Elizabeth looked away from the window by her bed in the infirmary when she heard footsteps approaching. "Dinner is served," John said with a grin as he put the plate he was carrying down on the tray beside her bed.

"Thank you," she told him.

"No problem. You said we'd do dinner eventually. This wasn't exactly the setting I'd imagined, but…"

"What's on the menu tonight?" she asked. He took the cover off of her plate.

"Supposedly that was a pork chop when it left Earth. I think we'll just have to take the kitchen staff's word for it. It's pretty hard to mess up mashed potatoes, though, and I hear the green beans are actually pretty good."

Elizabeth smiled. "Two out of three isn't bad."

"Nope. You'll also be happy to know that the city has survived an entire day without you and is still completely intact. Although I've been asked to tell you that everyone misses having you up in your office to run to when things go wrong."

She looked down. "Did you tell anyone?"

"No. I thought that was your call."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome…You know, you don't have to be the strong one all the time, Elizabeth. At least not around me."

"Honestly, I think I just needed to admit that it really did happen. I WAS attacked…Keeping it all inside let me pretend that it wasn't true, but it is. And for some reason, I'm not afraid anymore. I know that I can keep going – that I did survive this…and I'm not alone anymore."

John slowly nodded. "Did Carson read you the riot act for not saying anything sooner?"

"I…I haven't told him."

He raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think that you should talk to SOMEBODY on the medical team? I mean, what if…"

"Carson already had to do a full blood work-up on me this week. If there was anything wrong, he would have already found it."

"Why was he already doing blood work on you?" Elizabeth raised a hand to point to the mark on her neck, knowing it was clearly visible now that she was in infirmary garments instead of her uniform. "It took this long for that to start going away?" John asked. "I know I've said it before, but I really am sorry."

"I know…Wait, what do you mean 'start going away'?"

"I didn't think bruises were still supposed to be fading after a month." Elizabeth frowned.

"Is there a mirror anywhere around here?" John got up and looked around the little curtained off area. He finally found a small mirror and handed it her. To Elizabeth's great surprise, the mark on her neck had faded considerably in the past twenty-four hours.

"It wasn't going away," she told John. "Yesterday morning, it looked just as bad as it had the day that…that I got it, and Carson had no idea why."

"Well, then what made it start disappearing now?"

"I don't know. He said he was going to try giving me something that might help, but didn't get a chance before last night."

"Well, then, this doesn't make any sense…unless…"

"Unless what?"

He reached a hand up to gently finger the mark. Elizabeth didn't even flinch. "Well…the thing that happened – what I did to you – re-triggered your memories of what the Genii did, right?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe the bruise was your body's way of getting your attention, making sure you did something to deal with everything that had happened."

"That couldn't really be true…Could it?"

John smiled. "I've definitely seen weirder things in this galaxy."

"McKay, you've got five minutes," John told his teammate. Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Science doesn't have a time limit, Colonel."

"Yeah, but my patience does. You can come back to play mad scientist another day."

The civilization they had discovered on planet P2H-692 was more advanced than any other they'd come across in the Pegasus galaxy, and had immediately become Rodney's new best buddies when he learned they were working to find a way to recharge ZPMs with their own technology. Certain locations on the planet – the most populated areas – had shields similar to the world of children the expedition had encountered early in their arrival to Pegasus, but they would soon fail unless the people were able to get a new source of power.

Normally, John would have had little problem with dialing back to Atlantis and informing them that his team was going to be a few hours late in returning to the city. However, this was Elizabeth's first full day back at work, and he was determined to do his part to make everything go smoothly.

"Fine. Finished," McKay said a few minutes later, packing up his gear. "I want to go over this data in my lab and I'm going to recommend to Elizabeth that we send a science team back to continue working."

"Agreed," John replied. He smiled at their host, a tall, wiry blond man. "In that case, I guess we'll be seeing you again soon."

"We look forward to it."

"Let's head out," Sheppard told his team.

Upon arrival back in Atlantis, John wasn't surprised to see that Elizabeth was waiting in the control room. "How did things go?" she asked.

"Marvelously," Rodney replied. "I think they're actually on to something. If we can combine resources, we may be able to replenish the three ZPMs here in the city, plus the one back on Earth. We'd have more power than we know what to do with, not to mention wormhole travel from SGC to here."

Elizabeth smiled. "Well, while you're working on it, see if you can think up a way of breaking it to Colonel Caldwell that you're trying to put the Daedalus out of business.

Rodney's eyes widened slightly at that prospect. "Well…they wouldn't be entirely useless…"

"Rodney, I was joking."

"Oh."

John shook his head with a smile as he headed up the stairs to the control room. "What time are you calling it quits?" he asked Elizabeth.

"I'm not sure yet. Why?"

"Well, I know I got my rain check on dinner, but the infirmary doesn't really count, and you still do have to eat. Besides, I've got something else to show you."

"Oh really?"

"Yep. But only if you get done up here at a reasonable hour. I think the city could manage without you until the morning."

She smiled. "Famous last words."

TBC...