NOTES: Written several months ago, long before The Prodigal aired. I prefer this scenario - much more drama and a more interesting thread of connection-danger to Atlantis.
Reaching The Shore
The table on the balcony has the grace of being solitary. Teyla's in no mood for company now.
Wind whistles past the spires of the city, sliding thin, cold fingers beneath her jacket. She lets the chill take her. Better the cold outside than the cold inside. She believed in lies, trusted where she should not, and her son will pay the price.
She does not look up when the mug is placed on the table before her. A scented curl of steam rises briefly above the rim, then is swept away in the breeze.
"Keller says you should rest." John says as he sits down opposite her.
"Torran is gone." The words are harsh in her throat, barely speakable. "I cannot sleep."
More difficult to explain is that she cannot go back to her rooms - to the rooms she shared with the man who betrayed her, who betrayed their son.
She cannot look at John; the conflicts within her too strong for words. But she knows he watches her, concern in his eyes, uncertainty in his thoughts. He doesn't know what to say; does not seem to understand that she doesn't need him to say anything. Fixing this is beyond him, beyond Rodney, beyond the power of anyone in the city. All their technology and all their knowledge might bring back her son; but there is nothing that can restore her belief.
It is a bitter thought.
"We can move you."
Startled into movement, she looks up at John. He has leaned forward, both hands around another steaming mug of tea, and his eyes are on her.
"We can move you into an empty room tonight if you want. If it will help. Keller's got something to knock you out - Teyla, you need to rest. We're not giving up; we're just looking after you."
"I thought him free of Michael's influence," she says, never looking away. "I thought he wanted..."
Her. Their son. Their relationship. A family.
John looks down, looks away. "He seemed...happy." His fingers curve around the ceramic mug, a restless movement. "Maybe he thought he was free. Look, it's possible that Michael coerced him into it - it wouldn't be the first time."
"Then why did he not say as much? Why did he not alert someone while he was in the camp?" The questions plague her like Torran's wailing in the early days, an endless cycle of doubt and fear and grief and rage.
On Michael's ship, pregnant with her son and the knowledge that her time was running out, Teyla had accepted that Michael's grasp had been impossible to break from so close; that part of her people's suborning had been mental and not merely physical. But Kanaan had been different then - other.
Kanaan was not other anymore; not since Jennifer and her work on him, not since Carson and his assistance and advice.
And yet, this.
"I don't know."
"My son is gone, John!" She shakes with the force of her fury, even as she feels shame at her outburst. John had nothing to do with this; he is merely convenient to her rage.
"And we're going to do everything in our power to get him back." His eyes hold hers as he leans forward and grips her hand. "Teyla, you know we'll move heaven and earth to find Torran."
The rare contact does what his voice does not - anchors her more than any words of comfort.
But even that solidarity is not enough. "Because he is a danger to Atlantis?"
She should not bait him; but bitterness brings relief of a kind - it invigorates her, a river into which she can plunge herself and be clean. "Because he's your son," says John, his fingers closing around hers, and she hears again the sentiments he struggled to voice when Ronon was lost on Sateda: he would give his life for those he cares about.
Teyla looks into his face, into his soul. John has always held parts of himself back; but that has never troubled her. If the layers were stripped away there would be nothing left of who he is.
His skin is hot over the back of her hand, fierce with the inner fire that is only ever kept banked, never extinguished. It burns with a ferocity that she admires, appreciates, cherishes. And yet she knows the layer that lies between them should not be pulled aside. In that knowledge, she takes back her hand, withdraws it into the chill wind and closes it around the mug of tea he brought her.
He accepts the withdrawl with only a brief clench of his fist. "We've got people out asking about Michael's movements - if anyone knows where he is, what he's doing. Your people are doing the same, aren't they?"
"Yes." Because they, also, are horrified at what Kanaan has done, what has been wrought through him, what might yet be wrought through their own.
That is the true horror of what Kanaan - what Michael, through Kanaan - has done to her people.
They thought themselves free of Michael, of his influence and what was done to them. Kanaan's defection has shown that to be mere illusion.
At night, in the Athosian tents, the children still have nightmares and the adults wake shivering. And Teyla dreams of her son, so small, so helpless, in the hands of his fathers - of the creature who claims his existence's meaning, of the man whose seed gave him life.
She will believe that Kanaan was coerced. She must believe it. To believe otherwise is to invite despair.
"You didn't know," John says into the silence. Teyla does not ask how he knows the train of her thoughts. He has always second-guessed himself after everything is done and the air has cleared; he would understand what runs through her now.
It is still small comfort.
"Should I have known?" Should she have seen something more, something that might have warned her that this was coming?
"No. I'm not saying-- Teyla..." His hand opens, fingers splayed before he closes his hand again. "We want to believe the best of people. Especially the people close to us." He leans forward again, elbows out, his eyes on her, intent and reassuring. "It's not your fault."
Teyla says nothing, unwilling to relinquish her guilt. Perhaps it is not; but her son is missing all the same. No amount of reassurance can absolve that wrong.
Perhaps John senses that, for he says nothing more. He simply sits with her, silent and unspeaking; offering her his presence, his silence, and his support.
And in his company, Teyla finds grace of a kind, too.
- fin -