Hold on to me as we go,

As we roll down this unfamiliar road.

And although this wave is stringing us along

Just know you're not alone.

Settle down, it'll all be clear.

Don't pay no mind to the demons

They fill you with fear.

Phillip Phillips - Home

Chapter Three

John held Teyla as they lay in bed together, her gentle breathing letting him know she was already asleep. It had been an unsettling day to say the least. Ever since the incident with the door at the community center, Teyla had continued to have "moments" where something seemed completely wrong. He had started to suspect a mental breakdown, maybe some sort of delayed postpartum depression, until it had happened to him too.

They were cleaning up the studio after her class when John had noticed a set of sparring rods in a basket in the corner. They seemed out of place in a yoga studio, but he remembered all sorts of classes were held here. He picked one up and a wave of familiarity washed over him. He turned around to tell Teyla when he saw her swirling across the floor. Not in her black and teal yoga clothes but in something else. She was wearing a dead gorgeous leather skirt and top, her arms bare and her hair pulled up. She was swinging a rod - a bantos rod - and was coming right at him. He could see the look of absolute determination on her face and beads of perspiration along her hair line as she spun towards him. He held up the sparring rod in self defence and shouted.

"John?" Teyla placed her hands on the sparring rod. "What is wrong?"

The image snapped back and his Teyla stood in front of him. She was back in her hip hugging black pants and her sleeveless teal top. Her hair was pulled up, but she looked serene, not fierce and or scary. John dropped the rod and took a step back away from her.

"I saw ... I saw," he stumbled, shocked by what had just happened.

"What did you see?" Teyla asked gently. She folded her hands in front of her gazing at John patiently.

"You. I saw you. But not you. It was a different you. You were intense; focused. You had a rod in your hand, shorter than this one," John picked the sparring rod back up. "And you were spinning around across the floor, swinging the rod, about to attack me."

"Attack you? Why?" Teyla asked, her eyes wide.

"I have no idea!" John grabbed her roughly, pressing his face into her neck. He took a long deep breath, inhaling her warmth and her scent. Behind his closed eyes he could draw up the image of a different Teyla. Why had she been fighting with him? That wasn't exactly right. She had been about to attack him, but somehow he knew they hadn't been fighting. They'd been sparring, something he and Teyla had never done. She was a yoga instructor, he was an airline pilot. They went hiking for recreation; they didn't beat each other with short sticks. He knew the vision was wrong. It had to be! Or maybe this was wrong. He didn't know which. But the Teyla he had seen had turned him on like no other. He was still feeling the powerful surge of attraction washing over him at the memory of her spinning across the floor. He groaned into her neck.

"You are not crazy," Teyla assured him, reading his thoughts. "My vision wasn't quite the same, but I think what we have been experiencing is real."

John nodded, still holding her tightly. "What are we going to do?"

"We are going to go make dinner, and then we will talk. Come John," Teyla stepped away but kept his hand in hers. They drove home in silence, each caught up in their own thoughts.

Now in bed, John ran his fingers along Teyla's arm lightly, not wanting to disturb her. The baby was still waking up in the night from time to time, although more often than not he slept through. John knew Teyla needed her sleep. If Torren woke, nothing but nursing would lull him back to sleep. The idea that this world wasn't real nagged at John. Teyla had told him other things she had noticed that had felt wrong to her and John had to admit he'd had a few moments himself, but nothing like what he'd seen in the studio. That had been powerfully real; not a watery vision. For a slice of time he had been right there, about to be hit by Teyla. The very air around him had felt different: warm, salty and humid.

John gently lifted Teyla's arm off his stomach, and slid out of bed. He padded across the floor and pulled the door almost shut behind him. The lamp was still on in the family room and John made his way there. Pulling out a pad of sketch paper, John began to draw.

Swift lines moved across the paper. Teyla's face began to appear. He erased here and there, correcting the form. He drew her skirt, and her slender arm holding the bantos rod. He captured her hair, swept up from her neck. She was glorious. He began working on the room around her. The floor was wide, with geometric patterns around the edges and a thin mat under Teyla's feet. A tall window grew behind her, like something from a cathedral with different panes of color. The air had dust motes dancing in the light, and John tried to capture them as well. When he had drawn everything he could remember, he sat back and stared. Teyla glowed, but it was more than that. He knew this place. He just could not remember from where. He had the feeling he had spent a great deal of time there, and not just with Teyla. As he mulled over this, he turned the page and began another sketch.

John had always been good at drawing. He had no interest in being an artist, but he found sketching relaxing. It helped him think. On this sheet he began a rough outline of the doorway at the community center. He did his best to get the curve right and then began filling in the stones. He erased some lines and redrew them. That was better. The stones were not as rounded at the ones at the center, but they looked right. He made keystones, one at the top, two at the midpoint, two more at the side, and two more at the lower point of the curve. A doorway didn't have seven keystones, but again, it just looked right. He left the actual doors out for now, concentrating on the surroundings. A wall appeared behind the curving frame, set back from it. It had windows like the one behind Teyla in the sparring vision, sweeping and majestic. Another circle swept out from in front of the archway across the floor of the room. It was looking less and less like a doorway and more like an archway. This was not the door at the community center. This was somewhere else. John tapped his pencil on the spiral wire of the sketchpad, narrowing his eyes on the archway he had drawn. Something was missing. He lifted his pencil, touching the middle of the circle. He began drawing a spiral, rubbing the edged with his finger to blur it, forming it into a ripple like a pond after a rock had been dropped into it. Waves moved out from the center and bumped up against the edge of the circle. John could swear he saw them moving. A tingling moved up his arms as he soaked in the image he had created. This was real. He was sure of it. He couldn't remember being in this place, but he was absolutely certain he had been there before.

He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the shadow of his beard coming in. His eyes felt dry and prickly from exhaustion. He had just stood up and laid the sketchbook aside when a scream tore from Teyla in their room. Racing back to her side, he saw her tangling herself up in the sheets, thrashing from side to side. Swiftly he pulled the covers back and gathered her into his arms. Instead of calming her this made her panic even worse. Teyla shook and fought against him, biting down on his hand. John yelped and did something he had never done before: he grabbed both of Teyla's wrists in one hand, held them out straight behind her and held her down with the other. "Teyla!" he shouted. "Calm down, it's me!"

Teyla quit thrashing and John immediately released her wrists, helping her to sit up. The fight was draining out of her and violent shakes followed close behind. So much fear was racing through her that John could hear her teeth chattering. "Oh, baby," he soothed. "It's alright now, it was just a dream."

Teyla began to cry, deep shuddering sobs wracking her frame. John just held on and let her work it out. He had never seen her so afraid. Whatever she had seen, wherever her dream had taken her, it had been very, very bad. Gradually she calmed down, and she was able to lift her head. Her eyes were swollen from crying and John kissed her eyelids, tasting salty tears there.

"I saw monsters," she finally whispered. "I was a little girl, in a country village, and the monsters came. They took my friends, and one of them took my mother. She tried to fight them, but he struck her in her chest and sucked her dry, like some sort of vampire. She withered away right in front of me, and I screamed and screamed. The monster started coming for me and I tried to run, I did-"

"I know you did, honey," John encouraged.

"But he was grabbing my hair and pulling me back. I fell, and he dragged me. I tried to fight, I bit his hand-"

"That was me," John interjected with a crooked smile. Teyla looked up, startled. "But he pushed me down, and then I, then I think I woke up."

John rubbed her back."It's over now. It was just a dream. A really horrible, nasty dream."

Teyla sagged against him. "I'm not sure anymore. What if it was like before? What if it was a memory or a vision or something?"

"I don't know." John admitted. He knew that her mother had died of cancer when Teyla was a little girl and that she had been raised by her father alone. Maybe all the weird feelings she'd been having had dredged up those painful memories and turned the cancer into a monster that she could see?

"I'm thirsty," Teyla confessed pulling herself up. "I'd really like a cup of tea."

John accepted the change of conversation, and together they went to the kitchen. He filled a mug and put it into the microwave to heat it up quickly while Teyla selected a teabag. Once she had her mug, she sat down on John's favorite chair. The herbal scent rose from her cup, and she closed her eyes, drawing it in.

"I am feeling much better now," Teyla spoke softly. "I don't know what came over me, but I am very sorry about your hand."

"It's fine. If anyone asks, I'll just tell them you were getting creative," he smirked at her suggestively.

"You will not, John Sheppard!"

"No, I won't. I'll say it was the dog."

"Even worse!" Teyla threw a cushion at his head, with surprising accuracy. He batted it away with a grin, knocking his sketchbook to the floor. It fell open to the picture of the archway.

"That is it." Teyla was leaning forward, looking intently at the drawing. "That is just what it looks like."

John picked up the drawing and passed it to Teyla. "But what is it? Where is it?"

"I do not know John. But I have been there," John nodded his agreement, "and we have to find out where it is."

AN: For my international readers, the expression "nursing" a baby means to breastfeed.