[stargate: atlantis fic] as the mist leaves no scar, r/nc-17
as the mist leaves no scar
- stargate: atlantis
- john/elizabeth
- 8000
- r/nc-17
- for cutting_onions on the day after her birthday. ♥
- thanks to bigdamnxenafan for the beta! title from a poem by leonard cohen.
as the mist leaves no scar
on the dark green hill
so my body leaves no scar
on you, nor ever will
- leonard cohen
fallout
n
1. (physics) the descent of solid material in the atmosphere onto the earth, especially of radioactive material following a nuclear explosion.
I.
He throws his body over hers as the wave slams against the 'jumper, careening them back into Nothing. She screams, he thinks, or maybe he screams, or maybe the 'jumper is coming apart and the metal is screaming and they'll be floating, white and hypoxic and deaddeaddead--
Her hands are white and her lips are blue and the angry mark across her cheek is red.
*
She descends the staircase in an emerald dress.
*
Hot skin, soft lips, her body over his and fingers tangled with his fingers, sweat with his sweat, breath with his breath. He opens his eyes and--
II.
The helicopter touches down. The engine winds to a murmur. The blades slow their mangling of the air.
She touches his knee, and he turns too slow. "John?" she asks. Her face is pale, but he's seen it paler. She smiles and he smiles. A lieutenant appears in the doorway of the chopper and gives a crisp salute. "Colonel Sheppard; Dr. Weir. Welcome to the White House."
--
Their meeting is brief. The President commends them for a job well done, answers a few questions and asks several more. John's lips quirk up with a hint of pride at the way the he listens to them, even if it's only a few minutes, and he can't help but admire the ease with which Elizabeth smiles and shakes his hand and says all the things he wants to hear so that she can slip in the things he doesn't. The President nods and agrees and congratulates them again, and apologizes for the abrupt end to their mission.
John winces, barely, and looks at Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye--her expression is entirely neutral, her smile calm and warm, her words clear and level; she shows no sign at all of heartbreak. For one moment, one fraction of a second, John is deceived.
Then the President turns toward his desk and Elizabeth turns toward John and the lie hits him like a sucker-punch.
He wants to reach out to her, but the Oval Office suddenly seems so vast, like there are miles and miles of ocean (waves, rocks, water, ice, land, sky, snow, space) between them.
--
Elizabeth meets with liaisons and Heads of State.
John visits the museums.
He calls her around eight for dinner, but she never answers her phone. He goes back to their hotel and stands outside her room with his ear to the door, and wonders if the defeat in her tone carries over into other tongues.
--
"I didn't mean to wake you," she says, standing on the other side of the door. "It's almost eleven. We have to check out soon."
John runs a hand through his hair. "I'll be down in five."
Elizabeth nods and disappears down the hall. John turns back to the television just in time to see photographs of soldiers and a list of dead from Iraq.
--
They take a commercial flight back to Colorado. John stares out the window and Elizabeth reads reports on her laptop. On the other side of her sits a decent looking guy in an expensive looking suit who keeps moving his knee to touch hers. He tries to make conversation every time she looks up from her computer. She humors him for the most part, but her smile is vacant and her back is rigid and shortly after he lays a hand on her thigh, she gets up to go to the washroom.
John appraises him for a moment, then compliments his jacket. "Armani?" he asks.
The guy chuckles. "Yves Saint Laurent."
John affects a sigh. "You know you've been out of the country too long when you can't ID a good suit."
The guy agrees and asks where he's been. He tells him Afghanistan.
"You're Army?"
"Air Force." He offers his hand. "Colonel John Sheppard."
The guy smiles and shakes his hand. "Doctor Greg Landow."
John withdraws and leans back in his seat, picking up his discarded magazine and leafing through it. Greg asks about Afghanistan; if he's seen combat; if he has family back home. "Buddy of mine went there a few years back," he says, "Never was quite the same."
"Yeah," John drawls, "It'll fuck you up. Speaking of which--" Greg stops his nod of agreement and looks up, startled and confused; John keeps his eyes on the magazine in front of him. "Touch her again, and you won't leave this plane in one piece."
Before he can respond, Elizabeth appears in the aisle. Greg stares, blinks, then shifts to let her through. After buckling her seatbelt, she turns to John. "You okay?"
He doesn't look at her. "Never better."
Greg doesn't say a word.
--
John picks up the suitcase off the belt and slams it on the ground with more force than necessary. "You should have put him in his place," he says. He doesn't mean to. Elizabeth stops mid-sentence and frowns.
"What?"
Part of him wants to shake it off, but he can't get rid of the images--a large hand on her thigh; her averted gaze; nervous fingers tucking strands of hair behind her ear; his appreciative expression. "That asshole on the plane. Greg." He says the name with a sneer.
Elizabeth immediately looks away. "He wasn't doing anything." She reaches for her bag on the turn-belt, but John grabs it first. She glares; he doesn't notice.
"He was making you uncomfortable."
She rolls her eyes and picks up her duffle bag. "We were on an airplane, John, there's not a whole lot I could have done."
She's right. She's wrong. His head hurts. Greg had large hands; he wanted to break every bone, all twenty-eight of them. One by one. He takes a deep breath; looks at Elizabeth--Elizabeth, who stared down Wraith and the Genii and Goa'uld; stared down the barrel of a gun; stared unflinching. Elizabeth in her business suit who shook hands with the President and didn't stumble over a word. The woman standing next to him, with bags under her eyes and a bag over her shoulder and she looks so small under its weight; looked so small under Greg's large hands.
"You never would have put up with that shit on Atlantis," he snaps, under his breath and bitter.
"John," she warns.
He spares her a glance as they exit the airport. The Colorado cold is like a slash across his cheek. "It's true and you know it."
Elizabeth steps to the curb and hails a cab. "Why are you so angry about it?"
He should say: never mind.
He should say, "I'm just worried about you."
He should say nothing at all.
Instead he says, angrily, " 'Cause I'm tired of hanging out with someone who's only half there."
The cab pulls up. Elizabeth stares at him, her expression indecipherable. He thinks he's hurt her, insulted her; he thinks she's pissed, but she just looks numb. "Maybe we shouldn't 'hang out' then," she says, flatly, and opens the taxi door.
"Elizabeth-" he tries. She shuts the door and the cab takes off. John sighs and stares after her. "Damn it."
III.
When he wakes up, he asks for her.
*
When he wakes up, everyone is surprised.
*
When he wakes up, they shake their heads.
*
When he wakes up--
IV.
He pounds on the door for the third time. "Damn it, Elizabeth, open the door," he calls. "I know you're home." Silence. "Your car's out front." Silence. He knocks again, louder. "Elizabeth." Down the hall, someone peeks out of their apartment. John can't bring himself to care. "I'm not leaving until you open the door," he threatens. Inside, nothing stirs.
Sighing, he leans his head against the doorframe and knocks again, then turns his back to the door and slides down to the floor.
He waits.
A few neighbors pass by and stare at him. He plays scrabble on his phone. An hour passes. He plays chess. An hour and a half.
"Anyone ever tell you you make a nice doorstopper?"
John starts and looks up. Elizabeth is standing over him, carrying two bags of groceries. She isn't smiling, but she doesn't look angry either. It's a start. John climbs awkwardly to his feet.
"Can't say I've ever gotten that one."
She nods. "First time for everything I suppose."
Her words mean more, and he winces. He holds out his arms. "Here, let me help."
She passes him a bag and pulls her keys from her pocket, opens the door, and follows him inside. John sets the bag on the counter and starts idly removing things and lining them up on her kitchen counter. She puts them away. They work in strained silence, and John keeps glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. She looks tired.
Elizabeth folds the bags when they're done and puts them in a drawer. She keeps her back to him for a long moment, and he can see her physically brace herself before she turns to face him.
"So, what can I do for you?"
John swallows and looks away. He had a list of things he wanted to say, but they die in the face of her hesitancy--in the knowledge that he could make her feel that way, look that way, stand that way--so far away from him, and on purpose.
"I, uh," he starts. Stops. Clears his throat. "What I said, at the airport. I didn't--" He shakes his head. "I shouldn't have said that."
Elizabeth stares at him. "That's not an apology," she says, but it isn't accusatory.
John meets her gaze. "Was I wrong?" (Let me be wrong. Let me be wrong. Please, god, he thinks, let me be--)
"No," she murmurs. The pause is heavy; her voice is soft. "No, you weren't."
"Elizabeth…"
"I'm doing the best that I can, John," she says, but it sounds too much like pleading.
"I know."
"Do you?" Her voice cracks just slightly. "Because you seem to be moving on awfully quickly." She shakes her head. "And I know you better than that."
John chuckles humorlessly and leans his head back against the cabinet behind him. "We aren't fooling anyone, are we?"
"I think we're fooling everyone. Except each other."
"Why do you think that is?"
She smiles sadly. "Burden of command?"
"Maybe," he murmurs, and takes a deep breath. "Look, I know…I know it isn't easy. And if you want me to…leave you alone, I will." He swallows tightly. "If that would make it better."
Her lips move, but she says nothing. He resists the urge to grab onto her and hold.
"Haven't we already lost enough?"
"You remind me--" she starts, and bites her lip to keep the words inside.
Too late, John thinks, and on an exhale steps just that much closer. "I know," he agrees softly. "It's why I can't let you go."
In the silence, he understands her so clearly. Without her words to defend and protect her, without a red uniform and a railing and a steel-blue city, she's just a woman. Just his friend. Just his--
"You want some coffee?" she asks.
"Sure," he nods, and she turns away toward the cupboard. "I'm sorry," he says finally.
Elizabeth pauses, and exhales softly. "Me too."
--
Rodney works on the midway station. Carson goes back to Scotland. Lorne joins SG-11 and Cadman takes a vacation. John goes through the 'Gate and meets new allies and new enemies and tries to be thankful that he wasn't discharged; that he still has a job; that he still gets to fly. He tries to be thankful that everyone's alive and safe and sound, even if they're broken.
Elizabeth writes her memoirs that no one will ever see.
--
And so he makes it a mission, like any mission, to draw her out. He finds ways, both subtle and conniving and obvious and ridiculous to get her out of her apartment. He drags her back to the SGC for consults on missions his team has been assigned and even tries to get her to teach him Ancient. He calls her for coffee and dinner and meet-ups with Rodney and once he even drags her to the movies with them, Elizabeth smashed between them as they volleyed comments and criticisms on the likelihood of the physics presented actually being possible; Elizabeth rolled her eyes and withheld popcorn until they shut up, and either didn't notice or didn't mind when John stretched an arm around the back of her seat and let his hand rest on her shoulder.
Six weeks later they go to a bar and drink enough alcohol that when he wakes up the next morning he only hazily remembers what happened the night before. He remembers the shots and the Jack Daniels and the football game on TV; he remembers daring her to drink him under the table, and later regretting the challenge; he remembers her: hot skin, soft lips, her body over his and fingers tangled with his fingers, sweat with his sweat, breath with his breath.
He wakes up on the couch in her apartment and doesn't remember how he got there, and by the hesitant smile she gives him neither does she. But he's fully clothed if a little disheveled, and he isn't sure whether he's relieved or disappointed.
John accepts the proffered cup of coffee gratefully and tries to breathe through the pounding in his head. "I think we're too old for that," he grunts.
Elizabeth smirks, but looks like crap in her over-sized sweatshirt and yoga pants and her hair in disarray and he realizes with an even greater headache that he wants nothing more than to continue what they started the night before.
She passes him a few pain killers and tells him he can stick around if he wants.
"Elizabeth," he tries, but she shakes her head and then winces at the motion.
"We were drunk," she says. "And now we're hung-over."
John grunts. "That an excuse?"
"For now," she says.
"And later?" he presses.
She doesn't answer.
--
Later comes after four days of avoided phone-calls and two failed attempts to break into her apartment. Later comes when he finally corners her in her office at the SGC and demands they talk. Talk involves excuses and circular arguments and Elizabeth on the other side of her desk, a barrier between them. John doesn't know how to make a convincing argument, not with his words.
"So what do you want to do?" he pushes, "Pretend nothing happened?"
"Yes," she answers, and he tries to pretend that it doesn't hurt like hell.
"Okay," he murmurs, responding more to the desperate look in her eyes than the harsh pull of her words. He forces a smile. "Friends?"
"Of course," she says, like it's the whole reason for her distance. She shakes her head and stares at the Athosian pot on her desk, smuggled back from Atlantis. "I can't lose you," she admits, echoing his words from weeks before.
"You won't," he promises.
"Good."
--
John drags her to coffee shops and movies.
Elizabeth makes him accompany her to plays and take long walks in the park with her dog.
Atlantis is still here, a ghost shadowing their movements, but it isn't as noticeable anymore. Isn't as loud.
Elizabeth stops writing her memoirs.
--
He looks up at the knock on the door. "Hey." She smiles briefly.
"Hey," he says, putting down the report. "What's up?"
Elizabeth hovers in the doorway. "I, um. I have a favor to ask."
"Sure."
She hesitates, and John frowns. "There's a gala in Geneva next week. Fancy dresses. Diplomats. The President asked me to attend."
"And?"
She exhales sharply. "I need a date."
John blinks and tries not to cough. "A…date-date?"
"Or the appearance of one," she says, but doesn't clarify. John's throat goes dry. "I can't show up alone," she continues, with a slight, self-deprecating roll of her eyes. "I made that mistake once and it's like asking drunk ambassadors to grab your--"
"I'll go," he says quickly.
Elizabeth eyes him, amused and somewhat suspicious. "That was easy."
He shrugs. "Open bar."
"Cheeky," she smirks, and John grins.
--
Six days later they catch a red-eye flight from Denver to New York, and from there to Geneva. Elizabeth falls asleep, her head against his shoulder, and he keeps one arm loose around her waist.
The woman in the aisle seat smiles.
--
The gala is in honor of a recent treaty between Pakistan and India. "It's not a real solution, but it's a start," she tells him, running a towel through her damp hair.
John thumbs through a few news articles he printed earlier. "Kashmir, huh?"
"We missed a lot," she murmurs. She doesn't sound like she regrets. Instead, she crosses the room and makes him stand up, fixes his tie, and shoos him toward the door. "I'll be down in ten minutes."
--
John waits in the lobby with a glass of soda in his hand and wishes he'd brought a flask to spike it with something. Nine minutes later, Elizabeth descends the staircase in an emerald dress.
--
"You look beautiful," he says, one hand on her hip. It's the first moment he's had her alone all night, and he has to dance to do it.
Elizabeth ducks her head. "Thank you."
"You didn't tell me you were giving the keynote speech," he chastises.
She shrugs. "It wasn't a big deal."
"It was really good."
She squeezes his hand gently. "Thank you."
"Elizabeth--" he starts, but she takes a deep breath and says abruptly,
"I've been offered a job. A liaison position between the US and the treaty delegation."
John tries not to stumble and keeps his voice and his movements smooth. "What did you say?"
"Nothing." He raises an eyebrow. "They gave me a week to decide."
He nods, but says nothing else. The music slows and he pulls her closer, letting his head fall against her shoulder.
"John?"
"Yeah?"
She pulls back enough to meet his gaze. "Is this a date?"
The steps slow. The music quiets. "Do you want it to be?"
"Do you?" she volleys back, but it isn't out of confidence and it isn't a challenge.
"Elizabeth…" He fumbles. Stares at the floor. His hand tightens over her hip.
"I need a reason to stay."
John shakes his head and looks at her. "I don't want to keep you from--"
"John." He falls silent. Stares. Waits while she parses her words. "I need to know," she says finally. "What we've been working toward. If this is…" she trails off. John makes a decision and grabs her hand, pulls her through the crowd and out of the ballroom and down a hallway. "What are you--" she starts, silenced when he pushes her against the wall and kisses her, hands in her hair and his body against hers and she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, his name a muffled breath across her lips.
They pull away breathless and dazed and John can't stop his hands from tracing over her curves. "That answer your question?" he asks.
Elizabeth smiles.
It's the last thing he sees before there's a light; a clap of thunder; white-hot heat and yellow fire and his name--
He blacks out.
V.
When he wakes up, they run a battery of tests. He spends four weeks in the infirmary, drifting, healing, dreaming. It's a week before he can stay awake long enough to ask; another four days before he can understand their answer.
Miraculous, they tell him, that he isn't dead.
A week after that they help him into a wheelchair and park him next to a bed with a ghost covered in wires.
He feels dead.
fallout
n
1b. (physics) The particles that descend in this fashion.
VI.
His hands are white and his lips are blue and the angry mark across his cheek is red.
Elizabeth crawls across the jumper floor, head pounding and leg useless and one hand splattered with blood.
"John," she says. Her voice is series of cracks. Hoarse and barely audible. She swallows, and it's painful and coppery and bitter. "John," she tries again.
He doesn't move. The cabin is dark.
--
The sensors are dead. Communications are dead. Life support is fading.
She wraps him up in the emergency blankets and tries to stay calm, stay focused, stay awake and alive and breathing--
She shifts wrong, and pain spikes from her leg to her skull. She can see the bone and it makes her sick. She tries to assure herself that help is on the way, that it'll be fine; tries not to think about Rodney and Carson in the other 'jumper; tries not to think about Ronon and Teyla or where they've gone or if they're alive; tries not to think about Atlantis in pieces; of silver, metal balls littering the ocean floor.
--
She tells him stories.
They float.
--
"Once upon a time," she says:
VII.
She puts lavender hyacinths on an empty grave.
I'm sorry, she says, but her words die on the wind.
--
She visits them both every day after physical therapy. Leans her crutches against their beds and sits vigil. Sometimes she speaks. Sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she holds their hands, but they're always cold, so cold, and it burns her skin.
Jack watches from the doorway as she reads aloud from a tattered book of poetry.
--
"Best laid plans," he says awkwardly, and puts a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he says. She nods, and thinks of a city on the sea and a scottish brogue and the pale, pale faces that refuse to return her gaze.
VIII.
When he wakes up, she holds his hand and says, "I'm here."
*
When he wakes up, she exhales in relief.
*
When he wakes up, she brushes her fingers through his hair and tells him to fight, goddamit, fight harder.
*
When he wakes up--
IX.
"The doctors say there's a slim chance he'll regain consciousness," she says. Her voice is as grey and lifeless as the walls. She stares at him and he stares at Rodney and Rodney doesn't stare at anything, and the machines just keep beeping and beeping and beeping and finally John says, "I dreamed about you," and doesn't say anything more.
X.
When her leg heals, she runs away to Berlin.
fallout
n
2. an incidental result or side effect
XI.
She's colder than before. Distant. John doesn't have the energy to break through, and she doesn't seem to want it. There's a scar across her cheek from her hairline to her jaw and it's jagged and angry and it makes him sick. She doesn't bother hiding it, doesn't seem fazed by it, but every time he looks at her it's as if there's a shadow in the way of his light, and he can't get the flaw out of his head.
--
He's grateful he doesn't have to ask.
"Eight days in the 'jumper," she says. "Rodney managed to send a distress beacon before their systems went dark. Steven found us."
John nods absently.
"I want to see him," he tells her.
Two days later she wheels him across the grassy lawn, weaving around tombstones and statues. There are purple flowers, dead from the cold, resting on the ground. Elizabeth replaces them with fresh ones.
"It was a nice funeral," she says flatly. "His mother came from Scotland. Thought he should be buried here." Bitterness. It doesn't suit her.
"He would have liked it," John comforts, but his voice is still weak and his breathing heavy and Elizabeth's hands are turning blue. "We should go," he says.
They stay, and silently count the debts they owe the man below.
--
Every night, John wakes up covered in sweat and chills and shaking from nightmares. Everyone is dead and Atlantis is in pieces and Elizabeth is kissing him and then smiling and then so, so white. He can still feel the fire at the nape of his neck, feels like his skin is raw and scorched.
"It didn't happen," Elizabeth says when he finally tells her about Geneva (just the speech. just the bomb). Her words aren't as comforting as they should be, and there's a scar across her cheek that's never, ever going to heal.
XII.
Everything is too perfect too quickly.
Elizabeth goes back to work before her leg has healed. She translates documents for SGC and works with Doctor Jackson and visits Rodney on her lunch break and reads him Dostoyevsky.
She smiles when John brings her tea, walking slowly from the infirmary to the mess to her office when the nurse lets him out. She sits in a chair next to his bed at night and reads him reports and sometimes doesn't act as if anything is wrong; as if it's all routine. She tucks her hair behind her ear and makes notes on the margins of documents and rubs absently at her injured leg and everything - everything - is wrong.
--
In his dreams, Elizabeth is taken by the Wraith; the Genii; Indians and Pakistanis. She's standing in front of him with a gag in her mouth and her wrists tied and there's a dignitary from some backwards Pegasus planet standing between them, smiling.
Teyla speaks with a quick and practiced tongue, syllables he doesn't recognize in an order he can't understand. The hall echoes with the beauty of it and his chest aches with rage--he wants a blaze. Gunfire and glory and anger made tangible by the press of his foot on the councilor's neck and a muzzle in his face and the heated whisper if you ever; wants to see him gasp for breath and beg.
Instead he stands there, robes to the floor, tall and smug. Teyla fights as gracefully with her words as she does with her body, but even still--standing, waiting, sharp like glass, he wants to break the gentle language with staccatos and screams; wants penalty; wants punishment for the way her hands are shaking and her skin is pale and the blood across her cheek is thick and dry.
The councilor releases her with a wave of his hand.
They walk away.
A gun goes off.
John wakes up with a start.
--
"How long have you been having these dreams?" the psychiatrist asks, making notes on a slim pad of paper.
"Since I regained consciousness," he says, sharply, but not directed at her. He doesn't want to be there, but he needs to tell someone and Elizabeth isn't listening. Isn't hearing him.
("You died," he tells her, and what he means is: "I'm reeling. I'm frightened. My best friend is in a coma and Carson is gone and you're all I have left." But she always shakes her head and says "I didn't die" like she isn't dying now.)
"I just wish she'd talk to me," he admits, and doesn't tell the shrink the way her skin felt under his palms.
XIII.
Rodney wakes up.
It's a week before he gets his memory back completely, but it's a miracle, they all say, a miracle you're all still alive. A miracle you survived.
Elizabeth is still on crutches and John is out of the wheelchair and already insisting he's ready for duty.
"I didn't break anything," he argues, and Elizabeth rolls her eyes.
"I think you broke your brain," she says, but it's too harsh to be just another one of her quips, and John sits down guiltily and manages to spend another week 'taking it easy' before he gives up.
--
John takes Rodney to visit Carson and they stand over the grave like brothers.
"It should have been me," Rodney says, and John knows there's nothing he can do to change his mind.
"You should sing him a song," he says instead. "He'd like that."
Rodney snorts and cracks a smile and John feels like the world is just spinning around and around and around, one day over and over and over again.
--
Three weeks later he's back on duty, planet-side work only. His status in the Air Force, and with the SGC, is still pending.
He's eating lunch in the mess with Rodney when there's an explosion in the kitchen.
It's small - a towel caught on fire and a pot left on the burner too long - but the sound is deafening in his ears. Rodney starts grumbling about incompetence and a few marines run to help, but all John can think about is what the ground feels like when a grenade goes off.
--
At the firing range, John puts five consecutive shots in the center and lowers his gun.
'What do you know about Molotov cocktails, Major?' he asks.
Lorne makes a rueful face takes aim. "They suck, sir," he answers.
Four in the middle.
John stares at the weapon in his hand. "Yeah."
Unassuming: "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," he says, and wastes half a magazine trying to get the ringing out of his ears.
--
He's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Turning a corner and he hears her voice, so loud and so angry she's almost screaming.
"…what you wouldn't do! What you were too scared to do!"
"Elizabeth," someone breaks in, and he thinks it's Landry but he can't be sure. "I understand your position, but there's nothing we can do."
"Bullshit," Elizabeth snaps, and there's a surprised silence that follows. "Military matters are your jurisdiction, General, not the IOA's."
"That's true. But it's a political matter as well, Dr. Weir. I'm sure you of all people can understand that. The decisions made to rescue Atlantis, decisions that ultimately led to failure--"
"Let me lay it out for you as simply as I possibly can, General," she says, brutal and almost condescending. "If you court marital John Sheppard not only will you lose a gifted pilot and military strategist, you'll also lose your top negotiator, and odds are you'll lose a brilliant scientist as well. It's a three for one deal and it's the last offer I'm going to give you."
The door opens and John freezes. Elizabeth stares at him but she doesn't blush or turn her head or smile. John grasps for words, but they've never been his forté, and what he really wants to do is kiss her until she doesn't look defeated anymore.
--
She dies that night.
The window shatters and the light comes in and she dies. She dies in a fire and she dies on the floor and she dies in his arms and every time she does it's because he wasn't fast enough, strong enough, brave enough, smart enough. Because he screwed up and a bomb went off and the cabin lost pressure and she turned so, so white and blue.
His mind screams at him to run even as his body freezes, dry heaving over the side of the bed, muscles knotted and skin crawling. He can't move, can barely breathe. His hand fumbles for the telephone.
"Elizabeth?"
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Boom.)
"John?"
His eyes slam shut in relief.
"Just checking."
XIV.
They decide not to court martial him. Rodney is reassigned to Area-51 again, but that's the worst of it. They go out to dinner to celebrate, and Elizabeth never mentions her argument with Landry and Rodney attributes their good fortune to the report he submitted on the attempted rescue mission.
"You can thank me by buying me dinner," Rodney informs him, and John rolls his eyes and Elizabeth cracks a smile.
--
After dinner they say goodbye to Rodney and John walks Elizabeth to her car. She's quiet and still.
"You okay?" he asks, touching her elbow gently.
She starts to nod, to reassure him, but stops and lowers her gaze. "Last time we had dinner together our pagers went off," she says. "Carson was here. Atlantis was--" she breaks off.
John slides his hand down her arm and grips her hand tightly.
"I don't know what to do," she admits.
She nods. "I thought you were dead," he murmurs, and for the first time, she looks like she gets it.
"Little Red Riding Hood," she says, and her voice cracks with tears.
"What?"
"In the 'jumper. You were unconscious and we were floating and I couldn't think of what to say, so I kept repeating Little Red Riding Hood." Her eyes are bright and her voice so broken. "I'm sorry."
John can't think of what to say, so he pulls her close and wraps his arms around her and tells her that he's fine. He's fine and she's fine and it'll all be fine, it'll get better, get easier, and the pain will fade, fade, fade, fade even if it never goes away.
Elizabeth buries her face in the collar of his coat like she'll fray apart at the seams if she doesn't hold on. When she finally pulls away, the expression on her face is what breaks him, and even though he knows it isn't smart and even fair, he cups her face between his hands and kisses her.
--
He knows what he'll see, now: a gold chandelier and an emerald dress and too much smoke. He'll see people running to the blaze, away from the blaze. He'll see bloodied bodies and her unconscious form, and hear the sound of sirens, of car alarms, of unearthly silence. Helicopters and gunfire.
Glass everywhere.
His hands skate under her shirt and lift, dragging the clothing up with the back of his wrists. She raises her arms, lowers them when the article is gone, blending in somewhere with the shadows on the floor. Her skin is warm at the shoulders, chest and arms, but her fingertips are cold. He holds both her hands between both of his.
She arches up on her toes and kisses him.
His name is light and warm against her lips, but he doesn't know what to say so he kisses her. Tangles his fingers in her hair and kisses her to drive away the cold anxiousness in his chest. His hand cups her cheek and holds her close and he doesn't know if she gets it because he keeps his eyes closed and his lips to hers. Her arms wind around his back as he moves, blanketing her with warm skin and desperation.
It's not enough.
Eyes closed, his mind wreaks havoc with his heart, greedily playing into all his fears and horrors--like she isn't here, like she isn't safe, like she isn't whole. Eyes open, he sees the red mark and her questioning gaze and her worry.
It's too much.
Tracking his way down her neck, he presses lips and teeth and tongue against her skin; keeps his eyes wide and open--hollows and curves, freckles and lines, bones and veins. Her legs shift, one between his and one to wrap around his hip and pull him closer. She says his name on a breath, hands skating over his shoulders, his arms; fingernails drawn gently against his scalp.
His hand covers her breast and her breathing stalls; her spine arcs like a wave, pressing skin closer to skin, sea closer to sky. He wants to tell her that she's beautiful, but it's so inadequate; he brushes his thumb against the underside of her breast and her fingers curl and he kisses the skin over her heart.
He wonders if it's too soft, too tender. She stills, and he feels her gaze and hears his name but he can't speak, doesn't want to speak, doesn't want to voice this or anything else going through his head. He flicks his tongue across her nipple and his hands play over her ribs. He moves lower, teeth nipping gently at her abdomen and she shivers; her soft moans quiet his nerves, and he finds himself smiling against her hip.
Her hands fall away, one brushing over his shoulder, the other reaching up to grasp the pillow beneath her head as he settles between her thighs, fingers and tongue tracing over her folds, mapping the way she moves, the sounds she makes. He can tell by the way she writhes that she's close; that she has her eyes closed and her lips parted and one hand covering her breast.
And he forgets. For a long moment, when her breathing stops and her back arches and she comes hard against his tongue; when she comes down slowly, blearily; when she smiles softly and reaches for him; when she kisses him like it means something--
Her legs curl around his waist and she moves her hips and he smirks (impatient). She rolls her eyes and drags her fingernails along his spine. He shudders (touché) and slides into her on a moan.
They rush back like a bomb--an explosion with nowhere to go, straight and sharp and he chokes. Fire on earth and fire on that planet and fire on Atlantis and his arms tighten around her without his consent. He doesn't hear his name under the roaring in his head and he tries to press her down, tries to keep her beneath him, keep her safe from the heat and the ash and the shrapnel and the flames and--
"John."
She presses against his shoulders, but he doesn't move; can't. There's fire in the field. Ash in her hair.
She's warm and tight around him, her skin like a brand everywhere they touch.
"John."
The images fade. Surround-sound switched off. He starts; pulls away and mutters some kind of apology, but she catches his arm and stays him with a look.
There's so much silence. John stares at his hands and stares at her knees and tries not to think about how her skin is pebbled from cold; how she's naked; how her expression is so bare and open and it terrifies him to think that he could do the same as that bomb, as the metal tearing into her skin; that once - just once - he could be wrong.
That he could leave scars, too.
When he says nothing, Elizabeth moves. Keeping her hand on his wrist, she straddles his waist, forcing him to straighten his legs and shift backwards towards the headboard. He starts to protest in confusion, but she shakes her head and kisses him softly. It's so hesitant, the way she brushes her lips against his, pulls back, and brushes them again. She laces their fingers together slowly, as if giving him the time to escape if he wanted. He wants to be afraid and embarrassed but he's too tired and she's too close, running her hands gently across his back in slow, soothing motions. Her lips brush against his ear as she whispers something soft--could be words of comfort, could be his name, could be poetry. He doesn't know. It doesn't matter.
He tries to speak, tries to soothe the worried look in her eyes with words he thinks she craves, but Elizabeth shakes her head; presses a finger to his lips.
"Don't," she whispers.
(It's okay.)
(Don't worry.)
(I love you.)
"'Lizabeth."
She kisses him and the voices vanish. Kisses him long and slow and deep and their tongues duel and he cups her neck in his palm, massaging the tight muscles hard enough to make her gasp and break away and bend into his touch. Open-mouthed kisses across his collarbone and shoulder distract him, leave him breathing unsteadily, his hands skittering along her back. Her skin is damp, her bones too prominent.
He can barely feel the scar under his fingertips, but he knows it's there. He thinks she says something, whispers something, but it's drowned out by the sudden press of his hips against hers; her gasp; the way she sinks down over him. Slick skin and heat and he keeps one hand on her thigh, the other at the small of her back, pressing her closer. She rocks slowly, too slowly, and he presses kisses to her shoulders, her breasts, her sternum, and urges her to move faster. He tries to let himself be carried away by her hands on his back and her lips against his neck and her breathing, loud and erratic and beautiful in the silence.
"Come on," he murmurs--begs.
She shakes her head slightly - "It's okay," she whispers - and squeezes her muscles around him; moves her hips; tightens her arms around his neck. (Let go.)
Desperately, he slips his hand between their bodies and presses his thumb against her clit. Her head falls back as she gasps, and he keeps his lips at the base of her throat as she comes; drops his forehead against her chest as he follows her.
XV.
He knocks on O'Neill's door and pokes his head in. "Sorry to bother you, Sir. Have you seen Elizabeth?"
Jack frowns. "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"She left the SGC this morning."
John's hands go numb. "Left, Sir?"
"Like a sabbatical," he says. "Kinda. I figured she told you."
John keeps his voice steady. "No, Sir. I'll, uh…" His throat is dry. "Thank you, Sir."
O'Neill nods and says something else, but John can't hear it for the ringing in his ears.
fall out
v
1. to happen or occur
XXI.
Elizabeth stays in a hotel near Unter der Linden.
Most of her time is spent in museums--the German Historical Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Museum für Naturkunde. She stares at the paintings and the blocs of text and the sculptures and the heirlooms and tries to make it all mean something, make it matter.
It's the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum that holds her attention. After that, every morning she has coffee in a cafe just off Leipziger Straße, and then walks to the museum. She spends hours wandering the rooms, staring at the changing screens, the film clips, the World War II images. One day she spends hours in one room, watching the scenes from Metropolis over and over again.
"Rediscovered after eighty years," an elderly man says, sitting next to her and watching with awe the deleted scenes from Lang's masterpiece. "Incredible," he says wistfully. Elizabeth swallows the lump in her throat. "After so many years," he says, "we can finally understand what he meant."
--
When she runs out of museums, she covers the other main tourist attractions. The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Berlin wall. She remembers a time when seeing the icons of history would have touched her, would have reminded her of why she loves politics and diplomacy and all the good it can accomplish; all the good people can accomplish, together. She searches, but all she feels is the coming winter wind against her skin, and it makes the scar across her cheek throb with a dull ache.
--
Sheppard's worried about you, Rodney says in an email. You should at least answer his calls.
International fees, she writes, I'll call him when I'm back.
She deletes the message instead of sending it, and instead closes her laptop and takes a long walk along the Spree river, losing herself in the city lights against the night sky.
--
If she isn't careful, her thoughts drift. She remembers the way the sheets felt against her skin, the way the light from the bedside table cast shadows across his face and the planes of his chest; the ease with which he kissed her, like he'd done so a hundred times before; like it was all so very, very simple.
She tries to avoid it, but it always comes back--his hands on her back and his breath against her neck; the way his fingers traced her scars.
XXII.
When she sleeps, she dreams of Atlantis at the bottom of the ocean. She dreams of Carson's cold, dead face staring back at her and asking her why. She dreams of legions of fallen soldiers and civilians under her command, staring at her with blood-splattered faces and asking her if it was worth it, in the end.
You lost, they say, and Kolya laughs and laughs and the Wraith laughs and laughs and Oberoth laughs and laughs and she wakes up screaming and wishes to God she had a warm embrace to turn to. You don't deserve it, the voices echo, and resign her to being as cold and lonely as they are, white and lifeless as they haunt her nightmares.
--
On the first Sunday of the month, she attends a Latin mass at St. Hedwig's Cathedral on the Bebelplatz. She doesn't know what she hopes to find among the psalms and homilies, only that it isn't there.
It isn't in the Cathedral and it isn't in the park and it isn't in the museums. It isn't on the busy streets around Alexanderplatz, or in any of the memorials, or along the river bank. It isn't in Berlin, but that isn't something she's ready to admit to herself yet, so she returns to the film museum and watches reels from the 1920s and searchers for the answers among the silent screens and the gentle hum of the projector.
XXIII.
She's staring at a photo of Marlene Dietrich when she hears his voice, and she finds it ironic that she went so far to find an answer, only to have the answer follow her so far.
XXIV.
Elizabeth throws her coat on the bed and turns to him angrily. "You followed me to Berlin?"
John glares back. "Wouldn't have had to if you'd stuck around."
Elizabeth puts her hands on her hips and ignores his accusation. "How did you even find me? I didn't tell--"
"Anyone," he says bitterly, "I know. I hacked your email."
"John--"
"Don't even start with me, Elizabeth. Rodney thinks you're visiting your mother, and O'Neill doesn't even know you've left the country."
"I'm entitled to a vacation."
"That's not what this is."
"No, it's exactly what it is. I needed time away and I took it."
"Convenient timing," he sneers.
Elizabeth opens her mouth to retort, but says nothing. She drops her arms to her sides and looks away. John sighs and runs a hand through his hair and waits. He waits and waits and it occurs to her in the ambient noise that he's been waiting so very, very long.
"I couldn't deal with it," she admits quietly, and John's head snaps up in surprise. "After everything, it was just…it was too fast."
John swallows and tries to keep his voice even. "You couldn't have just told me that?"
She smiles weakly. "That'd have been too easy, right?"
He huffs and rolls his eyes. "Right."
"I didn't…I didn't mean to hurt you. I just…I need…" she tries, but she doesn't know what she needs, only that she's so, so tired. She wishes she could stop, but it took her so long to get here. (Here:
Her hand flutters, hesitates, then lands lightly on his shoulder. A butterfly. A bee. Moth to a flame and she stares at the touch like she isn't sure whether she'll save him or burn him.) She doesn't want to think about how long it'll take her to get there.
"Elizabeth," he sighs, and takes her hand in hers.
"We lost everything, John," she whispers. "We lost."
"I know," he murmurs. "Doesn't mean we have to lose each other, though. Right?"
She stares at their hands. "You followed me to Berlin."
John shakes his head. "I'd follow you anywhere."
XXV.
They leave Berlin for Paris, and Paris for Lyon, and Lyon for Marseille.
Elizabeth stands on the hotel balcony overlooking the ocean, John's arms around her waist and his head on her shoulder; the smell of salt and the lulling sounds of movement and music and life soothes her. John draws patterns on her skin beneath her shirt and presses a kiss against the scar on her face.
It's the first time she realizes (admits) that she'd follow him, too.
- stargate: atlantis
- john/elizabeth
- 8000
- r/nc-17
- for cutting_onions on the day after her birthday. ♥
- thanks to bigdamnxenafan for the beta! title from a poem by leonard cohen.
as the mist leaves no scar
on the dark green hill
so my body leaves no scar
on you, nor ever will
- leonard cohen
fallout
n
1. (physics) the descent of solid material in the atmosphere onto the earth, especially of radioactive material following a nuclear explosion.
I.
He throws his body over hers as the wave slams against the 'jumper, careening them back into Nothing. She screams, he thinks, or maybe he screams, or maybe the 'jumper is coming apart and the metal is screaming and they'll be floating, white and hypoxic and deaddeaddead--
Her hands are white and her lips are blue and the angry mark across her cheek is red.
*
She descends the staircase in an emerald dress.
*
Hot skin, soft lips, her body over his and fingers tangled with his fingers, sweat with his sweat, breath with his breath. He opens his eyes and--
II.
The helicopter touches down. The engine winds to a murmur. The blades slow their mangling of the air.
She touches his knee, and he turns too slow. "John?" she asks. Her face is pale, but he's seen it paler. She smiles and he smiles. A lieutenant appears in the doorway of the chopper and gives a crisp salute. "Colonel Sheppard; Dr. Weir. Welcome to the White House."
--
Their meeting is brief. The President commends them for a job well done, answers a few questions and asks several more. John's lips quirk up with a hint of pride at the way the he listens to them, even if it's only a few minutes, and he can't help but admire the ease with which Elizabeth smiles and shakes his hand and says all the things he wants to hear so that she can slip in the things he doesn't. The President nods and agrees and congratulates them again, and apologizes for the abrupt end to their mission.
John winces, barely, and looks at Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye--her expression is entirely neutral, her smile calm and warm, her words clear and level; she shows no sign at all of heartbreak. For one moment, one fraction of a second, John is deceived.
Then the President turns toward his desk and Elizabeth turns toward John and the lie hits him like a sucker-punch.
He wants to reach out to her, but the Oval Office suddenly seems so vast, like there are miles and miles of ocean (waves, rocks, water, ice, land, sky, snow, space) between them.
--
Elizabeth meets with liaisons and Heads of State.
John visits the museums.
He calls her around eight for dinner, but she never answers her phone. He goes back to their hotel and stands outside her room with his ear to the door, and wonders if the defeat in her tone carries over into other tongues.
--
"I didn't mean to wake you," she says, standing on the other side of the door. "It's almost eleven. We have to check out soon."
John runs a hand through his hair. "I'll be down in five."
Elizabeth nods and disappears down the hall. John turns back to the television just in time to see photographs of soldiers and a list of dead from Iraq.
--
They take a commercial flight back to Colorado. John stares out the window and Elizabeth reads reports on her laptop. On the other side of her sits a decent looking guy in an expensive looking suit who keeps moving his knee to touch hers. He tries to make conversation every time she looks up from her computer. She humors him for the most part, but her smile is vacant and her back is rigid and shortly after he lays a hand on her thigh, she gets up to go to the washroom.
John appraises him for a moment, then compliments his jacket. "Armani?" he asks.
The guy chuckles. "Yves Saint Laurent."
John affects a sigh. "You know you've been out of the country too long when you can't ID a good suit."
The guy agrees and asks where he's been. He tells him Afghanistan.
"You're Army?"
"Air Force." He offers his hand. "Colonel John Sheppard."
The guy smiles and shakes his hand. "Doctor Greg Landow."
John withdraws and leans back in his seat, picking up his discarded magazine and leafing through it. Greg asks about Afghanistan; if he's seen combat; if he has family back home. "Buddy of mine went there a few years back," he says, "Never was quite the same."
"Yeah," John drawls, "It'll fuck you up. Speaking of which--" Greg stops his nod of agreement and looks up, startled and confused; John keeps his eyes on the magazine in front of him. "Touch her again, and you won't leave this plane in one piece."
Before he can respond, Elizabeth appears in the aisle. Greg stares, blinks, then shifts to let her through. After buckling her seatbelt, she turns to John. "You okay?"
He doesn't look at her. "Never better."
Greg doesn't say a word.
--
John picks up the suitcase off the belt and slams it on the ground with more force than necessary. "You should have put him in his place," he says. He doesn't mean to. Elizabeth stops mid-sentence and frowns.
"What?"
Part of him wants to shake it off, but he can't get rid of the images--a large hand on her thigh; her averted gaze; nervous fingers tucking strands of hair behind her ear; his appreciative expression. "That asshole on the plane. Greg." He says the name with a sneer.
Elizabeth immediately looks away. "He wasn't doing anything." She reaches for her bag on the turn-belt, but John grabs it first. She glares; he doesn't notice.
"He was making you uncomfortable."
She rolls her eyes and picks up her duffle bag. "We were on an airplane, John, there's not a whole lot I could have done."
She's right. She's wrong. His head hurts. Greg had large hands; he wanted to break every bone, all twenty-eight of them. One by one. He takes a deep breath; looks at Elizabeth--Elizabeth, who stared down Wraith and the Genii and Goa'uld; stared down the barrel of a gun; stared unflinching. Elizabeth in her business suit who shook hands with the President and didn't stumble over a word. The woman standing next to him, with bags under her eyes and a bag over her shoulder and she looks so small under its weight; looked so small under Greg's large hands.
"You never would have put up with that shit on Atlantis," he snaps, under his breath and bitter.
"John," she warns.
He spares her a glance as they exit the airport. The Colorado cold is like a slash across his cheek. "It's true and you know it."
Elizabeth steps to the curb and hails a cab. "Why are you so angry about it?"
He should say: never mind.
He should say, "I'm just worried about you."
He should say nothing at all.
Instead he says, angrily, " 'Cause I'm tired of hanging out with someone who's only half there."
The cab pulls up. Elizabeth stares at him, her expression indecipherable. He thinks he's hurt her, insulted her; he thinks she's pissed, but she just looks numb. "Maybe we shouldn't 'hang out' then," she says, flatly, and opens the taxi door.
"Elizabeth-" he tries. She shuts the door and the cab takes off. John sighs and stares after her. "Damn it."
III.
When he wakes up, he asks for her.
*
When he wakes up, everyone is surprised.
*
When he wakes up, they shake their heads.
*
When he wakes up--
IV.
He pounds on the door for the third time. "Damn it, Elizabeth, open the door," he calls. "I know you're home." Silence. "Your car's out front." Silence. He knocks again, louder. "Elizabeth." Down the hall, someone peeks out of their apartment. John can't bring himself to care. "I'm not leaving until you open the door," he threatens. Inside, nothing stirs.
Sighing, he leans his head against the doorframe and knocks again, then turns his back to the door and slides down to the floor.
He waits.
A few neighbors pass by and stare at him. He plays scrabble on his phone. An hour passes. He plays chess. An hour and a half.
"Anyone ever tell you you make a nice doorstopper?"
John starts and looks up. Elizabeth is standing over him, carrying two bags of groceries. She isn't smiling, but she doesn't look angry either. It's a start. John climbs awkwardly to his feet.
"Can't say I've ever gotten that one."
She nods. "First time for everything I suppose."
Her words mean more, and he winces. He holds out his arms. "Here, let me help."
She passes him a bag and pulls her keys from her pocket, opens the door, and follows him inside. John sets the bag on the counter and starts idly removing things and lining them up on her kitchen counter. She puts them away. They work in strained silence, and John keeps glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. She looks tired.
Elizabeth folds the bags when they're done and puts them in a drawer. She keeps her back to him for a long moment, and he can see her physically brace herself before she turns to face him.
"So, what can I do for you?"
John swallows and looks away. He had a list of things he wanted to say, but they die in the face of her hesitancy--in the knowledge that he could make her feel that way, look that way, stand that way--so far away from him, and on purpose.
"I, uh," he starts. Stops. Clears his throat. "What I said, at the airport. I didn't--" He shakes his head. "I shouldn't have said that."
Elizabeth stares at him. "That's not an apology," she says, but it isn't accusatory.
John meets her gaze. "Was I wrong?" (Let me be wrong. Let me be wrong. Please, god, he thinks, let me be--)
"No," she murmurs. The pause is heavy; her voice is soft. "No, you weren't."
"Elizabeth…"
"I'm doing the best that I can, John," she says, but it sounds too much like pleading.
"I know."
"Do you?" Her voice cracks just slightly. "Because you seem to be moving on awfully quickly." She shakes her head. "And I know you better than that."
John chuckles humorlessly and leans his head back against the cabinet behind him. "We aren't fooling anyone, are we?"
"I think we're fooling everyone. Except each other."
"Why do you think that is?"
She smiles sadly. "Burden of command?"
"Maybe," he murmurs, and takes a deep breath. "Look, I know…I know it isn't easy. And if you want me to…leave you alone, I will." He swallows tightly. "If that would make it better."
Her lips move, but she says nothing. He resists the urge to grab onto her and hold.
"Haven't we already lost enough?"
"You remind me--" she starts, and bites her lip to keep the words inside.
Too late, John thinks, and on an exhale steps just that much closer. "I know," he agrees softly. "It's why I can't let you go."
In the silence, he understands her so clearly. Without her words to defend and protect her, without a red uniform and a railing and a steel-blue city, she's just a woman. Just his friend. Just his--
"You want some coffee?" she asks.
"Sure," he nods, and she turns away toward the cupboard. "I'm sorry," he says finally.
Elizabeth pauses, and exhales softly. "Me too."
--
Rodney works on the midway station. Carson goes back to Scotland. Lorne joins SG-11 and Cadman takes a vacation. John goes through the 'Gate and meets new allies and new enemies and tries to be thankful that he wasn't discharged; that he still has a job; that he still gets to fly. He tries to be thankful that everyone's alive and safe and sound, even if they're broken.
Elizabeth writes her memoirs that no one will ever see.
--
And so he makes it a mission, like any mission, to draw her out. He finds ways, both subtle and conniving and obvious and ridiculous to get her out of her apartment. He drags her back to the SGC for consults on missions his team has been assigned and even tries to get her to teach him Ancient. He calls her for coffee and dinner and meet-ups with Rodney and once he even drags her to the movies with them, Elizabeth smashed between them as they volleyed comments and criticisms on the likelihood of the physics presented actually being possible; Elizabeth rolled her eyes and withheld popcorn until they shut up, and either didn't notice or didn't mind when John stretched an arm around the back of her seat and let his hand rest on her shoulder.
Six weeks later they go to a bar and drink enough alcohol that when he wakes up the next morning he only hazily remembers what happened the night before. He remembers the shots and the Jack Daniels and the football game on TV; he remembers daring her to drink him under the table, and later regretting the challenge; he remembers her: hot skin, soft lips, her body over his and fingers tangled with his fingers, sweat with his sweat, breath with his breath.
He wakes up on the couch in her apartment and doesn't remember how he got there, and by the hesitant smile she gives him neither does she. But he's fully clothed if a little disheveled, and he isn't sure whether he's relieved or disappointed.
John accepts the proffered cup of coffee gratefully and tries to breathe through the pounding in his head. "I think we're too old for that," he grunts.
Elizabeth smirks, but looks like crap in her over-sized sweatshirt and yoga pants and her hair in disarray and he realizes with an even greater headache that he wants nothing more than to continue what they started the night before.
She passes him a few pain killers and tells him he can stick around if he wants.
"Elizabeth," he tries, but she shakes her head and then winces at the motion.
"We were drunk," she says. "And now we're hung-over."
John grunts. "That an excuse?"
"For now," she says.
"And later?" he presses.
She doesn't answer.
--
Later comes after four days of avoided phone-calls and two failed attempts to break into her apartment. Later comes when he finally corners her in her office at the SGC and demands they talk. Talk involves excuses and circular arguments and Elizabeth on the other side of her desk, a barrier between them. John doesn't know how to make a convincing argument, not with his words.
"So what do you want to do?" he pushes, "Pretend nothing happened?"
"Yes," she answers, and he tries to pretend that it doesn't hurt like hell.
"Okay," he murmurs, responding more to the desperate look in her eyes than the harsh pull of her words. He forces a smile. "Friends?"
"Of course," she says, like it's the whole reason for her distance. She shakes her head and stares at the Athosian pot on her desk, smuggled back from Atlantis. "I can't lose you," she admits, echoing his words from weeks before.
"You won't," he promises.
"Good."
--
John drags her to coffee shops and movies.
Elizabeth makes him accompany her to plays and take long walks in the park with her dog.
Atlantis is still here, a ghost shadowing their movements, but it isn't as noticeable anymore. Isn't as loud.
Elizabeth stops writing her memoirs.
--
He looks up at the knock on the door. "Hey." She smiles briefly.
"Hey," he says, putting down the report. "What's up?"
Elizabeth hovers in the doorway. "I, um. I have a favor to ask."
"Sure."
She hesitates, and John frowns. "There's a gala in Geneva next week. Fancy dresses. Diplomats. The President asked me to attend."
"And?"
She exhales sharply. "I need a date."
John blinks and tries not to cough. "A…date-date?"
"Or the appearance of one," she says, but doesn't clarify. John's throat goes dry. "I can't show up alone," she continues, with a slight, self-deprecating roll of her eyes. "I made that mistake once and it's like asking drunk ambassadors to grab your--"
"I'll go," he says quickly.
Elizabeth eyes him, amused and somewhat suspicious. "That was easy."
He shrugs. "Open bar."
"Cheeky," she smirks, and John grins.
--
Six days later they catch a red-eye flight from Denver to New York, and from there to Geneva. Elizabeth falls asleep, her head against his shoulder, and he keeps one arm loose around her waist.
The woman in the aisle seat smiles.
--
The gala is in honor of a recent treaty between Pakistan and India. "It's not a real solution, but it's a start," she tells him, running a towel through her damp hair.
John thumbs through a few news articles he printed earlier. "Kashmir, huh?"
"We missed a lot," she murmurs. She doesn't sound like she regrets. Instead, she crosses the room and makes him stand up, fixes his tie, and shoos him toward the door. "I'll be down in ten minutes."
--
John waits in the lobby with a glass of soda in his hand and wishes he'd brought a flask to spike it with something. Nine minutes later, Elizabeth descends the staircase in an emerald dress.
--
"You look beautiful," he says, one hand on her hip. It's the first moment he's had her alone all night, and he has to dance to do it.
Elizabeth ducks her head. "Thank you."
"You didn't tell me you were giving the keynote speech," he chastises.
She shrugs. "It wasn't a big deal."
"It was really good."
She squeezes his hand gently. "Thank you."
"Elizabeth--" he starts, but she takes a deep breath and says abruptly,
"I've been offered a job. A liaison position between the US and the treaty delegation."
John tries not to stumble and keeps his voice and his movements smooth. "What did you say?"
"Nothing." He raises an eyebrow. "They gave me a week to decide."
He nods, but says nothing else. The music slows and he pulls her closer, letting his head fall against her shoulder.
"John?"
"Yeah?"
She pulls back enough to meet his gaze. "Is this a date?"
The steps slow. The music quiets. "Do you want it to be?"
"Do you?" she volleys back, but it isn't out of confidence and it isn't a challenge.
"Elizabeth…" He fumbles. Stares at the floor. His hand tightens over her hip.
"I need a reason to stay."
John shakes his head and looks at her. "I don't want to keep you from--"
"John." He falls silent. Stares. Waits while she parses her words. "I need to know," she says finally. "What we've been working toward. If this is…" she trails off. John makes a decision and grabs her hand, pulls her through the crowd and out of the ballroom and down a hallway. "What are you--" she starts, silenced when he pushes her against the wall and kisses her, hands in her hair and his body against hers and she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, his name a muffled breath across her lips.
They pull away breathless and dazed and John can't stop his hands from tracing over her curves. "That answer your question?" he asks.
Elizabeth smiles.
It's the last thing he sees before there's a light; a clap of thunder; white-hot heat and yellow fire and his name--
He blacks out.
V.
When he wakes up, they run a battery of tests. He spends four weeks in the infirmary, drifting, healing, dreaming. It's a week before he can stay awake long enough to ask; another four days before he can understand their answer.
Miraculous, they tell him, that he isn't dead.
A week after that they help him into a wheelchair and park him next to a bed with a ghost covered in wires.
He feels dead.
fallout
n
1b. (physics) The particles that descend in this fashion.
VI.
His hands are white and his lips are blue and the angry mark across his cheek is red.
Elizabeth crawls across the jumper floor, head pounding and leg useless and one hand splattered with blood.
"John," she says. Her voice is series of cracks. Hoarse and barely audible. She swallows, and it's painful and coppery and bitter. "John," she tries again.
He doesn't move. The cabin is dark.
--
The sensors are dead. Communications are dead. Life support is fading.
She wraps him up in the emergency blankets and tries to stay calm, stay focused, stay awake and alive and breathing--
She shifts wrong, and pain spikes from her leg to her skull. She can see the bone and it makes her sick. She tries to assure herself that help is on the way, that it'll be fine; tries not to think about Rodney and Carson in the other 'jumper; tries not to think about Ronon and Teyla or where they've gone or if they're alive; tries not to think about Atlantis in pieces; of silver, metal balls littering the ocean floor.
--
She tells him stories.
They float.
--
"Once upon a time," she says:
VII.
She puts lavender hyacinths on an empty grave.
I'm sorry, she says, but her words die on the wind.
--
She visits them both every day after physical therapy. Leans her crutches against their beds and sits vigil. Sometimes she speaks. Sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she holds their hands, but they're always cold, so cold, and it burns her skin.
Jack watches from the doorway as she reads aloud from a tattered book of poetry.
--
"Best laid plans," he says awkwardly, and puts a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he says. She nods, and thinks of a city on the sea and a scottish brogue and the pale, pale faces that refuse to return her gaze.
VIII.
When he wakes up, she holds his hand and says, "I'm here."
*
When he wakes up, she exhales in relief.
*
When he wakes up, she brushes her fingers through his hair and tells him to fight, goddamit, fight harder.
*
When he wakes up--
IX.
"The doctors say there's a slim chance he'll regain consciousness," she says. Her voice is as grey and lifeless as the walls. She stares at him and he stares at Rodney and Rodney doesn't stare at anything, and the machines just keep beeping and beeping and beeping and finally John says, "I dreamed about you," and doesn't say anything more.
X.
When her leg heals, she runs away to Berlin.
fallout
n
2. an incidental result or side effect
XI.
She's colder than before. Distant. John doesn't have the energy to break through, and she doesn't seem to want it. There's a scar across her cheek from her hairline to her jaw and it's jagged and angry and it makes him sick. She doesn't bother hiding it, doesn't seem fazed by it, but every time he looks at her it's as if there's a shadow in the way of his light, and he can't get the flaw out of his head.
--
He's grateful he doesn't have to ask.
"Eight days in the 'jumper," she says. "Rodney managed to send a distress beacon before their systems went dark. Steven found us."
John nods absently.
"I want to see him," he tells her.
Two days later she wheels him across the grassy lawn, weaving around tombstones and statues. There are purple flowers, dead from the cold, resting on the ground. Elizabeth replaces them with fresh ones.
"It was a nice funeral," she says flatly. "His mother came from Scotland. Thought he should be buried here." Bitterness. It doesn't suit her.
"He would have liked it," John comforts, but his voice is still weak and his breathing heavy and Elizabeth's hands are turning blue. "We should go," he says.
They stay, and silently count the debts they owe the man below.
--
Every night, John wakes up covered in sweat and chills and shaking from nightmares. Everyone is dead and Atlantis is in pieces and Elizabeth is kissing him and then smiling and then so, so white. He can still feel the fire at the nape of his neck, feels like his skin is raw and scorched.
"It didn't happen," Elizabeth says when he finally tells her about Geneva (just the speech. just the bomb). Her words aren't as comforting as they should be, and there's a scar across her cheek that's never, ever going to heal.
XII.
Everything is too perfect too quickly.
Elizabeth goes back to work before her leg has healed. She translates documents for SGC and works with Doctor Jackson and visits Rodney on her lunch break and reads him Dostoyevsky.
She smiles when John brings her tea, walking slowly from the infirmary to the mess to her office when the nurse lets him out. She sits in a chair next to his bed at night and reads him reports and sometimes doesn't act as if anything is wrong; as if it's all routine. She tucks her hair behind her ear and makes notes on the margins of documents and rubs absently at her injured leg and everything - everything - is wrong.
--
In his dreams, Elizabeth is taken by the Wraith; the Genii; Indians and Pakistanis. She's standing in front of him with a gag in her mouth and her wrists tied and there's a dignitary from some backwards Pegasus planet standing between them, smiling.
Teyla speaks with a quick and practiced tongue, syllables he doesn't recognize in an order he can't understand. The hall echoes with the beauty of it and his chest aches with rage--he wants a blaze. Gunfire and glory and anger made tangible by the press of his foot on the councilor's neck and a muzzle in his face and the heated whisper if you ever; wants to see him gasp for breath and beg.
Instead he stands there, robes to the floor, tall and smug. Teyla fights as gracefully with her words as she does with her body, but even still--standing, waiting, sharp like glass, he wants to break the gentle language with staccatos and screams; wants penalty; wants punishment for the way her hands are shaking and her skin is pale and the blood across her cheek is thick and dry.
The councilor releases her with a wave of his hand.
They walk away.
A gun goes off.
John wakes up with a start.
--
"How long have you been having these dreams?" the psychiatrist asks, making notes on a slim pad of paper.
"Since I regained consciousness," he says, sharply, but not directed at her. He doesn't want to be there, but he needs to tell someone and Elizabeth isn't listening. Isn't hearing him.
("You died," he tells her, and what he means is: "I'm reeling. I'm frightened. My best friend is in a coma and Carson is gone and you're all I have left." But she always shakes her head and says "I didn't die" like she isn't dying now.)
"I just wish she'd talk to me," he admits, and doesn't tell the shrink the way her skin felt under his palms.
XIII.
Rodney wakes up.
It's a week before he gets his memory back completely, but it's a miracle, they all say, a miracle you're all still alive. A miracle you survived.
Elizabeth is still on crutches and John is out of the wheelchair and already insisting he's ready for duty.
"I didn't break anything," he argues, and Elizabeth rolls her eyes.
"I think you broke your brain," she says, but it's too harsh to be just another one of her quips, and John sits down guiltily and manages to spend another week 'taking it easy' before he gives up.
--
John takes Rodney to visit Carson and they stand over the grave like brothers.
"It should have been me," Rodney says, and John knows there's nothing he can do to change his mind.
"You should sing him a song," he says instead. "He'd like that."
Rodney snorts and cracks a smile and John feels like the world is just spinning around and around and around, one day over and over and over again.
--
Three weeks later he's back on duty, planet-side work only. His status in the Air Force, and with the SGC, is still pending.
He's eating lunch in the mess with Rodney when there's an explosion in the kitchen.
It's small - a towel caught on fire and a pot left on the burner too long - but the sound is deafening in his ears. Rodney starts grumbling about incompetence and a few marines run to help, but all John can think about is what the ground feels like when a grenade goes off.
--
At the firing range, John puts five consecutive shots in the center and lowers his gun.
'What do you know about Molotov cocktails, Major?' he asks.
Lorne makes a rueful face takes aim. "They suck, sir," he answers.
Four in the middle.
John stares at the weapon in his hand. "Yeah."
Unassuming: "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," he says, and wastes half a magazine trying to get the ringing out of his ears.
--
He's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Turning a corner and he hears her voice, so loud and so angry she's almost screaming.
"…what you wouldn't do! What you were too scared to do!"
"Elizabeth," someone breaks in, and he thinks it's Landry but he can't be sure. "I understand your position, but there's nothing we can do."
"Bullshit," Elizabeth snaps, and there's a surprised silence that follows. "Military matters are your jurisdiction, General, not the IOA's."
"That's true. But it's a political matter as well, Dr. Weir. I'm sure you of all people can understand that. The decisions made to rescue Atlantis, decisions that ultimately led to failure--"
"Let me lay it out for you as simply as I possibly can, General," she says, brutal and almost condescending. "If you court marital John Sheppard not only will you lose a gifted pilot and military strategist, you'll also lose your top negotiator, and odds are you'll lose a brilliant scientist as well. It's a three for one deal and it's the last offer I'm going to give you."
The door opens and John freezes. Elizabeth stares at him but she doesn't blush or turn her head or smile. John grasps for words, but they've never been his forté, and what he really wants to do is kiss her until she doesn't look defeated anymore.
--
She dies that night.
The window shatters and the light comes in and she dies. She dies in a fire and she dies on the floor and she dies in his arms and every time she does it's because he wasn't fast enough, strong enough, brave enough, smart enough. Because he screwed up and a bomb went off and the cabin lost pressure and she turned so, so white and blue.
His mind screams at him to run even as his body freezes, dry heaving over the side of the bed, muscles knotted and skin crawling. He can't move, can barely breathe. His hand fumbles for the telephone.
"Elizabeth?"
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Tick.)
Ring.
(Boom.)
"John?"
His eyes slam shut in relief.
"Just checking."
XIV.
They decide not to court martial him. Rodney is reassigned to Area-51 again, but that's the worst of it. They go out to dinner to celebrate, and Elizabeth never mentions her argument with Landry and Rodney attributes their good fortune to the report he submitted on the attempted rescue mission.
"You can thank me by buying me dinner," Rodney informs him, and John rolls his eyes and Elizabeth cracks a smile.
--
After dinner they say goodbye to Rodney and John walks Elizabeth to her car. She's quiet and still.
"You okay?" he asks, touching her elbow gently.
She starts to nod, to reassure him, but stops and lowers her gaze. "Last time we had dinner together our pagers went off," she says. "Carson was here. Atlantis was--" she breaks off.
John slides his hand down her arm and grips her hand tightly.
"I don't know what to do," she admits.
She nods. "I thought you were dead," he murmurs, and for the first time, she looks like she gets it.
"Little Red Riding Hood," she says, and her voice cracks with tears.
"What?"
"In the 'jumper. You were unconscious and we were floating and I couldn't think of what to say, so I kept repeating Little Red Riding Hood." Her eyes are bright and her voice so broken. "I'm sorry."
John can't think of what to say, so he pulls her close and wraps his arms around her and tells her that he's fine. He's fine and she's fine and it'll all be fine, it'll get better, get easier, and the pain will fade, fade, fade, fade even if it never goes away.
Elizabeth buries her face in the collar of his coat like she'll fray apart at the seams if she doesn't hold on. When she finally pulls away, the expression on her face is what breaks him, and even though he knows it isn't smart and even fair, he cups her face between his hands and kisses her.
--
He knows what he'll see, now: a gold chandelier and an emerald dress and too much smoke. He'll see people running to the blaze, away from the blaze. He'll see bloodied bodies and her unconscious form, and hear the sound of sirens, of car alarms, of unearthly silence. Helicopters and gunfire.
Glass everywhere.
His hands skate under her shirt and lift, dragging the clothing up with the back of his wrists. She raises her arms, lowers them when the article is gone, blending in somewhere with the shadows on the floor. Her skin is warm at the shoulders, chest and arms, but her fingertips are cold. He holds both her hands between both of his.
She arches up on her toes and kisses him.
His name is light and warm against her lips, but he doesn't know what to say so he kisses her. Tangles his fingers in her hair and kisses her to drive away the cold anxiousness in his chest. His hand cups her cheek and holds her close and he doesn't know if she gets it because he keeps his eyes closed and his lips to hers. Her arms wind around his back as he moves, blanketing her with warm skin and desperation.
It's not enough.
Eyes closed, his mind wreaks havoc with his heart, greedily playing into all his fears and horrors--like she isn't here, like she isn't safe, like she isn't whole. Eyes open, he sees the red mark and her questioning gaze and her worry.
It's too much.
Tracking his way down her neck, he presses lips and teeth and tongue against her skin; keeps his eyes wide and open--hollows and curves, freckles and lines, bones and veins. Her legs shift, one between his and one to wrap around his hip and pull him closer. She says his name on a breath, hands skating over his shoulders, his arms; fingernails drawn gently against his scalp.
His hand covers her breast and her breathing stalls; her spine arcs like a wave, pressing skin closer to skin, sea closer to sky. He wants to tell her that she's beautiful, but it's so inadequate; he brushes his thumb against the underside of her breast and her fingers curl and he kisses the skin over her heart.
He wonders if it's too soft, too tender. She stills, and he feels her gaze and hears his name but he can't speak, doesn't want to speak, doesn't want to voice this or anything else going through his head. He flicks his tongue across her nipple and his hands play over her ribs. He moves lower, teeth nipping gently at her abdomen and she shivers; her soft moans quiet his nerves, and he finds himself smiling against her hip.
Her hands fall away, one brushing over his shoulder, the other reaching up to grasp the pillow beneath her head as he settles between her thighs, fingers and tongue tracing over her folds, mapping the way she moves, the sounds she makes. He can tell by the way she writhes that she's close; that she has her eyes closed and her lips parted and one hand covering her breast.
And he forgets. For a long moment, when her breathing stops and her back arches and she comes hard against his tongue; when she comes down slowly, blearily; when she smiles softly and reaches for him; when she kisses him like it means something--
Her legs curl around his waist and she moves her hips and he smirks (impatient). She rolls her eyes and drags her fingernails along his spine. He shudders (touché) and slides into her on a moan.
They rush back like a bomb--an explosion with nowhere to go, straight and sharp and he chokes. Fire on earth and fire on that planet and fire on Atlantis and his arms tighten around her without his consent. He doesn't hear his name under the roaring in his head and he tries to press her down, tries to keep her beneath him, keep her safe from the heat and the ash and the shrapnel and the flames and--
"John."
She presses against his shoulders, but he doesn't move; can't. There's fire in the field. Ash in her hair.
She's warm and tight around him, her skin like a brand everywhere they touch.
"John."
The images fade. Surround-sound switched off. He starts; pulls away and mutters some kind of apology, but she catches his arm and stays him with a look.
There's so much silence. John stares at his hands and stares at her knees and tries not to think about how her skin is pebbled from cold; how she's naked; how her expression is so bare and open and it terrifies him to think that he could do the same as that bomb, as the metal tearing into her skin; that once - just once - he could be wrong.
That he could leave scars, too.
When he says nothing, Elizabeth moves. Keeping her hand on his wrist, she straddles his waist, forcing him to straighten his legs and shift backwards towards the headboard. He starts to protest in confusion, but she shakes her head and kisses him softly. It's so hesitant, the way she brushes her lips against his, pulls back, and brushes them again. She laces their fingers together slowly, as if giving him the time to escape if he wanted. He wants to be afraid and embarrassed but he's too tired and she's too close, running her hands gently across his back in slow, soothing motions. Her lips brush against his ear as she whispers something soft--could be words of comfort, could be his name, could be poetry. He doesn't know. It doesn't matter.
He tries to speak, tries to soothe the worried look in her eyes with words he thinks she craves, but Elizabeth shakes her head; presses a finger to his lips.
"Don't," she whispers.
(It's okay.)
(Don't worry.)
(I love you.)
"'Lizabeth."
She kisses him and the voices vanish. Kisses him long and slow and deep and their tongues duel and he cups her neck in his palm, massaging the tight muscles hard enough to make her gasp and break away and bend into his touch. Open-mouthed kisses across his collarbone and shoulder distract him, leave him breathing unsteadily, his hands skittering along her back. Her skin is damp, her bones too prominent.
He can barely feel the scar under his fingertips, but he knows it's there. He thinks she says something, whispers something, but it's drowned out by the sudden press of his hips against hers; her gasp; the way she sinks down over him. Slick skin and heat and he keeps one hand on her thigh, the other at the small of her back, pressing her closer. She rocks slowly, too slowly, and he presses kisses to her shoulders, her breasts, her sternum, and urges her to move faster. He tries to let himself be carried away by her hands on his back and her lips against his neck and her breathing, loud and erratic and beautiful in the silence.
"Come on," he murmurs--begs.
She shakes her head slightly - "It's okay," she whispers - and squeezes her muscles around him; moves her hips; tightens her arms around his neck. (Let go.)
Desperately, he slips his hand between their bodies and presses his thumb against her clit. Her head falls back as she gasps, and he keeps his lips at the base of her throat as she comes; drops his forehead against her chest as he follows her.
XV.
He knocks on O'Neill's door and pokes his head in. "Sorry to bother you, Sir. Have you seen Elizabeth?"
Jack frowns. "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"She left the SGC this morning."
John's hands go numb. "Left, Sir?"
"Like a sabbatical," he says. "Kinda. I figured she told you."
John keeps his voice steady. "No, Sir. I'll, uh…" His throat is dry. "Thank you, Sir."
O'Neill nods and says something else, but John can't hear it for the ringing in his ears.
fall out
v
1. to happen or occur
XXI.
Elizabeth stays in a hotel near Unter der Linden.
Most of her time is spent in museums--the German Historical Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Museum für Naturkunde. She stares at the paintings and the blocs of text and the sculptures and the heirlooms and tries to make it all mean something, make it matter.
It's the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum that holds her attention. After that, every morning she has coffee in a cafe just off Leipziger Straße, and then walks to the museum. She spends hours wandering the rooms, staring at the changing screens, the film clips, the World War II images. One day she spends hours in one room, watching the scenes from Metropolis over and over again.
"Rediscovered after eighty years," an elderly man says, sitting next to her and watching with awe the deleted scenes from Lang's masterpiece. "Incredible," he says wistfully. Elizabeth swallows the lump in her throat. "After so many years," he says, "we can finally understand what he meant."
--
When she runs out of museums, she covers the other main tourist attractions. The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Berlin wall. She remembers a time when seeing the icons of history would have touched her, would have reminded her of why she loves politics and diplomacy and all the good it can accomplish; all the good people can accomplish, together. She searches, but all she feels is the coming winter wind against her skin, and it makes the scar across her cheek throb with a dull ache.
--
Sheppard's worried about you, Rodney says in an email. You should at least answer his calls.
International fees, she writes, I'll call him when I'm back.
She deletes the message instead of sending it, and instead closes her laptop and takes a long walk along the Spree river, losing herself in the city lights against the night sky.
--
If she isn't careful, her thoughts drift. She remembers the way the sheets felt against her skin, the way the light from the bedside table cast shadows across his face and the planes of his chest; the ease with which he kissed her, like he'd done so a hundred times before; like it was all so very, very simple.
She tries to avoid it, but it always comes back--his hands on her back and his breath against her neck; the way his fingers traced her scars.
XXII.
When she sleeps, she dreams of Atlantis at the bottom of the ocean. She dreams of Carson's cold, dead face staring back at her and asking her why. She dreams of legions of fallen soldiers and civilians under her command, staring at her with blood-splattered faces and asking her if it was worth it, in the end.
You lost, they say, and Kolya laughs and laughs and the Wraith laughs and laughs and Oberoth laughs and laughs and she wakes up screaming and wishes to God she had a warm embrace to turn to. You don't deserve it, the voices echo, and resign her to being as cold and lonely as they are, white and lifeless as they haunt her nightmares.
--
On the first Sunday of the month, she attends a Latin mass at St. Hedwig's Cathedral on the Bebelplatz. She doesn't know what she hopes to find among the psalms and homilies, only that it isn't there.
It isn't in the Cathedral and it isn't in the park and it isn't in the museums. It isn't on the busy streets around Alexanderplatz, or in any of the memorials, or along the river bank. It isn't in Berlin, but that isn't something she's ready to admit to herself yet, so she returns to the film museum and watches reels from the 1920s and searchers for the answers among the silent screens and the gentle hum of the projector.
XXIII.
She's staring at a photo of Marlene Dietrich when she hears his voice, and she finds it ironic that she went so far to find an answer, only to have the answer follow her so far.
XXIV.
Elizabeth throws her coat on the bed and turns to him angrily. "You followed me to Berlin?"
John glares back. "Wouldn't have had to if you'd stuck around."
Elizabeth puts her hands on her hips and ignores his accusation. "How did you even find me? I didn't tell--"
"Anyone," he says bitterly, "I know. I hacked your email."
"John--"
"Don't even start with me, Elizabeth. Rodney thinks you're visiting your mother, and O'Neill doesn't even know you've left the country."
"I'm entitled to a vacation."
"That's not what this is."
"No, it's exactly what it is. I needed time away and I took it."
"Convenient timing," he sneers.
Elizabeth opens her mouth to retort, but says nothing. She drops her arms to her sides and looks away. John sighs and runs a hand through his hair and waits. He waits and waits and it occurs to her in the ambient noise that he's been waiting so very, very long.
"I couldn't deal with it," she admits quietly, and John's head snaps up in surprise. "After everything, it was just…it was too fast."
John swallows and tries to keep his voice even. "You couldn't have just told me that?"
She smiles weakly. "That'd have been too easy, right?"
He huffs and rolls his eyes. "Right."
"I didn't…I didn't mean to hurt you. I just…I need…" she tries, but she doesn't know what she needs, only that she's so, so tired. She wishes she could stop, but it took her so long to get here. (Here:
Her hand flutters, hesitates, then lands lightly on his shoulder. A butterfly. A bee. Moth to a flame and she stares at the touch like she isn't sure whether she'll save him or burn him.) She doesn't want to think about how long it'll take her to get there.
"Elizabeth," he sighs, and takes her hand in hers.
"We lost everything, John," she whispers. "We lost."
"I know," he murmurs. "Doesn't mean we have to lose each other, though. Right?"
She stares at their hands. "You followed me to Berlin."
John shakes his head. "I'd follow you anywhere."
XXV.
They leave Berlin for Paris, and Paris for Lyon, and Lyon for Marseille.
Elizabeth stands on the hotel balcony overlooking the ocean, John's arms around her waist and his head on her shoulder; the smell of salt and the lulling sounds of movement and music and life soothes her. John draws patterns on her skin beneath her shirt and presses a kiss against the scar on her face.
It's the first time she realizes (admits) that she'd follow him, too.