Wow! Thanks so much for all the reviews, guys. They made my day. :)

Part Two

It took John twenty minutes of ooohing and ahhhing over some old swords before he got away from Councilor Doram. McKay had lasted about five minutes before he made up an excuse to escape, and Sheppard had no idea where he'd gone.

Teyla and Ronon were also nowhere to be found.

Ronon had been acting weird when he finally decided to show up for the negotiations. John didn't blame him for blowing the meeting off; he was only jealous that he couldn't do the same. When Elizabeth had been planning to attend the talks, he had briefly hoped he would get out of it himself, but those hopes were dashed when she got the flu.

He'd tried to convince Carson that as long as she wasn't actually eating anything, she wouldn't be throwing up, but the doctor hadn't gone for it. Elizabeth hadn't seemed too pleased with his plan, either. She'd pretty much immediately disproved his theory about eating and vomiting, though he was sure she hadn't purposely thrown up on him. Mostly sure, anyway.

The talks were supposed to start in another fifteen minutes, and John would be damned if he was going to sit through another hour or two of this by himself.

He wandered outside and scanned the town square. If his teammates were out there, he couldn't see them in the crowd. He started to call them on the radio when he heard a voice in his ear.

"They're across the street."

John turned to see Malena Doram leaning against the side of the Meeting Hall.

"Pardon?"

"Ronon and Teyla," she said. "They're in that stable." She glared at the building across from them.

"All right," he said slowly. What was she so mad about? "Thanks. I'll go check it out."

"I wouldn't," she said sulkily. "I think he wants to be alone with her."

The words hit Sheppard like a sucker punch. Teyla and Ronon? They wouldn't. And even if they did -- which they wouldn't -- they sure as hell would have more sense than to do it during a mission. Wouldn't they?

He'd heard the rumors, sure, but he hadn't given them any credence. Well, not much credence. He'd had enough concern -- professionally, of course -- to casually ask Ronon about it once, and all he'd gotten in response was a snort.

He'd taken that to mean, "No way, Sheppard," but what if he'd really meant, "Hell yeah, Sheppard, of course I'm doing Teyla!"

Well, he wasn't going to stand around all day staring at a building where Teyla and Ronon were not doing anything. Glancing at Malena again, he shrugged and headed for the stable.

He wasn't sure why, exactly, but when he got close to the building he slowed down, stepped more carefully. He wasn't really trying to sneak up on them, catch them at something. He just didn't want to startle them.

OK, he admitted to himself, he was sneaking.

He crept into the stable, trying to remember everything Teyla had taught him about hunting prey. He didn't see anyone in the dim light of the building, but he froze when he heard Teyla's voice.

"We have to tell Colonel Sheppard."

"No."

"He can --"

"You were right the first time, Teyla. We can't tell anyone. They won't understand."

John's stomach dropped. They were involved. They were sleeping together, and they couldn't afford to let anyone at Atlantis know. But why did Teyla want him to know? He didn't even want to know.

"But --"

"What do you think'll happen when Sheppard tells Dr. Weir? Because he will tell her."

Teyla sighed. "If this man comes after you, or after me, John could be injured. Or Rodney. It is not their fight."

"Not yours either."

"No?" Teyla's voice was tight. "I do not believe Kell's son would agree with you."

It finally occured to John that he had no idea what the hell was going on.

"He'll come after me, not you. I'm the one he wants."

"And you are certain of this?" When Teyla got no answer, she continued. "We must at least tell Colonel Sheppard."

John decided it was time to step in. He moved further into the stable, not trying to hide the sound of his approach this time. "Tell me what?"

Another time, he would've been amused by their reactions. Both immediately had pulled weapons and were glaring his direction. They looked like twins. Twins of different sexes and vastly different sizes, but still.

It belatedly occurred to him that surprising the two most deadly members of his team was not necessarily the best plan.

"Colonel." Teyla spoke evenly, her knife vanishing as though it had never existed.

Ronon nodded at him, slowly replacing his gun in the holster. "Sheppard."

"So." John watched as they exchanged a glance and felt anger burning in his gut. "You two better be deciding which one of you is going to tell me what the hell is going on."

After a moment, Teyla looked at Ronon and nodded toward the door.

"But I --" Ronon started, swallowing the rest of this thought at one raised eyebrow from the Athosian. With a sigh that sounded an awful lot like a growl, he stomped out of the stable.

John tried to look casual, leaning against a nearby post. He crossed his arms and stared at Teyla, waiting for her to begin.

Before she could say anything, he heard Rodney's voice over the radio. "Sheppard, it's McKay --" With a frown, he snapped the radio off and continued staring at Teyla. Finally, she spoke.

"A few months ago, Ronon and I went to Belkan to trade while you and Dr. McKay worked on the Ancient generator on Doranda, do you recall?"

He did recall. He remembered that neither one had much to say about the trip, other than that Teyla had succeeded in getting the seed she wanted. "Yeah, I think McKay was blowing up a solar system at the time, so ... yeah, kind of stuck in my memory."

"Right." Teyla took a deep breath. She looked nervous, and she wasn't meeting his eyes, which was making him nervous. Teyla was always straightforward with him, and if she was avoiding looking him in the eye, it couldn't be good.

Of course, sneaking around with Ronon and keeping secrets? Not so good, either.

Teyla finally raised her eyes from the floor and met his gaze. The look on her face worried him even more. "When we were on Belkan, Ronon killed a man."

It took a moment for the words to register. He pushed away from the post and stepped in front of her. "And I'm just hearing about this now ... why?"

"We thought ... I thought it was better to keep it to ourselves," she said, avoiding his eyes again. "The man ... Kell ... he was responsible for manydeaths on Sateda, all so he could escape the Wraith himself."

John felt the anger burning up inside him, but he felt ice cold. She didn't trust him. After all this time, everything they had been through together, he still hadn't proved worthy of her trust.

"You didn't think you could tell me? You don't trust me." He tried to make his voice even, totally calm, but by the look of alarm on her face, he failed miserably.

"You would have had to tell Dr. Weir. Report it to your leaders. They would not understand," she said quickly.

It didn't escape him that she hadn't really answered his question.

"Maybe you underestimate them," he said. Maybe you underestimate me, he thought.

Teyla laughed, a short, harsh sound that he'd never heard from her before. "Your people ... they judge us by their own standards. Because we do not have the technology they do, they look down upon us. They believe us to be ignorant. They know nothing of what our lives are like, plagued by the Wraith."

She was shaking now, and John wondered how long she had wanted to say these things -- to him, to anybody. "When we first came to Atlantis, and the Wraith attacked us so often, we were the first to be suspected! Anyone who understood our lives would have known we would never collaborate with the Wraith! And yet it was I who was put under guard by your soldiers."

"And I defended you!" he yelled, deciding not to point out that she had been the one giving their position away, albeit unknowingly. "I always defended you. I always trusted you.Why don't you trust me?"

"I --" she looked surprised. "I trust you, Colonel. I do. I simply did not wish for the others to find out."

"And you assumed I'd tell."

"It is your job," she pointed out. "And Dr. Weir would not want Ronon on your team if she knew."

"Yeah, I wonder why that is," he said, finally processing what they were arguing about. He felt a surge of anger at Ronon for getting Teyla involved in his personal vendetta. "We kind of frown on killing people in cold blood where I come from. Even war criminals get a trial there."

"Who would try him?" Teyla asked, shrugging. "This is not your earth, Colonel. It is time you -- all of you -- learned to accept that things are different here."

"Murder is pretty much murder, anywhere you go," he said, stubbornly. He'd done his share of killing, but that was war. This was ... something else.

Teyla was silent.

"You can honestly tell me you agree with what he did?"

"I ... do not know," she admitted. "But if someone caused thousands of my people to die to save himself, I might have done the same thing."

"I don't believe that."

"Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think," she said softly, pushing past him. "But I know you. I knew you would not understand."

"Teyla --" he turned around, but she was gone.

Ronon was waiting for John as he emerged after a few minutes of pacing the stable and cursing to himself. Or at himself.

"I really don't want to see you right now," he told Ronon, walking right by him.

"Sheppard --"

John stopped and turned, pointing at Ronon. "Not. Right. Now. Go ... find Teyla, make sure she's OK. Meet us back at Atlantis."

After a moment, Ronon nodded and took off down the street. John sighed and headed for the Meeting Hall. It looked like he was going to spend the next hour or two in the negotiations by himself.

He entered the building, nodding to a few people wandering the halls, and pulled open the meeting room door. "I'm so sorry I'm late --" he began.

"Quite all right, quite all right," Councilor Doram said heartily. "Your Dr. McKay here was just showing us your ... what were they called? Radios? We have something similar ourselves, but yours are so compact!"

"I was just explaining to the Councilor how radios work," Rodney said, glaring at Sheppard. "And how they don't work if someone, say, turns theirs off."

Sheppard stared at McKay, sitting alone among the Cirslans, trying to make the negotiations work. He felt a rush of gratitude. At least he had one teammate he could count on.

"I'm really sorry Rodney," he said sincerely, obviously confusing the poor guy. "It won't happen again. He looked at Councilor Doram. "So ... maybe some radio technology should be included in the negotiations?"

tbc See, not a big cliffhanger. THIS time. :)