Author's Note: I just want to be sure to say thank you for all of the reviews. This whole story kinda happened by accident, so I'm glad it's turning out all right! I also want to say that the bouncy balls contained herein are the product of sleep deprivation.
Also, there is the slightest hint of a spoiler for Conversion in this chapter.
Elizabeth didn't speak at all as John told her his story, a fact for which he was immensely grateful.
He noticed her blink back tears a few times, and a spark of anger flickered in her eyes once, but for the most part she simply listened to him, face expressionless. Somehow it was easier to tell her like this, knowing that he didn't have to fear seeing pity or worse from her.
When he finished, he leaned forward, rubbing his hands together for a minute in the open space between his knees. He took a shaky breath and looked up.
"I don't know why I wrote to him. I guess... we were on Earth, after thinking we would never see it again. I guess I just wanted to see if he'd forgiven me yet.
Elizabeth started at that. "Forgiven you?" Her voice was soft but he could hear the incredulity.
"Yeah." At her confused expression, he continued. "For her death."
"John, you weren't..."
"I know," he said, cutting her off. "I've been over this before, Elizabeth. She took those pills long before I got home; there was nothing I could have done. But that doesn't mean I don't feel guilty. She'd been talking about suicide again, and my father didn't want us to ever leave her alone. I was supposed to be there. I promised to be there. And I wasn't."
"It wasn't your fault."
"I know that, Elizabeth!" he exclaimed, almost angry. "But I feel – felt – like it was. And so did Kathy and my father. We stopped speaking after that, and as soon as I graduated from high school I left. I haven't seen them since."
He sighed. "I was just hoping that they would want to talk to me. But I guess not."
There was nothing Elizabeth could say to make him feel better, to change his hurt. So she did the only thing she could.
Rising from her seat she stepped across the distance between them. She dropped to her knees beside him and reached for his hand, squeezing it hard and letting all of the respect and admiration she felt for him show in her eyes.
And if John read something more in there as well, it was only fair. Because she could see the same feeling reflected in his eyes, locked with her own.
Elizabeth had managed to avoid the temptation to read any more of her mail for nearly a week. The letters sat in a bundle on her desk, taunting her each day, but she resisted. She had an iron will.
Of course, the three days when John's team was missing offworld was a useful, if rather unpleasant and worrisome, distraction.
They returned unscathed, much to Elizabeth's relief. Then again, she was almost inclined to believe that the four of them were indestructible – no matter how many times something happened to them, no matter how many scrapes they got into, they always seemed to survive. Not that it meant she worried any less.
This time they'd been delayed when Rodney, searching for the source of some power reading, had inadvertently cut all power to the gate, somehow taking it completely off the Stargate system. Atlantis had been unable to dial in to the planet, and the team had been unable to dial out. Elizabeth had been about to ask the Daedalus to go on a rescue mission when the team had returned to Atlantis.
Now that they were here, Elizabeth wasn't any too sure she wanted them to be. Rodney had found some sort of lab to be the source of the power, and had brought back from it samples of some type of rubber material that he assured her would mean big breakthroughs both in this galaxy and back on Earth. She was sending a sample of it with the Daedalus on their next trip, but in the meantime, the Atlantis personnel had discovered a new use for the material.
They'd made bouncy balls.
After the first one had smashed an instrument panel, she, Rodney, and Carson (who feared that the balls, which bounced with a much greater force than their Earth equivalents, might soon be responsible for broken limbs as well) had taken to confiscating them. John had helped them as well, until Elizabeth stopped by his office unexpectedly one day to find that he was simply creating his own stash and was practicing bouncing them off each other.
Presently, she was at her desk, still working her way through the reports the SGC wanted from her, reports she'd been putting off for days. She paused to give her eyes a rest, and leaned her head on one hand.
Her gaze fell on the book on her desk, the book from Dr. Roth. She hadn't put it back since reading Tom's letter, and lately she'd taken to reading the inscription whenever she felt stressed.
At first it had been hard, reinforcing her sorrow at his passing. But, more often now, reading it brought up memories of Dr. Roth.
As she opened it now, she smiled, remembering a meeting with him after her first paper for his class.
"I expected better of you, Elizabeth," Dr. Roth said, tapping the paper on his desk.
Elizabeth was shocked, and she glanced at the circled grade once more to be sure she wasn't mistaken. "But... you gave me an A!"
He nodded and leaned back in his chair, elbows on the arms and fingers steepled. "Yes, I did. Because according to the grading rubric I provided, it meets all the standards for an A.
"But you are capable of more than this, and I expected better of you."
Elizabeth was torn between anger that he would critique her like this when she'd done all she was supposed to, and guilt that she'd disappointed this brilliant and distinguished man, this professor who had, in the short time she'd known him, already impressed her as one of the best people she'd ever met.
"What did you expect?" she asked.
"Your efforts at research were commendable, and you were very thorough in your analysis of some of your sources. But the paper sadly lacks references to the articles by Evans and Hart. And what of Jameson's discussion?"
Her research wasn't thorough enough? But she'd stayed up nights, poring over books in the library. And this wasn't exactly her only class. She told him so.
He simply raised an eyebrow at her.
"And Evans and Hart and Jameson all offer opinions directly opposite to my position!" she added.
"Exaclty. Think about it, Elizabeth. You want to change the world. When an opportunity comes along, will you simply avoid it, or give it less than your all, because you are busy? Would you remain ignorant of the ways in which you will be opposed, rather than attempt to understand their arguments, so that you may counter them?"
Dr. Roth tapped her paper again. "Generalizations and overviews have their place, Elizabeth, but you must never forego thoroughness in your preparation."
"Watcha reading?" John's voice startled her out of her reverie.
Elizabeth looked up, still smiling. "Dr. Roth gave me this book for graduation," she replied.
He came to stand behind her, reading over her shoulder. "'Elizabeth – You give me hope for the future. I have faith in your ability to change the world. – Dr. Roth. Remember, thoroughness is key.'"
John tilted his head to one side, studying the title. "Elizabeth, this title is four lines long, and it's all about politics! How the hell did you ever read this?"
She had to laugh at that. "It is my field, John." Running a hand over the flyleaf, she closed the book and sighed. "I sometimes wonder if he would be – would have been – disappointed in me."
John shot her an incredulous look. "Disappointed? Elizabeth... the man wanted you to change the world. You're changing galaxies. I don't think he would have had any complaints."
She looked at him for a moment. "Thank you," she said finally, grateful for his belief in her.
They stayed locked in a gaze for a moment longer, and Elizabeth was reminded of what she'd seen (thought she'd seen? hoped she'd seen?) in his eyes days before, and then John cleared his throat and looked away, shoving his hand in his pocket and fiddling with something.
"So," Elizabeth said slowly. "Was there something you needed?"
He shrugged slightly, then shook his head. "Nah. I just finished with all my paperwork and thought I'd come hang out here for a while."
"I see. Well, you're welcome to stay," she nodded at the couches, "but I've got to get ahead on my work, John."
"That's okay," he replied. "I'll just sit here and watch."
Elizabeth would have found this odd, but she was just too happy to have him in such a cheerful mood. They hadn't had time for more than brief conversations since he told her about his mother – he'd left for a mission the next day, and since he'd come back things had been very busy.
But he seemed much lighter, as if telling her about his past and lifted a weight from his shoulders. She still caught him eyeing her bundle of mail jealously sometimes, but the one time she'd removed it from her desk, he'd angrily told her that she didn't have to shelter him. She'd brought it back the next day.
Elizabeth made it through two reports before it started.
Thud. Slap. Thud. Slap.
Her head snapped up, and she saw that John had taken something from his pocket and was now idly tossing it against the wall and catching it. Thud.
"John," she said warningly.
Slap. He caught the object and looked at her sheepishly. "Sorry."
Elizabeth nodded and bent her head over her computer once more.
The silence remained for another few minutes, before it started again.
Thud. Slap. Thud. Slap.
This time she didn't even look up. "John!" she said harshly.
CRASH!
Elizabeth jumped from her chair, startled. She turned to John, who was staring wide eyed at the wall behind her.
She followed his gaze to find that the object he'd been playing with, one of the bouncy balls it appeared, had slipped from his hand to strike the glass wall. The glass wall which was now shattered in thousands of pieces on the floor.
"Oops," John said faintly.
It took the maintenance personnel a little over half an hour to completely clean the glass away and take measurements for a new pane. Because, Elizabeth thought wryly, of course it couldn't have been the window that had to be replaced before. No, this was a new wall.
She'd confiscated John's rubber ball and sent him down to pester Rodney or Teyla. "Hell, go pick a fight with Ronon for all I care. Just get out of my office!" she'd yelled.
Now that he was gone and the mess was cleaned up, she was starting to fight a headache. And thanks to the various interruptions of the day she'd barely made it through a third of the work she'd wanted to do.
Elizabeth decided she needed to treat herself. If she had to work with children day in and day out, she deserved some reward. So she picked up her stack of letters, selecting one at random from the middle.
The return address showed that it was from a college roommate, one of the few college friends she'd stayed in contact with over the years. Andrea had lived in Washington while Elizabeth was at Georgetown, and whenever the world of politics and school got to be too much for her, Elizabeth would meet up with her friend for dinner on the town.
Elizabeth smiled in anticipation as she slit the envelope. Andrea's letters were always fun, containing anything from gossip to philosophical discussions, depending on her mood.
As she pulled out the letter, another envelope fell to the desk. She ignored it, figuring that Andrea had probably included a collection of random and amusing newspaper or magazine clippings, as she did from time to time.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth put the letter down, laughing quietly at Andrea's description of her upstairs neighbor's antics. She picked up the second envelope and was about to open it when the address label caught her attention.
Whoever was resealing envelopes at the SGC had obviously mistakenly put someone else's mail inside her own, she realized.
She took a second look at the address, and caught her breath. For a moment she could do nothing but stare, and then she toggled her radio.
"John? Could you come here a minute? There's something you need to see."