"We need to meet," Elizabeth said calmly, as if she hadn't been missing for weeks. "I'm sending you a 'gate address," she disappeared from the screen for a moment as she interfaced with the MALP. "I'll be there, alone, unarmed, you may search me if you wish." Her hair was piled up on top of her head and she was wearing a dull gray shirt he didn't recognize, but it was her.
Rodney's smile of relief was gentle and bright; just seeing her alive had gone a long way towards assuaging his guilt. Ronon twisted his gun and nodded. Carter looked relieved even though her lips remained tight. Teyla's eyes were on him and John couldn't think of anything in the world to say. He wanted- needed- to tell her how much it meant to see her alive.
Instead, he faltered and his throat went dry. "See you soon," John murmured dumbly as she nodded.
"it's good to see you too," Elizabeth's words were soft and hopeful but John felt her smile dig into him. There was something in her voice that he'd been missing and his chest was getting tight.
John tried not to feel the sweat on his palms as he turned to Carter. "Well? When can we go?" he demanded impatiently as he looked at the rest of his team.
"The planet needs to check out before anyone leaves the city," Carter began with all of the restraint he wasn't feeling. "I'll send a MALP."
"Okay," John nearly tripped over her words as he started out of control. "I'm just going to go get dressed."
Ronon shrugged and followed John. "It'll be good to have her back," he offered in an optimistic growl. His gun hissed as it sank back into his holster.
John's fingers itched for a gun, grenades, or the controls of a jumper; anything that meant he was doing something instead of waiting desperately in safety while she was out there alone. Ronon's huge hand thudded on his shoulder and shocked him out of his thoughts.
"Knew we'd get her back," Ronon muttered hopefully as he passed him on the way to the armory. Ronon didn't need to change clothes, he probably just needed more guns.
John ducked into his room and ripped off his city clothes and started pulling on his off-world uniform. He didn't change his socks and forced his boots through the legs of his pants instead of unlacing them. The fabric caught and he swore as he He had to get back to the 'gate. Pulling on his jacket and lifting his tactical vest, John actually took his time with the vest. Equipment was important, even if he was just hours away from finally seeing her again.
He needed equipment because something was about to go wrong. He couldn't just get lucky enough to bring her back in one piece. He'd been so close to having everything. Hell, John would have almost given back the ZPM to have had her.
Shoving his knife into the holster, John threw the vest over his shoulder and headed for the armory. Teyla's soothing voice rang through the hallway as he slipped into the darker room.
"You need to let go of this being your fault," she reminded Rodney as his fingers fumbled with a clip for his pistol. ARGs were their primary weapon on this trip, but it never hurt to be prepared. "What happened to Elizabeth was her choice and you have to honor the decision she made the put your lives before hers."
"We'd make the same choice," Ronon agreed as he sighted down his gun one last time before he was satisfied.
John snapped clips into his vest and collected a few grenades. Looking over his team, his eyes landed on Rodney. "I was in charge," he ended the debate firmly. Holding up his hand towards Rodney, he sighed again weakly. "I let you give her the nanites. I let her go on the mission. I let her get away," he looked down at his ARG as he finished. "I lost her." It only took a moment to drag the wall back up, and only then he trusted himself to make eye contact again. "We'll get her back."
Carter's voice rang in his ear, summoning them all back up to control. John felt the weight of his rifle settle into his hands like he was sinking. It was about time they got her back.
The planet Elizabeth specified was sickly hot and the humidity in the air clung to their skin as soon as they arrived. The air stank of rotting vegetation and swamp muck. A thick mist covered the ground and John didn't want to know what was in it or what could possibly be crawling around his feet as he squished towards the high ground.
Teyla searched the area calmly over her ARG and tilted her head towards a solitary figure near a large tree. Ronon pretended not to be paying attenion and nodded with her as he lazily checked the perimeter.
Rodney swatted at the small, reddish flies that were swarming around them and sighed. "Forgot bugspray," he complained as he ran up behind them after sending the MALP back through. "Hopefully this is just a meet-and-greet and take her back home?"
"Unfortunately not," Elizabeth's voice rang out behind them. surprising all of them as Ronon whirled and leveled his gun. The ARG clicked as he cocked it tight.
"You said alone," John threatened as the cold feeling sank so hard into his stomach he was worried it would never let go. If this was a trap-
"I am alone," Elizabeth corrected as she stepped from the brush and held up her hands. For some reason, her hair was suddenly shorter. As if she'd cut it down to a pixie length after sending her message. It haloed around her head and John was still distracted by her curls when a second Elizabeth emerged at her side.
"So am I," the second Elizabeth continued as she held up her hands. Her hair was down and hanging in heavy curls on her shoulders.
"And I," a third voice, Elizabeth's voice, added as she stepped out as well. Her hair was back in a ponytail and she was a little slower to lift her hands, as if she loathed to do so.
"We're not going to hurt you," the Elizabeth voice behind them promised levelly as she stepped up directly between John and Teyla. She was the one from the video. Her hair was piled neatly on her head. All four of them wore the same gray scrubs, reminding John vaguely of escaped convicts. He loosened his death grip on his ARG and wished his skin was drier. His throat certainly was, even in the wet air of the forsaken jungle planet.
Ronon drew another gun and kept two of them in his sights. Teyla covered the others. John tried not to think about how wrong it felt to be staring down the barrel of a gun, even an ARG, at Elizabeth.
"Please come with us," the last Elizabeth suggested gently. She was the one with her hair up, and the one who seemed to be the de facto leader. "We can get out of the bugs and explain ourselves."
"The bugs aren't even biting you," Rodney pointed out anxiously as they all tried to figure out what it meant.
All four of the facsimile Elizabeths flashed silver for a moment before returning to their natural state. All of their features, their hair and even their clothing were suddenly solid pieces of burnished metal.
Ronon's guns didn't budge at all. His lips were in a tight line, as if he'd known this was coming. Rodney's hand twitched and his disappointment was dark on his face.
"We don't have anything the bugs want," the last Elizabeth, the leader, explained with a hint of sadness. "If you intend to help us, if you want to help her, please come with us now. Her time is limited."
"Her?" John asked weakly as he nodded to his team. He'd tried to prepare himself for finding Elizabeth again. He'd tried mentally to be ready for whatever horrors she had been dealing with. The replicator-elizabeth-quadruplets were well outside what he'd prepared for.
"The original Elizabeth," Rodney realized suddenly. "She's still alive. She's still alive and you have her, right?"
"She is here," the first one, the short-haired one, answered grimly. "You may want to call your medical team now and tell Keller to start packing." The tone was Elizabeth's but she walked slightly differently, almost as if she had a bit of a swagger in her shoulders. Ducking the branches and silently pointing them out as she went, that Elizabeth led the way through the jungle.
John lifted his radio. "Atlantis," he began slowly, still not quite sure how to explain himself. "We've found some 'friends' and we're going to need a medical team. It seems Elizabeth's in pretty bad shape."
The facsimile at his side nodded sadly as she listened to his report.
"I'll have Keller prepare her team immediately," Carter's voice came back. "Take care of yourselves."
"Will do," John answered mechanically. The Elizabeth at his side looked bemused.
"They replaced me with Carter?" she asked lightly ducking around a branch and protecting his head from the hanging moss as she led his feet through the muck. "Not you?"
"Didn't want it," John shrugged and kept his head down. "You said me?" he wondered as he slipped and caught his balance on the slimy trunk of a nearby tree.
"I have parts of her memories," the leader-Elizabth explained as she offered him a hand. Normally, John would have anticipated the strength of her grip, but this was a Replicator. She pulled him up the hill in a single burst of energy. "Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish myself from her and I'm afraid I do not always succeed."
"She's also the youngest," short-haired Elizabeth explained as she stared off into the jungle, listening to the same creature Ronon had been watching. "It's a large feline, around three meters long. They are aggressive and foul-tempered but they definitely have their uses.."
"Must be easier when it doesn't actually want to eat you," Ronon mused dryly as he kept his eyes on it. "I wouldn't."
The short-haired Elizabeth was almost amused. John remembered seeing that smile cross her face and suddenly he was unbelievably homesick for her and the balcony.
"The youngest?" Teyla asked the facsimile closest to her. That one had spoken little and seemed content just to listen to the group.
Shoving her dark hair back from her face, she nodded once and started to explain. "The Asurans created Alpha," she pointed up at the short-haired version walking with John, "They were trying to create a replicator that could ascend. One with Elizabeth's memories."
"Did they succeed?" Teyla wondered numbly. John could hear the concern in her voice and hoped Elizabeth hadn't been treated as badly as they all feared.
"In a way," she said pointing to her chest. "Alpha awoke without any of Elizabeth's memories and was forced by the Asurans to take them from her. Elizabeth was stronger than they believed, and the two of them were able to come up with a truce. I was made second and when they exposed me to Elizabeth, she gave her memories freely."
"Alpha and Beta realized they could hear each other," pony-tailed Elizabeth interrupted impatiently. "Elizabeth can hear all of our thoughts, but we can hear each other when we share proximity. It is a side effect the Asurans never planned for. Delta and I both have parts of Elizabeth's memory and it has taken some time for us to realize, but we have different parts. She thinks our separate personalities emerged because she was selective each time."
"She is the original Elizabeth?" Teyla asked as John, Rodney and Ronon listened silently.
"She is the hybrid, part human, part Asuran," Gamma explained quickly as Alpha and Beta exposed the nanite-constructed camouflage hiding their base. A mass of tree branches and moss flashed silver and pulled away from a small structure reminiscent of Asuran desigh. "The Asurans have tried to duplicate your modifications, Doctor McKay, but so far, we are their failures."
"They're not just letting you live on this planet," John interrupted as he felt his feet find metal beneath them instead of muck. "You must have escaped?"
"It became necessary to remove Elizabeth from her situation," Alpha answered curtly as she waved them all under the camouflage. "Her nanites were starting to fail and the Asurans were considering terminating the entire experiment."
"So you broke out?" Ronon asked suddenly impressed. "Five of you, unarmed?"
"We are more efficient as a collective than the Asurans," Delta explained calmly as she led Rodney and Teyla towards what seemed to be their lab. "It worked to our advantage."
"Keller's team will be here soon," Ronon reminded John as he took in the metal walls of the structure. "She'll need a guide."
"We will take him back to the 'gate," Alpha volunteered as Beta jumped to follow.
Ronon's nod to John said he could handle the situation. John couldn't focus and deferred to Ronon's opinion.
"Where's Elizabeth?" he asked weakly of the one called Delta.
"Back here," Delta indicated with her hand as she walked with him to a sealed room in the back of the compound. "The large felines are predatory and several times at night they have attacked, even through the camouflage. Keeping her here was the safest course."
John watched as Delta's hand, which was so familiar, disappeared into the wall for a moment and released some kind of lock. "Is she a prisoner?" John demanded as the sick, cold feeling returned to his stomach.
"She requested to be locked in," Delta explained with a softening of her eyes that looked nearly human. "As a collective, the minds of the four of us can resist most attempts the Asurans make to control us. She is still human."
"Does she know you contacted us?" John asked as he waited in the hallway. His feet were suddenly heavy, as if he was still in the muck outside.
"She does not," Delta answered honestly as she leaned against the wall. "She will be angry with us when she realizes what we have done, but I believe she will be happy to see you."
"So I just?" John hesitated in the doorway and looked from her to the darkness behind.
Delta waved him on with a patient look that reminded him suddenly of Teyla.
"Right," John finished more to himself than anything else. He'd been ready for her to be part of the Replicators. He'd been ready for her to be dead, John had admitted that to himself and steeled himself to the fact that it might happen. He wasn't sure he was ready for this. How could he face her after he'd let her stay gone so long?
There was a noise from inside the room. A voice, her voice, but worn and tired instead of fresh and mechanical. He let it lead him in. John's eyes took a moment to adjust, the lights were lower there. She was in the corner, hunched against the wall. Her arms were wrapped around her chest and her eyes were closed. Her lips moved slowly but the sound had stopped.
Setting down his ARG and removing his vest, John crossed towards her.
"I can hear your boots," Elizabeth muttered weakly without lifting her head. "I can hear them, but I know they aren't there."
"Elizabeth--"
John's voice hit her like a physical blow and she crumpled back. "You aren't real," she insisted as she started to open her eyes. The lids seemed to heavy and John could see her struggle etched on her forehead.
"I'm here," he countered as he took another step towards her and the thin mattress the replicators must have created for her. "I'm really here."
"Don't play this game," she pleaded as she shook her head at him. "Children, please, it's harder than you know."
Kneeling down by her side, John reached for her cheek. He didn't usually touch people. She'd nearly given him a heart attack when she'd hugged him that first time, but now he needed to know she was there. He needed to feel she was real as much as she did.
His hand connected with her cheek and she startled. Her own hands flew up and weakly batted it away. John held on, moving his feet beneath him and giving her his other hand. Her hands slid over and around it, taking it in before she opened her eyes.
"Please don't," she murmured in a whisper so faint he had to lean closer to hear. "Please--"
"Elizabeth," John called her back putting both his hands on her face. "I'm really here."
Grabbing the back of his arm, she dug her thumb into it until a tiny trickle of blood broke the skin. Lifting her thumb and staring at it, Elizabeth started to shake. The trembling came from somewhere within and the only thing he could think of was to hold on. She pushed off from the wall and nearly crashed against his chest. John hit the wall in the corner and let her sink against him.
His arms went around her shoulders and stayed there. Soundlessly, Elizabeth folded closer, seeping into his body. He ran his hands over her shoulders as she fell into his lap. Her hands clung to her chest as she collapsed down to him. One of his legs was behind her and her head was heavy on his thigh.
"Sometimes, when I'm really desperate, I think you're here," Elizabeth explained as if she were talking to a ghost. "Sometimes they feel it. Sometimes I can't block them out and they try to make me feel better. Sometimes one of them looks like you and I can't--"
"It's me," he soothed as he tried to turn her head towards him. "I'm here." Her skin had grown more pale and John wondered if she had seen the sun at all since her capture. Her eyes were overly bright and her lps were dry. Her face was thin, but she seemed to be well fed. Her hair was clean, but dull and limp as he ran his hands through it meditatively.
"They're like children," she continued as her eyes struggled to focus on his face.
"Or puppies with replicator IQs and your face?" he tried to help her explain.
For almost a second, she smiled. "Any face they want. My mother, Simon, Rodney, Oberoth," Elizabeth's voice weakened and her eyes closed again. "You."
"Elizabeth?" John demanded shaking her slightly as he tried to bring her back. Her skin felt strangely dry and smooth, like a snake.
"Head hurts," she complained in a sigh as her hand moved weakly towards her temple. "I go in and out. I can't remember things, can't move my legs rwhen I want to. The children think it's because my body is starting to reject the nanites. They're inferior, Rodney tampered with them too much."
He put his cool hand on her forehead and wished desperately there was something he could do for her. His eyes were stinging, like they had in the infirmary when Keller had tried to prepare him for the worst, and John found himself wrestling with the possibility that he'd found her only to lose her.
"He'll fix them," John insisted optimistically and with enough force to make her smile. "Keller's already on her way."
"The children-" Elizabeth's sudden moan cut her off and she bit her lip. "They tried to help me." Her hand went to her stomach, and for a moment John thought the pain was radiating from there. "They tried to remake me. Fix me the way they can fix themselves." Fumbling for his hand, she dragged it down to her stomach and held it there. "If something happens, I want you--"
"No," he interrupted firmly as he tried to figure out why she was holding his hand desperately against her stomach. Feeling the softness of her flesh through the abused fabric, John tried to keep his hand away. "No, we're not talking like that."
"Take me back to my mother," she whispered as her tired eyes sought his. "John--"
"Elizabeth--"
"I was ready to die," she offered softly tightening her grip on his fingers. "I remember the glass, and the light, and Keller and you--" Elizabeth fought with her throat, as if she was having trouble remembering how to speak. "I don't know if I'm ready to live again."
"You're coming home," John insisted finally as he leaned closer to her head. "You're going to live and you're going home. That's the way it has to happen."
"I don't know-" she sighed and her hand lost its death grip, "-it sounds nice."
The door hissed open and Keller rushed in. She was alone, so Carter must have decided not to risk more people than she had too. The poor doctor looked a little shell-shocked from her experience with the replicant Elizabeths, but she was quick to shake it off.
Elizabeth had lapsed slightly further out of consciousness, but she managed to smile minutely at Keller when she realized it was the doctor examining her.
"Her blood pressure's too low, her heartrate is sluggish, her endocrine system is elevated, her nervous responses are all off," Keller rattled off her list to herself as she shoved her blonde hair back out of her eyes. "Electrolytes are nearly too high. Blood glucose is low. Her entire autonomic nervous system is going haywire."
Delta whispered something to Keller and the young doctor's eyes widened in shock.
"You've confirmed this?" she demanded as she started taking Elizabeth's pulse again. Her blue eyes were huge with surprise and John knew he had missed something.
"Gamma and Rodney are working on the data right now," Delta explained softly and John watched her concern as she looked at Elizabeth. She'd been right to explain them as children. Delta could have a conversation with the maturity and intelligence of an adult, but here with Elizabeth she looked like a child that was loosing her mother.
"We were trying to reprogram her nanites," Delta explained as she knelt a slight distance back from Elizabeth and John. "We thought we might be able to get them to repair and regenerate her damaged tissues before they failed and she died."
"But they didn't understand the command?" Keller asked as she ran her handheld scanner over Elizabeth's still form. "They short circuited or something?"
"They did exactly as they thought we had commanded," Delta explained sadly. "They remade Elizabeth with a perfect brain."
"If she has a perfect brain why is she in and out of consciousness like this?" John demanded through his confusion. Elizabeth's hand tightened again and she tried to communicate something through her eyes. She was still holding his hand against her stomach. There was something he wasn't seeing.
"John," Keller began slowly. "The nanites remade Elizabeth from the beginning, from scratch, and put her the only place they could."
John looked from Keller to the Delta version of Elizabeth and felt like everyone in the room knew something he didn't. "I don't--"
Elizabeth cut him off. "John, the nanites impregnated me."
"With herself," Keller added as John felt his head spin. Elizabeth was staring up at him, needing him to understand and be real and solid. He looked away for a moment, and tried to find the answers in the gray metal wall. He smiled at her as reassuringly as he could. Keller and Delta were talking quickly, supposing and hypothesizing but all he could think was that for some, odd, reason, he was jealous.
"Why did you cut your hair?" Rodney asked finally when he couldn't hold back his curiosity.
Elizabeth, the one who had cut her hair so it was nearly as short as John's, grinned and slipped off the chair by the door. Teyla watched her and tried to decide if she had seen this side of Elizabeth before. "Needed to look different," she explained as she sauntered over to see what he was doing. "In the beginning, it was just me and her-"
"Always brings this up," Elizabeth Gamma, the one with the ponytail who was showing Rodney their data, rolled her eyes. "Like she's somehow better because she was first."
"I was just wondering about the hair," Rodney tried to save himself.
"She can't help it," Beta explained as she sighted a spot on the wall and threw an impossibly sharp blade at the metal. "None of us can," she finished as Ronon got up and mimicked her throw. His was better and he started correcting her aim.
"What do you mean?" Teyla asked as she ran her hand along the edge of the gleaming computer console.
"We all imprinted on a different memory," Gamma explained without looking up and Teyla suddenly realized why she seemed so familiar. She even tapped her fingers like Rodney did when he was annoyed. "Alpha happened accidently, Elizabeth was thinking about John when Alpha tried to take her memories."
"We are like blank slates when they create us," Delta explained as she emerged from the room John had disappeared into. "Alpha was programmed to take Elizabeth's memories anyway she could. Elizabeth thought of John, and she gravitated towards the memory. In a way, Alpha is as much John as she is Elizabeth."
Teyla met her eyes and saw something of herself in the green eyes that should have been Elizabeth's. "And so with the rest of you," she realized as she looked around. Beta was pointing out the large feline to Ronon and planning some kind of attack. Gamma looked up from her work just as Rodney realized they didn't have enough power.
"Would you mind?" Gamma asked with a wave of her hand. "We're going to need raw materials."
"Got it," Beta nodded as she tilted her head to Ronon. "Ready?"
"I'll be back," Ronon called towards Teyla, who was in charge when Sheppard was away as far as he was concerned.
"What are you using for power?" Rodney asked Gamma as he checked the fluctuations in the computers. "No ZPM?"
"We couldn't risk stealing one," Gamma explained as she nudged his hand towards the outputs he wanted. "We use deconstructed matter to power small generators. Biologic matter works as well as any, and the energy Beta will absorb has it's uses too."
"It also keeps her from driving you crazy if she's busy," Alpha pointed out as she dragged her feet over towards the back room. "They okay?"
"Yes," Delta insisted as she straightened her grey shirt. All of them were dressed the same, in simple grey scrubs. Teyla wondered if that was why they all were so careful with their hair. Even as copies of the original, they needed to tell themselves apart on some level. "I think he was something she's been waiting for."
"He has been waiting as well," Teyla reminded her as she watched Gamma and Rodney bicker before realizing how to coax most of the data onto his portable. Alpha was just pacing back and forth. When Teyla looked away, the sounds of boots on the floor were so much like John. "How long have you been running?"
"Thirty-eight days," Gamma explained grimly as she kicked the base of her computer.
"Can that really help?" Rodney asked her with a tiny smile of amusement.
"No," Gamma sighed as she tapped her fingers anxiously. "Not in the slightest, but these are no where near as good as the ones on Atlantis and it made me feel better."
"You've never been to Atlantis," Rodney reminded her as he finished wiping everything off of his palm computer. "I think I have enough space. How's that compression algorithm?"
"Better than yours," Gamma snapped back and Rodney looked stunned for a moment.
Alpha started to laugh as she leaned against the wall next to Teyla. "This is better than her fighting with Beta...it's almost like having a prettier version of Rodney to fight with Rodney," she whispered to Teyla through her chuckling.
Rodney turned around and glared at the chuckling Elizabeth next to Teyla. "You're not really her you know," he retorted petulantly. "I don't have to do what you say."
"You never really did anyway," Alpha reminded him lifting her knife and checking the point lazily. Gamma shrugged and nodded a little.
Rodney sighed and turned back to the computers. "Zelenka's never going to believe this--"
"The fetus," Rodney struggled through the explanation back in the conference room on Atlantis. "Elizabeth, I mean, the fetal Elizabeth, is a perfectly healthy embryo of four weeks gestational age."
John couldn't focus. He'd barely allowed Carter to drag him out of the infirmary to attend this meeting, and he still didn't see how his opinion mattered. He wasn't a scientist. He should be sitting with Elizabeth, keeping her spirits up while Keller's baffled people tried to keep her brain from melting into goo.
"Our Elizabeth, however, is not in as good shape," Rodney continued with the cool scientific tone he used when he was deathly afraid. "Her synaptic pathways are already starting to degrade and the nanites taking over those functions work sporadically at best. I know sometimes she may seem normal, but underneath it, her brain is starting to die." He paused and fumbled with his computer for support. "Again."
"What are our options?" Carter asked gently steering the conversation in a more positive direction.
"We may be able to use the stem cells of the fetus- Elizabeth- fetal Elizabeth--" Rodney stumbled and Carter nodded simply.
"Stem cells?" she continued to lead him.
"We may be able to implant them into her brain and hope they work better than the nanites at replacing her brain cells," Rodney explained as Delta nodded to him. The presence of the replicant-Elizabeths had the city twisted up into equal parts confusion and amazement.
Alpha and Beta had little patience for science and were training with the Marines and Ronon. Gamma couldn't be dragged out of the lab and was staying there with an escort. All of them had a marine with an ARG by them at all times. Delta had Lorne himself for this shift and the major was holding his on her subtly enough that she kept her dignity.
"That will involve terminating the embryo," Keller explained in case anyone in the room hadn't known. "Rodney and I don't like the odds of the stem cells succeeding. "
"Stem cell research is years behind where it should be because of the United States and their--" Rodney cut himself off and let Keller explain the second option.
"Elizabeth will not survive to carry the pregnancy to term," Keller explained with a physician's cool handling of the truth. "She might survive a few weeks, maybe a month or two, but she will never live long enough to carry the embryo long enough."
Delta's face was impassive and John wondered what was going on behind the mask. Elizabeth was the closest thing she had to a mother, and she'd was partially responsible for that mother's untimely death. Perhaps even twice over if the embryo didn't survive as well. That had to be messing with her head, robot or not, she was still part Elizabeth in there.
"Rodney and I think we can transfer the embryo to another host," Keller continued as calmly as she could explain the irrational procedure. "Everything I've seen so far suggests that Elizabeth would then grow up again physically as a normal human child."
Rodney chimed in suddenly, startling John out of his wondering what Elizabeth had looked like as a child. "Colonel Carter has volunteered to be the surrogate, should this become our best option," he said as the eyes in the room shifted to Carter. Clothes rustled and people were moving in their chairs uncomfortably.
Teyla saved the other woman. "I volunteered, but the difference in age between my child and the embryo is too great," she explained as she nodded to Carter. "Colonel Carter then decided due to the delicate nature of the situation, she was the best choice."
"Jack-" Carter stopped herself reflexively before she let herself continue. "General O'Neill and I have the necessary clearances and possibly the closest to the correct experience required to raise a child that might have the brain of an adult with a PhD and knowledge Atlantis."
The idea that General O'Neill and Colonel Carter were involved was possibly the oldest piece of gossip in the Stargate program. Having it abruptly proved true in a meeting was obviously throwing Lorne and Zelenka off their trains of thought. John hadn't been in the SGC long enough to hear more than rumors, but again, he felt the odd surge of jealousy so strangely that he wasn't sure what it was at first.
"The last plan is the most farfetched," Delta began when the room had quieted. "The other replicants and I believe we can modify your hibernation chamber to speed up cellular time instead of slowing it."
"We can essential put Elizabeth on fast-forward," Rodney added in. "Rush her through the pregnancy before her mind fails on her."
"We can prevent her brain from degrading by putting her in a deep coma when we place her in hibernation," Keller answered John's question before he got a chance to ask it. "Her body and the body of the child will still age, but her brain will have stopped."
"We considered putting Elizabeth in a coma now," Delta elaborated as Rodney's mind worked on the hibernation chamber. John could see him thinking and was grateful again for the scientist's intelligence, not that he'd admit it. "But her condition is too fragile to depend on it remaining stable for nine moths."
"Hibernation is different?" John asked and tried not to feel like the stupid kid in the room.
"We can selectively activate and deactivate parts of her metabolism," Keller tried to explain hopefully. "The stress on her body will be significantly less than if she were to remain in a coma in real time."
"When she comes out," Rodney faltered but continued as his hands twitched nervously. "We should be able to put the baby, Elizabeth, back into the hibernation chamber and return her to the correct age. The replicants--"
"If the child does not have her memories, we believe Elizabeth will be able to transfer her memories into the new body," Delta explained for Rodney. "Much as she was able to give her memories to us. This would also be a direct transfer, so it should result in a true reproduction of the Elizabeth you knew."
"And the replicants?" Teyla asked from the back of the table. "Where will you go?"
"Provided we can prove we pose no threat to you or Atlantis," Delta paused and John saw Elizabeth in her wry smile. "We wish to be allowed on our way. We have many ways we could be useful to Atlantis and Earth without being locked up by the IOA."
"Has this been discussed with Elizabeth?" Carter asked as she took control of the meeting.
Rodney's eyes dropped to the floor. Delta looked concerned as well and it was Keller who spoke.
"Elizabeth herself believes she is compromised," Keller began darkly. "We weren't sure she would even allow us to consider plans that let the pregnancy continue unless she was helped to understand the embryo is free of nanites."
"Which it is," Rodney interrupted. "It's completely healthy, a prefect recreation of Elizabeth as she was and there's nothing we can find that suggests she won't continue to grow that way. I know it's a long shot, but if we can work the hibernation tube like Delta and Gamma think we can-"
"We can have her back," John finished grimly as he left his chair. All his thoughts, the scattered mess of his conscious mind, collapsed into knowing Elizabeth could come back. "I need to--" The chair creaked for a moment in the silence before Carter nodded.
"Go," she allowed.
"Do you think as she does?" Zelenka asked the replicant Elizabeth as he watched her frown at her computer terminal. "Do you have the same thoughts?"
Gamma twirled the stylus of her computer and reached for her coffee with her left hand. The room was packed with scientists, and though man of them kept sneaking a look at the replicant, she didn't seem fazed. Zelenka admired that about her.
"No, not entirely," she paused and kept her lips on her cup for a moment. "I think I have more in common with Rodney now that I've worked with him," she mused as she set the cup down. "For instance, I don't need to ingest nutrients, and this coffee will have no effect on my brain, but I feel better knowing it's there."
"What will happen to it?" Zelenka wondered as she set the cup aside and returned her hands to the keyboard.
"My nanites will break it down to the component atoms and use it for fuel," Gamma explained as she bit her lip in concentration. "So I suppose it's not a total waste of time."
"Doctor Weir likes coffee," Zelenka reminded her as he peered over her shoulder and tried not to think about how much she looked like Elizabeth.
"She does," Gamma nodded as she moved over and let him see what she was doing. The chair squeaked on the floor and had he not been so close, he wouldn't have heard it over the argument heating up the other side ofthe laboratory. "But I think it's Rodney's need for it that keeps me wanting it. I don't think Eliz- Doctor Weir- ever felt like her head was going to explode if she didn't get it."
Her eyes looked like Elizabeth's looked when Sheppard's team was late. "You care about her very much, don't you?" Zelenka asked as his hand hovered over her shoulder. He never would have touched the real Elizabeth. She lived in a world of her own, but this one seemed so lost, he couldn't help himself.
To his surprise and amazement, she smiled in the direction of the hand and turned her eyes back to her work without comment. "It was my idea to reprogram her nanites," she admitted without looking up from her computer. "It was my arrogance that got all of us into this impossible situation and if we hadn't agreed to contact Atlantis, my stubborn belief that I could control the nanites would have killed her. Still might really." Stopping her typing, Gamma turned to the sympathetic Czech and patted the hand on her shoulder.
"She's me, she's my mother and she's the most important thing in my very brief life," Gamma explained as she squeezed his hand before releasing it. "I don't know if I have the emotional context to deal with losing her, so I suppose an addiction to coffee I don't need to drink is the least of my problems."
She sounded sarcastic and vaguely like Rodney when he was trying desperately not to deal with something. The tiny exhausted smile was entirely Elizabeth and he couldn't help staring at her instead of her work.
"Do you think we should change the crystal orientation in the hibernation chamber or try and work with what we have?" Gamma asked him as she waited for his response. She hadn't seen him staring at her and Zelenka pretended to be thinking when she looked up.
"Which ones do you want to move?"
"Doctor Weir doesn't shoot like that," Ronon pointed out as he studied the paper target with a grin. "Unless she's possessed by an alien. Then she was a good shot."
"She still feels bad," Alpha reminded him as she shuddered inwardly. "I feel bad and I'm not her."
"I lived," Ronon reminded her as he crumpled up the paper target and tilted his head towards the gym. "Wanna try something else?"
"Sticks?" she asked with a grimace that remind him so much of John Ronon couldn't help grinning.
"Hey, least you can't bleed when I hit you," he nudged her shoulder and watched as her eyes started to shine with amusement. "You're not her," he decided as she watched her strip down a simple black sports bra in the gym.
"Oh?" Alpha asked running a hand through her hair. "I look a lot like her."
"That's the end of the resemblance," Ronon corrected as he tossed a stick over to her. "I don't think she'd be in here dressed like that."
"Doesn't really matter, does it?" Alpha asked as she swung the stick a few times over her head. "Not like I'll distract you or anything."
"You'd distract Sheppard," Ronon teased as he stretched his arms and rolled his neck in preparation.
"You distract Sheppard," Alpha retorted as she parried three blows and hit his chest hard enough to knock him back to the wall.
Ronon grinned wickedly and panted through the pain in his chest. "He's not used to people looking away from where they hit," he grunted as he met her again. This time his stick slammed hard into her back, knocking her to her knees with a solid, satisfying thud. The naked skin on her back flashed silver for a moment as it repaired itself.
"Almost seems like you're cheating," Ronon teased as he helped her up from the floor.
"I can shut them off," Alpha offered as she stopped in thought for a moment. "I think," she murmured as she closed her eyes. "Hit me," she asked as she stiffened.
Ronon obeyed, slamming the stick into her unprotected stomach.
This time an imprint of the stick remained on her flesh, as if he'd drawn it there with silver paint. Alpha looked down and shrugged. "Satisfied?"
Ronon nodded and missed her getting ready to smack him back, hard across the stomach.
"Even," Alpha explained winking as she blocked his retaliatory strike and their sticks cracked hard in air.
"Come here often?" Evan Lorne began lightly as he stopped on the balcony next to one of the Elizabeths. She had borrowed an Athosian shawl from Teyla and she seemed more comfortable than she had been in the meeting. The purple wrap hung lazily over her shoulders and she pulled it a little closer as she looked up.
"Part of me would say yes," Delta smiled and nodded to him. "The other part has never seen anything so beautiful."
"Which part are you listening to?" Evan continued as he smiled and realized she did not have the legendary barriers Elizabeth Weir believed were part of her position. She did have the same beautiful smile.
"My part," Delta answered cryptically as she reached for his hand. Surprised by her touch, Evan let her lift his hand from the railing. "Elizabeth knows you paint."
"We talked about it once," Even nodded calmly trying to come to terms with the idea. "You- she- was happy I had a hobby. Joked that she should consider getting one, someday. That was a couple years ago now. Still doesn't have one, does she?"
"Never really got around to it," Delta conceded softly as she pointed out at the water. "Unless this counts."
"It could," Evan offered optimistically. "You could always take up painting on your own."
Delta smiled at him and headed back into his quarters with a hand on his arm. "Only if someone teaches me."
"I'm going to die in here," Elizabeth whispered to him as he sat down next to the bed in the white quarantine room. "I should have died here." She added as she looked away from his eyes. "You never should have tried the nanites."
"Stop talking like that," John snapped much more harshly than he intended to. "Keller has a plan."
Moaning as she rolled away from him, Elizabeth curled into a ball on her side. "No more plans," she begged with an edge in her voice John had come to associate with the worst of her headaches. "No more far-flung attempts to save my life." She coughed and curled tighter in the bed. "Let me go." Her voice grew raspier as she had more trouble breathing.
Hurrying to the other side of the bed, John watched in horror as silvery pink fluid drained from her lips. There were bubbles in it as she continued to fight the fluid building up in her lungs. There were a stack of small white towels and basins by that side of the bed and grabbing one from the top, he held it against her lips until the spell passed.
Elizabeth caught one breath full enough to cough the piece of lung tissue out of her throat. John stared at it on the towel, pink and silver tissue flecked with blood. Dropping it to the floor didn't make it any less real. Elizabeth was literally falling apart from the inside out. Keller had mentioned putting her on dialysis soon if the modifications to the stasis tube would take any longer than a few hours.
Gasping for her next breath, Elizabeth let him lift her head back up to her pillow. "Can't go on like this," she pleaded as her chest gurgled with blood and fluid. "Please--"
"Keller is going to put you into stasis," John began as he rubbed the last of the bloody sputum from her lips. "We're going to speed up parts of your metabolism, put your body on autopilot--"
"No," she cut him off as she sobbed weakly. "Don't do this."
"What do you want us to do?" He whispered so softly he wasn't even sure he was speaking. "What will you let you do? Transfer the embryo- fetus, whatever you want to call it to Carter and grow up on Earth? This is you we're talking about. Not a thing or a creature."
"You," he repeated with the quiet commanding tone he'd developed in her absence. "You have a choice. You can die. You can give up and leave us again-"
"Stop it," she begged him as she closed her eyes. "How many times have you tried to sacrifice yourself for the city? Two? Four?"
Sitting down no longer seemed appropriate, leaving his chair gave him room to pace. "That was different."
"Different how?" she asked as her eyes popped back open. "You were the only one?"
"Damn right I was the only one," he corrected her. "Who would you have had me send? Rodney? Ford? Ford in the puddle jumper might have been good, that way he wouldn't have gotten his guts sucked out by the Wraith--"
"For god's sake John!" Elizabeth sat bolt upright in bed and her eyes burned with something he'd thought was long dead in her. "You can sacrifice yourself as many times as you want, but I refuse to go through with some kind of ridiculous plan and you try to guilt me?" Her coughing only sounded angry now. "I was supposed to die. I should be dead."
"You're not-" John interrupted her.
"You didn't ask me before you filled me full of these things!" she spat back as she pulled her knees up. When her legs wouldn't move, she dragged them up with her hands. "I was supposed to die--"
"Why is it so damn hard to ask you to live?"
"I would have died human," Elizabeth choked before she repeated herself. "I wouldn't have to live like this."
He couldn't face her when he said it. "You're dying, Elizabeth. You're not living like anything. If we do nothing, you die. If we transfer you to Carter, you might still die. You could even take her with you."
Shaking her head slowly, Elizabeth shoved herself back towards the wall. "Tell her no," she kept shaking her head. "John, don't let her risk it."
"Let us put you in stasis," he argued back finally turning to look at her. "If it doesn't work I will sit with you and watch you die. I can promise you that."
Elizabeth's hand shook as she pointed to the chair by her bed. "No nanites?"
"Nothing," he promised as he crossed his arms and moved towards the chair. "If this doesn't work, I promise you will die."
Smiling as she shut her eyes, Elizabeth leaned back against the wall and sighed. "I'll hold you to that John."
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of theBuonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated bythat Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--" John paused and reached for his cup of water and took a sip. In front of him, Elizabeth glowed golden in the stasis tube. By the wall on his left was the gurney and Keller's medical equipment for when the released the stasis. John's watch ticked past oh-three hundred before he looked up from his book.
"After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone,"pausing to yawn and stand up, John left his chair and continued with chapter eight of 'War and Peace'.
"I know you've read this before," he reminded Elizabeth as he stared at her through the golden light separating them. "Sometimes it's just nice to have someone read to you. Since you can't argue with me, I'm going to keep going." Clearing his throat, he started with the next paragraph.
By oh-six hundred he was nearly asleep on his feet and Beta appeared with Rodney. "We heard you were reading," Beta began gruffly. "Rodney couldn't sleep, and I don't sleep so I thought we'd--"
Mutely, John handed over the book and retreated to the back of the room. When Rodney opened to the place he had bookmarked, John was already asleep.
Gamma was reading while Zelenka sat beside her and set out food for John. They had a thermos of coffee and it was still hot as he drank it greedily down.
"When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything but what was good of him," Gamma finished as she reached the end of chapter fourteen and passed the book back to John. Zelenka had his hand on her back when they left, John caught out of the corner of his eye.
He was half-way through chapter nineteen when Ronon arrived with more food. The Satedan took the fat book in his hand and read with a gentle baritone that surprised John as he slipped away to shower and shave. Ronon was still reading when he came back. He ate dinner and listened to the many reasons Natasha could not marry her lover.
Ronon didn't even slip up on the complicated Russian names.
Alpha came in the night, preferring to sit her vigil when only John was there to see her. They spoke in whispers, sitting against the wall by Elizabeth's feet. "Colonel Carter has made it clear that we are to take one of the jumpers," Alpha whispered as she poured some of her beer into John's empty mug.
"Yeah," John agreed softly swirling the amber liquid. "I asked for one."
"We are leaving tomorrow," she added as she lifted 'War and Peace' up to her eyes and searched for chapter twenty-one. "We will not say goodbye."
John read twenty-two through twenty-six on his own. He was growing hoarse when Lorne and Delta arrived with breakfast and his next reprieve. Delta had paint on her hands and she smiled whenever Lorne caught her eye. When John fell asleep, Lorne was reading and Delta was serenely watching him with the kind of patience he adored and barely understood in Elizabeth.
When he woke up, it was only Teyla. "The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another. Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he dismounted. The game had begun," she finished reading and closed the book on chapter twenty-nine.
"I do not understand the way your people constantly refer to war as a game to be won or lost," she asked as she sat with him on the gurney Keller was saving for Elizabeth. "Do you not understand that war consists only of losses? Of death and destruction?"
"Maybe if we had fought the Wraith longer," John mused as he ran his hand through his hair. "We spent too much time just fighting each other. We never really noticed how important it was to see the big picture."
"It is an impressive story," Teyla nodded to the book as she passed it to his hands. "I think I shall have to read it from the beginning one day."
He hand brushed his shoulder as John began to read, "On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Boris had given up to him."
"I heard you were reading," Sam began as she slipped into the room behind him. John was pacing as he read aloud. He didn't even see the words anymore, and sometimes he worried that he'd gone over the same part. Elizabeth would have to tell him. If she remembered.
"Keeps me awake," John admitted as he set the book down for a moment and stretched his fingers.
Sam lifted it up and smiled at him softly. "She let me bring General O'Neill back," she offered as she stared at the golden light and the slowly changing curves of Elizabeth's body. "Her vitals are good, considering."
"I don't want her to die alone," John admitted as an excuse and a prayer as he stared at the worn pages of his book in her hands. "I don't care if I'm asleep when it happens. I just--"
"I have some time," Sam offered gently as she found a place with her eyes on the page. "I'll read and I'll wake you."
Keller, two nurses, Rodney and Sam were there when Sam's hand shook his shoulder. "Keller's bringing her out," she said anti-climatically. War and Peace lay on the chair, shoved into the corner and forgotten as Keller and the aides moved the bed in front of the stasis chamber.
Elizabeth's hair had grown more than a centimeter while she'd been in stasis and it was her curls John focused on as the golden field flicked off and she fell. Her legs weren't functioning. Keller was speaking and Sam and the aides were answering her questions. Elizabeth's eyes didn't move. None of her limbs moved and Keller only made a preliminary check of the host's vitals before she started checking the baby.
No one cared that John moved up to her head. It didn't matter that he was touching her hair because she couldn't feel it. He'd felt her hair once, when he'd carried her to the infirmary. It seemed softer now, more forgiving as it slipped from his fingers. The lines on her face and faded away and her skin seemed almost translucently white. Nearly seven months had passed for her cells while her brain had been locked in a trance. Was it gone? Was she already gone?
Keller rolled her arm to the side and began adding the IVs. One went into her elbow, and another into her left hand. One of the aides lifted Elizabeth's leg and started pulling back the sheet that covered her.
"We left her in as long as possible," Keller explained to Sam when she realized John wasn't listening to her. "We shouldn't have to do much more than remove the baby."
Elizabeth's eyelids twitched once and John stopped hearing the voice around him. "You didn't finish," she accused softly. "All that reading--" Elizabeth swallowed and her eyelids moved again. "And you didn't finish."
"Cliffhangers keep us coming back," John murmured just in case he was the only one who saw this. "Didn't you see 'Empire Strikes Back'?"
Laughing weakly, Elizabeth's head moved once from side to side. "No," she answered as if she could sense the disappointment on his face. "What happened?"
"Can't tell you unless you saw the first once," John sighed in mock exasperation. "Which you didn't, did you?"
"No--" Elizabeth replied with the hint of a smirk.
"A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away," John began as he felt someone push a chair in behind him. Sam slipped past him wordlessly and set 'War and Peace' in a corner of the room as she returned to Keller.
John saw the doctor lifting Elizabeth's legs out of he corner of his eye. "One of the best beginnings to a movie you'll ever see," he promised her as he mimed the credits appearing on a screen.
"You'll have to take me," Elizabeth whispered as her eyebrows twitched slightly. The only sign that she felt the contractions Keller had induced was a momentary tightening of the muscles in her neck.
"I'll hold you to that," John echoed her from earlier. Her lips twitched as she remembered.
"It starts with a princess," John explained as he watched in amazement as Elizabeth managed to move her hand. it feebly worked up towards her shoulder and he caught it before she lost the ability to move it any further. "And she's in trouble."
Sighing as she half-opened an eye, Elizabeth looked amused. "Aren't they always?"
"When you open your eyes you're upside down and the world is spread out beneath you like a blanket of blue and white," John explained as he tried to ignore the smell of blood behind his head. He'd asked Keller not to bother cauterizing anything unless she needed to see. It didn't matter to Elizabeth if she bled out or died later from slow brain failure. John had nearly bled out a few times and he preferred that way to go.
"All you hear is the engine because it's so loud it cancels out your breath," John leaned closer to her ear as he watched her screw her eyes shut against the pain. "You nearly forget you even have to breath, it's so beautiful and you're so small up there. Technically you're upside down because space is beneath you but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like you're part of that space and all of you is all around the Earth. you're bigger than the ice and the ocean and everything and if you just stay there. You'll get it. I mean really get it, you can feel it pulse through you like--"
John held her hand closer to his face and watched her knuckles tighten and go white against his hand. "Like nothing I've ever felt. You're everywhere at once and you don't feel the seat and the belts and the straps on your suit. You feel space and the fourteen Gs slamming your eyes back into their sockets when you loose the moment."
Her lips curled slightly into a smile and John realized how grey they'd gotten. Her hand relaxed and he wondered if it was over. Somewhere past the white skin of Elizabeth's leg, Keller and Sam were moving and Rodney had his eyes fixed so firmly to the stasis chamber that he wouldn't have seen Armageddon happen behind him.
"John?" Elizabeth's voice cut through his thoughts like a razor.
"Antarctica," he repeated her last request and kept going with his explanation. "That's a F-eighteen," he explained as he shook himself away from the flurry of movement that was Keller and the nurses. "A helicopter is more like a being able to fly were pure thought, you get up, down, left, right but you don't have to climb and dive like the a fighter. You can drop so low you churn up the snow like a tornado. Remember when you could make tornados in bottles with glitter when you were a kid? And you put the monopoly houses in there? So they worked better?"
"-She's gone," Sam's voice interrupted him as her hand touched his shoulder. "I'm sorry John," she finished as she pulled the sheet up over the ruin of Elizabeth's body.
The hand in his was slack now, limp and cooling. He hadn't seen her go, John realized as it hit him like a punch in the gut. Sam pulled the dead hand away and the hand on his shoulder tightened in comfort.
Keller's lips were set in a hard line as she crossed the room to him. "It'll take us a few minutes to reset the chamber, could you please?"
The baby was in her arms, wrapped in something white and pristine. He'd never seen an infant that small, John realized as Keller handed her over to him. Instead of crying, she still had Elizabeth's mind, Elizabeth's nanites had seen to that, the infant stared at him with incredibly deep blue eyes.
"Hey," John whispered sheepishly taking her away from the corpse. "I know this is weird, but it's going to be over soon. Few minutes of this, some time in the stasis pod and you'll be you and you'll be human and life will be back to normal."
The baby's face scrunched up and John wondered if all infants could manage that accusatory look.
"As normal as it gets around here?" he corrected and watched her face relax. He'd never held a baby who was still damp. By the time he saw them, they usually had hats and booties, but Elizabeth was just wrapped, naked, in the sheet in his arms.
"Puddler jumpers are the best," he dragged himself back to flying for want of anything better to say. "You get in that pilot seat," he began as her eyes bored into him. "You think and you move, it's that simple. No clumsy controls, no suit, no Gs or eyeballs flattening out. You just move."
Her tiny red lips parted and impossibly small fingers emerged at the edge of the white sheet. He nudged them with just one of his and they moved beneath his touch. Her fingers seemed almost too small to move, and John was glad her eyes were probably too untrained to see his face. Rubbing the dampness off with his shoulder, John slipped his finger into the palm of her hand and felt her fingers wrap around his.
"Puddler jumpers in deep space are like being truly free," John sighed and wished he was better and speaking. "You're out there and you feel like you could dance with everything else that's out there. It's when i really understand infinity. Not the mathematical one, but the real one. The one where forever really means- you know. You could chase down comets if you had to. Not that I would," he chided himself as he smiled down at her. "That would be a waste of valuable time and resources."
Her tongue moved inside her lips and John marveled that anything about Elizabeth could have begun so small and meekly. She nearly refused to let go when Sam came to collect her from his arms.
"It'll be a few days before she's herself again," Sam explained as she worked to detach the baby fingers from John's hand. "It's easier this time though, we can age all of her at the same rate."
Nodding stupidly, he watched the baby disappear as Sam walked away. Keller took her next and Rodney was doing something with the wall.
The body was in the corner, forgotten and cooling like a plane that would never need to fly again. John made himself walk away without looking at her. The real Elizabeth was being put into the stasis chamber and in a few days the whole thing would be over. She'd be cleared by the IOA, fill out more forms than she'd ever seen in her life and she'd be back.
He forced himself into the shower before he went to bed. John collapsed after the water had rinsed all the smells of that room off of his skin. Pulling on clean boxer shorts seemed like a formality, but, if there was an emergency, he'd be glad he had. That thought, however unimportant, was the last thing he knew before he fell asleep.
It was five days before he saw her. He'd known she was back. The mood in the cafeteria was lighter, Rodney was making jokes and eating with Teyla more enthusiastically than he had for months. Ronon still seemed amused Colonel Carter had been so quick to let the replicator Elizabeths disappear into the galaxy, he'd even started sitting at her table when they ate at the same time. Sam's stories of early SG-1 missions made his laugh carry across the room.
Elizabeth was released from the infirmary on Monday. By Wednesday she had passed every test the IOA had to offer and Friday morning he had to attend his first staff meeting with her sharing stewardship of the city with Colonel Carter. Sam had agreed that military and scientific decisions would rest with her primarily, while Elizabeth had the responsibilities of personnel, politics and relationships with foreign governments here in Pegasus.
According to Rodney is was amicable and Teyla seemed pleased by the situation as well. Ronon was himself but he took the batch of new recruits that had returned from Earth with Elizabeth to the gym with renewed vigor. Sam was making room for a second desk and the two masks he'd refused to send back to Earth, Calvin and Hobbes as he liked to think of them, were back on the wall behind what would be Elizabeth's desk.
Everything was normal.
Everything was good and happy and as it should be except that he'd scattered her ashes off the southern pier. He'd done it alone. Rodney, Teyla, Ronon- most of the city would have come with him if he had asked, but he'd done it alone. It had seemed foolish because Elizabeth was alive but he'd done it. The little metal case her ashes had been in was at the bottom of the ocean as well because he'd felt like throwing it. He'd thrown it so hard his arm still stung.
War and Peace was back in his quarters. John wasn't sure how it had gotten there, but he believed it was Sam. She had that way about her. He even thought he might eventually like it. He already respected her, he wasn't sure if he could have been as cool as she was when she lied to the IOA directly about the replicator clones of Elizabeth.
They were destroyed, at least, as far as anyone who wasn't part of a select group of personnel knew.
He couldn't read the book anymore. He'd tried to pick it up but something in the cover seemed to have become poisonous to him and John left it in the corner. Maybe it was better that way, he'd always thought finishing it would mean finishing his time in Atlantis and he wasn't ready for that yet.
When his quarters chimed, John had expected Rodney. He'd been reclusive and Rodney only let him get away with a few days of that before the scientist would come bother him until he found out what was eating at him. Teyla would be polite and wait for him to come to her. Ronon would just beat him up because bruises were therapy on Sateda. John was wondering if it was Sam when the door slid open.
Elizabeth's hair was long, curly and full of life as it hung radiately on her shoulders. She was in a green t-shirt, perhaps as testament to her new position, and her hands were clasped loosely in front of her. She had the same black trousers, the same shoes and the same rapt expression she used when she didn't know what to say. The past few months, the weirdness of having five Elizabeths when none of them were the right one, all of that could have blinked out of existence because she was there.
"May I come in?" she asked so gently her words seemed to float.
John nodded and took a step towards the center of the room. He had no chair to offer her, so unless she wanted to sit on the bed, they were going to stand.
"i wanted to thank you," Elizabeth opened neutrally as if he'd simply bailed her out of a difficult meeting. "You went to extraordinary lengths to save me and I--"
"You're welcome," John interrupted simply wondering if she'd leave it at that.
Elizabeth still stood there, like a ghost in his quarters. Both of them stood, breathing without looking at each other and he puzzled over the workings on her mind. Usually he was the one thanking her for saving his ass. On the rare occasions it was him, he was usually smug.
Except this time he didn't feel smug. John felt like hell and he was hoping she'd leave before she could feel it.
"How's being back?" John asked pathetically when it felt like the silence would hang until it choked them.
"Strange," Elizabeth admitted with a half smile that made his heart feel like bursting. "There are new faces here, new policies I have to get myself accustomed to but at the same time it feels like i never left. All that running and fighting with the Replicators was a dream I'm waking up from now that I'm home."
"But you did make it home," John reminded her as he stared into her face and speculated at how much she remembered.
"I should thank you again because you let me die," she continued clearly though her voice was starting to tremble. "I don't have all of my- her- memories of that moment, but i do remember a powerful sense of relief. She drew a great deal of strength from you. I probably owe my life to you for that."
"I was just talking--"
"Many of my memories are still jumbled," Elizabeth spoke over him with a new steadiness he envied. "Jen says they'll get better with time-"
"-You don't have too--"
She interrupted him nearly the moment he spoke. "Chasing comets," she blurted out. "I'd like to think she- I- whatever she is, I'd like to think she's there now. Where you said she could feel free. I hadn't realized what it was to be trapped until I was there, in that stasis chamber and I could feel myself dying in tiny pieces. I kept clinging to you and your promise that you'd let me go. I thought I could will myself out of there, that I could just let go."
"You didn't," John added when her words had faded out of the air.
"I didn't," she repeated as she stared down at her hands. Holding out one of her hands towards him, John stared at the skin and flesh wrapped around the bone and felt his heart catch. He didn't want to touch her because he was desperately afraid one touch would send her into oblivion again, like a phantom or a nightmare.
Forcing himself to lift his hand, his flesh melted into her palm. Elizabeth clung to him running her fingers over his until they stopped perfectly wrapped around his own. "I have this funny memory of your hands being so big I could only hold one finger."
Biting his lip, John dragged his eyes up from their entwined hands. "Elizabeth--"
"Thank you."