Summary: Janus deals with the guilt of leaving a woman to face ten thousand years of waiting in stasis and her death, alone. Inspired by the episode "Before I Sleep." Angst/Romance. AU. Slight Janus/Elizabeth.

Note: I apologize for any grammatical errors or spelling errors you may notice. Please feel free to point them out so that I may correct them. I also apologize if any of the facts don't match up with canon.

I'll just apologize in advance if you don't like the pairing. It's certainly a very rare and unlikely one, I'll give you that. Heh. Strange, mutated, plot bunnies from various planets in the Pegasus Galaxy have infested my brain. Did I mention that they're also hopeless romantics? Again, I mention, this is very AU.

The story takes place shortly after the Ancients evacuate and sink Atlantis, gate to Earth, and leave the Pegasus Galaxy for good.

Disclaimer: I don't own Janus or Elizabeth, or the Stargate Franchise or anything associated with it. This goes for all my stories.

Before He Sleeps

By Charismilena

Janus has done many things in his lifetime, and he knows, without a doubt, that he will continue to do many more. All in all, Janus is proud at what he has done. He knows that he's a thorn on the Lantean High Council's side. It's always been that way, but he has never let it stop him.

He will persevere, he knows this without a doubt.

But even he has had his fair share of regrets.

Elizabeth…

The name drifts through his mind at random times throughout the day. Her name makes his throat tighten painfully, and he cannot help but be extra aware of the painful feeling that spreads through his gut when he sees something that reminds him of her. Those who knew him well and who had the pleasure of meeting her, his darling Elizabeth, no matter however briefly, look at him pityingly.

They know his greatest regret, and Janus knows that he can never meet their eyes again. The shame is almost too much for him to handle.

He knows that it's written all over his face. The guilt and the loss.

He knows that everyone is aware.

Sometimes, when he is alone, lying in bed at night, he can see her blood on his hands, and on those particularly horrible days, he can hear her voice, asking him, demanding…

"Janus, what have you done?"

…condemning him. He can hear the anguish, the loneliness, the desperation, the hate. Intellectually, Janus knows that she was happy, that it wasn't her voice condemning him; he knows that it was only a figment of his own imagination. But it is too real...and he shatters.

And Janus cannot bring himself to care.

Those days, he admits to himself, are the worst. But he can't even bring himself to contradict the voice, or hate it for haunting him so. After all, he had condemned her to ten-thousand years of waiting and a lonely death, first.

It was only fair.

The realization doesn't make the mysterious ache in his chest go away, and the first time Janus reports it to the Healers, he can't understand why they cannot find its source or why his natural healing capabilities can't even numb the pain. Only when Heras, a Healer who had lost his wife during the war, looks at him with knowing eyes does he understand what the pain is. There is pity there, too, and Janus can't help but lower his head in shame.

"My name is Elizabeth…"

It was her voice again.

He remembers the pain in her eyes when she learned of the death of her two companions. He can remember the expression of horrified realization on her face when she put all the pieces of the puzzle together. She was the last. Her expedition was dead. The realization that she had failed.

Janus remembers how she had buried her face in his chest, sobbing painfully, mourning the dead. Those she had sworn to protect with whatever she had.

He remembers when she broke.

And it breaks him whenever he is confronted with the fact that he has left her to face all her demons alone and signed her death warrant in the process.

"Janus, what have you done?"

This time it is his own voice, asking him for an answer he does not possess, and Janus can say nothing.

So he looks for an escape, barely coherent enough to string together an excuse for the Lantean High Council about why he is so eager to leave Earth and confine himself to a planet devoid of any sentient life. It is a planet, he neglects to tell them, that he is desperate to visit so that he might escape all of the pitying stares he receives from all his Alteran brethren.

Melia, too, looks at him with pity when he leaves, but she says nothing. She knows him too well.

When he arrives, a laboratory has already been set up for him, and Janus cannot hide his relief when he finds only one room ―his room. He makes a note to thank Melia for her forethought before he buries himself in his research. He loses himself in his work, so that setting up an alarm to remind him when to sleep and when to eat has become a necessity.

But she does not leave him, even there, in the lonely confines of his room.

"Janus, thank you."

And he thinks, distantly, that perhaps he has completely lost his grip on his own sanity when he replies to the memory of her beaming face.

"For what, Elizabeth?" he whispers to her in the dead of night, echoing his words from long ago, knowing that he will receive a reply. And he does, but this time, it is merely his own mind recounting a memory from a time so long ago that it felt like lifetimes had passed.

"Thank you for saving me."

He pauses, eyes staring blankly at his ceiling, painfully aware of the distance between them. Galaxies had never felt so distant, so unreal, so vast. And Janus has never been more aware of just how small, how insignificant, how weak he is.

"No," he contradicts her softly, voice hoarse and thick with his grief. "I have killed you."

The voice seems intent on ignoring him, and Janus can do nothing but sigh and drown in his guilt as his precious Elizabeth's words reverberate loudly in his mind.

"Thank you, Janus."

His only comfort is the oblivion that awaits him in his sleep, thanks largely to the sedative he had injected himself with earlier so that he might have at least one night of rest, free from his regrets.

But he hears her voice still.

"Janus…thank you for saving me."

He says nothing this time, for there is nothing to say. He cannot convince a ghost.

Because no matter what his many achievements may be, Janus knows that he cannot raise the dead.

And he can't help but drown in his regrets, before he sleeps.

:~:~:~:

The End...

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost
New Hampshire
1923

Inspired by the Episode "Before I Sleep", and the songs "Love Song Requiem" & "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday. The Poem is where the title for that episode was evidently taken from, according to the Stargate Wiki. I found the last two paragraphs to be particularly fitting for this short oneshot. Please Review and Favorite!

Update: February 28, 2012: After taking this down a couple of months back, I just decided to republish it. Not much difference from the old version. Enjoy.

Continuation as a mini-series: I'm considering it and already have a couple sequels planned. Their summaries are written down, at any rate. Might take a while to publish and actually write it and turn it into a story, though. I'm drowning in a sea of work and probably won't get the chance to resurface until Summer Break. Huzzah!