AN: Written for Sparktober 2022 (though I'd been thinking about the idea for a while). The title/concept is actually based on a poem I wrote, (you can find it under "Reflections from a Balcony") that was in turn based on a quote from a Buffy episode. The poem takes the angsty if-only route, but for this one I wanted to go full fix-it. It isn't a dream. 3


"Get to the jumper."

Four words, and John understands with swallowing horror exactly what's about to happen. He sees it play out, step by step, minutes in the flash of one second.

No.

He doesn't think. Two strides, a clear line of sight and he fires the ARG. The instant he does so he panics—she's still connected and he doesn't know what it might do to her—but as Oberoth dissolves into a platinum shower and Elizabeth staggers back, still alive, he stops thinking again. He grabs her, shouting to Ronon as he drags her on stumbling feet back the way they came.

"You shouldn't have done that," she gasps, and he can hear the thump of booted Replicator feet pounding after them. He doesn't take the time to reply. They make it to the jumper and for half a second John feels better, until Rodney gives his status report. John takes off anyway; they'll improvise as they go, nothing new there. But space is still enemy territory and for another second John thinks this might be it, until, with a blast, the Apollo arrives in perfect cavalry time. It's only when the jumper has safely parked in the landing bay that he allows himself to really breathe. And with the oxygen, his brain begins to work again.

They got the ZPM. They sicced the Replicators on the Wraith. They'd done it.

He turns in his chair, relief and elation rising in his chest, and sees Elizabeth, pale in the shadows of the aft compartment. A brick smashes into the dawning triumph as he suddenly realizes just how close it had all been.

Rodney buzzes in his ears, starts messing with the ZPM, and John waves him to it. Vaguely, he's aware of Ronon helping, the two of them leaving the jumper. John stands. She hasn't moved, doesn't move. But as he gets closer he realizes that isn't true. Her hands are shaking.

Slowly, he sits down on the rumble seat beside her. "You okay?"

She flexes her right hand—the one that had been linked to Oberoth's forehead—and gives a shaky laugh meant to be reassuring. "There's a buzzing, right at the end of my fingertips. It won't stop."

She worries at her hands, twisting them around each other. Another sound, but this one's even less of a laugh than the first.

Gently, with a deliberate sort of not-thinking, he reaches out and lays a hand over hers. He feels her start—his skin is warm, heated by lingering escape adrenaline; hers is chill as December metal—and he draws both hands towards him, wrapping them in his. After a moment, she draws in a breath and shifts her grip beneath his hands, latching onto them like the proverbial lifeline in a storm, and he returns the grasp with equal pressure.

The trembling slows, stops.

She meets his eyes, at last, and hers are wide in the dim light. She is too pale, there is too much to say, and the what-ifs yawn cavernous and grasping beneath them, crying out that it was too, too d— close. But she nods, once-twice. The reassurance she can't seem to speak. The thank you she never needs to say. And even though Atlantis is still drifting, though there is plenty of work yet to be done and questions to answer and the crisis is by no means over… for this one stolen moment in this endless string of days, John believes that everything just might be okay.