'Amarantine' Chapter Seven - Gone
Title: "Amarantine"
Chapter: 7 of 10 - Gone
Rating: PG
Pairing: John/Elizabeth
Genre: Romance/Angst/Drama
Summary: "He didn't have forever, but you do. And you wonder time and time again, if that makes a difference."
Author's Note: This is my first Atlantis fic in quite a little while, and it feels nice to come home every once in a while, I've gotta say. I've been working on it for some time now and I hope that it's reached it's potential. I've written it for anuna_81 as a gift.
This is set following "Ghost In The Machine" (in a sense). And it leads on to well beyond the end of the series. I hope that the fic can explain it for you.
Also noted: Each chapter will be accompanied by an Enya song. These songs have all been specifically chosen to coincide with each chapter, so please listen as you read. Think of it as a soundtrack. (Note: All mistakes and annoying repetitions, are mine.)
Disclaimer: All Stargate Atlantis characters and/or locations are the property of MGM. No copyright inringement is intended nor is profit gained from the distribution of this story.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten
You go there you're gone forever
I go there I'll lose my way
We stay here we're not together
Anywhere is.
~ Anywhere Is, Enya
Chapter 7: Gone
You find yourself spending hours of your days with him. Getting lost in his stories; fairytales, you like to call them. But he's just as proud, if not moreso, of you when you find yourself filling in the gaps he leaves on purpose. He's baiting you, you know that. He's urging you to remember, to recall what you've lost. And whilst you're grateful to him; the more you remember, the more painful it becomes and you find that it feels awfully characteristic of you, to try and hide from that pain.
You realise that slowly, you're getting to know Meredith just as well as you ever knew him or those faces that you remember from so long ago. They're still only faces, given names when he tells you his stories, but in your mind their faces stand out to you more than anything else. Their faces are more real, more important, than the stories behind them.
Meredith takes you to the Mainland and you realise, as you step down into the small boat - which is large by ferry-boat standards, but tiny compared to Atlantis - that in all the time you've been 'back', this is the first moment that you've actually felt the gentle cadence of the waves, rocking the boat from side to side. It doesn't make you nervous; it makes you nostalgic for faces even older than the ones closest to your heart. You smile across the boat at Meredith - she's wearing a broad sun-hat and large sunglasses. She looks elegant, you think and it reminds you of the woman that used to sit you on her knee down by the lake-side as you watched a distinguished man attempt to row a canoe.
You find that you like the memories that come to you in small moments. When John touches your hand, you get a flash of memory of him touching you somewhere else. Sometimes it makes your heart flutter, sometimes it makes your breath quicken and sometimes, when he meets your eye at just the same moment, it makes your cheeks flush crimson.
Meredith is a great help with the smaller things. She encourages you to remember how John likes his tea but you're worried that you can't conjure a single moment in your scattered memory, when you ever brought his tea - You can't even gather the notion that he'd ever liked it. John tells you later, with a gentle chuckle as he sips tea that is too bitter, that he was the one that always, always, brought tea to you. And you grin like a child because he's found yet another way, to make you feel like you're not a failure.
It's like magic, his gift. He knows just the way, with a weathered smile, to hand you a few baby steps forward just after you thought you'd taken two back.
The streets of San Francisco are busy and you find yourself overwhelmed at first; frightened even, if you're willing to admit it. It's been almost three months since you awoke on what you now know, is the West Pier. And in those entire three months, you've never been in a room with more than ten people at a time. The sheer thousands that pass you in the first five minutes of stepping into the Market at Meredith's side, terrify you. But there is Meredith with her familiar smile, right there by your side and she whispers that her Uncle John used to take her to this Market when she was a child, that they'd eat Candy Corn until their bellies hurt and ride the Ferris Wheel at the Fair twice a year.
Suddenly, with the thought of Ferris Wheels, you find that you're not so afraid; because it makes you think of John, as he was, and you feel safe with his smile in your heart.
You never stay too long though. The crowds are too much and you're sure that Meredith can see in your eyes, that there is something there, still burning, that is urging you to run back to him. She mentions, quietly one night as the two of you sip warm milk and munch on chocolate chip cookies, that she understands why you feel so drawn to him, beyond the feelings you clearly shared for each other, way back then. She says how she can see it in the way you ache for each new story he has to tell, each moment that passes where another truth just might slip past his lips.
He is the last remaining link to the woman that you are. Not were, or had been. The world has moved on without you, generations have passed on, grown and left this place but here you are, in an all but alien world; alone.
She tells you with a small smile, that she'll never be offended if you choose his whispered fairytales over shopping through the market with her.
You've made a dear friend in Meredith and you're grateful to her for all that she's done. But when the kind-mannered doctor - Samuel McKay, Meredith's older brother - declares him bedridden, you incline your head with glistening eyes and tell her honestly, that it's time you sat down and listened to all the fairytales you can possibly get. She doesn't say a word, just wraps her arm around your shoulders in shared heartache and the both of you walk the length of the darkened hall towards his room with Caleb following close behind. The lights don't shine as brightly in the halls when you're not with John and while you notice this, notice how even Atlantis seems to weep for him, you say nothing of it.
And you don't tell Meredith that you can see in Caleb's eyes, that his heart is breaking for her.
"We got pretty used to this, didn't we?" You ask and John smiles, his lips shaking slightly as he holds back a cough.
"Yeah, we did." You're talking about sitting by his side, watching him recover each time he risked his life and managed to only just survive. But you both know you mean something else. He's here, you're right beside him and since that day in the control room, as you looked up at him and held a magnum of champagne to your chest, the setting you were in never mattered, as long as it was you and him against the universe. And you realise just there, that the magnum of champagne was another little detail he'd purposely left out to see if you remembered.
"Is it really a terrible thing to get used to?" He asks and you smirk, brushing your fingers across his knuckles as you fight a few tears that spring to your eyes for no apparent reason. You're kidding yourself though, because you know very well the reason for those barely concealed tears. You couldn't be with him, completely, back then and you can't be with him now and the irony of it is a sudden blow to the chest.
As he sleeps you find yourself studying his hands. Every crease and wrinkle and callous. You think of the lines across his hands as a sort of timeline of his life, kind of like the way hundred year old trees grow ring after ring, growing taller and stronger as the time passes by them on the breeze. You compare his life to those trees; near to a hundred years, waiting in the same forest, watching the ebb and flow of time. It also speaks to the almost organic feel of Atlantis. With water trickling through the halls like a babbling brook and the towers, tall organic spires, standing beside him in his dark solitude.
You smile through tears and saddened eyes that now remember all he ever meant to you and your heart flutters and a vice grip holds it tight as he whispers that this is the way it's supposed to be. You're smiling but it breaks your heart when he speaks quietly; his voice small but steady as he says:
"I was always supposed to die first, Elizabeth." He smiles up at you, lovingly and finally at peace. In the glistening of his beautiful, dark, hazel eyes you see the man you fell in love with in the city that flew amongst the stars and he breathes his last promise, touching your cheek with all the tenderness of a man who's loved the same woman, his entire life. "It's okay now."
You feel guilty but you also feel cheated because you've only just gotten him back but now you're losing him again. The world isn't fair, you've always known that. But fate, it seems, is all the more cruel and without heart.
His eyes close and his breathing evens out and you get the instant memory of shouting his name through a static radio to no reply. You ignore that Meredith is sitting behind you, sobbing quietly. Samuel and Caleb are across the room, both men with their arms crossed over their chests and their lips pressed together in identical, thin, tense lines. You don't want to acknowledge that they're there because that would mean acknowledging that this is all real. That would mean acknowledging that you really did come back from the dead, only to watch the only man you ever thought you could love, die.
"To have you here, Elizabeth..." Meredith starts, but her sobs pull her words to a sudden halt. She can't voice it but you know what she's trying to say. Even through your own pain, you completely agree with her because you know what these last few months have meant to him. And you don't want to imagine what he'd have felt, the pain he would have gone through, if he'd had to face the end alone.
You're grateful then, in the silence of the infirmary where Samuel's patients are few though the equipment is far more advanced than anything Carson ever had to work with. You're grateful that you could give him this; grateful that you could give him one moment of peace in a lifetime of waiting.
Dropping your head down, you clutch his hand within your own, no longer caring for the way your taut skin looks against his aged fingers.
Your heart is in your throat and tears seep from your eyes, soaking into the blanket as your body shakes with grief because he's so unquestionably gone.
And suddenly it's like you're floating between worlds again.
So irrevocably alone.
TBC.
Chapter: 7 of 10 - Gone
Rating: PG
Pairing: John/Elizabeth
Genre: Romance/Angst/Drama
Summary: "He didn't have forever, but you do. And you wonder time and time again, if that makes a difference."
Author's Note: This is my first Atlantis fic in quite a little while, and it feels nice to come home every once in a while, I've gotta say. I've been working on it for some time now and I hope that it's reached it's potential. I've written it for anuna_81 as a gift.
This is set following "Ghost In The Machine" (in a sense). And it leads on to well beyond the end of the series. I hope that the fic can explain it for you.
Also noted: Each chapter will be accompanied by an Enya song. These songs have all been specifically chosen to coincide with each chapter, so please listen as you read. Think of it as a soundtrack. (Note: All mistakes and annoying repetitions, are mine.)
Disclaimer: All Stargate Atlantis characters and/or locations are the property of MGM. No copyright inringement is intended nor is profit gained from the distribution of this story.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten
Click to viewYou go there you're gone forever
I go there I'll lose my way
We stay here we're not together
Anywhere is.
~ Anywhere Is, Enya
Chapter 7: Gone
You find yourself spending hours of your days with him. Getting lost in his stories; fairytales, you like to call them. But he's just as proud, if not moreso, of you when you find yourself filling in the gaps he leaves on purpose. He's baiting you, you know that. He's urging you to remember, to recall what you've lost. And whilst you're grateful to him; the more you remember, the more painful it becomes and you find that it feels awfully characteristic of you, to try and hide from that pain.
You realise that slowly, you're getting to know Meredith just as well as you ever knew him or those faces that you remember from so long ago. They're still only faces, given names when he tells you his stories, but in your mind their faces stand out to you more than anything else. Their faces are more real, more important, than the stories behind them.
Meredith takes you to the Mainland and you realise, as you step down into the small boat - which is large by ferry-boat standards, but tiny compared to Atlantis - that in all the time you've been 'back', this is the first moment that you've actually felt the gentle cadence of the waves, rocking the boat from side to side. It doesn't make you nervous; it makes you nostalgic for faces even older than the ones closest to your heart. You smile across the boat at Meredith - she's wearing a broad sun-hat and large sunglasses. She looks elegant, you think and it reminds you of the woman that used to sit you on her knee down by the lake-side as you watched a distinguished man attempt to row a canoe.
You find that you like the memories that come to you in small moments. When John touches your hand, you get a flash of memory of him touching you somewhere else. Sometimes it makes your heart flutter, sometimes it makes your breath quicken and sometimes, when he meets your eye at just the same moment, it makes your cheeks flush crimson.
Meredith is a great help with the smaller things. She encourages you to remember how John likes his tea but you're worried that you can't conjure a single moment in your scattered memory, when you ever brought his tea - You can't even gather the notion that he'd ever liked it. John tells you later, with a gentle chuckle as he sips tea that is too bitter, that he was the one that always, always, brought tea to you. And you grin like a child because he's found yet another way, to make you feel like you're not a failure.
It's like magic, his gift. He knows just the way, with a weathered smile, to hand you a few baby steps forward just after you thought you'd taken two back.
The streets of San Francisco are busy and you find yourself overwhelmed at first; frightened even, if you're willing to admit it. It's been almost three months since you awoke on what you now know, is the West Pier. And in those entire three months, you've never been in a room with more than ten people at a time. The sheer thousands that pass you in the first five minutes of stepping into the Market at Meredith's side, terrify you. But there is Meredith with her familiar smile, right there by your side and she whispers that her Uncle John used to take her to this Market when she was a child, that they'd eat Candy Corn until their bellies hurt and ride the Ferris Wheel at the Fair twice a year.
Suddenly, with the thought of Ferris Wheels, you find that you're not so afraid; because it makes you think of John, as he was, and you feel safe with his smile in your heart.
You never stay too long though. The crowds are too much and you're sure that Meredith can see in your eyes, that there is something there, still burning, that is urging you to run back to him. She mentions, quietly one night as the two of you sip warm milk and munch on chocolate chip cookies, that she understands why you feel so drawn to him, beyond the feelings you clearly shared for each other, way back then. She says how she can see it in the way you ache for each new story he has to tell, each moment that passes where another truth just might slip past his lips.
He is the last remaining link to the woman that you are. Not were, or had been. The world has moved on without you, generations have passed on, grown and left this place but here you are, in an all but alien world; alone.
She tells you with a small smile, that she'll never be offended if you choose his whispered fairytales over shopping through the market with her.
You've made a dear friend in Meredith and you're grateful to her for all that she's done. But when the kind-mannered doctor - Samuel McKay, Meredith's older brother - declares him bedridden, you incline your head with glistening eyes and tell her honestly, that it's time you sat down and listened to all the fairytales you can possibly get. She doesn't say a word, just wraps her arm around your shoulders in shared heartache and the both of you walk the length of the darkened hall towards his room with Caleb following close behind. The lights don't shine as brightly in the halls when you're not with John and while you notice this, notice how even Atlantis seems to weep for him, you say nothing of it.
And you don't tell Meredith that you can see in Caleb's eyes, that his heart is breaking for her.
"We got pretty used to this, didn't we?" You ask and John smiles, his lips shaking slightly as he holds back a cough.
"Yeah, we did." You're talking about sitting by his side, watching him recover each time he risked his life and managed to only just survive. But you both know you mean something else. He's here, you're right beside him and since that day in the control room, as you looked up at him and held a magnum of champagne to your chest, the setting you were in never mattered, as long as it was you and him against the universe. And you realise just there, that the magnum of champagne was another little detail he'd purposely left out to see if you remembered.
"Is it really a terrible thing to get used to?" He asks and you smirk, brushing your fingers across his knuckles as you fight a few tears that spring to your eyes for no apparent reason. You're kidding yourself though, because you know very well the reason for those barely concealed tears. You couldn't be with him, completely, back then and you can't be with him now and the irony of it is a sudden blow to the chest.
As he sleeps you find yourself studying his hands. Every crease and wrinkle and callous. You think of the lines across his hands as a sort of timeline of his life, kind of like the way hundred year old trees grow ring after ring, growing taller and stronger as the time passes by them on the breeze. You compare his life to those trees; near to a hundred years, waiting in the same forest, watching the ebb and flow of time. It also speaks to the almost organic feel of Atlantis. With water trickling through the halls like a babbling brook and the towers, tall organic spires, standing beside him in his dark solitude.
You smile through tears and saddened eyes that now remember all he ever meant to you and your heart flutters and a vice grip holds it tight as he whispers that this is the way it's supposed to be. You're smiling but it breaks your heart when he speaks quietly; his voice small but steady as he says:
"I was always supposed to die first, Elizabeth." He smiles up at you, lovingly and finally at peace. In the glistening of his beautiful, dark, hazel eyes you see the man you fell in love with in the city that flew amongst the stars and he breathes his last promise, touching your cheek with all the tenderness of a man who's loved the same woman, his entire life. "It's okay now."
You feel guilty but you also feel cheated because you've only just gotten him back but now you're losing him again. The world isn't fair, you've always known that. But fate, it seems, is all the more cruel and without heart.
His eyes close and his breathing evens out and you get the instant memory of shouting his name through a static radio to no reply. You ignore that Meredith is sitting behind you, sobbing quietly. Samuel and Caleb are across the room, both men with their arms crossed over their chests and their lips pressed together in identical, thin, tense lines. You don't want to acknowledge that they're there because that would mean acknowledging that this is all real. That would mean acknowledging that you really did come back from the dead, only to watch the only man you ever thought you could love, die.
"To have you here, Elizabeth..." Meredith starts, but her sobs pull her words to a sudden halt. She can't voice it but you know what she's trying to say. Even through your own pain, you completely agree with her because you know what these last few months have meant to him. And you don't want to imagine what he'd have felt, the pain he would have gone through, if he'd had to face the end alone.
You're grateful then, in the silence of the infirmary where Samuel's patients are few though the equipment is far more advanced than anything Carson ever had to work with. You're grateful that you could give him this; grateful that you could give him one moment of peace in a lifetime of waiting.
Dropping your head down, you clutch his hand within your own, no longer caring for the way your taut skin looks against his aged fingers.
Your heart is in your throat and tears seep from your eyes, soaking into the blanket as your body shakes with grief because he's so unquestionably gone.
And suddenly it's like you're floating between worlds again.
So irrevocably alone.
TBC.