Author's Notes: You'll note that, in these TAGs that while Sora is occasionally referenced, I will not attempt to resolve her story or even tell much of her story. The reason for this is that someone else has already done it, and better than I have: SGAFan's Shades of Grey is a fantastic piece dedicated to just that purpose. While I will not explicitly reference that story out of respect for SGAFan's own creative work, I will also be careful not to say anything that will explicitly contradict SGAfan's work.

Tempest a in Teacup, Part 1 of 3: Thunder Wakes

TAG to The Storm and The Eye

This scene starts immediately after Atlantis' shield has been raised, immediately prior to the last scene of the episode.

His blood had warmed from frozen to slightly thawed. On his right McKay was still hunched, breathless and astonished, over his keyboard, staring at the readouts as if sheer force of will would keep the shield raised under the onslaught that raged outside Atlantis. On the other side of the room Teyla was eyeing him cautiously, clearly aware of his tormented state of mind, but Ford had already moved from problem one to problem two, his fingers tightening around his 9 millimeter and focusing on Sora, the pretty, young, Genii firebrand.

Weir still looked shellshocked, but not half as shellshocked as Sheppard felt. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking now that it was over.

Realizing that Ford was waiting for instructions, he regained his composure. "Sora, are you going to behave yourself or do we need to cuff you to a chair?"

The Genii woman frowned. "So long as the storm rages outside, I will do nothing to oppose you. After it ends, however..." she shrugged.

Sheppard nodded at her. "Thank you for your honesty." He turned to Ford. "I'll take her at her word but if it makes you feel better to keep an eye on her, go ahead."

"Yessir."

Beckett, still nursing the knock on the head Sora had given him, fell heavily into the chair next to McKay. "Ach, my head," he muttered.

"Are you all right, Carson?" Weir asked, but to Sheppard the voices faded to background, his own thoughts and recriminations dominating. Suddenly feeling caged, he turned on his heels and walked towards Weir's office, ignoring what he knew were the eyes of Teyla, Ford, Weir, and McKay locked on his back as he went. He thought he heard McKay calling to him but he ignored the pestering, pushing his way into and past Weir's office, out onto the balcony.

In the open, the air was still heavy from the earlier rain. The sky was blackened and sparked relentlessly, both because of the lightning that flashed down and the torrential rains and winds that battered impotently against Atlantis' shield. Closing his eyes, he released his senses to the tempest. His senses told him he was standing in the largest storm ever recorded by man, but there was no rain, no wind. Nothing plucked him off the balcony and tossed him down to the pier that floated peaceably below, no lightning slashed down and fried every nerve in his body.

He'd goddamned failed.

Locking his hands around the bar that separated him from the immense drop down from the balcony, his hands squeezed, the pressure both comforting and... not. He'd been taken off guard by the Genii attack. Kolya - his hands tightened around the bar further - had killed two men in cold blood. Then he'd murdered Elizabeth and held Rodney's life in his mercurial hands.

He'd made the Genii pay. The rage that now merely simmered in his blood had consumed him, and he'd done his best to bring the wrath of a vengeful god down on the people who had killed Elizabeth and were, without a shadow of a doubt, going to kill Rodney. Unlike many people who allow themselves to be taken by the madness of their rage, his did not blind him - it was cold, ruthless, and effortlessly deadly. Kolya had released the Major John Sheppard who had heartlessly avenged his dead comrades in Afghanistan, Dex and Mitch's blackened corpses engraved on the insides of his eyelids, and the Genii commander paid for that mistake with more than seventy lives and a bullet that carved out a piece of his shoulder.

Until Kolya had revealed that Elizabeth was still alive and resurrected hope that she and McKay could yet be saved, Sheppard had but one concern: deny Kolya Atlantis and make sure that when the city died, Kolya would damned well go with it.

He released the bar, exhaling softly and letting the last of the rage go. In its place came unyielding despair. He'd failed Atlantis, failed Forman and Cormier, failed McKay, failed Elizabeth. The Genii had waltzed into Atlantis while he'd been off on the far side of the city, playing with lightning rods, killed Forman, killed Cormier, and taken Rodney and Elizabeth hostage.

The most devastating revelation is that he hadn't got a clue what he could have done differently. He supposed, instead of killing the two Genii soldiers who'd ambushed him at the power generator he could have let them kill him. Kolya would have had no reason to kill Elizabeth then, but Kolya would be in control of Atlantis instead and Sheppard had no doubt that he would never have let Elizabeth and Rodney go free. What would that have accomplished?

"John?" Elizabeth rested a hand on his shoulder and his eyes closed again in revived anguish. "We're all still here, John."

Sheppard cleared his throat to make sure he would be able to speak clearly. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Elizabeth tilted her head up to stare at the raging storm, water rolling down the shield and electrical current flashing over as the wind howled angrily down at them, denied its prize. "Yes, John, I'm all right."

"It's beautiful, isn't it," he murmured. "All that violence and here we are, safe and protected in our tiny little bubble of the universe. But eventually this bubble will pop and we'll go back to fighting a battle that may well be unwinnable." Her hand tightened on his shoulder and he sighed. "There was nothing I could do to save you or Rodney. He told me..."

"I know."

"I made him pay for that lie."

"I know."

John's breath hitched. "He told me you were dead, Elizabeth."

Her name, coming from him, was still something new to her. And his pain, all the more enlightening when she considered the fact that she was not, in fact, dead, was something she wasn't really sure how to relieve because she wasn't entirely sure what the source of it was.

John, as usual, read her mind. "I've always thought that if I did everything right, if I was willing to let myself go first and was always the first into the trench and the last out of the trench, that I could save everyone else. When people died it was always my mistake. But I go over the events of today over and over and over and I can't... maybe I didn't leave specific enough instruction with Forman and Cormier? Maybe I should have turned myself in instead of playing the hero? Maybe I-"

"Maybe you just can't win every time, John."

"I can," he whispered. "I have to." The events of barely ten minutes before, with John's cold, remorseless eyes lined up at the end of a gun that was, from her vantage, aimed straight at her head, flashed through her mind and was enough to send a shiver down her spine. She'd been staring into the eyes of a killer, one who knew every last trick in the book and knew he was the best there was... and one who was bound and determined to accomplish his mission.

She'd recently told herself that she hoped never to get between John and something he was bound and determined to do. Now she'd seen the way he looked at someone who did and she was even more determined to stay out of his line of fire.

His stalwart belief that he was the be-all-and-end-all in defense of Atlantis, that he had to be perfect, and that it was always his life that should first and foremost be risked - that was dangerous. It could get him killed and, perhaps just as worrying, seemed to override all of his decision making capabilities. She would have to find a way to show him that it wasn't necessary, that him doing a Rambo impersonation was more likely to cause problems then solve them in most cases, but she didn't need to do that now.

Right now, she needed to make sure that he knew he hadn't failed. McKay was in the control room watching over the shields that held the storm raging over their heads, separated them by only the translucent shield, and she was here on the balcony. With him.

She turned him to face her and wrapped her arms around his chest, pulling him to her tightly. "Rodney and I are alive," she murmured. "We won. We won." He didn't hug her back, but then she didn't expect him to. He just slouched over, pressing his chin into her shoulder, and allowed her to give him whatever reassurance she could. The air around them grew lighter, followed by light that trickled through the clouds and the shield and she released him, pulling him to look up at the sky as the storm receded. "We're in the eye," she noted quietly, subdued.

John nodded, comfortable in having her side pressed against his. The cold, relentless hatred and despair had gone from him now, his eyes filled again with a soft warmth. But he replied, "The storm will be back," a subtle reminder that they'd escaped this time, somehow, against all the odds. There would be a next time.

"We'll be ready for it."

"Maybe."

When the flashes of lightning came off the horizon and started battering again on Atlantis' shields, the city's stalwart defenses more than up to the task of defeating whatever nature might have in store, Elizabeth gently tugged John back in the direction of the control room. Leading him, as he had led her away from the spot where Kolya had wrapped his arm around her neck, she gave him a soft reassuring smile before releasing his arm, letting him free once again. Her eyes followed him as he casually evaluated Sora, the Genii woman sitting on the floor with her back up against one of the control panels, staring at the floor. Above her was Beckett, sitting in the chair and talking softly with Teyla and Ford while he held his head and complained of concussion symptoms. McKay was hunched over the shield control panel, carefully regulating the flow of power to avoid shorting out any one power coupling that might struggle under the truly limitless energy provided by the storm's lightning.

Once McKay was satisfied that Atlantis wasn't in any danger of sinking, he collapsed into his chair, heaving a huge sigh that caught everyone's attention for a moment. When they realized that there was no problem, it was only McKay, most turned back to what they were doing, but Sheppard made his way over to the scientist, glancing over his shoulder at the power relays. Weir stepped closer, staying just far enough away not to intrude but close enough to hear.

"Are the power conduits in the hallways holding?" Sheppard asked, much to Weir's surprised. It wasn't like him to encourage technical talk, especially not from McKay.

"The raw energy is more than they were designed to be capable for, but it's within safety tolerances," McKay replied. "Although, if you hadn't disabled the control room power generator, it'd be much easier for me to regulate the flow of power away from the more frayed systems and into the ones with more fortitude."

"If I hadn't disabled that generator I would never have gotten close enough to the control room to stop the reinforcements from coming through," Sheppard pointed out.

McKay paused, then nodded. "Why did you disable the second generator? The one powering the grounding station that Elizabeth and I were supposedly trying to repair?"

Sheppard shrugged. "After Kolya told me Elizabeth was dead I knew three things: first, that he had you in close custody and that I wasn't going to be able to get close enough to rescue you. The way Kolya had his troops deployed made that almost impossible. Second, that you were the only one who knew how to save Atlantis and that he needed your help to do that. Third, I knew Kolya wouldn't hesitate to kill you and even if I did turn myself in, chances are it would just be signing my own death warrant along with yours." He held his hands up, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness. "I had to stop Kolya and no matter what I did, I couldn't see a way to save your life without first putting you in mortal jeopardy in the hands of a man who'd already demonstrated he had no compunctions about killing unarmed personnel." Sheppards eyes drifted over to Weir, then darted back to McKay. "So I wrote you off and went after Kolya. I hoped that he wouldn't kill you, but there wasn't anything I could do about it if he decided to. And I figured if anyone could talk their way out of getting shot, you could."

"Oh," McKay said, face slightly mortified.

Weir stepped up next to Sheppard, smiling at Rodney. "He did talk them out of shooting me," she murmured, glancing up at Sheppard. His hand drifted down to her shoulder and squeezed gently, both of their focuses still on the disturbed McKay.

"I did, didn't I?" McKay replied. "I think I've been spending too much time with you, Major," he said. Sheppard cocked his head and McKay frowned at Elizabeth. "I couldn't let them kill you. If they killed you then I would be next."

Weir's face went from softly sympathetic and comforting to one that reminded John oddly of the storm before it had struck the city, while it was still on the distant horizon.

"Besides," McKay continued, "I did need you to help me with the repairs on the grounding station and certainly none of the Genii had any expertise with Ancient technology! They're still somewhere just after the bronze but shortly before the nuclear age and don't have a clue. Without me they'd still be peddling about somewhere around the Fermi experiments and without a clue as to the right direction to go!" McKay lost his bluster momentarily, glancing down at the computer and tossing off the next command almost as an aside. "And I didn't want them to kill you."

That was enough to send the storm packing and put a smile back on Weir's face. Rodney, clearly come to what he wanted to be the end of the conversation, was seemingly absorbed into his computer redoubt doing something that, if asked, would probably be vital to Atlantis' continued survival. So Weir backed off and took a seat in one of the chairs scattered around the control room, being careful to take a seat that did not have a vantage which could see either the bodies of the two men they'd lost or those of the Genii which were laid out on the opposite side of the gate room.

She had just been sitting long enough for some of the melancholy to return, the echoes of her fear of death, of Kolya, of imprisonment, when she felt two hands rest on her shoulders from behind and begin gently kneading the tension out of her flesh. She tensed at first, then relaxed. Only one man would be brave enough, or stupid enough, to do something like this while they were both ostensibly on duty and other senior officers were sitting just on the other side of the control room.

Their focus, however, was elsewhere, and she felt Sheppard lean in behind her, hands still rolling over her shoulders. "You know," he murmured softly, "I never did ask about why you gave me that hug."

Weir flushed, grateful that Sheppard couldn't see her face. "You thought I was dead," she replied in an equally soft and understated tone of voice.

She could feel Sheppard's smile. "Does this mean I get to hug you every time you can demonstrate that you're not dead even though I believe otherwise?"

They hadn't done this lately, the flirting, the casual comments, the innocent touches. Although these particular touches were far less innocent than previous ones. Still, she smiled - smirked really - and leaned back into the chair, into his almost innocent touch. "As long as we're not in the gate room," she murmured.

"What about the other way around, when you think I'm dead?" That was, they both knew, a far more likely occurrence.

Weir stood, shaking his hands off her shoulders gently, not quite rejecting him, although there was a gentle rebuke implied. But she smiled, not a seductive smile, but an openly teasing, demure smile that suggested nothing more than high-school grade response from a girl who knew she was being chased and didn't want to end the chase, but also knew she wasn't going to get caught. "As long as we're not in the gate room," she repeated.