(no subject)
Apparently I can write angst after all.
Title: What I Have to Do
Author: ravenstarwind
Genre: angst
Spoilers: Contains MAJOR SPOILERS for season 4. You have been warned.
Disclaimer: The pleasure of owning the characters and setting belong to someone else.
Unbetaed. As usual.
Summary: Something changed when she left.
"ELIZABETH!"
The woman standing in front of the gate didn’t move. He pelted towards her. I can’t let her go. Not her.
"Let go, John." she said quietly. "I healed too quickly. They healed me. I’m still in control for now, I don’t know how long it will stay that way."
"We’ll figure out a way!" He was almost crying. "We’ll reprogram them, shut them down..." She cut him off.
"No John. I’m too dangerous to the city." She turned devastated eyes toward him. "I have to do this."
He pulled her into his arms, holding her like he’d never let go. She stiffened, then slowly relaxed against him, tentatively placing her hands on his chest. Then she stood on tiptoe to place a soft kiss on his mouth.
Stunned, his hold relaxed. She took the opening to slip out of his grasp. Her fingers slid through his as she turned and walked through the open gate. He fell to his knees, his hand still outstretched, as the gate shut down behind her.
***
Dr. Keller gave him a clean bill of health. It appeared that no nanites had infected him in the brief contact before Elizabeth’s escape.
Weeks passed, but John knew something was wrong.
It began as a slight jumpiness around Teyla. It got steadily worse as time went on. Then Teyla collapsed in the gateroom after a routine mission. In the infirmary she grudgingly admitted she was pregnant. She refused to name the father. John’s uneasiness jumped to ten times its previous level. It got so bad, he sometimes couldn’t be in the same room with her. Wraith the feeling whispered.
***
The Wraith attack as always was sudden and swift. Ronan and Rodney barely made it through the gate. John wasn’t so lucky.
The wraith hovered over him, pressing it’s feeding hand to John’s chest. But instead of the familiar rush of the enzyme followed by intense pain, he saw a puzzled look cross the wraith’s features. It detached the feeding hand, looking at it strangely. Then the wraith began screaming in pain. It collapsed, convulsed, and died before John’s eyes.
When they retrieved the wraith’s body, it showed clear signs of having been attacked by nanites. John was immediately placed in isolation and subjected to intense scans. They found nothing. After hours of intense debate it was decided there was nothing to be done about this mystery, and he was released.
But John knew.
He sat on his bed, his elbows on his knees. In his mind’s eye, he could see her there, on the balcony, where no one else dared to intrude when it was the two of them there. Like it had always been ever since that first year.
"Elizabeth, what did you do to me?" he asked her image.
What I had to do, to protect you.
~End~