A/N: A quieter chapter. Part 2 in its entirety might be thought of as a hiatus of sorts. To everyone who has left feedback, hopefully e-mail system will be working again soon so you'll receive my responses. Deepest thanks to everyone who has come with me this far.

The Known World

Part 2: "Hope"

A morning tension mounts

The sun a demon riding

Across the vast unclouded sky

Away and into hiding

Only the darkness sees

The ways we love each other

The sun will not partake of this

It lives in darkness' cover.

Dinstade Pistoule, "What the Darkness Saw," The Known World, p. 326.

Chapter One

Teyla watches John's chest move, up, down, up, down. No one knows what to do for him. He may still be in there somewhere, but the penlites don't see anything, and the small round things stuck to his head don't show anything understandable, and John's not talking, either.

A doctor on the Daedalus makes sure that John's chest keeps rising and falling. He checks the wires and the feeding tube and the mask delivering oxygen. The nurses show compassion when they take his temperature and when they shave his beard and wash down his arms and legs as he sleeps.

"It's your turn," the doctor, Dr. Jacobs, tells Teyla.

Her arms are folded in front of her chest. She refuses to change into a paper gown. A nurse records her vital signs and asks her questions about her overall health. Teyla is not even trying to cooperate.

Disturbing sounds reach her. Ronon is having trouble breathing and is in considerable pain. McKay is still unconscious. From her vantage point sitting on this table in a small examination room, Teyla sees the three of them. They are battered and stunned and sick, and make wheezy, rasping sounds—except for John, who makes almost no sound at all. Her little problems, a bruise here and there, are nothing compared with how the other members of her team are faring, so she tells the doctor to see to them.

The doctor stands directly in front of her, his hands shoved into his pockets. This doctor is quite a bit older than Dr. Beckett. Not old-old, but more world-weary. He watches Teyla's face. She feels naked under his glare and holds her arms more tightly against herself.

"You're not going to let me examine you at all?" Jacobs says.

Teyla shakes her head. Since she regained consciousness, none of these prying strangers has been allowed to touch her. "I am fine, Doctor. When I am back in Atlantis, I will see Dr. Beckett if anything arises."

Without a word, Jacobs hands Teyla a release form, which she signs.

"If you keel over and die between now and the time we reach Atlantis, my ass is covered," he says, taking the signed form from her and walking away. Teyla watches as he inserts the release form into a medical record that he has started on "Emmagen, Teyla" and then removes his glasses to rub blood-shot eyes.

Ronon groans and slowly rolls from his back to his side. His bed is tilted up to ease his breathing, but he still feels uncomfortable. Teyla leaves the oppressive little exam room and comes to stand where Ronon can see her. She takes his hand, the one that doesn't have an IV stuck into the back of it, and holds it tight and tells him to squeeze as hard as he wants to, if that's what he needs. Either he's holding back or hasn't much strength in him, yet, because his fingers barely move.

"You are looking better, Ronon, even though you probably do not believe me. You were much worse when we came here."

He nods under the mask. The doctor said he suffered an injury to his ribs and a bruised lung from the blast that struck his flank as he carried John Sheppard across the tarmac battlefield on the Kali's moon. The skin is burned there, as well. When he moves around, Teyla smells the topical cream used to cover the wound.

Jacobs ordered low-dose morphine, enough to tide him along, but not enough to keep him completely pain free.

"Respiratory depression," said the doctor, as if Teyla understood.

McKay sustained a concussion when the ship pitched up and sent him flying. Teyla doesn't remember much about all of that. She vaguely recalls the jolt of explosives hitting the ship, the sound of the hull tearing and violent forces propelling her into the freezing, airless void of space. The Daedalus's transporter beam scooped them up and deposited them inside its welcoming belly at the moment Teyla lost consciousness. She doesn't remember anything after that until she awoke in this infirmary.

A nurse checks McKay's IV line. She takes his temperature and pries open his eyelids to assess his pupils. He suddenly reaches up and grabs her wrist, which makes the nurse jump back. But it's just a reaction; he's not really awake, yet. Taking up her penlite and paperwork, the nurse quickly steps away.

Teyla is amused; the nurse doesn't know Rodney as well as she does, doesn't know that Rodney can be like this even when he's merely sleeping. He is close to waking up, so she moves to his bedside and says his name quietly.

When McKay opens his eyes, they scoot around their sockets looking for focus. They finally rest on her. He pulls up the side of his mouth a bit to let her know he's in there after all.

"You are alive," she says, because that is what she wishes someone had said to her when she awoke. "We are all alive."

Her friend closes his eyes. Teyla puts her hand on his chest, feels it rise and fall. She looks over at John, who is still breathing, as well, seemingly to the exclusion of all else.

The doctor says that John's mind is gone, but Teyla doesn't believe that. It is merely hiding from the terrible things that happened in the moon prison, she thinks. Or it has been stolen and can be reacquired if the proper type of currency is offered.

"Hope...to repair the body…" mumbles McKay. He is quoting Dinstard Pistoule, again. Poetry sounds odd coming from the irascible physicist. 'Hope to repair the body, love to repair the mind.' Teyla understands why McKay would like this poem. Just like him to commit to memory verse about fixing things.

OoOoO

The Daedalus sends a message to Atlantis. It reads, "All SGA-1 team members accounted for. Medical reports to follow by databurst." Caldwell obviously doesn't want to broadcast what's happened, what's going on. That is why a second after Elizabeth's mood lifts for the first time in five months, it plummets again. The burst is routed to Beckett's node. Elizabeth decides not to wait. She walks to the infirmary immediately.

"Major Lorne, Dr. Zelenka, the Daedalus has reported in," she tells them. "Meet me in Carson's office."

She is terse, focused, and more afraid than she's been in a long, long time. They are "accounted for."

Beckett sits at his desk, chin in hand, staring at his laptop. His eyes don't leave the screen as Elizabeth enters, followed by her senior staff. The doctor sits perfectly still except to push the right-arrow key, skipping to the next page.

If her hands weren't folded up together and held firmly against herself, Elizabeth thinks that everyone would know that she is breaking apart. No matter what Beckett has to say about the team, she is splintering and will not be back together for a long time.

Finally, he looks up. "Close the door," he says, and, even though it is within her reach, Elizabeth can't move at all to shut it. "Sit down." It takes a few moments for Elizabeth to realize that he is speaking to her.

Carson backs up the file, hitting the left-arrow key this time. He describes Ronon's fall from the jumper and what that did to him. He talks about the Satedan's flail chest and about McKay's lung problems and concussion. He says that Teyla doesn't want to be examined.

"But Ronon and Rodney are out of the woods?" Elizabeth asks.

"I don't know," Carson responds. "Dr. Jacobs is guardedly optimistic." He sighs and then sits up, taking a moment to refocus.

"Colonel Sheppard…" he taps the right-arrow key again, and Elizabeth is going to pass out if he doesn't get on with it. "Teyla reports that he was subjected to a machine. Says she saw the effects of this machine on another man, who is now brain damaged."

He pauses, struggling to finish. Elizabeth wishes that she possessed the strength to help him, but she's so horrified she barely knows what to tell herself, let alone someone else.

Carson continues, "He is unconscious. His higher-level brain activity fluctuates strangely, going from flat to sleep patterns and back to flat. His EEG shows this one minute…" and Carson turns the laptop towards Elizabeth. The screen shows a graph with stacked lines that run more or less straight across the screen. "And this the next…" and he pushes the right arrow key and the stacked lines form the peaks and valleys of normal, relaxed brain activity.

"And Colonel Sheppard will not wake up?" asks Radek, who stands directly behind Elizabeth, his hands on the top of her chair. She feels his knuckles rubbing against the back of her neck.

"He's essentially comatose," Carson answers. He points at the screen, but then lets his hand fall because there is nothing to see, really. "Dr. Jacobs can't explain this. Franklyh, until I've examined him, neither can I. One minute Colonel Sheppard is brain dead and the next he's not."

"This was deliberate?" Lorne hasn't said anything until now. He looks like he's still trying to figure out who's responsible, so that he can go and shoot them.

Carson closes his laptop. Elizabeth wishes it were just that easy to put away bad news. She twists her hands together as more details come forth. Beckett holds back nothing as he describes injuries, illness and abuse, using words like "experimentation" and "multi-system trauma" and saying, "God only knows their psychological condition." He has to stop several times to bring his emotions under control.

John Sheppard sends his last transmission: "The Kalians are acting weird…" And Elizabeth drops her head into her hands because if it is this hard on Carson telling it and this hard on the rest of them hearing it, what must it have been like to live through it?

"Elizabeth?" Radek touches her shoulder.

She looks up at him, at Carson and Lorne.

"I'm sorry," she mutters, regaining control. "Anything else?" she asks, thinking, "What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?"

Carson shakes his head tiredly, even though his patients haven't arrived yet. Elizabeth rises and leaves without a goodbye or a nod of departure. She doesn't cry or fidget or speak to anyone. Atlantis is the size of New York City. A mile from Carson's tiny office she's still walking, still thinking it, her new mantra, letting it roll around in her mind: What have I done, what have I done, what have I done…

OoOoO

It is the night before the Daedalus's return, three days since Caldwell's brief message and the distressing databurst that accompanied it. Elizabeth reads Caldwell's supplemental report, which describes how his crew followed the roaming transmitter beacon by jumper and then on foot, until the two-person Kalian diversionary team was finally found.

Caldwell isn't the best writer in the galaxy.

"We interrogated the Kalian diversionary team," he writes. "We were told that the puddle jumper's beacon was being moved throughout the galaxy to prevent us from focusing on the Kali and its moon, where Col. Sheppard and his team were being held. We were proximal to the moon when sensors picked up within a disintegrating vessel three personal locator signals identified as belonging to members of the missing Atlantis team. We locked onto the locator signals. We used beam transport to acquire said Atlantis team. We provided immediate medical care to said Atlantis team..."

Despite Caldwell's lack of literary prowess, Elizabeth feels that he and his "we" deserve commendations and steak dinners.

It is impossible to sleep tonight, so Elizabeth stops trying, just as Beckett suggested. She takes a shower, styles her hair and puts on a little makeup. She tidies her quarters, moves the little work table closer to the wall.

"Okay, that's two hours killed right there," she says. She's really gone to town with herself in order to eat up more time, has put on body lotion all over and filed her nails.

Few people are awake, so she walks the halls and thinks. If she hadn't taken a shower already, she'd go to the gym and work out for an hour or two. Radek's not in the lab when Elizabeth visits there. She pauses, looking at the whiteboard and at the laptops with their screensavers bouncing around, then leaves.

No one occupies the cafeteria, right now, which is fine for Elizabeth. She makes coffee in the large urn and helps herself to some fruit from the kitchen.

After a while, a couple of people show up, early birds attracted by the smell of coffee and the chance to visit for a few minutes. Beckett is one of these early risers. He sits down across from Elizabeth.

"Are you doing better?" he asks.

She nods, holding her hands very tightly around her coffee mug.

"A little. Six hours a couple of nights ago. Nothing last night, though."

They talk in code because they are not alone.

"Understandable. I didn't do very well myself."

"You've informed Dr. Jacobs of my situation?"

Beckett looks away, watches someone else enter the cafeteria and head straight for the coffee.

"Yes, I have."

They don't say anything for a while. If the tables were turned she would have done the same thing herself. She was taken off the meds weeks ago but still has trouble sleeping almost every night. Beckett's just looking out for her, in case she approaches Jacobs in a moment of weakness.

"Maybe once they're back I won't have so much trouble."

"I'm thinking the same. Why don't we see how it goes, then?"

Elizabeth nods. She'll give it a little more time. After that she will either go crazy or become too exhausted to do her job, which is practically the same thing.

A click in her headset, in Carson's. Caldwell is hailing them, giving an ETA of just twenty minutes.

Elizabeth acknowledges the transmission. "Do you mind if I follow you back?" she asks Carson, as they rise together. "I'd like to be there when they arrive."

He nods and then pulls on her jacket sleeve, just a little tug. "You know that I'm on your side."

"I do. Thank you, Carson. I mean it."

The team will be beamed directly to the infirmary. In anticipation of that, one of the nurses has put up streamers in a couple of places and stuck to the walls some balloons with "Welcome Home!" written across them with a black Sharpie.

Elizabeth feels stronger now that she has something to look forward to. Month after month, she willed Sheppard's team to return. In a few minutes, John and Ronon and Teyla and Rodney will rematerialize right in front of her, just as she's wished and imagined and prayed for almost half a year.

In a few minutes, she will see what she has done.

TBC…