Title: Blame
Summary: "You must learn to live with it or it will never let you go."
Characters: Teyla & Rodney
Rating: K
azure-horizon.livejournal

"Rodney?"

She slipped into his darkened lab when he did not answer. A single table lamp was lit, highlighting his drawn features, pale from too little sleep. She paused for a moment, a hand resting on a worktop shrouded in darkness, her eyes fixed on the scientists face.

She knew he had not heard her.

"Rodney," she said again as she reached out and touched the back of his hand.

He jerked his head in her direction and frowned a hand rising to paw at his mouth. His lips were white and dry, his eyes glassy; she recognised exhaustion and smiled at him slightly.

"Teyla," he said flatly and looked to the laptop in front of him, frowned at the screen then shut the machine down. "I was just... ah..."

"You should go to bed, Rodney. Sleep," she advised him gently, trying to ease his startled stare with a smile. She watched as he moved his jaw in circles, his eyes darting from surface to blinking surface, his hand tapping a tuneless staccato against his hip. Eventually he returned his eyes to her and she was startled by the depth of the sadness there.

"I can't," he told her truthfully, his voice unsteady and wavering. She took a breath and stepped towards him but he shook his head, evading her grasp. "I'm okay." She levelled him with a stare and he looked away. "Should you be ah... up and about?" he asked eventually when the silence had dragged on too long and Teyla smiled.

Many believed Rodney selfish and, for the most part, they were right but when it came to those close to him he was just like the rest of them; he would do anything for them. She hesitated for a moment before answering, her own dark sadness seeping through her resolve.

"I could not stay in the infirmary any longer."

She didn't say anything else, - did not mention the hollow feeling, the sudden depression when Doctor Keller stepped past the curtain instead of Carson – but she knew he heard the unspoken words. He felt them too.

She heard him sigh, the soft thrump as he folded onto the chair at his desk. She pursed her lips, willing away the sudden pain in her chest. She tucked a stool behind her knees and sat, her hand resting close to Rodney's. She watched him glance at her fingers, her eyes before he turned his head from her, eyes misting over with a watery fog.

"When I was younger," she began but her words were clogged, heavy with tears she could not repress. He turned back to her, questioning eyes not quite meeting hers. "My friend and I used to bathe in a river not far from our village." Her mind automatically conjured the river, the silver-blue 

colour of the flowing water as it gurgled past hanging branches of ancient trees, flowering buds blossoming sprinkling the air with their sweet scent. "One day, I decided not to go – the night before, friends had come to trade. There was a boy with them..." she trailed off when Rodney smirked and she rolled her eyes at him.

"Sorry," he mumbled and looked away, almost shy.

"I wanted to spend some time with the visitors, so I did not go." The image of Rayn came to her mind but his features were hazy, indistinguishable, worn away over time. "That day..." her voice cracked suddenly and darkness swamped her mind, dragging her into an abyss it had taken her years to escape. 2A lone Wraith came through our Stargate; the river was not so far from there." She gulped. "Some of us sensed him and I knew..." she trailed off again, her eyes seeing not Rodney's lab but her home, the trees rushing past as she sped to the river. She knew because his presence was suddenly stronger, she knew what they were running to. She felt the knot as tightly as she had that day, felt it twisting in her stomach, crushing the breath from her lungs. She had been the first to arrive, falling to her knees beside the withered husk of her friend. "I was twelve years old, I knew what I had done."

She felt Rodney's hand on the back of hers, his awkward pat strangely comforting. She tried to smile. She cleared her throat when it failed and withdrew her hand, running fingers through her hair.

"I blamed myself – if I had gone I could have warned her; she would have survived. It was avoidable, I could have changed what happened but I did not." She paused, feeling the strength return to her bones and she looked to Rodney. He was watching her with glassy eyes, his tongue parting his lips. She grasped his hand. "It was not easy living with the knowledge that I could have changed what happened. If I had gone, Beya would have survived." She tightened her grip on his hand, hoping he was hearing what she was trying to say. "It did not cross my mind that she may have died anyway – two days later there was a culling – the one that took my father. I did not sense the Wraith coming, not soon enough anyway."

Rodney stood, wrenching his hand from hers and covered his wet face.

"Ours is not an easy life, Rodney, it never had been in Pegasus." She ducked her head, her hair sliding over her shoulders to cover her face. "I still blame myself for what happened to Beya, even though no one else did. You must learn to live with it or it will never let you go."

She waited a few minutes, hoping he understood what she had been trying to tell him but he said nothing – she had not expected him to. She stood quietly, hoping to slip out as quietly as she had come in.

"Do you think it was my..." he didn't finish the sentence but Teyla knew what he meant.

She met his gaze and slowly, surely shook her head.

"No." She reached out and touched his arm. "Only you do." She met his small smile for a moment before turning to leave. She knew he needed his own time to heal. They all did. She was almost out of the door when he called her name.

"Thank you."

She hesitated a moment before nodding, smiling at him over her shoulder as she left.

As the doors slid shut, she heard his sob.