SGA - Time Has Not A Heart
It’s a long way to the gate. Longer than it seemed when he arrived on the planet. All the while Rodney is babbling and pestering him, Ronon is glancing at him mistrustingly, and Teyla is gazing fixedly at the path. He had tried to reach out to her back in the tavern but she had been distant. Polite, but oh so distant.
There were still so many questions to answer, and many he still didn’t know to ask. He remembered everything up until the moment he had ascended. From then on everything was bullet-riddled. He doesn't know why Teyla of all people was the trigger, and he’s not so sure he wants to know.
He remembers how rocky their relationship was before…before all this.
And he knows she does too.
They tell him it’s been almost two years…and much has changed. But Lorne (he’s a colonel now too), he insists that they wait to let…Mr. Woolsey? -debrief him. He had been more than a little shocked to hear that. When he had left Elizabeth had still been in command…Doctor Keller Atlantis’s newest physician. All he gets in response to his questions are sorrowful bowed heads. They don’t have to answer him for him to know she’s dead.
He can’t help but wonder who else has died.
And which ones he could have saved had he been there.
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The next few days are a whirlwind of activity and meetings and people. He’d been dead. For two years. They’d buried a casket on Earth. He’d never wanted to go back home again anyway. Over the next week he learns a lot.
His suspicions are confirmed, and he feels the knife twist deeper into his gut when he discovers that not only did Teyla move on after his death, but she had a life.
A family.
A son.
It’s wrong but deep inside he’s glad he’ll never have to look into the eyes of the man who fathered her child. He tries to settle back into an everyday life, but some things-most things, still shock him through and through.
They laugh and talk and relationships are mended eventually. But the sting remains when he hears stories of how they saved Atlantis without him.
And while they have ‘normal’ conversations, he can’t talk to Teyla about anything of substance.
About them.
It takes many long months for him to start remembering things from when he was ascended. They rescue her from simple people who’ve taken her prisoner in hope of gaining a random. It’s just a simple in and out.
But in the middle of it, he’s nearly knocked out by a flashback. She’s lying down somewhere, in a room with bars. He watches himself gently sweep hair away from her face and whisper a goodbye.
He carries on with the rescue and doesn’t breathe a word of it.
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The next flashback comes when he sees her with Torren. And this time it hurts more than anything. He remembers promising himself that things would change…and he hasn’t done a thing. He can make dozens of excuse as to why he never acted. But it all boils down to the fact that he’s a coward.
He can’t change what he’s done.
But he can change what he will do.