Title: Dear John
Author: Madj
Date: 9-14-05
Rating: PG-13
Summary: John remembers, and he can tell Teyla does, too.
Spoilers: Oh, yes. "Conversion" spoilers, big-time.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of "Stargate Atlantis." I just like to obsess over them.
Archiving: Please ask first.
Note: Big thanks to Suzanne, Sel and Cheryl for beta reading this. Any crappy writing or mistakes that are still around are totally my own.
She calls him John now.
Not all the time, just occasionally.
And when she does, he can see a glint in her eye that tells him she's remembering.
"You can call me John when we're off the clock."
He remembers, too -- the overwhelming urge to take what's his. To kiss her. To mark her. To push her up against the wall and thrust into her until she knows she belongs to him.
Now that he's back to normal, that urge embarrasses him.
Mostly.
"Sit down, John," Teyla says, smiling and waving to the seat next to Ronan.
Ronan takes a moment from shoveling food into his mouth to mumble something about their last mission, but John hears none of it.
He remembers Teyla, flushed from exertion -- and maybe something else -- leaning against the wall of the gym. She is shocked, but maybe not unpleasantly so. She seems to have lost the ability to speak. "That was interesting," he says, but there are so many other words he could use instead.
He wonders now, as he has so often since his "extermination," as he likes to call it, if he was just imagining that for a second she kissed him back?
"John," she says patiently, as though she hasn't told him this a dozen times before. "When you attack, you are leaving yourself open here," she gives him a sharp rap on the side with her sticks to reinforce her point.
Again.
"Yeah, well," he says, annoyed, "I already beat you once. I think that's pretty much the high point of my fighting career."
He can tell she's reliving that sparring session in her mind, as he is.
He is fast, strong, aggressive. He absolutely cannot miss, cannot lose. He is unstoppable. He plays with her for a while, to allow her to understand that he has changed. And then he takes what he wants.
Teyla sighs, and for a moment he thinks she will ignore the comment. "That was ... still you," she says carefully. "Yes, you had speed and reflexes beyond what you have now, but those things come with practice." She smiles because she knows this advice will go ignored as usual.
Later, he replays their conversation, as he seems to spend much time doing lately. If she believes he is capable of more as a fighter, what else does she think he is capable of?
John prides himself on his honesty. Sure, sometimes lies, little and white or otherwise, have to be told. Truth must be withheld. But he tries his best to be completely honest with his team. And with himself.
That's why he struggles so much with what to say to Teyla post-extermination.
It is easy to apologize to Elizabeth ("Um, sorry I kind of strangled you. And that whole breaking your office wall thing? Not cool.").
But Teyla is harder. How do you apologize for something you're not one-hundred percent sorry for?
"There's another thing I should probably apologize for," he begins, somewhat reluctantly. "Give it no further thought," she says. Clearly, this is the last thing she wants to discuss with him. "Good," he replies. "I won't."
It doesn't really count as a lie if neither one of them believes.
End