Doppelganger
"You shouldn't have done that."
Elizabeth's voice echoes through the dark control room. There is nothing in John's sight but the active Stargate, its blue shadows running along every wall.
"You have no idea what I've been through the last time."
Composed as her voice sounds, he can still hear the fear behind her words. As always, her role of leader prevailing and she did her best to hide it, but he knows better.
He wants to answer. Tell her he could have, he would have understood, if only she'd tried to explain it to him.
But no, she'd decided to shut down on this, bury her pain deep where it had no chance to bother anyone else. An expert at keeping pain to himself, John knows too that it would have had no chance to dissolve either.
Suddenly she's there, her frail figure appearing at the top of the stairs. He tries to reach for her, climbing the steps in front of him. The more he climbs, the higher Elizabeth seems. He starts running, helpless, but the brown curls that she gradually let grow over the years still frame a distant face. When she speaks again, her voice is cold and the restrained look she gives him sends shudders along his spine.
"It's too late John. Why did you let them do that to me?"
He knows she's right. When she'd needed him most, he'd let her down. When he left her alone and Mckay reactivated the nanites within her, no matter that the scientist's decision had been purely emotional, it was John's fault. The scientist didn't understand, didn't know that Elizabeth would rather have died than put her people in danger. He knows, because the first time he met her, John had realized there were many things on which their opinions differed, but on this, they thought alike.
He's a coward and he knows she must think the same. He couldn't bring himself to face her alone, because though he could have foreseen her reaction, he failed to stop the irredeemable from happening. With this knowledge, confronting her had been beyond his power. He wanted to believe she would be fine so fiercly because the very thought of loosing her was untolerable. Caught in the force of his wishful thinking, now she's the one left to face the consequences. And because he knows this guilt won't let him live for long, he still wants to believe there is hope for Elizabeth to be saved.
In a final burst of determined speed, he reaches her. The room around them spins in a blur. Clinging her arm, John tries to speak but she is torn away from his grasp toward the shinning blue ripples of gate.
Her expression changes, panic alterring her features as the face of Oberoth and other replicators appear behind her. She turns, one final plea on her lips, "John! Don't fail me!" she shouts.
The gate shuts down and he's alone again, leaving his despair to mourn in darkness.
When the reparations of the city were made, the idea somehow came up to set some tables out on the mess' balcony. As Teyla listened to the tale of her friends' previous night experiences, she took mental note to ask whom she could thank for this refreshing initiative.
"Don't you think it's strange, that each of us had incredibly vivid nightmares with Colonel Sheppard being somehow an integral part?" asked Jennifer Keller, pulling Teyla out of her reverie.
She nodded in response, "Acting most unlike Colonel Sheppard."
As if the mention of his name had suddenly attracted him, John appeared from behind a pillar, his own breakfast tray in hand. He smiled upon seeing his team already sitted, and as he pulled out a chair, Teyla politely introduced him to the conversation.
"What about you John, did you suffer from any nightmares in the previous days?"
His expression tensed somewhat, but he finally shrugged, "Nothing out of the ordinary."