She stops screaming to demand, “What on Earth are you doing in my room?”
“Your room? This is my -”
He stops and looks around. Nope, it’s definitely not his room.
Dr. Weir sits up, scrambling to the far edge of the bed. “Get out,” she demands tightly. She’s wearing a t-shirt and boxers, as is he. So there’s that at least.
Sheppard feels his face burning. He has no idea how he came to be in his new boss’s bed, but it’s clear she thinks he’s the biggest perv in two galaxies. “Dr. Weir, I didn’t - I don’t remember how I got here.”
She pulls the sheet tighter around herself. “If you were intoxicated, we need to talk about that. It’s highly inappropriate. For now, please leave.”
“Intoxi - ? I was not!”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
“No! I’m telling you, right now, that last night I went to bed stone sober in my own damn bedroom, and I woke up here! There is something weird going on, so stop prissing out and listen to me!”
For a second her eyes go wide and he has visions of spending the next decade in whatever Atlantis uses as a brig. Then she takes a deep breath and snaps, “Explain.”
John locks his hands behind his neck and begins to pace. “I can’t. Like I said, I went to sleep in my own bed, at 2200. I went to sleep early because I’m taking two of the teams out for dawn maneuvers.” He glances at her clock and groans. “Which I’m now an hour late for.”
“Are you prone to sleepwalking, Major?”
“I’ve never sleptwalked - sleepedwalked - I don’t walk in my sleep.”
“Evidently now you do,” she snaps. “Go see Carson. Take care of it.”
He starts to object - he has buddies who got sleep drugs after Afghanistan, and they all seem to be bad news - but one look at her face and he holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay. But I’m still not sure that’s what happened.” He starts to head for the door, then turns back. She’s still curled up in a ball at the corner of her bed. “And, uh, sorry.”
She buries her face in her hands. “Oh, just don’t tell anybody about this,” she moans.
“No worries,” he says fervently.
He goes to Carson and tells him about the sleepwalking, without mentioning his destination, and gets a flustered look and a sedative. He dutifully starts popping a little red pill before bed, though they leave him groggy and nauseous.
And, as it turns out, they don’t stop him from waking up in Dr. Weir’s bed again three days later.
This time when he cracks an eyelid, she’s already wide awake and cross-legged, staring at him. One eyebrow shoots up when she sees his eyes open. “Morning,” she says dryly.
At least she’s not terrified this time. But he’s not sure her laughing at him is any better.
***
Elizabeth is beginning to wonder if she was gravely mistaken about John Sheppard. She prides herself on being a good judge of character. In her darkest moments of self-doubt about her leadership, she reminds herself, at least I found Major Sheppard. She truly thought he was a diamond in the rough, a born leader that the hidebound military had overlooked.
Now she wonders if they were right, and he’s merely unstable. What kind of a man keeps climbing into bed with a sleeping woman he barely knows? After the second time it happens, she brings him straight to her office and pulls up his file on her laptop.
He slouches in her chair, hands in his pockets, his body one long curve of shame. “I’ll get more sedatives,” he blurts. “A lot more. And I’ll lock my door.”
“That’s a start,” she agrees. “Major, the first time I headed up a diplomatic mission, I couldn’t keep a meal down. I threw up my breakfast every day for a week.”
“That’s - too bad?”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You have an eating disorder?”
“I do not have an eating disorder!”
“But you just said -”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Major, I’m saying adjusting to command can be stressful. In addition to seeing Carson, I’d like you to schedule an appointment with Dr. Heightmeyer.”
He crosses his arms. “All due respect, Dr. Weir - no way. I don’t do headshrinkers.”
“But you do do breaking and entering?”
“Who says that’s even my fault?” he demands hotly. “This place is weird as hell. There are moving closets. There’s a room two floors down that glows bright blue. Maybe there are sleep transporters. You don’t know. And by the way, I’m adjusting just fine to the burden of command.”
Obviously he’s not, but there’s no point in making him more defensive than he is. “Perhaps that’s not it. I know your marriage recently ended -”
His face closes off. “We’re not going there.”
“You and I don’t have to,” she says tightly. “That’s why Dr. Heightmeyer is here.”
For a second there’s a standoff as they lock eyes. Elizabeth has a queasy vision of spending the next decade or so trying to govern alongside a taciturn, cuddle-hungry lunatic. But then he heaves himself to his feet and mutters, “Next time we’re under fire, remember all the times I gave in to you on stupid stuff like this.”
She blows out a sigh. “Thank you, Major. I’m sure Kate will make time for you at your earliest convenience.”
As it turns out, Kate’s earliest convenience isn’t early enough to prevent Elizabeth from once more waking up in a tangle of limbs with her military commander. And this time, when she lifts her head off his rumbling chest and sees the Johnny Cash poster hanging above her, she realizes that this is probably beyond the scope of Kate’s expertise anyway.
Waking up with him is beginning to feel oddly routine, she realizes as she gives him a sharp poke in the shoulder. He twitches away from her touch, wrapping an arm around her and trying to pull her back down against his chest. It would be adorable if it wasn’t so - well, all right, it is adorable, but he’s not hers to adore, and she pulls away again. “Wake up, Major.”
He wakes up, sees her and winces. “Sorry.” Then he takes a proper look around. He points a finger at her. “Ha!”
“Shut up.” Elizabeth can’t meet his eyes. “You must have carried me here.”
“Nope,” he says cheerfully. “I locked myself in last night, and told Atlantis to set off an alarm if I walked through the door before dawn. You must have come in on your own.” He frowns. “Hang on a sec. How did you get in if the door’s locked?”
“Well, actually,” Elizabeth says, “We can find out.”
***
“You’re spying on me?!”
She glares at him over her shoulder. They’re both bent over her laptop, which displays black and white footage of an Atlantis hallway. His hallway, to be specific. He can’t believe she’s put him under surveillance.
“I hardly think you’re in a position to take offense if I happen to want to know if you leave your room at night,” she says.
Fair point. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
She doesn’t answer.
“You still thought I was doing it on purpose.” She stiffens, but doesn’t reply. “Gee, thanks. Your trust means a lot.”
“I do trust you. I’m just not ruling anything out.”
He’s working up a retort to that when there’s a flicker of movement on the tape. “Hey, check it out.”
A grainy, black and white Elizabeth Weir is making her way up the corridor. Although she’s in her pajamas, she looks entirely in possession of her faculties. When she reaches his door, she yawns, then waves a hand over the door sensor. It doesn’t open. John nudges her. “Told you it was locked. You must have used your override.”
But she doesn’t. The pajama-clad woman reaches up to the keypad on his door and taps out red, green, pink, pink, red - his personal lock code. The door slides open and Dr. Weir, stretching casually, slips inside.
“I haven’t told anyone that code,” he says. “How’d you know it?”
“I don’t know that code,” she says, wide-eyed. “I don’t remember a second of this.”
They lock eyes. She has some of the most expressive eyes John’s ever seen. It’s like they can come to an agreement without even speaking.
Now, for example, she says what he’s thinking: “There is something very odd going on here.”
John nods. “You can say that again. Still think we need our heads shrunk?”
“It’s still a possibility, but it no longer seems like the most likely one. No, this is clearly due to something in the city.”
John nods. “I’ll get Rodney and his guys on it -”
“No,” she says sharply.
“What? Why?”
“Imagine, if you will, the way that conversation would go,” she says.
“Yeah, but those guys could help -”
“They could also tell the entire city that I’m dallying with my subordinate. No thank you.”
“Even if they did, why should anyone care?”
Her nostrils flare, but she smiles. “Major, you’re going to have to accept that I know a few things about being a woman in command that you don’t.”
He’s about to scoff at that, but then he remembers that crude drawing labeled “Dr. Weir” he took off Private Meyers. He cocks his head, looking at her with new eyes. He’d always thought that her balance of adorably geeky enthusiasm and slightly distant formality was just her. Now he wonders how much thought she really has to put into it.
“Okay,” he says aloud. “It’ll be our little project. Cool. We can get to know each other better.”
“I think we’re already doing that,” she says. “I have no idea, for example, whether Rodney wears Looney Tunes underwear.”
“At least my boxers don’t have puppies.”
“It’s the Yale bulldog.”
“Uh huh.”
There isn’t much surveillance footage except on the last night, but they manage to get enough from their standard cameras to gather a few things. It turns out that they’ve had more night time excursions than they thought - John made a trip to the gym and one to the kitchen, and Elizabeth has actually been to John’s room twice, but the first time she left after about 90 minutes.
John frowns, watching Elizabeth leave his room at 4 in the morning, tugging at her clothes. “You don’t think we -”
“No,” she says quickly. “We would know.”
That would depend somewhat on what they did, but she’s probably right. Still, the thought makes his whole body prickle. He’s slammed with a sense memory of how she felt in his arms. Her soft skin, the flowery scent of her hair. It’s been a long time.
He clears his throat. “Okay. So we know this is always happening between two and three in the morning after we go to sleep. So how about tonight, we don’t?”
***
Major Sheppard, Elizabeth discovers, is essentially ten.
They’ve occupied one of the lounges on the lowest floor of the main tower - far enough away from the expedition quarters that they’re unlikely to be interrupted, but central enough to get help if they need it. They’ve borrowed some of Rodney’s scanning equipment and set it up to monitor the room. Now there’s nothing to do but stay awake and wait.
Elizabeth had planned to spend the wee hours getting caught up on mission reports. That was before she found out that Major Sheppard is such a big pain in the ass when he’s bored. He spends an hour pacing, bouncing a rubber ball against the wall, and trying to do fighting stick drills with her tablet stylus before Elizabeth gives in and puts her work aside to amuse him.
“Your attention span is shorter than my dog’s,” she tells him with a sigh.
He grins and gives a few mock pants with his tongue hanging out before plopping down beside her on the couch. She suppresses the urge to toss his ball across the room to see if he’ll fetch it. Instead they talk.
It might be a good thing, this enforced togetherness, she realizes. Neither of them are terribly forthcoming people. At least this way they have to share something of themselves, even if it’s just small, dirty tales of what his pilot buddies used to get up to.
“ - And then Simp said, ‘Sure, but can I have the vase too?’”
Elizabeth is collapsed back against the couch, weak with giggles. “Stop,” she gasps. “He did not.”
Sheppard smirks and raises a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Elizabeth gasps and wipes away tears of laughter. “Our nation is in good hands.”
She opens her eyes to find him leaning on his elbow, staring at her. “You’ve got a nice laugh,” he says. “I’m not sure I’ve heard it before.”
She shrugs self-consciously. “Not much to laugh about here.”
“I don’t know about that.”
It should be awkward, sitting here like this, but it’s not. “John?” she says.
He shifts at her use of his first name, but says only, “Yeah, Elizabeth?”
“Why do you think we’re doing this?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he points out.
“No, I mean -” she shakes her head. “We hardly know each other. Why don’t I seek out Carson, or Peter?”
“I don’t know, but if I have to wind up in bed with someone, I’m glad it’s not Grodin.”
She gives him a wicked look. “Not sure he’d say the same.”
His eyes go wide. “Really?”
“Mmm.” She’s amused to see his chest puff out a little.
“Well. He has good taste.” Sheppard frowns, considering her earlier question. “I don’t know. If anything goes wrong, my commander is my first call, you know? Maybe it’s a subconscious thing.”
“Maybe,” she admits. “There are worse beds we could end up in, like you said.”
“Exactly.”
She’s about to reply when something flashes in the corner of her eye. She walks over to the window, frowning. It comes again: A pale blue flash of light, extremely dim but somehow as painful as staring into the sun. “Ow! What was that?”
She cranes her neck out the window, leaning on the railing. There’s nothing to be seen but the moonlit city, lovely and serene.
“Elizabeth?”
“I can’t see where it’s coming from,” she mutters.
“Elizabeth, what the hell is happening?”
He’s close behind her now, and there’s an odd tone to his voice. She turns around slowly to find him staring at her with hooded eyes. Her hands grip the railing behind her. He’s looking at her with a mix of anger, fear, and longing that couldn’t be more different from the easy conversation they were just sharing.
“Is it you?” he asks in a hoarse whisper. “Talk.”
She swallows. “What?”
He steps closer, invading her space. “What is it this time? Cloning? Ascension? General mindfuckery? Gonna kill us once and for all?”
“I - I -”
“Never mind. Can you be touched?” She opens her mouth, but before she can answer he places his fingers on her lips and breathes, “Don’t answer that. Oh God, Lizbeth,” and he slides his hands into her hair and kisses her.
Elizabeth gasps against his mouth. The kiss is shockingly confident, obviously not a first kiss, but at the same time it’s defiant, possessive. Her hands push him weakly away as his arms slide down to lock around her waist and back. “Major, stop,” she manages to gasp, wrenching her mouth from his, her heart thundering in her ears. Dear God, the man can kiss.
He stiffens, drawing back to look her in the eye. “What did you call me?”
Elizabeth stumbles a few steps back. “Major Sheppard, is that you?”
He laughs, a harsh, bitter sound. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“You’re not Major Sheppard?”
“I was. I haven’t been for over three years.”
Before she can answer, there’s another blue flash, and his head jerks back. She cries out as his eyes roll back in his head.
***
“Then again, Grodin’s -” John trails off, realizing he’s now standing by the window instead of sitting on the couch. “Whoa.”
Elizabeth is staring at him, a hand half-raised. He’s not sure if she’s reaching for him or warding him off. “Major? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.” There’s a weird ringing in his ears. He gives a head a shake. “What happened?”
“I’m - not sure. You changed. You started saying some very odd things.” She hesitates, then adds, “You kissed me.”
“I what?”
Dr. Weir crosses her arms tightly. “You heard me. You don’t remember?”
“Not at all.”
And there’s something else. You said you hadn’t been Major Sheppard for three years.”
“Huh. Cryptic.”
“That’s what I thought, but now I have a theory,” she says. Clasping her hands behind her back, she begins to pace. “I think I was talking to a version of you from the future.”
“Time travel? That’s crazy.”
“We know it can be done. The SGC’s encountered it before. Suppose it’s, say, five years from now. Your rank has gone up -”
“Or I’ve been discharged.”
She throws him a look. “So you no longer answer to Major.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain all the snuggling.”
She frowns, considering that. “It does if our relationship is different in the future. If we were, well, dating. You and I will probably always be on different schedules. If the future me wakes and finds herself alone in bed, she probably doesn’t think anything of it -”
John snaps his fingers. “She just goes and joins me in my quarters.” It does make a weird kind of sense.
They stare at each other, the enormity of what they’re saying sinking in. All that time in Atlantis stretches out before them. They’re going to make it. More than that.
“Good to know we’ll last at least three years,” he says. Dr. Weir winces. “What?”
“Well - I didn’t quite get all of what you were saying, but you seemed both angry at me and - surprised to see me.” She wraps her arms around herself, and looks very young. “I think something’s going to happen to me. Something bad.”
And John knows, suddenly, how he’s going to spend those coming years. “No it’s not.”
“John, you know how dangerous it is here. I could well end up a casualty.”
“But you won’t, okay? I’m not gonna let that happen.”
She looks down and away, and he moves without thinking, their recent unchosen intimacy making him bold. Her eyes widen when he grabs her hand, but she doesn’t pull away. “Don’t listen to future me. He’s an ass.” That gets a smile out of her.
“He was kind of a jerk.”
“That’s the spirit. Five years from now, we’re going to be toasting our phenomenally successful Lantean mission.” He offers her a wolfish grin. “Naked, knowing future us.”
She laughs, but raises an eyebrow. “Careful, Major. You’re the one who just got through telling me the future’s not set in stone.”
Yeah, but there are some parts of it that don’t sound so bad.
***
They find the source of the blue light - it is, in fact, the glowing room on Level Two that Sheppard mentioned the day before - but it seems to be dormant now and they can’t get any readings off of it. Elizabeth starts to translate the Ancient text on the control screen, but by then it’s 5 AM and they can hardly keep their eyes open.
He walks her back to her quarters, smothering yawns into his fist. God help her, she finds it cute. She never expected to get hung up on a GI Joe type like Sheppard - she’s always been more into the tweedy sort - but she doesn’t know what to think anymore. The last few days have rattled her but good.
Him too, apparently, because when they reach her door, instead of leaving, he leans one arm against it, looming over her. “So,” he says, waggling his eyebrows, “My place or yours tonight?”
He’s joking, but only just. Ignoring the way her stomach is fluttering, she whispers, “Nothing we’ve learned makes it appropriate for us to have a relationship.”
His gaze falls to her mouth, and her breath catches. She doesn’t really want to push him away, and she’s sure it shows. But he only whispers, “You say that now,” drops a kiss on her cheek, and walks away.
She goes into her quarters, collapses against the door, and blows out a breath. “Good lord,” she says aloud to Atlantis, “What are you trying to do to me?”
That night they return to the blue room. Elizabeth spends an hour or so translating the activation instructions. Her head is pounding and there’s an odd, growing hum and she’s sure Rodney could figure this out in about five minutes, but then, finally, she figures out a key passage and everything slides into place. “I know what this is,” she says to Sheppard, tapping in a command, but before she can finish there’s a blinding flash of light.
***
Elizabeth cries out and clutches her head and before he can think he’s on the ground, hands on her shoulders. “Elizabeth? Are you all right?”
She looks up. “I see you finally figured out those private transporters. I’m not in the mood, John.”
He withdraws his touch. She doesn’t sound happy to see him. “Uh, sorry. It wasn’t me though. See -”
“Spare me. Did you really think now was the time for a tryst?” She doesn’t sound angry, just tired. “It won’t work this time. My mind’s made up.”
He should tell her the truth, but he finds himself needing to know what put that hopeless tone in her voice. “Made up about what?”
She rises and goes to the window, turning her back on him. “I’ll stay until after the op,” she says dully. “Then I’ll make arrangements to return to Earth.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Not that you and Everett would really miss me if I left right now.”
“Elizabeth, whatever I did -”
She waves him off. “I know, that wasn’t fair. But the fact remains that this isn’t working. It’s time for me to stop pretending.”
He swallows. He knew this would happen. “I let you down, didn’t I.”
She closes her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
Maybe it’s something they’ll get past. He takes a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. You’ve actually traveled back in time. The expedition is only eleven days old.” She turns to him, eyes wide. “Sorry, I probably should have led with that.”
She’s staring at him. “I’ve traveled back in time four years?! How?”
OK, maybe they won’t get past it. That’s a long time from now. Four years from now could be the end - the reason the future him was so desperate to see her. “Uh, I’m really not sure.”
A voice behind him says, “I can answer that.”
John turns around to find a middle-aged man in a white dress thing beaming at him placidly. Elizabeth says, “Janus?”
“Not exactly,” the man says. “I’m a holographic interface. My creator modeled me after himself.”
“You know him?” John says.
Elizabeth crosses her arms. “Only by reputation.”
This Janus guy turns and observes her. “Bitter. Disillusioned. Oh, dear. 2007, I presume? Whereas you, Sheppard, still have that just-out-of-the-box gleam about you. It must be 2004 for you.”
“It’s 2004 for everyone, present company excluded,” John says, crossing his arms by Elizabeth’s side. “I take it you did this to us?”
“Oh, no. I’m what’s keeping it from happening to everyone else.” He indicates the undulating blue light chasing around the room. “You see, thanks to my creator’s experiments, Atlantis is - was, will be - a font of chronatic energy.” When he sees them exchange a blank look, he supplies, “Time particles. Janus knew they could set Atlantis and its population adrift in the time stream if left unchecked, so he created a complex series of set of chronatic radiation channels, as well as an administrator.” He beamed. “Me.”
“So why aren’t you administering?” John demands.
“I am. But like everything else, I was dormant for a long time. Now that Atlantis has risen, there’s a bit of chronatic leakage, that’s all. That’s what you’ve been experiencing. But I can fix that.” He turns his back on them, tapping away on the touch screen, which responds to him just as if he was physically present.
“So why is it just us?” John asks. “Why isn’t anyone else flashing forward?”
“Hmm? Because you two are the only time travelers currently in Atlantis. And,” he says, holding up a hand to forestall John’s question, “Before you ask, that’s all the details you get. I won’t spoil your future for you.”
“About that,” Elizabeth says, sounding intrigued in spite of her sullenness, “Why don’t I remember this, if it’s four years in my past?”
“Hmm,” Janus says. “Interesting. I must have be about to... Of course. I’ll erase your memories of these events, so you don’t further degrade the timestream. Clever idea, me-in-an-hour.”
“Look,” Elizabeth says wearily, “Can you fix it? I’m not keen to relive the last four years.”
“Yes, yes.” Janus flips a hand at them. “Just let me adjust the levels, and you’ll be back in your proper chronology in an hour. Well, some version of an hour, of course.”
She nods, dropping her head in her hands. It makes John ache to look at her. How can all that passion and spark be so thoroughly extinguished?
“Was it really so bad?” he asks.
She doesn’t raise her head. “What?”
“The last four years. Your last four years. Were they really that bad?”
She raises her head, but not to look at him. “Janus, do I need to be here for this? Because I’d really rather not be around any version of John at the moment.”
“No, no, the adjustments will take effect throughout the city. You can be on your way.”
She gives a short nod and heads for the door. She pauses just before leaving. “You’ll be fine, John.” He can tell she’s trying to mean it. He means at least that much to her. Then she’s gone.
He sinks down against the wall, watching the blue light play over the ceiling. He loses time at a couple points but Janus must talk his future selves into staying put. He doesn’t care. He thought he was starting something wonderful. Now he can barely face the thought of tomorrow.
Four years from now, the beautiful, brilliant, dorky, passionate woman who dragged him to another galaxy and into the greatest adventure of his life is going to be so disappointed in him she can’t even stand to be in the same room as him. And from what his Elizabeth told him, is sounds like that’s not the worst that’s going to happen to her. What’s he going to do to her? Dammit, why’d she have to drag him into all this? Didn’t she realize a screwup like him could never live up to her expectations?
Shit.
“John?”
He raises his head to find her standing in the doorway. “He’s almost done,” he says.
“Who is?” She takes a few steps into the room, looking around. “Oh. This is when we were time traveling, wasn’t it.”
He takes a proper look at her. That defeated air is gone. “What year is it for you?”
She smiles, eyes twinkling. “Mmm, a lady never tells.”
“How do you know about the time traveling? I thought what’s-his-name over there was going to wipe our memories.”
“Oh, he does, but we remembered in 2013. It’s a long story.”
2013. He smiles a little. A very long story, apparently. “So you’re okay.”
“Seems so.” She cocks her head. “What’s wrong?”
He looks away. It’s good to know that she lives, but it doesn’t mean he ever got her respect back for whatever he did. Or got her back. “I just met you from 2007.”
There’s a pause. Then he feels her slide down beside him. “John.”
He doesn’t look at her.
“John.” Fingers catch his chin. He can hear suppressed laughter in her voice. “Baby, come on.”
Baby. He turns to her.
“I was angry,” she says gently. “Angrier than I’ve ever been, practically. Mind you, I had damn good reasons to be. But that doesn’t mean it lasted forever.”
He doesn’t know what to say. There’s so much he needs to know. So much he’s afraid to know. “So you and me -”
She shakes her head. “I should let you discover that for yourselves, don’t you think?”
He gives her a lascivious smirk. “Our memories are getting wiped, remember? Educate me all you want.”
“Oh God. This is what you were like back then, isn’t it?” She shakes her head. “But God, you were cute. Oh, what the hell. One for the road.” And she leans in and kisses him.
It’s soft, exploratory, his hand cupping her jaw, fingers trailing over her skin, knees bumping gently. She smiles at him fondly, and the cold lump of self-hatred he’s been working at in his chest dissolves. “It’s going to get very hard,” she says. “Harder than you can imagine. But John, we’re going to be so amazing.” Her soft smile turns to a grin. “Well, as far as I know. It could all go to hell again tomorrow.” The light is building again. She gives him a little wave. “Bye!”
***
Elizabeth comes back to herself sitting inches from John. He’s not touching her, but the way he’s looking at her makes her wonder what she’s missed. “2004?” he whispers.
“2004. You?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Hi.”
“Almost done,” Janus says. “Stand by. You’ll be transported back to your rooms. This will all be just a dream.”
He reaches out a finger, trailing it over the seam at her shoulder. He cups her cheek as they both lean in, and as their lips meet, there’s one last flash of blue light.
***
Major Sheppard is rather tongue-tied today. And he keeps staring at her. Usually in the staff meetings he’s full of cracks directed at Rodney and digressions when he gets bored. “John, are you all right?” she asks.
He looks a little startled. Elizabeth is a bit surprised herself. Since when does she call him by his first name at staff meetings? “Uh, fine,” he says. “Just haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, I guess.”
She nods. “Well, we’re done here, so you can go have a nap.”
But he doesn’t, instead following her out onto the balcony. She stands at the railing, looking out at the setting sun, and he comes to stand beside her.
“My guys unpacked the last of the gear,” he says. “Guess we’re settling in for the long haul.”
“I guess so,” she says.
They settle into a comfortable silence. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. But something feels different.
Especially when his arm brushes hers. Elizabeth smothers a gasp at the electric shock that races up her skin at the casual contact. She glances over and sees the same thing mirrored in his eyes.
After a charged moment, she tears her eyes away, clearing her throat.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, apropos of nothing, “Yeah, I should go, uh, do some training. Stick fighting. Or, yeah.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” she says.
He nods, backing out awkwardly. Probably for the best. Odd moments like that aren’t really something she can afford, now are they?
And then he’s back. “Uh, actually, Dr. Weir, why don’t you come watch a movie with us? I don’t really feel like stick fighting.”
She should say no.
But she doesn’t.
The first time John Sheppard wakes up in Elizabeth Weir’s bed, it’s eleven days into the expedition.
He doesn’t know where he is at first. The first thing he notices is how relaxed he is - a bone-deep bliss so complete that his groggy brain wonders for a second if he accidentally took heavy drugs without noticing. But no, he realizes, this is just the almost-forgotten sensation of a good night’s sleep.
After that, he spends an endless few seconds cataloguing other sensations. A cloud-like comforter cocooning him in warmth. A silky strand of hair tickling his nose. His fingers twitching against the soft, warm thigh flung across his hip.
Whoa. Back up.
Before he can wake up enough to figure out what’s wrong with this picture, the warm body in his arms stiffens and an ear-splitting scream pierces the air.
“What the -” John opens his eyes and finds himself staring into the wide, panicked ones of his boss. “Jesus! Dr. Weir? What the hell?”
She stops screaming to demand, “What on Earth are you doing in my room?”
“Your room? This is my -”
He stops and looks around. Nope, it’s definitely not his room.
Dr. Weir sits up, scrambling to the far edge of the bed. “Get out,” she demands tightly. She’s wearing a t-shirt and boxers, as is he. So there’s that at least.
Sheppard feels his face burning. He has no idea how he came to be in his new boss’s bed, but it’s clear she thinks he’s the biggest perv in two galaxies. “Dr. Weir, I didn’t - I don’t remember how I got here.”
She pulls the sheet tighter around herself. “If you were intoxicated, we need to talk about that. It’s highly inappropriate. For now, please leave.”
“Intoxi - ? I was not!”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
“No! I’m telling you, right now, that last night I went to bed stone sober in my own damn bedroom, and I woke up here! There is something weird going on, so stop prissing out and listen to me!”
For a second her eyes go wide and he has visions of spending the next decade in whatever Atlantis uses as a brig. Then she takes a deep breath and snaps, “Explain.”
John locks his hands behind his neck and begins to pace. “I can’t. Like I said, I went to sleep in my own bed, at 2200. I went to sleep early because I’m taking two of the teams out for dawn maneuvers.” He glances at her clock and groans. “Which I’m now an hour late for.”
“Are you prone to sleepwalking, Major?”
“I’ve never sleptwalked - sleepedwalked - I don’t walk in my sleep.”
“Evidently now you do,” she snaps. “Go see Carson. Take care of it.”
He starts to object - he has buddies who got sleep drugs after Afghanistan, and they all seem to be bad news - but one look at her face and he holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay. But I’m still not sure that’s what happened.” He starts to head for the door, then turns back. She’s still curled up in a ball at the corner of her bed. “And, uh, sorry.”
She buries her face in her hands. “Oh, just don’t tell anybody about this,” she moans.
“No worries,” he says fervently.
He goes to Carson and tells him about the sleepwalking, without mentioning his destination, and gets a flustered look and a sedative. He dutifully starts popping a little red pill before bed, though they leave him groggy and nauseous.
And, as it turns out, they don’t stop him from waking up in Dr. Weir’s bed again three days later.
This time when he cracks an eyelid, she’s already wide awake and cross-legged, staring at him. One eyebrow shoots up when she sees his eyes open. “Morning,” she says dryly.
At least she’s not terrified this time. But he’s not sure her laughing at him is any better.
***
Elizabeth is beginning to wonder if she was gravely mistaken about John Sheppard. She prides herself on being a good judge of character. In her darkest moments of self-doubt about her leadership, she reminds herself, at least I found Major Sheppard. She truly thought he was a diamond in the rough, a born leader that the hidebound military had overlooked.
Now she wonders if they were right, and he’s merely unstable. What kind of a man keeps climbing into bed with a sleeping woman he barely knows? After the second time it happens, she brings him straight to her office and pulls up his file on her laptop.
He slouches in her chair, hands in his pockets, his body one long curve of shame. “I’ll get more sedatives,” he blurts. “A lot more. And I’ll lock my door.”
“That’s a start,” she agrees. “Major, the first time I headed up a diplomatic mission, I couldn’t keep a meal down. I threw up my breakfast every day for a week.”
“That’s - too bad?”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You have an eating disorder?”
“I do not have an eating disorder!”
“But you just said -”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Major, I’m saying adjusting to command can be stressful. In addition to seeing Carson, I’d like you to schedule an appointment with Dr. Heightmeyer.”
He crosses his arms. “All due respect, Dr. Weir - no way. I don’t do headshrinkers.”
“But you do do breaking and entering?”
“Who says that’s even my fault?” he demands hotly. “This place is weird as hell. There are moving closets. There’s a room two floors down that glows bright blue. Maybe there are sleep transporters. You don’t know. And by the way, I’m adjusting just fine to the burden of command.”
Obviously he’s not, but there’s no point in making him more defensive than he is. “Perhaps that’s not it. I know your marriage recently ended -”
His face closes off. “We’re not going there.”
“You and I don’t have to,” she says tightly. “That’s why Dr. Heightmeyer is here.”
For a second there’s a standoff as they lock eyes. Elizabeth has a queasy vision of spending the next decade or so trying to govern alongside a taciturn, cuddle-hungry lunatic. But then he heaves himself to his feet and mutters, “Next time we’re under fire, remember all the times I gave in to you on stupid stuff like this.”
She blows out a sigh. “Thank you, Major. I’m sure Kate will make time for you at your earliest convenience.”
As it turns out, Kate’s earliest convenience isn’t early enough to prevent Elizabeth from once more waking up in a tangle of limbs with her military commander. And this time, when she lifts her head off his rumbling chest and sees the Johnny Cash poster hanging above her, she realizes that this is probably beyond the scope of Kate’s expertise anyway.
Waking up with him is beginning to feel oddly routine, she realizes as she gives him a sharp poke in the shoulder. He twitches away from her touch, wrapping an arm around her and trying to pull her back down against his chest. It would be adorable if it wasn’t so - well, all right, it is adorable, but he’s not hers to adore, and she pulls away again. “Wake up, Major.”
He wakes up, sees her and winces. “Sorry.” Then he takes a proper look around. He points a finger at her. “Ha!”
“Shut up.” Elizabeth can’t meet his eyes. “You must have carried me here.”
“Nope,” he says cheerfully. “I locked myself in last night, and told Atlantis to set off an alarm if I walked through the door before dawn. You must have come in on your own.” He frowns. “Hang on a sec. How did you get in if the door’s locked?”
“Well, actually,” Elizabeth says, “We can find out.”
***
“You’re spying on me?!”
She glares at him over her shoulder. They’re both bent over her laptop, which displays black and white footage of an Atlantis hallway. His hallway, to be specific. He can’t believe she’s put him under surveillance.
“I hardly think you’re in a position to take offense if I happen to want to know if you leave your room at night,” she says.
Fair point. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
She doesn’t answer.
“You still thought I was doing it on purpose.” She stiffens, but doesn’t reply. “Gee, thanks. Your trust means a lot.”
“I do trust you. I’m just not ruling anything out.”
He’s working up a retort to that when there’s a flicker of movement on the tape. “Hey, check it out.”
A grainy, black and white Elizabeth Weir is making her way up the corridor. Although she’s in her pajamas, she looks entirely in possession of her faculties. When she reaches his door, she yawns, then waves a hand over the door sensor. It doesn’t open. John nudges her. “Told you it was locked. You must have used your override.”
But she doesn’t. The pajama-clad woman reaches up to the keypad on his door and taps out red, green, pink, pink, red - his personal lock code. The door slides open and Dr. Weir, stretching casually, slips inside.
“I haven’t told anyone that code,” he says. “How’d you know it?”
“I don’t know that code,” she says, wide-eyed. “I don’t remember a second of this.”
They lock eyes. She has some of the most expressive eyes John’s ever seen. It’s like they can come to an agreement without even speaking.
Now, for example, she says what he’s thinking: “There is something very odd going on here.”
John nods. “You can say that again. Still think we need our heads shrunk?”
“It’s still a possibility, but it no longer seems like the most likely one. No, this is clearly due to something in the city.”
John nods. “I’ll get Rodney and his guys on it -”
“No,” she says sharply.
“What? Why?”
“Imagine, if you will, the way that conversation would go,” she says.
“Yeah, but those guys could help -”
“They could also tell the entire city that I’m dallying with my subordinate. No thank you.”
“Even if they did, why should anyone care?”
Her nostrils flare, but she smiles. “Major, you’re going to have to accept that I know a few things about being a woman in command that you don’t.”
He’s about to scoff at that, but then he remembers that crude drawing labeled “Dr. Weir” he took off Private Meyers. He cocks his head, looking at her with new eyes. He’d always thought that her balance of adorably geeky enthusiasm and slightly distant formality was just her. Now he wonders how much thought she really has to put into it.
“Okay,” he says aloud. “It’ll be our little project. Cool. We can get to know each other better.”
“I think we’re already doing that,” she says. “I have no idea, for example, whether Rodney wears Looney Tunes underwear.”
“At least my boxers don’t have puppies.”
“It’s the Yale bulldog.”
“Uh huh.”
There isn’t much surveillance footage except on the last night, but they manage to get enough from their standard cameras to gather a few things. It turns out that they’ve had more night time excursions than they thought - John made a trip to the gym and one to the kitchen, and Elizabeth has actually been to John’s room twice, but the first time she left after about 90 minutes.
John frowns, watching Elizabeth leave his room at 4 in the morning, tugging at her clothes. “You don’t think we -”
“No,” she says quickly. “We would know.”
That would depend somewhat on what they did, but she’s probably right. Still, the thought makes his whole body prickle. He’s slammed with a sense memory of how she felt in his arms. Her soft skin, the flowery scent of her hair. It’s been a long time.
He clears his throat. “Okay. So we know this is always happening between two and three in the morning after we go to sleep. So how about tonight, we don’t?”
***
Major Sheppard, Elizabeth discovers, is essentially ten.
They’ve occupied one of the lounges on the lowest floor of the main tower - far enough away from the expedition quarters that they’re unlikely to be interrupted, but central enough to get help if they need it. They’ve borrowed some of Rodney’s scanning equipment and set it up to monitor the room. Now there’s nothing to do but stay awake and wait.
Elizabeth had planned to spend the wee hours getting caught up on mission reports. That was before she found out that Major Sheppard is such a big pain in the ass when he’s bored. He spends an hour pacing, bouncing a rubber ball against the wall, and trying to do fighting stick drills with her tablet stylus before Elizabeth gives in and puts her work aside to amuse him.
“Your attention span is shorter than my dog’s,” she tells him with a sigh.
He grins and gives a few mock pants with his tongue hanging out before plopping down beside her on the couch. She suppresses the urge to toss his ball across the room to see if he’ll fetch it. Instead they talk.
It might be a good thing, this enforced togetherness, she realizes. Neither of them are terribly forthcoming people. At least this way they have to share something of themselves, even if it’s just small, dirty tales of what his pilot buddies used to get up to.
“ - And then Simp said, ‘Sure, but can I have the vase too?’”
Elizabeth is collapsed back against the couch, weak with giggles. “Stop,” she gasps. “He did not.”
Sheppard smirks and raises a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Elizabeth gasps and wipes away tears of laughter. “Our nation is in good hands.”
She opens her eyes to find him leaning on his elbow, staring at her. “You’ve got a nice laugh,” he says. “I’m not sure I’ve heard it before.”
She shrugs self-consciously. “Not much to laugh about here.”
“I don’t know about that.”
It should be awkward, sitting here like this, but it’s not. “John?” she says.
He shifts at her use of his first name, but says only, “Yeah, Elizabeth?”
“Why do you think we’re doing this?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he points out.
“No, I mean -” she shakes her head. “We hardly know each other. Why don’t I seek out Carson, or Peter?”
“I don’t know, but if I have to wind up in bed with someone, I’m glad it’s not Grodin.”
She gives him a wicked look. “Not sure he’d say the same.”
His eyes go wide. “Really?”
“Mmm.” She’s amused to see his chest puff out a little.
“Well. He has good taste.” Sheppard frowns, considering her earlier question. “I don’t know. If anything goes wrong, my commander is my first call, you know? Maybe it’s a subconscious thing.”
“Maybe,” she admits. “There are worse beds we could end up in, like you said.”
“Exactly.”
She’s about to reply when something flashes in the corner of her eye. She walks over to the window, frowning. It comes again: A pale blue flash of light, extremely dim but somehow as painful as staring into the sun. “Ow! What was that?”
She cranes her neck out the window, leaning on the railing. There’s nothing to be seen but the moonlit city, lovely and serene.
“Elizabeth?”
“I can’t see where it’s coming from,” she mutters.
“Elizabeth, what the hell is happening?”
He’s close behind her now, and there’s an odd tone to his voice. She turns around slowly to find him staring at her with hooded eyes. Her hands grip the railing behind her. He’s looking at her with a mix of anger, fear, and longing that couldn’t be more different from the easy conversation they were just sharing.
“Is it you?” he asks in a hoarse whisper. “Talk.”
She swallows. “What?”
He steps closer, invading her space. “What is it this time? Cloning? Ascension? General mindfuckery? Gonna kill us once and for all?”
“I - I -”
“Never mind. Can you be touched?” She opens her mouth, but before she can answer he places his fingers on her lips and breathes, “Don’t answer that. Oh God, Lizbeth,” and he slides his hands into her hair and kisses her.
Elizabeth gasps against his mouth. The kiss is shockingly confident, obviously not a first kiss, but at the same time it’s defiant, possessive. Her hands push him weakly away as his arms slide down to lock around her waist and back. “Major, stop,” she manages to gasp, wrenching her mouth from his, her heart thundering in her ears. Dear God, the man can kiss.
He stiffens, drawing back to look her in the eye. “What did you call me?”
Elizabeth stumbles a few steps back. “Major Sheppard, is that you?”
He laughs, a harsh, bitter sound. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“You’re not Major Sheppard?”
“I was. I haven’t been for over three years.”
Before she can answer, there’s another blue flash, and his head jerks back. She cries out as his eyes roll back in his head.
***
“Then again, Grodin’s -” John trails off, realizing he’s now standing by the window instead of sitting on the couch. “Whoa.”
Elizabeth is staring at him, a hand half-raised. He’s not sure if she’s reaching for him or warding him off. “Major? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.” There’s a weird ringing in his ears. He gives a head a shake. “What happened?”
“I’m - not sure. You changed. You started saying some very odd things.” She hesitates, then adds, “You kissed me.”
“I what?”
Dr. Weir crosses her arms tightly. “You heard me. You don’t remember?”
“Not at all.”
And there’s something else. You said you hadn’t been Major Sheppard for three years.”
“Huh. Cryptic.”
“That’s what I thought, but now I have a theory,” she says. Clasping her hands behind her back, she begins to pace. “I think I was talking to a version of you from the future.”
“Time travel? That’s crazy.”
“We know it can be done. The SGC’s encountered it before. Suppose it’s, say, five years from now. Your rank has gone up -”
“Or I’ve been discharged.”
She throws him a look. “So you no longer answer to Major.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain all the snuggling.”
She frowns, considering that. “It does if our relationship is different in the future. If we were, well, dating. You and I will probably always be on different schedules. If the future me wakes and finds herself alone in bed, she probably doesn’t think anything of it -”
John snaps his fingers. “She just goes and joins me in my quarters.” It does make a weird kind of sense.
They stare at each other, the enormity of what they’re saying sinking in. All that time in Atlantis stretches out before them. They’re going to make it. More than that.
“Good to know we’ll last at least three years,” he says. Dr. Weir winces. “What?”
“Well - I didn’t quite get all of what you were saying, but you seemed both angry at me and - surprised to see me.” She wraps her arms around herself, and looks very young. “I think something’s going to happen to me. Something bad.”
And John knows, suddenly, how he’s going to spend those coming years. “No it’s not.”
“John, you know how dangerous it is here. I could well end up a casualty.”
“But you won’t, okay? I’m not gonna let that happen.”
She looks down and away, and he moves without thinking, their recent unchosen intimacy making him bold. Her eyes widen when he grabs her hand, but she doesn’t pull away. “Don’t listen to future me. He’s an ass.” That gets a smile out of her.
“He was kind of a jerk.”
“That’s the spirit. Five years from now, we’re going to be toasting our phenomenally successful Lantean mission.” He offers her a wolfish grin. “Naked, knowing future us.”
She laughs, but raises an eyebrow. “Careful, Major. You’re the one who just got through telling me the future’s not set in stone.”
Yeah, but there are some parts of it that don’t sound so bad.
***
They find the source of the blue light - it is, in fact, the glowing room on Level Two that Sheppard mentioned the day before - but it seems to be dormant now and they can’t get any readings off of it. Elizabeth starts to translate the Ancient text on the control screen, but by then it’s 5 AM and they can hardly keep their eyes open.
He walks her back to her quarters, smothering yawns into his fist. God help her, she finds it cute. She never expected to get hung up on a GI Joe type like Sheppard - she’s always been more into the tweedy sort - but she doesn’t know what to think anymore. The last few days have rattled her but good.
Him too, apparently, because when they reach her door, instead of leaving, he leans one arm against it, looming over her. “So,” he says, waggling his eyebrows, “My place or yours tonight?”
He’s joking, but only just. Ignoring the way her stomach is fluttering, she whispers, “Nothing we’ve learned makes it appropriate for us to have a relationship.”
His gaze falls to her mouth, and her breath catches. She doesn’t really want to push him away, and she’s sure it shows. But he only whispers, “You say that now,” drops a kiss on her cheek, and walks away.
She goes into her quarters, collapses against the door, and blows out a breath. “Good lord,” she says aloud to Atlantis, “What are you trying to do to me?”
That night they return to the blue room. Elizabeth spends an hour or so translating the activation instructions. Her head is pounding and there’s an odd, growing hum and she’s sure Rodney could figure this out in about five minutes, but then, finally, she figures out a key passage and everything slides into place. “I know what this is,” she says to Sheppard, tapping in a command, but before she can finish there’s a blinding flash of light.
***
Elizabeth cries out and clutches her head and before he can think he’s on the ground, hands on her shoulders. “Elizabeth? Are you all right?”
She looks up. “I see you finally figured out those private transporters. I’m not in the mood, John.”
He withdraws his touch. She doesn’t sound happy to see him. “Uh, sorry. It wasn’t me though. See -”
“Spare me. Did you really think now was the time for a tryst?” She doesn’t sound angry, just tired. “It won’t work this time. My mind’s made up.”
He should tell her the truth, but he finds himself needing to know what put that hopeless tone in her voice. “Made up about what?”
She rises and goes to the window, turning her back on him. “I’ll stay until after the op,” she says dully. “Then I’ll make arrangements to return to Earth.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Not that you and Everett would really miss me if I left right now.”
“Elizabeth, whatever I did -”
She waves him off. “I know, that wasn’t fair. But the fact remains that this isn’t working. It’s time for me to stop pretending.”
He swallows. He knew this would happen. “I let you down, didn’t I.”
She closes her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
Maybe it’s something they’ll get past. He takes a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. You’ve actually traveled back in time. The expedition is only eleven days old.” She turns to him, eyes wide. “Sorry, I probably should have led with that.”
She’s staring at him. “I’ve traveled back in time four years?! How?”
OK, maybe they won’t get past it. That’s a long time from now. Four years from now could be the end - the reason the future him was so desperate to see her. “Uh, I’m really not sure.”
A voice behind him says, “I can answer that.”
John turns around to find a middle-aged man in a white dress thing beaming at him placidly. Elizabeth says, “Janus?”
“Not exactly,” the man says. “I’m a holographic interface. My creator modeled me after himself.”
“You know him?” John says.
Elizabeth crosses her arms. “Only by reputation.”
This Janus guy turns and observes her. “Bitter. Disillusioned. Oh, dear. 2007, I presume? Whereas you, Sheppard, still have that just-out-of-the-box gleam about you. It must be 2004 for you.”
“It’s 2004 for everyone, present company excluded,” John says, crossing his arms by Elizabeth’s side. “I take it you did this to us?”
“Oh, no. I’m what’s keeping it from happening to everyone else.” He indicates the undulating blue light chasing around the room. “You see, thanks to my creator’s experiments, Atlantis is - was, will be - a font of chronatic energy.” When he sees them exchange a blank look, he supplies, “Time particles. Janus knew they could set Atlantis and its population adrift in the time stream if left unchecked, so he created a complex series of set of chronatic radiation channels, as well as an administrator.” He beamed. “Me.”
“So why aren’t you administering?” John demands.
“I am. But like everything else, I was dormant for a long time. Now that Atlantis has risen, there’s a bit of chronatic leakage, that’s all. That’s what you’ve been experiencing. But I can fix that.” He turns his back on them, tapping away on the touch screen, which responds to him just as if he was physically present.
“So why is it just us?” John asks. “Why isn’t anyone else flashing forward?”
“Hmm? Because you two are the only time travelers currently in Atlantis. And,” he says, holding up a hand to forestall John’s question, “Before you ask, that’s all the details you get. I won’t spoil your future for you.”
“About that,” Elizabeth says, sounding intrigued in spite of her sullenness, “Why don’t I remember this, if it’s four years in my past?”
“Hmm,” Janus says. “Interesting. I must have be about to... Of course. I’ll erase your memories of these events, so you don’t further degrade the timestream. Clever idea, me-in-an-hour.”
“Look,” Elizabeth says wearily, “Can you fix it? I’m not keen to relive the last four years.”
“Yes, yes.” Janus flips a hand at them. “Just let me adjust the levels, and you’ll be back in your proper chronology in an hour. Well, some version of an hour, of course.”
She nods, dropping her head in her hands. It makes John ache to look at her. How can all that passion and spark be so thoroughly extinguished?
“Was it really so bad?” he asks.
She doesn’t raise her head. “What?”
“The last four years. Your last four years. Were they really that bad?”
She raises her head, but not to look at him. “Janus, do I need to be here for this? Because I’d really rather not be around any version of John at the moment.”
“No, no, the adjustments will take effect throughout the city. You can be on your way.”
She gives a short nod and heads for the door. She pauses just before leaving. “You’ll be fine, John.” He can tell she’s trying to mean it. He means at least that much to her. Then she’s gone.
He sinks down against the wall, watching the blue light play over the ceiling. He loses time at a couple points but Janus must talk his future selves into staying put. He doesn’t care. He thought he was starting something wonderful. Now he can barely face the thought of tomorrow.
Four years from now, the beautiful, brilliant, dorky, passionate woman who dragged him to another galaxy and into the greatest adventure of his life is going to be so disappointed in him she can’t even stand to be in the same room as him. And from what his Elizabeth told him, is sounds like that’s not the worst that’s going to happen to her. What’s he going to do to her? Dammit, why’d she have to drag him into all this? Didn’t she realize a screwup like him could never live up to her expectations?
Shit.
“John?”
He raises his head to find her standing in the doorway. “He’s almost done,” he says.
“Who is?” She takes a few steps into the room, looking around. “Oh. This is when we were time traveling, wasn’t it.”
He takes a proper look at her. That defeated air is gone. “What year is it for you?”
She smiles, eyes twinkling. “Mmm, a lady never tells.”
“How do you know about the time traveling? I thought what’s-his-name over there was going to wipe our memories.”
“Oh, he does, but we remembered in 2013. It’s a long story.”
2013. He smiles a little. A very long story, apparently. “So you’re okay.”
“Seems so.” She cocks her head. “What’s wrong?”
He looks away. It’s good to know that she lives, but it doesn’t mean he ever got her respect back for whatever he did. Or got her back. “I just met you from 2007.”
There’s a pause. Then he feels her slide down beside him. “John.”
He doesn’t look at her.
“John.” Fingers catch his chin. He can hear suppressed laughter in her voice. “Baby, come on.”
Baby. He turns to her.
“I was angry,” she says gently. “Angrier than I’ve ever been, practically. Mind you, I had damn good reasons to be. But that doesn’t mean it lasted forever.”
He doesn’t know what to say. There’s so much he needs to know. So much he’s afraid to know. “So you and me -”
She shakes her head. “I should let you discover that for yourselves, don’t you think?”
He gives her a lascivious smirk. “Our memories are getting wiped, remember? Educate me all you want.”
“Oh God. This is what you were like back then, isn’t it?” She shakes her head. “But God, you were cute. Oh, what the hell. One for the road.” And she leans in and kisses him.
It’s soft, exploratory, his hand cupping her jaw, fingers trailing over her skin, knees bumping gently. She smiles at him fondly, and the cold lump of self-hatred he’s been working at in his chest dissolves. “It’s going to get very hard,” she says. “Harder than you can imagine. But John, we’re going to be so amazing.” Her soft smile turns to a grin. “Well, as far as I know. It could all go to hell again tomorrow.” The light is building again. She gives him a little wave. “Bye!”
***
Elizabeth comes back to herself sitting inches from John. He’s not touching her, but the way he’s looking at her makes her wonder what she’s missed. “2004?” he whispers.
“2004. You?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Hi.”
“Almost done,” Janus says. “Stand by. You’ll be transported back to your rooms. This will all be just a dream.”
He reaches out a finger, trailing it over the seam at her shoulder. He cups her cheek as they both lean in, and as their lips meet, there’s one last flash of blue light.
***
Major Sheppard is rather tongue-tied today. And he keeps staring at her. Usually in the staff meetings he’s full of cracks directed at Rodney and digressions when he gets bored. “John, are you all right?” she asks.
He looks a little startled. Elizabeth is a bit surprised herself. Since when does she call him by his first name at staff meetings? “Uh, fine,” he says. “Just haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, I guess.”
She nods. “Well, we’re done here, so you can go have a nap.”
But he doesn’t, instead following her out onto the balcony. She stands at the railing, looking out at the setting sun, and he comes to stand beside her.
“My guys unpacked the last of the gear,” he says. “Guess we’re settling in for the long haul.”
“I guess so,” she says.
They settle into a comfortable silence. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. But something feels different.
Especially when his arm brushes hers. Elizabeth smothers a gasp at the electric shock that races up her skin at the casual contact. She glances over and sees the same thing mirrored in his eyes.
After a charged moment, she tears her eyes away, clearing her throat.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, apropos of nothing, “Yeah, I should go, uh, do some training. Stick fighting. Or, yeah.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” she says.
He nods, backing out awkwardly. Probably for the best. Odd moments like that aren’t really something she can afford, now are they?
And then he’s back. “Uh, actually, Dr. Weir, why don’t you come watch a movie with us? I don’t really feel like stick fighting.”
She should say no.
But she doesn’t.