In the Details
by Bil!
K+ - General, Romance – Teyla, John/Elizabeth – Oneshot
Summary: The Earth people see only the obvious, not the subtle. Teyla muses on her and Elizabeth's different relationships with John Sheppard. Sparky.
Season: 2. Spoilers: Runner.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I've said it a lot and it's still true.
In the Details
by Bil!
I have heard the whispers, though the whisperers believe me oblivious, whispers linking my name with John Sheppard. I see their eyes, watching the pair of us when we are together, watching for some sign that the rumours are true. These people have so many rumours about so many things. It is something strange about them, one of those small, little things that make them so much more foreign to me than their ability to comprehend the technology of the Ancestors ever could. They come from a world where they have so much time, so little fear, that they have learnt to indulge in fabrication, in prevarication. Among my people it is much more likely that we will simply say what must be said and be done with it. We do not dance around and around a subject as the hours slip by. And the idea of trading stories which are almost certainly not true – we have not that much time.
Even had we the technology, we should never spend so much time in front of this tee-vee as they claim to. So much of their days are spent on trivial pursuits, pastimes even they acknowledge to have no usefulness. Among my people every activity has purpose – the very stories and games we teach to our children are designed to train them to become stronger, faster, quicker. To teach them to survive in a galaxy where they are nothing but prey.
I have assimilated much during my time here in Atlantis in order to keep these people from truly understanding how very different I am from them. It is all right for my people, who are separated from them, to be as different as they truly are, but I live amongst these Earth people. There is only so much difference they can accept.
I know this, I have known it all along, even before I accepted a place among them. Their goal, their ability to fight – to fight the Wraith instead of hiding – I felt to be worth the effort. That I could be a part of that fight was, to me, worth the sacrifice of my leadership, my people's companionship... and perhaps even the pieces of myself I have given up to fit among them. So from the start I have worked to learn as much as I can about them.
That is where Colonel Sheppard came in. He has a rare gift: tolerance. He is, perhaps, the most open-minded person in Atlantis. I trusted him almost from the start and he has trusted me. And so it was him to whom I turned to guide my first steps into his world as I guided his first steps into mine.
And yes, that mutual journey, reaching out to each other across the divide, has made us close. But the eyes watching us do not see friendship, they see something different. Something that does not exist.
These people, they know so much, live so long, have so much time to waste on unimportant things – but they are not very observant. They see only what they wish to see, not what truly exists. They see him sparring with me in the gym and believe it means he wishes to become physically intimate with me. They don't wonder if it is simply a true warrior's desire to learn that one last trick that could save his life. Or his way of apologising for my distance from my people by keeping alive this one part of them. Or that it is a simple fact of his nature to be constantly seeking a challenge. They see him laughing with me and they think we are flirting, they don't wonder if I could just happen to have a sense of humour that matches his with surprising precision at times despite our alien cultures. They see that he spends a lot of time with me and the whispers start up louder – because they don't acknowledge that he spends time with me as a part of his team. No one seems to realise that we are not merely his teammates, we are his family. That for all his casualness he is a man who feels things very deeply, a man who has been hurt and hurt and still desperately reaches out to those he loves, needing to love them.
No one sees that we are, especially now Ronan has taken Aidan's place, the team of outsiders, Atlantis's misfits. Rodney, who cannot understand other people even when he sincerely tries because it was simply not given to him to be able to; Ronan, who has spent seven years Running and no longer knows how to stop; myself, separated from my people and adrift amongst aliens. And John Sheppard, who knows exactly how to fit in, but does so only by hiding the dearest parts of himself.
They look and they watch, but they cannot understand us.
And because they are so busy watching him when he is with me, the onlookers somehow miss the moments when he is not. Perhaps those moments are shorter, but they are greater than anything he has with me.
He brings her coffee when they share a meeting, he gets her to promise to come to movie night, he orders her out of her office when she has been working all day and needs to eat. He glances at her across the room and they hold an entire conversation in that moment. Perhaps she does not spend hours at his bedside when he is injured, for she doesn't have hours to spare, but she always comes, and when she does his smile is for her alone.
The eyes around me see only the obvious, not the subtle. These people live so long, yet are in such a rush that few of them take the time to study the details of the tapestry being woven about them with every breath. No matter what those around me may believe, there could never be a relationship between Colonel Sheppard and myself such as they suspect. He is a handsome man, it is true, with many qualities I admire (and some I do not), but I am content with our friendship. It is a rare and precious thing to have teammates in whom one can place complete and utter trust – and I am not a fool. I will not desire of him something he cannot give me.
What the watchers have failed to note is something very simple, present every day. I cannot understand how even they, intent on avoiding the subtle, do not see it – or rather, hear it.
It is as simple as the way he says two different words.
One is my name. Teyla, said in clipped syllables with the strange way he has of speaking, his alien accent. It is just a word to him, a means of gaining my attention, a label. Useful, but nothing more.
The other word is also a name: Elizabeth. Each syllable enunciated, pronounced, wrapped in careful warmth, bringing a light to his eyes. It is a prayer, a benediction, an acknowledgement of something greater than himself. The very word is a wonder to him; its owner is much more.
John Sheppard could never love me in the way the rumour-makers believe, for there is another who held his heart first – and better.
Fin