Slide Into the Night: Chapter Twelve
Title: Slide Into the Night
Rating:T
Warning(s): Language; Implied Violence
Disclaimer: Other than being a fan, I have nothing to do with Stargate:Atlantis
Prompt: This was written for the Season 4/5 Fix-It ficathon at john_elizabeth with the prompt: BASMR alternate ending: The away team on Asura finds and rescues Elizabeth. How does she deal/recover from her imprisonment?
Spoilers: Everything up to “Be All My Sins Remembered"
Summary: Janos Arany once wrote, "In love and dreams, there are no impossibilities." It's a faith that Atlantis is clinging to when the Pegasus Galaxy throws another curveball at them.
Beta: The amazing bluewillowtree who was invaluable with her input and generous with her time.
~*~*~*~*~
Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt the Truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love.
~ Hamlet (Act II, scene ii)
John watched as Kate held out her hand, a familiar object resting in her palm. He watched the psychologist’s lips move in a familiar sequence of syllables and he found himself whispering the name she was calling:
“Elizabeth?”
He stepped out onto the darkened balcony, the twilight fading fast into the warm night, calling her name again. A dim figure stirred and turned toward him, the faint illumination from the Control Room casting a soft light on her familiar features. She moved toward him with a welcome smile curving her lips. “How did the mission go?”
“I thought you’d said we’d debrief tomorrow,” he teased. She arched an eyebrow at him, amused by his antics, but pretending not to be. He smirked, “We’ve got new friends. Ronon managed to shut Rodney up long enough that the Dezians are in complete awe of his genius with technology, yet not enough to actually want to keep him.”
“John!” she rebuked without any heat behind it. They both knew that Rodney wouldn’t seriously mind the characterization, and if their resident genius did have a problem with that assessment…well, John would find out about it very quickly if his shower went suddenly cold tomorrow morning. So John smirked a little, to show that he was joking, and then moved on to his real answer, “The Dezians seem trustworthy. I think, if we ever need a place that has natural defenses against the Wraith, they’d be open to letting us keep our non-essential personnel there until the Daedalus can get here. Of course, it’s not an Alpha or Beta candidate site, and we’ll have to do another thorough screening once we get the negotiations done. I don’t want a repeat of Manara.”
She let out a long, weary breath and looked back out at the sea, “Good.” Knowing that she was quickly sinking into dark memories (he was too, of Kolya’s voice over the radio, the three words that froze his heart and drove the trained covert ops soldier to the fore of his mind-John yanked himself away), he took a deep breath and went for a lighthearted note. “Teyla had a lot of fun, shopping around and making more trading connections. We’ve got an invitation to go trade for purple oranges in two weeks.”
“Again?” she questioned with amusement in her eyes when she glanced at him. The gesi fruit was common on a vast variety of worlds in Pegasus and was pretty much identical to Earth’s oranges, except for three things: they were as purple as eggplants, tasted like peaches, and contained no citric acid.
“Have you told Rodney yet?” He could hear her trying to keep the laughter out of her voice. They knew that Rodney knew he couldn’t possibly die of an allergic reaction from ingesting gesi, but he still treated the purple fruit as if it would leap out of the fruit basket and stuff itself down his throat. It was always amusing to set their genius off on a long-winded lecture about why it wasn’t wise to induce anaphylactic shock in the only person who could save the city on a moment’s notice, only to see him splutter to a halt when he realized that the peach pie he was eating wasn’t actually made from peaches grown on Earth. Rodney had a weakness for peaches, and when he was distracted by a rant or an idea, he sometimes forgot to remember that he was “allergic” to gesi. Besides, the entire city knew that he liked the sweet fruit as much as the rest of them; he only kept up his complaints for form’s sake. A complaining Rodney was a normal Rodney, and a normal Rodney meant that Atlantis was not in catastrophic danger and that everyone could go about their normal, crazy lives in Pegasus without worrying about dying in the next five minutes.
“No,” said John lazily, leaning against the railing next to her. “I figure Teyla will tell him right before we go, and then on the other side of the ‘gate, tell him that we’re actually going to trade for those kofa beans he loves so much.”
“Rodney and his caffeine,” she chuckled to herself. Knowing how much coffee she drank on a daily basis, he parried straight back, “You and your caffeine.”
She smiled wryly, “True, very true.” She tilted her head told her office. “I suppose you told everyone else?”
“Told what to everyone else?” he asked, playing innocent.
She gave him a knowing look, “So you can’t explain to me why today I came into my office to find a box of gifts underneath my desk, specifically, a box filled with thirty different types of teas and forty different roasts of coffee?”
Oh.
Maybe Teyla wasn’t the only one who had noticed the gift-giving last year, or the year before that. Inwardly, John squirmed at the thought that his interactions with Elizabeth were being scrutinized enough for people to figure out that he gave her birthday gifts. Then again, it wasn’t like the two of them were being completely secretive about it, handing each other birthday gifts on the balcony or in a quiet hallway that was only semi-private and mostly public. Still…it was a little awkward to realize that they were being watched by their staff. It did make sense in a way, but did nothing for John’s wish to keep his private life just that: private.
“Um, no, not really,” he said, because he really had no idea that there had been a massive organization throughout the city to organize a gift like that for her. He made a mental note to ask Lorne if he knew anything about it. Quick on the heels of that thought came the odd fact that he hadn’t been roped into the benign conspiracy, and he wondered if he was the only one from Elizabeth’s closest circle of friends who had been excluded from participation because everyone knew he was up to something on his own. Or…it could have just been as innocent as a lot of people putting together a useful gift for someone they respected.
She grinned at him, the years falling away from her face. “I guess not then.”
“Does Rodney know?”
“Considering that his handwriting is on the note attached, along with about half of the expedition members’ signatures,” she responded, “he knows I have coffee when we run out of supplies. But,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes, the spark of laughter that John loved to coax out of her, “he promised that he wouldn’t touch my drinks unless, and I quote, ‘there is a serious emergency that requires caffeine to fix.’”
He chuckled with her soft giggles because Rodney would see caffeine as an essential food group in a time of crisis, which it often was on Atlantis. John drank in the moment, watching Elizabeth laugh, her curls brushing across her cheek, and he wished that he had enough courage to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear.
Instead, he inhaled deeply and felt the weight of the jewelry box resting against his ribs, hidden underneath his jacket. John took it out, holding it in both hands, “Well, I guess I got left out of the coffee run, but I, uh, found this, well, um…” He held the flat box to her. “Happy Birthday, Elizabeth.”
She gave him a perplexed look as she took the jewelry box from him. “Thank you, John, but you didn’t ne-”
She stared at the open jewelry box in her hands for a seemingly eternal moment. In the reality of those brief seconds, John’s mind categorized relief that he had handed it to her right-side up, that Teyla had been right (as usual), and that Elizabeth was-blushing? Then she looked up at him, her green eyes suspiciously bright in the dim light, and she asked him steadily, “John, did you…did you have someone make this?”
He nodded and swallowed to wet his dry throat, “Yeah, uh, a few months back, I asked Halling if he knew about any jewelry-makers here, and um, he took me to Waina. They specialize in metal crafts, so I…” He shrugged, because he was sounding like a flustered idiot, and really, he didn’t need to dig himself deeper into embarrassment. He cleared his throat, “Eris and his family made it by hand. They don’t know what the design means, but Teyla knows about their myths and things like that, if you want to ask her.”
You’re babbling John, his mind scolded him in a fond voice surprisingly like Carson’s. Let her talk, hmm?
She looked back down at the necklace, the round sea-green jewel glimmering in the soft light cast by the city, and she said reverently, “I-This is beautiful, John.” She looked up. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Have dinner with me,” he said abruptly. She gave him a questioning look, because they did have dinner together, often in the mess hall late at night, usually after he dragged her out of her office when she worked too long or after she dragged him away from the infirmary when a mission had gone bad off-world. He clarified, “Tonight, I mean. I got us trays from the mess hall. I figured that you hadn’t eaten yet.”
She smiled at him, sheepishly admitting, “You’re right. I haven’t. Don’t tell Carson?”
He nodded, “All right, if you’ll help spring me out of the infirmary next time.”
“John, I know better than to agree to that.” She was grinning as she spoke, so he shrugged, “It was worth a try.”
She dipped her hand into the jewelry box and took out the necklace. “Can you help me?”
He took the necklace from her hand, fingers carefully undoing the clasp of the delicate silver chain as she turned around, sweeping her hair to one side. He lifted the chain around her neck and leaned in closer to link the ends of the necklace. As he fastened the clasp, the soothing blended scent of Atlantis and Earth filled his senses, and underneath it all, there was her, the woman he cared so deeply for. He squeezed her shoulder when he was done and she turned back around to face him.
When John saw his necklace resting against her breastbone, just above her heart, Eris’ words came back to him: “Then you should know, for the future, that many a man has given his love a gift such as yours: a gift of the heart.”
In that moment, John knew.
John knew he had to believe that she was going to pull through this. He had to believe that she was strong enough to climb through her personal hell and fight her way back to the life she deserved. He had to believe that he was strong enough for both of them, to help her defeat her demons, to protect her from the IOA on Earth, to hold her hand while she fell apart. He had to believe that he was strong enough to guide and protect the entire city in his care until he could take his place by her side again. He could do this; he could do what she had wanted him to do since the second she screamed at him all those months ago to “GO!” He had to hold everything together, even himself, and he could do it.
Because that’s what she wanted, what she believed, and what she had entrusted to him. He could do what he had to because she would be okay. That was what he was hanging onto, that promise. No matter how bitter or long the road, he knew they would have a happy ending.
He had to believe that.
He had no other choice, because he loved her.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
~
“John wanted me to give this to you.”
Elizabeth stared at the slivery-sapphire pendent swinging slowly from the hallucination’s fingers. Half-convinced it would dissolve into smoke before her eyes, she carefully reached out. Fake-Kate let go of the silver chain at the same moment that her own fingers closed around the warm metal. Delicate links fell across the back of her hand, sliding smoothly over her skin in a weightless caress. She was dimly aware that fake-Kate had leaned back, her counselor’s softly spoken words making their way through the fog in her mind.
The familiar weight rested in her palm and she quickly closed her fingers over the metal, feeling the blunted edges of the fire-forged sigil dig into her skin. The symbol did not vanish in her tightened grip, and a choking feeling rose in her throat at the realization that she was either so deeply immersed in this reality as to be completely lost or this-her mind stumbled and she pressed her closed fist against her mouth to choke back her inexplicable tears.
“Happy Birthday, Elizabeth,” said John with a shy, nervous smile that stunned her in its sincerity. His hands shook a little as she accepted the flat, hand-carved box from him. She thanked him formulaically, knowing that he deserved better than some vague gratitude from her and wishing that they were somewhere more private, as she opened the lid of the box. Her breath left her in a silent gasp of surprise.
She had never been sure of the truth about what was between them. They had hovered so long on that line between friendship and partnership that the distinction might never have existed in their case. He knew her just as well as she knew him. There were secrets they held from each other, but far fewer than the secrets they held together.
Perhaps it wasn’t entirely healthy, their dependent relationship on each other, but they were both independent career professionals-she a diplomat, he a soldier. It was nice to have the sanctuary of another person’s arms, even if was for just a single night of mutual understanding, to be weak in the dark and know that weakness wouldn’t be ruthlessly exploited in the light of day. In the night, their masks came off, and every person they couldn’t be in their duties, every emotion they couldn’t allow themselves to feel, every action that was forbidden to them because of the nature of their station alone-they let themselves be, feel and do. Those nights were her sanity, her saving grace in the pressure-cooker that was her position in Atlantis, and she knew it was the same for him. They both held lives in their hands, people dying or living on their call, their choices, their decisions. There weren’t many people who understood, and even fewer who knew how she wanted release from her burdens, but John did. John understood her, just as she understood him, saw deeper than the mask he displayed to the world around him.
For a very long time, she had suspected that perhaps their occasional midnight rendezvous meant just as much to him as they had come to mean to her-not just random “stress relief,” but something more that they weren’t allowed to have. Staring at the beautiful necklace, the graceful pendent a stylized version of Atlantis’ home symbol, she felt her cheeks flush and her eyes burn with threatening tears. Still, when she looked up to meet his eyes, she prided herself on the fact that her voice was steady, “John, did you-did you have someone make this?”
He nodded, his own face bright red as he stammered out an explanation of how he had managed to commission a handmade piece of custom jewelry in a galaxy that was populated by more refugees than civilizations. She barely heard any of it; instead, she searched his eyes and found the secret he was trying to hide.
At the realization, a wild burst of conflicting emotions whirled through her, because she had always been unsure of what they were doing, tangoing across invisible lines that they always seemed to stray across, no matter how hard they fought against it, or maybe because of it. It wasn’t that she hated herself for being human, or regretted whatever existed between them, but she wished things were simpler, kinder to a woman in her position.
She was surprised that she hadn’t heard any speculation in Atlantis about the two of them, but then, she was always overly cautious about how she was perceived. Her staff had to trust her to be levelheaded, to be fair, to be more than human, and she couldn’t find it within herself to let them down and remind them that she just like anyone else: out of her depth and making it up as she went along.
What was the next step now? To pretend that nothing had changed, when John was signaling something else, or to take his hand and let him lead this dance, and damn the consequences? Yet Atlantis-his city, her people-would always come before their hearts, and so the choice was never a real choice for them. She knew what the path was before her, and she couldn’t turn away from it, even if it meant she stayed in this limbo for the rest of her life. She loved him, but she owed Atlantis more, and she knew he felt the same. Still, the small romantic part of her held out hope that maybe circumstances would change in the future, that they could find their own personal happy ending that balanced devotion and duty without sacrificing one for the other.
Studying the elegantly-wrought necklace that was his gift to her, she said from her heart, “I-This is beautiful, John.” Staring into his eyes, she wondered what their ending would be, if they were doomed to be Atlantis’ Antony and Cleopatra, or if there could be a future for them, a happy ending that they could both live with. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Knowing better than to let Fake-Kate see her weakness, Elizabeth rested her forehead against her knees, taking slow shallow breaths to ease back the sobs in her chest. She wasn’t going to cry and let Oberoth know that she was this close to the edge of breaking. If he had managed to get his hands on her memories of John, her shared secrets with the only person she had entrusted with everything, then this fight was over and she was defeated. She desperately prayed that wasn’t the case.
Elizabeth had never dared to think about John’s necklace; she had rarely thought of John in general beyond the glancing mention in her mind. It was too dangerous, with Oberoth always seeking her weaknesses to use against her, always pressuring her to tell her deepest secrets, always searching for the best ways to destroy her humanity. She had always fought him, and would continue to fight him to the last.
But now…
She flexed her fingers, feeling the familiar outline of the handcrafted pendent imprint itself on her skin, marking her hand as the symbol and all it stood for-family, love, home-had seared itself onto her soul. Atlantis and its people, the man she had asked to lead in her stead, the unexpected, silent love she had found…all were part of the bedrock of who she was.
When she had woken from the accident that should have killed her, Elizabeth knew that there was no going back, no matter what happened. The realization had shattered her, but she had held herself together for the sake of her people-because they would always be her people, just as the city would always be John’s Atlantis. Their safety-that of her subordinates and particularly his-would trump her own needs at any moment in time. It was only a fair trade for all the times she had sent them into the fray with only a prayer for their survival.
Elizabeth had allowed herself a moment to grieve, when she had taken off the necklace, returning it to its giver. In that moment, she had given up everything she had loved, asking John to do what she knew he could do-to explore, to inspire, to lead. She knew that John would take care of Atlantis, that she could go to her grave at peace, knowing that her people, his city, their expedition was safe from harm as long as he lived.
She had never expected to see that necklace again, much less her best friend, sometimes lover, and unspoken partner. She missed John, but she knew it was for the best that he never came for her. She had been dead the moment that beam had hit her; everything that existed now was just a purgatory for a dead woman. Elizabeth didn’t want him throwing his life away to rescue her. She wasn’t worth the risks when there would be no benefit.
A warm breath on the skin of her neck made her shiver involuntarily and a long-silent sense tingled in the back of her mind. Her fingers tensed around the necklace as she placed the instinct. Someone was watching her, and she knew, with absolute certainty, who it was, but that was impossible. Unless…
Elizabeth fought back her panic and tears, sternly telling herself that John knew better, that he wouldn’t have gotten himself captured by Oberoth, oh God… She would do anything, die a thousand times over if it meant that he wasn’t here, that he was safe, she would give herself up if it meant that he would be safe, if Atlantis was safe, please please please please…
The soft voice in the long-forgotten corner of her mind whispered kindly, “Look up.”
Elizabeth held herself still, fighting her need to know, to verify for herself that it wasn’t John while being terrified that it was. She wasn’t going to be manipulated like a marionette by a sadistic puppet-master, not while she still had strength. Her head stayed stubbornly down, but the voice in her mind coaxed gently, “Look up.”
A part of her dimly noted that fake-Kate was sitting calmly on her high stool, her hands clearly folded in her lap, the expression on the hallucination’s face patient and a touch concerned. It wasn’t fake-Kate doing the manipulation then, making her think that John was here. If it wasn’t fake-Kate, then it was over, and she had lost to Oberoth, because if he could screw around with her mind this much, almost convince her that John was here…
There was no point in delaying the inevitable any longer. There would be no miraculous rescue, no knight-in-shining armor, no Ascended being to take her away from all of this. Despite all the odds against her, she had nursed a frail hope of survival and now, she felt that flame of defiance flicker and die in a wisp of smoke. Perhaps it was a miracle that she had staved off Oberoth’s attempts to break her for this long, fighting him with everything she had, shattering his illusions when he was unprepared. She always held onto a shred of control, blocking him from peering into the depths of her soul even as he ransacked her mind. She manipulated him, taunted him, distracted him from the truly important details she knew. Oberoth had never managed to touch John’s memories before, not the secret ones that she told no one except herself. If Oberoth had managed to breach the wall she had erected between her mind and her heart, a wall on which she had set a mental sentinel with John’s face to guard, then this fight was over. There was nothing left to do, but to make sure that she took her secrets to her final grave.
Elizabeth closed her eyes in defeat. She tucked everything she knew about Atlantis into a tight box in the back of her mind, laying as many false paths as she could away from information. Half-memorized schematics of the city’s defenses and blurry details about weapons’ capabilities were ruthlessly falsified in her mind, downplaying everything she knew. She inserted faulty efficiency rates and project completion dates into the data to make it all seem real. Names of people, trading partners, details of treaties and all the secrets she held, Elizabeth twisted and manipulated into lies, things she had convinced herself over the months of her imprisonment were true and still true. She would wreck Oberoth’s confidence in her information, convince him that even the truth was a lie, and so keep her people safe.
If Oberoth wanted to know what she knew, she would make him pay dearly for it. While he killed her, Elizabeth knew that she had just enough knowledge about the Asuran network in her own hands to have her own revenge. She knew where she was being held in reality, behind a false wall in the Power Control Room, just a breath away from several ZPMs. All she had to do was reach out along the nanite-built pathways and twist on the energy flows at the subatomic level for just a single ZPM. The resulting chain reaction would trigger a catastrophic explosion that would take out the city and a good portion of the planet’s surface. But she would have to be quick about it, shoving the energy disruption into place and keeping Oberoth occupied long enough with her pain to keep him from noticing the problem until it was too late to stop it. It would be her revenge and her escape to death.
When she had all of that at the ready in her mind, she took in a shuddering deep breath, opening her eyes to the soft white blanket that covered her legs. Fighting down her self-preservation instincts, Elizabeth gave herself a moment’s reprieve to grieve for everything she had given up and to fear the pain that would come. Then, clutching John’s necklace in her hand and drawing her last strength from all she had loved, she steeled herself to go down in wave of destruction.
Elizabeth looked up and felt her breath freeze in her chest. John’s clear green eyes met hers unflinchingly, the stubborn faith and desperate hope she saw in his eyes all too real to be false. She could almost hear him willing for her to believe what she was almost convinced to be true, pleading, begging her to know that she was safe, he was here and it was over. She could almost hear his voice in her memory, soothing her in her darkest hours, whispering to her over and over again that he would always be with her, always find some way protect her somehow, no matter what. His expression was so real, so honest… Elizabeth knew in her heart that no Asuran, no hallucination could ever duplicate that look in his eyes.
Something cracked inside of Elizabeth as her carefully constructed mental defenses crumpled around her, her plan fell to pieces, and she broke away from his open gaze, his pleas too much, far too much for her to handle right now. She hid her face in her arms, her unbound hair falling forward to shield her face from sight. Desperately clinging to the shreds of her self-control, she squeezed her eyes shut even as silent tears slipped free. Nothing came rushing into the silence, no pain, no terror, no demands…nothing. How could Oberoth do nothing when he had to have known that she was ready to fight him? Unless…unless Oberoth wasn’t in-
Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to complete her thought, the renewed hope still so fragile in her hands that she was afraid that the slightest breath would destroy it completely. Biting her bottom lip, she stubbornly held in the wild sobs of relief mixed with terror. She was so tired of fighting. She was so tired. She wanted to die and escape from this prison, but if she had to chose, she wanted to live.
Dimly, she heard fake-Kate-no, she corrected herself-she heard Real?-Kate say something before there was soft click of her shoes and a quiet hiss of a door unlocking, locking, that told Elizabeth that she was alone. Relieved by the solicitude, she risked a glance up into the observation room. John was still there, one hand on the railing, the other touching the glass barrier between them. He was watching her, a sincere expression of regret and longing on his face. He lingered at the window before he slowly turned away, moving out of her sight. She watched him go, unvoiced screams for him to stay, to keep the fear at bay, but she made no sound.
Elizabeth rolled onto her side, still curled up into a huddled ball, and let the weeks run past in her memory. From blinding pain to the murky drugged hours that passed her by, the memories were firmly separated from all her other experiences by the fact that Oberoth never appeared to her, never in all the minutes and hours that trickled down in the flow of time. There was no pale blue light when she closed her eyes, just peaceful darkness. When pain came, it was the kind that was quickly muffled with waves of warmth or icy chill that wrapped her up and swept her away. Thinking back now, focusing on the details she had missed, she remembered that no one around her took pleasure in her state, in causing her distress. Their smiles were soft and sympathetic, verging on pity and regret, emerging when they tried to convey comfort and good intentions. The nurses and doctors around her were acting so human. Elizabeth had thought then that it was because they were just realistic hallucinations, puppets controlled by a master manipulator, but now…she wasn’t so sure. She closed her eyes again, wondering if this was just a dream, or if she could take the hopeless chance that this was real and not some trap? The tears came in a wild rush of hope and she let herself cry in quiet gasps for air.
The realization that so many possibilities were before her, that her reality was as fragmented as before, yet also so unbearably coherent, was overwhelming. Was she in control now or was she free? Could she trust what her senses told her-that the filtered air had the salty tang of the sea, that the sheets were smooth against her skin, that the temperature was at a comfortably warm setting, that the Marines at the door now were living, breathing human beings who were bored out of their minds watching someone they distantly knew have a complete breakdown? Could she take that risk, to play into the game around her, to test the truth of her reality to see if it was what it claimed to be?
A monitor chirped unhappily above her and she was barely aware of the brisk footsteps entering the room. No one touched her, even as they talked to her, trying to calm her down. Words were exchanged in concerned tones. She ignored them all. They didn’t matter, not yet, not yet. What mattered was John, standing watch over her, being there for her-why wasn’t he here, in person, with her? Yet he was here, nearby, protective, steady; John was here and they were both safe.
Elizabeth let herself crumble into broken pieces without asking the reasons why. The memories that she carried within her, the darkest moments of her life that she hid from herself, those were reasons enough, but she cried also for the memories of balconies and conversations under warm sunlight and cool moonlight, of a voice in the darkness who offered so much to her, so much more than she felt she could repay. She was caught at a crossroads and she didn’t know which way to turn. But then again, maybe she did. Maybe she did know, but she was too scared to decide if she could trust herself, and it had been too long since she had trusted another person to guide her. What were her choices?
She dimly heard the monitor beeping angrily as she continued to sob in choking breaths that stole the air from her lungs. Warm hands carefully rubbed circles on her back as outside voices encouraged, coaxed, pleaded with her to calm down. She ignored them, sinking into the darkness that had been her friend for so long. Elizabeth barely felt the cool wave of medication that swept her away into sleep. She didn’t have the strength to fight it.
Maybe she was free from Oberoth, maybe she wasn’t. Either way…maybe it didn’t matter anymore, which opinion was right, because John was here, and wherever he was, she knew she was safe. John had always kept her safe. She remembered that; she trusted that, no matter what the hallucinations had said and done to her in the past. John would never hurt her, ever. Real-John had given her a necklace on the eve of her birthday while they stood on a windswept balcony and laughed. He had smiled, and with his eyes, he had wordlessly told her he loved her.
Elizabeth clung to that last thought before she gave into the sweet darkness of rest, her fingers still wrapped around John’s gift, holding onto it for dear life and sanity itself, because she knew this for a fact:
He was her guiding star home.
~
Kate opened her session with Elizabeth as she always did, silently taking off the other woman’s restraints. Elizabeth had been unusually passive for the past couple of days, more docile than Kate had even thought possible, and that was alarming. Yes, she was interacting with her environment more, but nothing else really had changed. She still didn’t speak to anyone. Syringes still sent her into panic attacks that no one could talk her down from, and Elizabeth still wasn’t eating properly.
Over the past two days, Jennifer had a look in her eyes, the regretful one that all doctors had before they did something that was necessary but unsettling to them, and Kate knew she was running out of time. If she didn’t get Elizabeth to a tipping point within the next day or so, Jennifer was going to step in and intervene to keep their patient’s health from sliding further downhill. Kate knew what the tipping point looked like, something like a shock to Elizabeth’s sense of reality, a moment when all her assumptions were twisted or turned upside down. The main problem was, though, that Kate had no idea how to coax her friend to that crucial breakthrough without accidentally shattering Elizabeth’s sense of stability and control.
So when she sat back in her seat, her hand clasped in Elizabeth’s, Kate hesitated for a moment before she spoke, careful to keep her voice low and smooth. “Elizabeth, do you mind if we talk? If you want me to leave now,” she offered, “let go of my hand.”
Elizabeth didn’t react to the opportunity, but she didn’t loosen her grip on Kate’s fingers, so the psychologist took it as implicit permission to continue. Kate searched her memory for the words and emotions she wanted to invoke in her patient. When she was ready, Kate began quietly, “I will be honest with you, Elizabeth: I don’t know where to start.
“I know it’s hard for you to believe that you’re safe now, that Asura is gone, and they will never come after you again. I don’t blame you. You’ve survived so much, and I understand if you never want to talk about it with anyone. Sometimes, memories hurt, but sometimes, they heal.
“This is what I remember: I remember a woman who was trapped in a reality that didn’t seem right to her, so she fought the lies with everything she had. Afterwards, I remember how I sat with her for hours, talking through what happened in the months she experienced and how she felt, cut off from the people she cared so much about. I remember how she found the strength inside of herself to trust that she was safe, that the world around her was real, and that we were never going to let her go without a fight.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Elizabeth. This is going to be a hard road, for the both of us, but you’re not so broken that you can’t be healed. The Asurans aren’t going to win because we’ve done this once together, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to question everything around us until we know the truth and trust it. We’re going to stumble and fall, but we’re going to pick ourselves right back up again when that happens.
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way, I swear. I’m not going to give up on you; no one on Atlantis is going to give up on you. You’re a strong woman, Elizabeth, and nothing can change that. No one can take that away from you. The entire city is with you on this journey, and we’re supporting you a hundred percent.”
Kate paused to gather her emotions, praying that she was saying the right words for the long run. She slipped her free hand into her pocket, her fingers finding the necklace she had carried with her for all these weeks of twice-daily visits with Elizabeth. It had become a talisman to Kate, reminding her of the world outside the isolation unit, and of a man who was placing his trust in her to bring his other half back to him. She didn’t have to look up into the observation area to know that he was standing there, watching over both of them. She took her hand out of her pocket. She hoped this was the right thing to do.
“John wanted me to give this to you,” said Kate quietly, opening her palm and letting the silver chain slip past her fingers as the delicately-crafted necklace rested in her hand. She saw that Elizabeth’s eyes focused immediately on the metal symbol Kate held, a flicker of recognition dancing across the other woman’s green eyes.
Elizabeth stared at the silvery-blue pendant in the stylized form of Atlantis’ point of origin for a long moment. Then Kate moved her wrist smoothly, telegraphing her movements, and let the necklace dangle from her fingers so that she was only holding the silver links of the chain. The silver pendant swung in the air between them once, twice. On the third swing, Elizabeth’s fingers let go of Kate’s hand to clutch at the small piece of her past. The psychologist gently draped the chain over the back of her friend’s hand before letting go and folding her own hands in her lap.
Elizabeth wrapped one arm around her knees, the other pressing her closed fist against her mouth. She lowered her head, tucking herself away. It was her silent signal that she wanted to think and Kate did not press. A slight tremor shook Elizabeth’s frail shoulders from time to time and Kate had to hold herself still, sternly reminding herself to be patient and passive. Moving too fast and too familiarly could spook Elizabeth and undo everything that she had managed to build up thus far.
Minutes passed in that silent tableau and then Elizabeth froze, her breathing rapid and shallow. Kate watched the numbers on the oxygen saturation monitor drop, her own concern growing as Elizabeth wasn’t getting enough oxygen into her body. Just before Kate was going to stand up from her seat and signal John to call in Keller, Elizabeth abruptly looked up, her eyes unerringly looking through the observation room window as if she knew John was standing there, watching over her as her personal guardian angel. For a moment, Kate saw their gazes lock, and there was a heartrending vulnerability in Elizabeth’s eyes for the briefest of seconds. Then Elizabeth just abruptly looked back down, curling tighter into a ball on her bed, her hand still clenched tight around the necklace John had given her, and Kate knew the session was over.
She quietly stood up and moved away from the gurney, murmuring as she always did, “I’ll be back later, Elizabeth. If you need me, just call the nurse on duty.”
There was, as always, no response from the still form on the bed, face still buried in her arms. Kate hadn’t expected one; it would be too much to ask after today: she had found the tipping point.
As she walked out of the room, Kate reflected on what had happened in that brief second.
Many people would have dismissed it out of hand. Elizabeth had been given something that reminded her of her life before she had been captured and tortured by a sadistic jailer. It was mere chance that she had looked upwards and seen someone from her past, a dear friend standing guard over her. To Kate, though, it was something else entirely different.
It was only a moment, but it was enough to know that Elizabeth looked to one person to protect her, that one person had the best chance out of all of them to save her, and in the process, save himself. When Elizabeth had looked up to see John at the window, under the confusion and defiance, there was also the faintest glimpse of hope in her eyes, a fleeting hint of the woman she had been before and still was.
Kate knew, as she walked out of the isolation room, that her patient, her friend, her leader was going to recover. She smiled to herself.
He was Elizabeth’s salvation; she was John’s hope. No matter what the Asurans had done to her, and no matter what Earth’s politicians threw at them, Kate knew that as long as John and Elizabeth stood together, they would triumph over all their tribulations. They were strong apart, but powerful together.
In Kate’s mind, there was no question that things would turn out all right in the end because when it came to love, there were no impossibilities.
Rating:T
Warning(s): Language; Implied Violence
Disclaimer: Other than being a fan, I have nothing to do with Stargate:Atlantis
Prompt: This was written for the Season 4/5 Fix-It ficathon at john_elizabeth with the prompt: BASMR alternate ending: The away team on Asura finds and rescues Elizabeth. How does she deal/recover from her imprisonment?
Spoilers: Everything up to “Be All My Sins Remembered"
Summary: Janos Arany once wrote, "In love and dreams, there are no impossibilities." It's a faith that Atlantis is clinging to when the Pegasus Galaxy throws another curveball at them.
Beta: The amazing bluewillowtree who was invaluable with her input and generous with her time.
~*~*~*~*~
Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt the Truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love.
~ Hamlet (Act II, scene ii)
John watched as Kate held out her hand, a familiar object resting in her palm. He watched the psychologist’s lips move in a familiar sequence of syllables and he found himself whispering the name she was calling:
“Elizabeth?”
He stepped out onto the darkened balcony, the twilight fading fast into the warm night, calling her name again. A dim figure stirred and turned toward him, the faint illumination from the Control Room casting a soft light on her familiar features. She moved toward him with a welcome smile curving her lips. “How did the mission go?”
“I thought you’d said we’d debrief tomorrow,” he teased. She arched an eyebrow at him, amused by his antics, but pretending not to be. He smirked, “We’ve got new friends. Ronon managed to shut Rodney up long enough that the Dezians are in complete awe of his genius with technology, yet not enough to actually want to keep him.”
“John!” she rebuked without any heat behind it. They both knew that Rodney wouldn’t seriously mind the characterization, and if their resident genius did have a problem with that assessment…well, John would find out about it very quickly if his shower went suddenly cold tomorrow morning. So John smirked a little, to show that he was joking, and then moved on to his real answer, “The Dezians seem trustworthy. I think, if we ever need a place that has natural defenses against the Wraith, they’d be open to letting us keep our non-essential personnel there until the Daedalus can get here. Of course, it’s not an Alpha or Beta candidate site, and we’ll have to do another thorough screening once we get the negotiations done. I don’t want a repeat of Manara.”
She let out a long, weary breath and looked back out at the sea, “Good.” Knowing that she was quickly sinking into dark memories (he was too, of Kolya’s voice over the radio, the three words that froze his heart and drove the trained covert ops soldier to the fore of his mind-John yanked himself away), he took a deep breath and went for a lighthearted note. “Teyla had a lot of fun, shopping around and making more trading connections. We’ve got an invitation to go trade for purple oranges in two weeks.”
“Again?” she questioned with amusement in her eyes when she glanced at him. The gesi fruit was common on a vast variety of worlds in Pegasus and was pretty much identical to Earth’s oranges, except for three things: they were as purple as eggplants, tasted like peaches, and contained no citric acid.
“Have you told Rodney yet?” He could hear her trying to keep the laughter out of her voice. They knew that Rodney knew he couldn’t possibly die of an allergic reaction from ingesting gesi, but he still treated the purple fruit as if it would leap out of the fruit basket and stuff itself down his throat. It was always amusing to set their genius off on a long-winded lecture about why it wasn’t wise to induce anaphylactic shock in the only person who could save the city on a moment’s notice, only to see him splutter to a halt when he realized that the peach pie he was eating wasn’t actually made from peaches grown on Earth. Rodney had a weakness for peaches, and when he was distracted by a rant or an idea, he sometimes forgot to remember that he was “allergic” to gesi. Besides, the entire city knew that he liked the sweet fruit as much as the rest of them; he only kept up his complaints for form’s sake. A complaining Rodney was a normal Rodney, and a normal Rodney meant that Atlantis was not in catastrophic danger and that everyone could go about their normal, crazy lives in Pegasus without worrying about dying in the next five minutes.
“No,” said John lazily, leaning against the railing next to her. “I figure Teyla will tell him right before we go, and then on the other side of the ‘gate, tell him that we’re actually going to trade for those kofa beans he loves so much.”
“Rodney and his caffeine,” she chuckled to herself. Knowing how much coffee she drank on a daily basis, he parried straight back, “You and your caffeine.”
She smiled wryly, “True, very true.” She tilted her head told her office. “I suppose you told everyone else?”
“Told what to everyone else?” he asked, playing innocent.
She gave him a knowing look, “So you can’t explain to me why today I came into my office to find a box of gifts underneath my desk, specifically, a box filled with thirty different types of teas and forty different roasts of coffee?”
Oh.
Maybe Teyla wasn’t the only one who had noticed the gift-giving last year, or the year before that. Inwardly, John squirmed at the thought that his interactions with Elizabeth were being scrutinized enough for people to figure out that he gave her birthday gifts. Then again, it wasn’t like the two of them were being completely secretive about it, handing each other birthday gifts on the balcony or in a quiet hallway that was only semi-private and mostly public. Still…it was a little awkward to realize that they were being watched by their staff. It did make sense in a way, but did nothing for John’s wish to keep his private life just that: private.
“Um, no, not really,” he said, because he really had no idea that there had been a massive organization throughout the city to organize a gift like that for her. He made a mental note to ask Lorne if he knew anything about it. Quick on the heels of that thought came the odd fact that he hadn’t been roped into the benign conspiracy, and he wondered if he was the only one from Elizabeth’s closest circle of friends who had been excluded from participation because everyone knew he was up to something on his own. Or…it could have just been as innocent as a lot of people putting together a useful gift for someone they respected.
She grinned at him, the years falling away from her face. “I guess not then.”
“Does Rodney know?”
“Considering that his handwriting is on the note attached, along with about half of the expedition members’ signatures,” she responded, “he knows I have coffee when we run out of supplies. But,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes, the spark of laughter that John loved to coax out of her, “he promised that he wouldn’t touch my drinks unless, and I quote, ‘there is a serious emergency that requires caffeine to fix.’”
He chuckled with her soft giggles because Rodney would see caffeine as an essential food group in a time of crisis, which it often was on Atlantis. John drank in the moment, watching Elizabeth laugh, her curls brushing across her cheek, and he wished that he had enough courage to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear.
Instead, he inhaled deeply and felt the weight of the jewelry box resting against his ribs, hidden underneath his jacket. John took it out, holding it in both hands, “Well, I guess I got left out of the coffee run, but I, uh, found this, well, um…” He held the flat box to her. “Happy Birthday, Elizabeth.”
She gave him a perplexed look as she took the jewelry box from him. “Thank you, John, but you didn’t ne-”
She stared at the open jewelry box in her hands for a seemingly eternal moment. In the reality of those brief seconds, John’s mind categorized relief that he had handed it to her right-side up, that Teyla had been right (as usual), and that Elizabeth was-blushing? Then she looked up at him, her green eyes suspiciously bright in the dim light, and she asked him steadily, “John, did you…did you have someone make this?”
He nodded and swallowed to wet his dry throat, “Yeah, uh, a few months back, I asked Halling if he knew about any jewelry-makers here, and um, he took me to Waina. They specialize in metal crafts, so I…” He shrugged, because he was sounding like a flustered idiot, and really, he didn’t need to dig himself deeper into embarrassment. He cleared his throat, “Eris and his family made it by hand. They don’t know what the design means, but Teyla knows about their myths and things like that, if you want to ask her.”
You’re babbling John, his mind scolded him in a fond voice surprisingly like Carson’s. Let her talk, hmm?
She looked back down at the necklace, the round sea-green jewel glimmering in the soft light cast by the city, and she said reverently, “I-This is beautiful, John.” She looked up. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Have dinner with me,” he said abruptly. She gave him a questioning look, because they did have dinner together, often in the mess hall late at night, usually after he dragged her out of her office when she worked too long or after she dragged him away from the infirmary when a mission had gone bad off-world. He clarified, “Tonight, I mean. I got us trays from the mess hall. I figured that you hadn’t eaten yet.”
She smiled at him, sheepishly admitting, “You’re right. I haven’t. Don’t tell Carson?”
He nodded, “All right, if you’ll help spring me out of the infirmary next time.”
“John, I know better than to agree to that.” She was grinning as she spoke, so he shrugged, “It was worth a try.”
She dipped her hand into the jewelry box and took out the necklace. “Can you help me?”
He took the necklace from her hand, fingers carefully undoing the clasp of the delicate silver chain as she turned around, sweeping her hair to one side. He lifted the chain around her neck and leaned in closer to link the ends of the necklace. As he fastened the clasp, the soothing blended scent of Atlantis and Earth filled his senses, and underneath it all, there was her, the woman he cared so deeply for. He squeezed her shoulder when he was done and she turned back around to face him.
When John saw his necklace resting against her breastbone, just above her heart, Eris’ words came back to him: “Then you should know, for the future, that many a man has given his love a gift such as yours: a gift of the heart.”
In that moment, John knew.
John knew he had to believe that she was going to pull through this. He had to believe that she was strong enough to climb through her personal hell and fight her way back to the life she deserved. He had to believe that he was strong enough for both of them, to help her defeat her demons, to protect her from the IOA on Earth, to hold her hand while she fell apart. He had to believe that he was strong enough to guide and protect the entire city in his care until he could take his place by her side again. He could do this; he could do what she had wanted him to do since the second she screamed at him all those months ago to “GO!” He had to hold everything together, even himself, and he could do it.
Because that’s what she wanted, what she believed, and what she had entrusted to him. He could do what he had to because she would be okay. That was what he was hanging onto, that promise. No matter how bitter or long the road, he knew they would have a happy ending.
He had to believe that.
He had no other choice, because he loved her.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
~
“John wanted me to give this to you.”
Elizabeth stared at the slivery-sapphire pendent swinging slowly from the hallucination’s fingers. Half-convinced it would dissolve into smoke before her eyes, she carefully reached out. Fake-Kate let go of the silver chain at the same moment that her own fingers closed around the warm metal. Delicate links fell across the back of her hand, sliding smoothly over her skin in a weightless caress. She was dimly aware that fake-Kate had leaned back, her counselor’s softly spoken words making their way through the fog in her mind.
The familiar weight rested in her palm and she quickly closed her fingers over the metal, feeling the blunted edges of the fire-forged sigil dig into her skin. The symbol did not vanish in her tightened grip, and a choking feeling rose in her throat at the realization that she was either so deeply immersed in this reality as to be completely lost or this-her mind stumbled and she pressed her closed fist against her mouth to choke back her inexplicable tears.
“Happy Birthday, Elizabeth,” said John with a shy, nervous smile that stunned her in its sincerity. His hands shook a little as she accepted the flat, hand-carved box from him. She thanked him formulaically, knowing that he deserved better than some vague gratitude from her and wishing that they were somewhere more private, as she opened the lid of the box. Her breath left her in a silent gasp of surprise.
She had never been sure of the truth about what was between them. They had hovered so long on that line between friendship and partnership that the distinction might never have existed in their case. He knew her just as well as she knew him. There were secrets they held from each other, but far fewer than the secrets they held together.
Perhaps it wasn’t entirely healthy, their dependent relationship on each other, but they were both independent career professionals-she a diplomat, he a soldier. It was nice to have the sanctuary of another person’s arms, even if was for just a single night of mutual understanding, to be weak in the dark and know that weakness wouldn’t be ruthlessly exploited in the light of day. In the night, their masks came off, and every person they couldn’t be in their duties, every emotion they couldn’t allow themselves to feel, every action that was forbidden to them because of the nature of their station alone-they let themselves be, feel and do. Those nights were her sanity, her saving grace in the pressure-cooker that was her position in Atlantis, and she knew it was the same for him. They both held lives in their hands, people dying or living on their call, their choices, their decisions. There weren’t many people who understood, and even fewer who knew how she wanted release from her burdens, but John did. John understood her, just as she understood him, saw deeper than the mask he displayed to the world around him.
For a very long time, she had suspected that perhaps their occasional midnight rendezvous meant just as much to him as they had come to mean to her-not just random “stress relief,” but something more that they weren’t allowed to have. Staring at the beautiful necklace, the graceful pendent a stylized version of Atlantis’ home symbol, she felt her cheeks flush and her eyes burn with threatening tears. Still, when she looked up to meet his eyes, she prided herself on the fact that her voice was steady, “John, did you-did you have someone make this?”
He nodded, his own face bright red as he stammered out an explanation of how he had managed to commission a handmade piece of custom jewelry in a galaxy that was populated by more refugees than civilizations. She barely heard any of it; instead, she searched his eyes and found the secret he was trying to hide.
At the realization, a wild burst of conflicting emotions whirled through her, because she had always been unsure of what they were doing, tangoing across invisible lines that they always seemed to stray across, no matter how hard they fought against it, or maybe because of it. It wasn’t that she hated herself for being human, or regretted whatever existed between them, but she wished things were simpler, kinder to a woman in her position.
She was surprised that she hadn’t heard any speculation in Atlantis about the two of them, but then, she was always overly cautious about how she was perceived. Her staff had to trust her to be levelheaded, to be fair, to be more than human, and she couldn’t find it within herself to let them down and remind them that she just like anyone else: out of her depth and making it up as she went along.
What was the next step now? To pretend that nothing had changed, when John was signaling something else, or to take his hand and let him lead this dance, and damn the consequences? Yet Atlantis-his city, her people-would always come before their hearts, and so the choice was never a real choice for them. She knew what the path was before her, and she couldn’t turn away from it, even if it meant she stayed in this limbo for the rest of her life. She loved him, but she owed Atlantis more, and she knew he felt the same. Still, the small romantic part of her held out hope that maybe circumstances would change in the future, that they could find their own personal happy ending that balanced devotion and duty without sacrificing one for the other.
Studying the elegantly-wrought necklace that was his gift to her, she said from her heart, “I-This is beautiful, John.” Staring into his eyes, she wondered what their ending would be, if they were doomed to be Atlantis’ Antony and Cleopatra, or if there could be a future for them, a happy ending that they could both live with. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Knowing better than to let Fake-Kate see her weakness, Elizabeth rested her forehead against her knees, taking slow shallow breaths to ease back the sobs in her chest. She wasn’t going to cry and let Oberoth know that she was this close to the edge of breaking. If he had managed to get his hands on her memories of John, her shared secrets with the only person she had entrusted with everything, then this fight was over and she was defeated. She desperately prayed that wasn’t the case.
Elizabeth had never dared to think about John’s necklace; she had rarely thought of John in general beyond the glancing mention in her mind. It was too dangerous, with Oberoth always seeking her weaknesses to use against her, always pressuring her to tell her deepest secrets, always searching for the best ways to destroy her humanity. She had always fought him, and would continue to fight him to the last.
But now…
She flexed her fingers, feeling the familiar outline of the handcrafted pendent imprint itself on her skin, marking her hand as the symbol and all it stood for-family, love, home-had seared itself onto her soul. Atlantis and its people, the man she had asked to lead in her stead, the unexpected, silent love she had found…all were part of the bedrock of who she was.
When she had woken from the accident that should have killed her, Elizabeth knew that there was no going back, no matter what happened. The realization had shattered her, but she had held herself together for the sake of her people-because they would always be her people, just as the city would always be John’s Atlantis. Their safety-that of her subordinates and particularly his-would trump her own needs at any moment in time. It was only a fair trade for all the times she had sent them into the fray with only a prayer for their survival.
Elizabeth had allowed herself a moment to grieve, when she had taken off the necklace, returning it to its giver. In that moment, she had given up everything she had loved, asking John to do what she knew he could do-to explore, to inspire, to lead. She knew that John would take care of Atlantis, that she could go to her grave at peace, knowing that her people, his city, their expedition was safe from harm as long as he lived.
She had never expected to see that necklace again, much less her best friend, sometimes lover, and unspoken partner. She missed John, but she knew it was for the best that he never came for her. She had been dead the moment that beam had hit her; everything that existed now was just a purgatory for a dead woman. Elizabeth didn’t want him throwing his life away to rescue her. She wasn’t worth the risks when there would be no benefit.
A warm breath on the skin of her neck made her shiver involuntarily and a long-silent sense tingled in the back of her mind. Her fingers tensed around the necklace as she placed the instinct. Someone was watching her, and she knew, with absolute certainty, who it was, but that was impossible. Unless…
Elizabeth fought back her panic and tears, sternly telling herself that John knew better, that he wouldn’t have gotten himself captured by Oberoth, oh God… She would do anything, die a thousand times over if it meant that he wasn’t here, that he was safe, she would give herself up if it meant that he would be safe, if Atlantis was safe, please please please please…
The soft voice in the long-forgotten corner of her mind whispered kindly, “Look up.”
Elizabeth held herself still, fighting her need to know, to verify for herself that it wasn’t John while being terrified that it was. She wasn’t going to be manipulated like a marionette by a sadistic puppet-master, not while she still had strength. Her head stayed stubbornly down, but the voice in her mind coaxed gently, “Look up.”
A part of her dimly noted that fake-Kate was sitting calmly on her high stool, her hands clearly folded in her lap, the expression on the hallucination’s face patient and a touch concerned. It wasn’t fake-Kate doing the manipulation then, making her think that John was here. If it wasn’t fake-Kate, then it was over, and she had lost to Oberoth, because if he could screw around with her mind this much, almost convince her that John was here…
There was no point in delaying the inevitable any longer. There would be no miraculous rescue, no knight-in-shining armor, no Ascended being to take her away from all of this. Despite all the odds against her, she had nursed a frail hope of survival and now, she felt that flame of defiance flicker and die in a wisp of smoke. Perhaps it was a miracle that she had staved off Oberoth’s attempts to break her for this long, fighting him with everything she had, shattering his illusions when he was unprepared. She always held onto a shred of control, blocking him from peering into the depths of her soul even as he ransacked her mind. She manipulated him, taunted him, distracted him from the truly important details she knew. Oberoth had never managed to touch John’s memories before, not the secret ones that she told no one except herself. If Oberoth had managed to breach the wall she had erected between her mind and her heart, a wall on which she had set a mental sentinel with John’s face to guard, then this fight was over. There was nothing left to do, but to make sure that she took her secrets to her final grave.
Elizabeth closed her eyes in defeat. She tucked everything she knew about Atlantis into a tight box in the back of her mind, laying as many false paths as she could away from information. Half-memorized schematics of the city’s defenses and blurry details about weapons’ capabilities were ruthlessly falsified in her mind, downplaying everything she knew. She inserted faulty efficiency rates and project completion dates into the data to make it all seem real. Names of people, trading partners, details of treaties and all the secrets she held, Elizabeth twisted and manipulated into lies, things she had convinced herself over the months of her imprisonment were true and still true. She would wreck Oberoth’s confidence in her information, convince him that even the truth was a lie, and so keep her people safe.
If Oberoth wanted to know what she knew, she would make him pay dearly for it. While he killed her, Elizabeth knew that she had just enough knowledge about the Asuran network in her own hands to have her own revenge. She knew where she was being held in reality, behind a false wall in the Power Control Room, just a breath away from several ZPMs. All she had to do was reach out along the nanite-built pathways and twist on the energy flows at the subatomic level for just a single ZPM. The resulting chain reaction would trigger a catastrophic explosion that would take out the city and a good portion of the planet’s surface. But she would have to be quick about it, shoving the energy disruption into place and keeping Oberoth occupied long enough with her pain to keep him from noticing the problem until it was too late to stop it. It would be her revenge and her escape to death.
When she had all of that at the ready in her mind, she took in a shuddering deep breath, opening her eyes to the soft white blanket that covered her legs. Fighting down her self-preservation instincts, Elizabeth gave herself a moment’s reprieve to grieve for everything she had given up and to fear the pain that would come. Then, clutching John’s necklace in her hand and drawing her last strength from all she had loved, she steeled herself to go down in wave of destruction.
Elizabeth looked up and felt her breath freeze in her chest. John’s clear green eyes met hers unflinchingly, the stubborn faith and desperate hope she saw in his eyes all too real to be false. She could almost hear him willing for her to believe what she was almost convinced to be true, pleading, begging her to know that she was safe, he was here and it was over. She could almost hear his voice in her memory, soothing her in her darkest hours, whispering to her over and over again that he would always be with her, always find some way protect her somehow, no matter what. His expression was so real, so honest… Elizabeth knew in her heart that no Asuran, no hallucination could ever duplicate that look in his eyes.
Something cracked inside of Elizabeth as her carefully constructed mental defenses crumpled around her, her plan fell to pieces, and she broke away from his open gaze, his pleas too much, far too much for her to handle right now. She hid her face in her arms, her unbound hair falling forward to shield her face from sight. Desperately clinging to the shreds of her self-control, she squeezed her eyes shut even as silent tears slipped free. Nothing came rushing into the silence, no pain, no terror, no demands…nothing. How could Oberoth do nothing when he had to have known that she was ready to fight him? Unless…unless Oberoth wasn’t in-
Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to complete her thought, the renewed hope still so fragile in her hands that she was afraid that the slightest breath would destroy it completely. Biting her bottom lip, she stubbornly held in the wild sobs of relief mixed with terror. She was so tired of fighting. She was so tired. She wanted to die and escape from this prison, but if she had to chose, she wanted to live.
Dimly, she heard fake-Kate-no, she corrected herself-she heard Real?-Kate say something before there was soft click of her shoes and a quiet hiss of a door unlocking, locking, that told Elizabeth that she was alone. Relieved by the solicitude, she risked a glance up into the observation room. John was still there, one hand on the railing, the other touching the glass barrier between them. He was watching her, a sincere expression of regret and longing on his face. He lingered at the window before he slowly turned away, moving out of her sight. She watched him go, unvoiced screams for him to stay, to keep the fear at bay, but she made no sound.
Elizabeth rolled onto her side, still curled up into a huddled ball, and let the weeks run past in her memory. From blinding pain to the murky drugged hours that passed her by, the memories were firmly separated from all her other experiences by the fact that Oberoth never appeared to her, never in all the minutes and hours that trickled down in the flow of time. There was no pale blue light when she closed her eyes, just peaceful darkness. When pain came, it was the kind that was quickly muffled with waves of warmth or icy chill that wrapped her up and swept her away. Thinking back now, focusing on the details she had missed, she remembered that no one around her took pleasure in her state, in causing her distress. Their smiles were soft and sympathetic, verging on pity and regret, emerging when they tried to convey comfort and good intentions. The nurses and doctors around her were acting so human. Elizabeth had thought then that it was because they were just realistic hallucinations, puppets controlled by a master manipulator, but now…she wasn’t so sure. She closed her eyes again, wondering if this was just a dream, or if she could take the hopeless chance that this was real and not some trap? The tears came in a wild rush of hope and she let herself cry in quiet gasps for air.
The realization that so many possibilities were before her, that her reality was as fragmented as before, yet also so unbearably coherent, was overwhelming. Was she in control now or was she free? Could she trust what her senses told her-that the filtered air had the salty tang of the sea, that the sheets were smooth against her skin, that the temperature was at a comfortably warm setting, that the Marines at the door now were living, breathing human beings who were bored out of their minds watching someone they distantly knew have a complete breakdown? Could she take that risk, to play into the game around her, to test the truth of her reality to see if it was what it claimed to be?
A monitor chirped unhappily above her and she was barely aware of the brisk footsteps entering the room. No one touched her, even as they talked to her, trying to calm her down. Words were exchanged in concerned tones. She ignored them all. They didn’t matter, not yet, not yet. What mattered was John, standing watch over her, being there for her-why wasn’t he here, in person, with her? Yet he was here, nearby, protective, steady; John was here and they were both safe.
Elizabeth let herself crumble into broken pieces without asking the reasons why. The memories that she carried within her, the darkest moments of her life that she hid from herself, those were reasons enough, but she cried also for the memories of balconies and conversations under warm sunlight and cool moonlight, of a voice in the darkness who offered so much to her, so much more than she felt she could repay. She was caught at a crossroads and she didn’t know which way to turn. But then again, maybe she did. Maybe she did know, but she was too scared to decide if she could trust herself, and it had been too long since she had trusted another person to guide her. What were her choices?
She dimly heard the monitor beeping angrily as she continued to sob in choking breaths that stole the air from her lungs. Warm hands carefully rubbed circles on her back as outside voices encouraged, coaxed, pleaded with her to calm down. She ignored them, sinking into the darkness that had been her friend for so long. Elizabeth barely felt the cool wave of medication that swept her away into sleep. She didn’t have the strength to fight it.
Maybe she was free from Oberoth, maybe she wasn’t. Either way…maybe it didn’t matter anymore, which opinion was right, because John was here, and wherever he was, she knew she was safe. John had always kept her safe. She remembered that; she trusted that, no matter what the hallucinations had said and done to her in the past. John would never hurt her, ever. Real-John had given her a necklace on the eve of her birthday while they stood on a windswept balcony and laughed. He had smiled, and with his eyes, he had wordlessly told her he loved her.
Elizabeth clung to that last thought before she gave into the sweet darkness of rest, her fingers still wrapped around John’s gift, holding onto it for dear life and sanity itself, because she knew this for a fact:
He was her guiding star home.
~
Kate opened her session with Elizabeth as she always did, silently taking off the other woman’s restraints. Elizabeth had been unusually passive for the past couple of days, more docile than Kate had even thought possible, and that was alarming. Yes, she was interacting with her environment more, but nothing else really had changed. She still didn’t speak to anyone. Syringes still sent her into panic attacks that no one could talk her down from, and Elizabeth still wasn’t eating properly.
Over the past two days, Jennifer had a look in her eyes, the regretful one that all doctors had before they did something that was necessary but unsettling to them, and Kate knew she was running out of time. If she didn’t get Elizabeth to a tipping point within the next day or so, Jennifer was going to step in and intervene to keep their patient’s health from sliding further downhill. Kate knew what the tipping point looked like, something like a shock to Elizabeth’s sense of reality, a moment when all her assumptions were twisted or turned upside down. The main problem was, though, that Kate had no idea how to coax her friend to that crucial breakthrough without accidentally shattering Elizabeth’s sense of stability and control.
So when she sat back in her seat, her hand clasped in Elizabeth’s, Kate hesitated for a moment before she spoke, careful to keep her voice low and smooth. “Elizabeth, do you mind if we talk? If you want me to leave now,” she offered, “let go of my hand.”
Elizabeth didn’t react to the opportunity, but she didn’t loosen her grip on Kate’s fingers, so the psychologist took it as implicit permission to continue. Kate searched her memory for the words and emotions she wanted to invoke in her patient. When she was ready, Kate began quietly, “I will be honest with you, Elizabeth: I don’t know where to start.
“I know it’s hard for you to believe that you’re safe now, that Asura is gone, and they will never come after you again. I don’t blame you. You’ve survived so much, and I understand if you never want to talk about it with anyone. Sometimes, memories hurt, but sometimes, they heal.
“This is what I remember: I remember a woman who was trapped in a reality that didn’t seem right to her, so she fought the lies with everything she had. Afterwards, I remember how I sat with her for hours, talking through what happened in the months she experienced and how she felt, cut off from the people she cared so much about. I remember how she found the strength inside of herself to trust that she was safe, that the world around her was real, and that we were never going to let her go without a fight.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Elizabeth. This is going to be a hard road, for the both of us, but you’re not so broken that you can’t be healed. The Asurans aren’t going to win because we’ve done this once together, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to question everything around us until we know the truth and trust it. We’re going to stumble and fall, but we’re going to pick ourselves right back up again when that happens.
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way, I swear. I’m not going to give up on you; no one on Atlantis is going to give up on you. You’re a strong woman, Elizabeth, and nothing can change that. No one can take that away from you. The entire city is with you on this journey, and we’re supporting you a hundred percent.”
Kate paused to gather her emotions, praying that she was saying the right words for the long run. She slipped her free hand into her pocket, her fingers finding the necklace she had carried with her for all these weeks of twice-daily visits with Elizabeth. It had become a talisman to Kate, reminding her of the world outside the isolation unit, and of a man who was placing his trust in her to bring his other half back to him. She didn’t have to look up into the observation area to know that he was standing there, watching over both of them. She took her hand out of her pocket. She hoped this was the right thing to do.
“John wanted me to give this to you,” said Kate quietly, opening her palm and letting the silver chain slip past her fingers as the delicately-crafted necklace rested in her hand. She saw that Elizabeth’s eyes focused immediately on the metal symbol Kate held, a flicker of recognition dancing across the other woman’s green eyes.
Elizabeth stared at the silvery-blue pendant in the stylized form of Atlantis’ point of origin for a long moment. Then Kate moved her wrist smoothly, telegraphing her movements, and let the necklace dangle from her fingers so that she was only holding the silver links of the chain. The silver pendant swung in the air between them once, twice. On the third swing, Elizabeth’s fingers let go of Kate’s hand to clutch at the small piece of her past. The psychologist gently draped the chain over the back of her friend’s hand before letting go and folding her own hands in her lap.
Elizabeth wrapped one arm around her knees, the other pressing her closed fist against her mouth. She lowered her head, tucking herself away. It was her silent signal that she wanted to think and Kate did not press. A slight tremor shook Elizabeth’s frail shoulders from time to time and Kate had to hold herself still, sternly reminding herself to be patient and passive. Moving too fast and too familiarly could spook Elizabeth and undo everything that she had managed to build up thus far.
Minutes passed in that silent tableau and then Elizabeth froze, her breathing rapid and shallow. Kate watched the numbers on the oxygen saturation monitor drop, her own concern growing as Elizabeth wasn’t getting enough oxygen into her body. Just before Kate was going to stand up from her seat and signal John to call in Keller, Elizabeth abruptly looked up, her eyes unerringly looking through the observation room window as if she knew John was standing there, watching over her as her personal guardian angel. For a moment, Kate saw their gazes lock, and there was a heartrending vulnerability in Elizabeth’s eyes for the briefest of seconds. Then Elizabeth just abruptly looked back down, curling tighter into a ball on her bed, her hand still clenched tight around the necklace John had given her, and Kate knew the session was over.
She quietly stood up and moved away from the gurney, murmuring as she always did, “I’ll be back later, Elizabeth. If you need me, just call the nurse on duty.”
There was, as always, no response from the still form on the bed, face still buried in her arms. Kate hadn’t expected one; it would be too much to ask after today: she had found the tipping point.
As she walked out of the room, Kate reflected on what had happened in that brief second.
Many people would have dismissed it out of hand. Elizabeth had been given something that reminded her of her life before she had been captured and tortured by a sadistic jailer. It was mere chance that she had looked upwards and seen someone from her past, a dear friend standing guard over her. To Kate, though, it was something else entirely different.
It was only a moment, but it was enough to know that Elizabeth looked to one person to protect her, that one person had the best chance out of all of them to save her, and in the process, save himself. When Elizabeth had looked up to see John at the window, under the confusion and defiance, there was also the faintest glimpse of hope in her eyes, a fleeting hint of the woman she had been before and still was.
Kate knew, as she walked out of the isolation room, that her patient, her friend, her leader was going to recover. She smiled to herself.
He was Elizabeth’s salvation; she was John’s hope. No matter what the Asurans had done to her, and no matter what Earth’s politicians threw at them, Kate knew that as long as John and Elizabeth stood together, they would triumph over all their tribulations. They were strong apart, but powerful together.
In Kate’s mind, there was no question that things would turn out all right in the end because when it came to love, there were no impossibilities.