NOTES: Season One fic with Lt. Ford.
Conversations On The Edge
The wind gusts through his hair, tumbling the new-cut strands like hay in the fields.
Right now, John is desperately wishing for fields. Fields are flat and solid, and there's no danger of falling off them.
He's desperately wishing for fields because she's standing right at the edge of the cliff. All it would take is an unexpected blast of wind and she'd be nothing more than a rag doll tumbling down into the ravine.
"Uh, Teyla?" Ford calls from the safety of the rock ledge. "You're making me dizzy."
She turns, and the wind tugs at her curls, reddish against the bleak shale surfaces of the far side. Her smile is brilliant, flashing out like a diamond sparkling against dark velvet. "I have good balance."
It's not her balance John distrusts.
His other two team-mates are standing well back from the view. McKay's already protested that it's not about the heights. It's about the lack of barrier between him and the height - a very important consideration in the scientist's view.
John understands that only too well. He is good with heights. Of course, he's better with them when he has some control over his surroundings - the pilot's yoke in his hands, the switches and buttons that control the plane, rather than standing at the edge of a ledge with a wind tugging at his clothing, urging him out to Teyla, standing solitary on the ledge.
He walks out, ignoring a moment vertigo that yawns the gaping mouth of the ravine at his feet, and plants his feet beside her - as much to prove to himself that he can do this as to speak with her.
"You know, we could go back to the cliff face."
She glances at him, and a tiny smile hovers at the corner of her mouth - a smile that suggests that she's laughing at him. "We could," Teyla agrees. "You may."
Like hell. John isn't about to back off. She didn't phrase it as a challenge, but he's taken it that way. "You know, we should continue on towards the settlement."
"Yes."
Apparently something in the atmosphere interferes with the mechanics of the 'jumper - hence the trek on foot to this settlement. Hence the ravine. Hence the ledge. Hence Teyla standing with her booted toes in line with the edge.
Hence John standing beside her.
He knows why she's out here while McKay and Ford stand well back from the edge.
He knows why he's out here standing beside her.
Compared with most women from Earth, Teyla seems reserved, concealed. If she's their window into the peoples of Pegasus, then she's tinted glass, nearly impossible to see through until you're really close up.
John would like to get close - if she'd let him. But while she's friendly and interested, there's been nothing to suggest that she'd invite more from him. It's probably a bad idea anyway. He asked her to join his team which means loyalty, friendship, and trust - things that go way beyond a mere roll in the hay.
Still, there's something in her that calls to him. A sense of kinship that he doesn't feel with anyone else in the city. They're all new and strange to him, although various people have tentatively approached him, and Dr. Weir is being friendly in an unnervingly bright and cheery way that John thinks he'll get used to sooner or later.
Maybe it's Teyla's solitude - the sense of difference and distance that she holds about herself.
John's used to solitude.
He's used to pushing the boundaries of command and facing isolation for it.
He's used to standing on the edge.
"We'll have to come back this way on the return journey," he reminds her. "You can walk back along the ledge - all the way if you like."
Teyla closes her eyes, prompting him to reach out in case she falls. But her eyes snap open again before he touches her, and John drops his hand, self-conscious.
"Will you stand with me?"
John indicates his position, just shy of the trail edge. "I already am."
And as she smiles and steps away from the edge, John wonders if they're talking about more than just the ridge.
- fin -