Title: Arm's Length
Category: Gen
Word count: 1,199
Warnings: Spoilers for Missing and The Seer

A/N: Written in one of those crash sessions when a lightning bolts strikes your brain and it's either write the thing down or lose it forever. Worth the effort? Only you can say for sure. Beta'd by my pal Madigirl.

Teyla doesn't talk to him anymore.

It's nothing anyone else would notice. She doesn't overtly shun him, doesn't get up and leave the table when he comes to sit down in the mess, and when they're all together, she treats him exactly as before. There is nothing that anyone else might witness and conclude from it that she is shutting him out.

It's just that now, she avoids being alone with him.

Used to be there were casual encounters in the hallways, sparring sessions, late night chance meetings in the mess when they were both unable to sleep. Teyla's not sleeping well these days, he can tell, but she's not spending those sleepless hours in any place where she might have company. His company, anyway.

Once he'd relaxed enough to start feeling like a part of the city, the two of them seemed to find a special comfort in those private conversations, a bond that came from being the only natives here. He alternately scoffed at their naïveté and embraced their mission to vanquish the Wraith; she had called his attention to their kindness and generosity while admitting to reservations about their occasionally impulsive ways.

Those conversations have now given way to polite smiles as Teyla hurries down the hall and excuses when he tries to schedule sparring sessions, all without really meeting his eyes.

Maybe it's the fact of her pregnancy, which he can clearly see even though she hasn't yet made it public knowledge. (And just how blindis John, anyway? He can understand Rodney not noticing, but John's spent a lot of time sparring with the woman. Even the early, subtle changes in her body should have caught his attention.) He's not sure why she's keeping it secret. It can't be out of shame; people in this galaxy don't apply weird moral judgments to creating new life. He doesn't really understand how or why people in the Milky Way can afford to – he knows that life is very, very different for humans in a place where there have never been Wraith, but it's still impossible for him to fully comprehend.

So for a while, he is puzzled by her avoidance, and when it continues, he's actually hurt – a bitter, stinging pain that's somehow sweet, too; after all, not so long ago, he'd considered it a given that he'd never be close to anyone again, never be able to form relationships, and therefore never be in a position to have his feelings hurt. But it bothers him that it's happening, and especially that he doesn't know why.

He considers just coming straight out and asking her, but he suspects that would not help this situation. Though he still favors bluntness in just about every circumstance, he knows that it isn't always appropriate or effective, and the last thing he wants is to widen this gap that has suddenly sprung up between them. He's stopped trying to schedule sparring sessions; her increasingly obvious excuses are beginning to embarrass him. Once he'd even asked her for another meditation lesson, which was met with that eyebrow-raising thing followed by, "Perhaps another time. I am feeling very tired tonight."

"Perfect," he'd said. "I'll probably fall asleep, anyway."

Weeks ago, that would have provoked either a narrowing of the eyes or a mischievous grin that promised to make him pay. Now, though, she merely forces a smile and repeats, "Another time."

So he simply watches her contrive to not be alone with him, notes the shuttered, distant look she has when they make eye contact, and pretends it's no big deal. And when the revelation comes, he is so busy being nonchalant that he nearly misses it. They are off-world, checking some uninhabited planet. Sheppard criticizes Rodney in that voice intended to provoke the scientist. Rodney makes a biting rejoinder, and he tells them both how the situation would have been handled on Sateda. And there is a flash of something in Teyla's eyes as he says it, something that she clamps down on quickly, like slamming a lid on a pot whose contents have caught fire. But she's not quick enough to keep him from seeing the panicked, pained terror, and suddenly he understands. And for a while, for a long while, he is angry.

She hasn't been avoiding him because of anything he's done or said. It's because he's lost his people. His world is gone, his culture exists only in memory now, and spending time with him makes it hard for her to keep believing that her people are not gone but only missing, and only temporarily. He is a concrete reminder that when something horrible, like a culling, appears to have happened, that's probably exactly what happened. It's much more comforting to believe the probable lies of a spy who betrayed her but offered hope than to face the reality of what happened to Sateda and the likely fate of her own people.

He is angered by this, not because she wants to postpone facing the prospect, but because it feels insulting, belittling, as though things like cullings only happen to other cultures. As though she feels the Athosians are above such a fate. He knows it's only natural that she would deny it as long as possible, but it still rankles. They are good people, and he has come to love them, but Teyla keeping him at a distance doesn't make it less likely that they are never coming back. It reminds him of those peoples who shun survivors from culled worlds out of a superstitious belief that they will attract Wraith to any world that takes them in. So stupid. The Wraith can find anyone at any time.

It angers him, too, because though her rejection of him has nothing to do with what he's done, it amounts to a punishment for him. He is sensitive to injustice now in a way that he wasn't when injustice was a daily fact of his life.

But the part of him that isn't quick to judge, to react in knee-jerk anger, knows that her behavior isn't just stubborn denial, isn't a personal rebuff of him. Among her people who've seemingly disappeared from existence is Teyla's lover. She doesn't give her heart lightly – another thing they have in common – and the idea that she has lost the man she's come to cherish is more than she can accept, especially knowing that she carries his child. For now, at least, she needs to hold out that hope, needs to believe that she'll find him again.

She needs her child to not be the last of the Athosians.

So he tamps down the anger and draws on the part of him that knows how to be patient. He watches, knowing that if the Athosians are found, she'll find it possible to meet his eyes again. He waits, because if it turns out that her people are truly gone, she will need to learn how to accept it. And he is the only one around who can help her do that.

He's the only one who can make her understand that they both have a new people now.