Stargate Atlantis and its characters do not belong to me.
Thanks to my beta reader who wishes to remain anonymous. You know who you are.
Set sometime after "Instinct" and before "Critical Mass" in season II (which is when I started writing it).
GEMINI
"John," said Elizabeth. She reached across her desk and gently placed her hand on his arm.
He jerked away angrily, the sudden movement causing a stack of neatly piled reports to collapse and slide across her desktop. "No! I'm not giving up!"
Elizabeth studied him sympathetically--noting the dark circles under his eyes and the tired lines of his face. Only few weeks ago, she would have said John Sheppard had a boyish appearance. Not any more. "John, she could be anywhere," she said, careful to keep her voice calm and even.
"I can't..." he paused, his voice quavering. Taking a deep breath he continued, "I won't give up on her."
"I'm not asking you to give up," reasoned Elizabeth. "But we've exhausted all our leads for the moment."
"What do you want me to do?" It came out as a desperate plea.
Elizabeth pursed her lips. She had seen men at the end of their endurance and they had nothing on this John Sheppard. "How about we start with you getting a full eight hours of sleep?"
"Sleep?" he half laughed, half choked, looking at her as if she had just asked him to eat a bucket of broken glass.
"Yes. Sleep."
"Sleep? While she's out there…maybe hurt…maybe…"
"Stop it, John. You've done everything you could. You've followed every lead, visited every world where she might have been taken, questioned every person in the village where she disappeared. Every team is keeping their eyes and ears open. Several of the Athosians have contacted friends and family on other worlds asking them to keep a look out for her as well. If anyone gets so much as a hint of Teyla, they'll report back instantly." When she saw he was still resisting the idea, she continued, "You're not going back through that gate until Dr. Beckett clears you and you know he won't do that until you've rested." His expression was clearly defiant so she gentled her voice. "You're not doing her any good wearing yourself down like this." She leaned over and placed her hand on his arm again. "This wasn't your fault." He turned his haunted eyes on her and she could see how much he wanted to believe it. "It wasn't," she said again, searching his eyes, willing him to accept it. When he closed his eyes tiredly, she knew that she had won. "Go to bed, John. We can talk more about this in the morning when you've rested. Things will seem clearer then."
He rose and stumbled out the office door. Elizabeth nodded to Major Lorne who had been standing near one of the control consoles. He quietly slipped out behind Sheppard, making sure the tired man made it back to his quarters. She had no doubt once John actually stopped moving for more than ten minutes, he'd be out like a light.
A few minutes later, Lorne radioed confirmation that Sheppard had fallen asleep in his quarters. Elizabeth, in turn, radioed Beckett to let him know. The physician had been increasing worried about how hard Sheppard had been pushing himself. But no amount of arguing had been able to convince the colonel to rest, not while Teyla might still be out there, somewhere.
"Let him sleep himself out," suggested Carson, sadly. "Maybe tomorrow we can talk some sense into him."
-
Elizabeth toyed with the food on her plate distractedly, not even looking up when Rodney took the seat beside her.
He watched her obliquely as he salted the food on his tray. "You've done everything you could. We all have."
"Funny, that's exactly what I told John yesterday." She put down her folk and stopped pretending to be interested in her lunch and looked at him. "Have we?" It was a desperate plea for reassurance.
Rodney saw a tear slide down her cheek and shifted his chair to shield her from the rest of the cafeteria patrons as he placed his hand on top of hers. "You know we have, Elizabeth."
"It wasn't enough though, was it?" She waved her free hand around. "Here we are in the city of the Ancients, a thousand discoveries at our fingertips on a daily basis and we can't find one woman."
"All the teams are keeping their eyes and ears open for any clue," Rodney reassured her.
"I told John that, too."
Rodney leaned over and wiped the tear off her cheek with his thumb. "Well, then, it couldn't come from a more reliable source, could it?"
She gave him a game smile but her heart wasn't in it. Weir could see the sadness in his eyes mirroring her own. It had been weeks now, and as each day passed the chances of finding Teyla grew ever smaller.
"Damn it," she exploded, slamming her fist down on the table with bruising force. "How could she just disappear without a trace?"
Rodney snagged her hand and held it tightly, preventing further chance of injury. "We will find her, Elizabeth."
"How can you be so sure?"
Because Sheppard won't stop looking, because I'm a genius, because Ronon's the best tracker I've ever seen, and because you won't give up.
-
"He hasn't been by to see me," said the doctor worriedly when Elizabeth stopped by the infirmary later that same day to talk to him.
"I told him he was restricted from gate travel until you gave the okay. I think he's finally come to the realization that we're not going to find her with the information we currently have."
"Or lack thereof," chimed in Rodney who had walked into the infirmary. "No one's seen him today?" he asked.
Weir and Beckett shook their heads.
"Maybe you could track him down with the city sensors?" suggested Carson.
"I think he needs to be alone right now." Rodney knew Beckett had grown quite fond of both Teyla and Sheppard over the past two years and the doctor's concern showed. "Really, Carson, I think he needs some space right now." He paused uncertainly, "Unless you think…" He left the sentence unfinished.
"No!" said Elizabeth firmly. "Not while there's still hope of finding her." She turned to McKay. "I know we've been over this a hundred times, Rodney, but if there's anything…"
"I've gone over and over it in my mind. I know Sheppard and Ronon have too. She was there, trading in the market one minute and gone the next. No one saw what happened. No one heard a scream or anything suspicious. There was no sign of a struggle or kidnapping, though Lord knows we've made enough enemies in the Pegasus Galaxy whether we meant to or not. We tracked down every life sign and even circled the area around the village in the jumper. She just--vanished."
-
Life on Atlantis slowly returned to normal, if you could call it that with the grieving Colonel and the unexpected emptiness that the loss of Teyla created still hanging heavy throughout the city. But the mission must go on and Elizabeth and her crew were forced to return to standard operations. John and his team continued with their assignments though the gate as scheduled but she could see his heart wasn't in it. She thought he would have quit altogether if it wasn't for the vain hope that he might stumble across some clue as to her location while on one of their missions. Sheppard, Ronon, and Rodney all vehemently refused to consider adding a fourth member to their team, even temporarily. It would be as if they were admitting that she wouldn't be coming back.
Pacing the upper deck above the gateroom, Elizabeth made her way around the technicians, trying to burn off the persistent niggling feeling that had gripped her since she had awoken earlier. When the sudden blaring of the gate alarm went off, she was at the technician's side in an instant.
"Unscheduled off-world activation," announced the technician as the alarm blared loudly.
"Is there an IDC?" she asked. No teams were scheduled to return. She dared to hope…
The tech gave her an incredulous look and double-checked the readings. "Teyla's."
"What?" asked Rodney from the other end of the room as he came running over to check for himself. "He's right."
"Lower the shield," Elizabeth instantly ordered before she tapped her earpiece, "John…"
"I heard," he yelled, entering the room at a run. Hope warred with caution as he took position with the rest of the guards and raised his weapon, aiming it toward the gate. She'd been gone for weeks. For all they knew, she had been captured and tortured into giving over her IDC code.
There was a long pause and then their missing teammate stepped through the gate, backlit for a brief moment by the glow of the wormhole until the gate shut down an instant later.
Throwing caution to the wind, Sheppard lowered his weapon and ran down the few remaining steps towards her. "Teyla!" He embraced her, holding her tightly to his chest, his P90 forgotten in his hand. "Thank God you're safe," he murmured into her ear.
Weir nodded to Lorne and he and his guards relaxed a little but remained alert as she and Rodney ran down the steps to join the couple.
Sheppard finally released Teyla and stepped back to look at her. "Teyla?" he asked worriedly.
"John," she acknowledged, but she seemed dazed and looked around uncertainly.
"Teyla," Elizabeth said, laying a hand on the Athosian's arm. "We're so glad to have you home." Questions could wait, she decided when the Athosian's response to her greeting was a confused stare. "Why don't you take her to see Carson, John," she said, knowing that the man was not about to let Teyla out of his sight.
"Right," he agreed. He handed off the P90 to Rodney and put his arm protectively around Teyla, leading her towards the infirmary.
At Weir's nod, two of the guards fell in behind the couple, but kept a respectful distance. She exchanged glances with Rodney but neither knew what to say. Calling Beckett on her radio, she informed him he would soon have visitors; then proceeded to contact the off-world teams and Athosian village on the mainland to let them know Teyla had been found. Naturally they clamored for more details, wanting to know what had happened, but other than telling them that Teyla was now safely home, she had no information to give them.
-
Carson barely glanced at the readout of Teyla's test results as he sipped on his coffee, his mind automatically cataloging that each reading was within satisfactory levels. He set the thin sheet of paper down on the table beside him and looked out into the infirmary. She was asleep in one of the beds, Sheppard was likewise dozing in a nearby chair. The colonel had absolutely refused to leave the infirmary after bringing her in and Carson could hardly blame him. Suddenly something he had read trickled down from his subconscious and he snatched the paper off the table, ignoring the hot coffee he sloshed over his hand. He quickly read down the list of readings again, pausing on one in particular.
Reentering the infirmary area, he saw that while Teyla was lying quietly, her eyes were open. She had said little since returning and Carson hadn't pushed her. Now that she was home, they had all the time in the world. Or so he had thought. He walked over to her bedside. "How are you feeling?"
"You tell me," she said quietly as she sat up, looking at the paper he held tightly in his hand.
Carson glanced towards the sleeping Sheppard only a few feet away before turning back to her.
"There is something wrong?" she asked, but there was no real concern in her voice, it was more like she was already resigned to the fact and was merely asking for a confirmation.
"Wrong? Well, I suppose that depends on your point of view." He looked searchingly into her dark eyes but they revealed nothing. She merely waited patiently for him to continue. "You're pregnant." He watched her carefully but the expression on her face didn't change at the news, neither astonishment nor acceptance, absolutely no reaction at all.
"Pregnant?" echoed Sheppard in stunned surprise.
Carson turned to see the colonel, now wide-awake and staring at Teyla in shocked disbelief.
"May I go now?" asked Teyla, calmly.
"What?" Beckett asked, confused by her demeanor. "Ah, yes, of course. There's no medical reason why you have to stay."
"Thank you, Doctor Beckett," she said, sliding off the bed and exiting the infirmary without so much as a backward glance.
Sheppard just sat there frozen, staring after her in bewilderment.
TBC
AN: There's nothing that turns me off faster than "Teyla's pregnant" fics but I had to take a stab at this particular story. So before you go "oh no, not again", at least try reading to the end of chapter 3; then if you're still rolling your eyes, happy trails.
