Spoilers: Instinct and Conversion

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or anything else so please don't sue

Also apologies for not updating "Just a Little Problem" my muse went on holiday and I have yet to receive even a postcard from it, however as my midsemester exams are approaching who knows, maybe it will return...

A very big thank you to my beta Jaymi :-)

Snowball

If there is one thing that bothers me about the whole "turning into a six foot tall bright blue bug" thing, is how the smallest thing can snowball, until you're suddenly six feet deep in drift and wondering where the hell you put your last pair of dry socks.

To be fair, no one is to blame for the whole situation. Carson certainly isn't, sure he took the retrovirus that was far from completion, to Ellia, but he more than made up for that. I'm a hardened Colonel and my blood still runs cold when I think of Carson "I'd rather be in Glasgow" Beckett willingly walking into a nest of bugs that are known to be the source of our greatest enemy. The enemy that makes the Goa'uld look like the tooth fairy.

Rodney, despite the fact that he still doesn't believe that I've forgiven him for that Ancient energy weapon fiasco, certainly isn't to blame either, he forgets that he was almost sucked dry by a wraith moments before Ellia attacked me – which believe me, for Rodney to not complain about the latest near death experience is a miracle in itself – and besides, I know a Czech who has it on good authority that the good Doctor was almost in tears when they thought I wasn't gonna make it.

I could go on… but playing the blame game is only part of the story. The long and the short of it is that quite frankly, despite what Rodney believes, the Universe hates me. And on this occasion it was no different. I try and do the good thing and save a young girl, well wraith girl and help her become more, well normal I guess, and suddenly I loose control, I become the hunter and the prey were all the people around me.

When I began to remember what I did, at first I was so appalled by the fact that I kissed Teyla that the first thing I did was apologise to her. I mean I am a red blooded male, and really you have to be blind, dead or Rodney McKay not to notice how gorgeous Teyla is. Not to say that any of the other people I work with are any less attractive but, it's hard to explain. Teyla is my moral voice. Sometimes I want to slap her across the head and tell her to smarten up, but at the same time, this is her galaxy, she has lived with the wraith all her life and sometimes all she needs to do to make sure that she feels she is doing something, is to help a handful of people. Not many, but to that person, she makes a difference.

What nearly killed me though, was remembering, or rather re-remembering apparently, what I did to Elizabeth. If Teyla is my conscience, Elizabeth is… well Elizabeth. She saw something in me that even I had missed when we met under the ice in Antarctica. She wanted to give me another chance to be all that I could be, as those recruitment posters say, and from that moment on, I never wanted to let her down.

But I have done. Far too frequently.

We've fought before but remembering the fear on her face as I pushed her against the wall… She keeps saying that I didn't know what I was doing, that no one was hurt and that she forgives me. But that's Elizabeth. And I could have taken that away.

I could have taken all of it away. McKay's smartass comments about the military. Teyla's innocent smile. Beckett's wry sense of humour. And most importantly, Elizabeth's compassion. I could have taken all of it away with me.

That is the greatest part of the snowball, the final destination perhaps. The fact that from a few single flecks of snow – an overheard conversation, a fight to the death, a purple scar, a nest of bugs, bad beside mannerisms – I could have lost it; this snowball could have barrelled headlong into everything around me, destroying everything.

But everything I could have destroyed saved me.

I should finish by apologising Doctor Heightmeyer, for not going to the session Beckett threaten… told me to go to. My guilt however got the better of me, and so I wrote this. The above may seem somewhat out of character, but that's what you said last week wasn't it? You wanted to know my thoughts, so here they are.

Perhaps the Universe isn't against me, just those damn snowballs.