TITLE: What She Meant to Say
DISCLAIMER: Don't own, so don't sue me.
SUMMARY: A peek into Teyla's inner monologue after the conversation between her and John during "Sateda". Goes with "What He Meant to Say", so you should probably read that too.
A/N: This slants toward John/Teyla but it's not real shippy.
How do you thank someone for saving your life?
On Athos it would have been easy. You would present a ritual gift, preferably hand-made, and declare a life-debt to the person who saved you. Whenever that person needed some great act of kindness or help, he or she would call upon you. The debt would be repaid.
But how do you thank someone for saving your village? Your entire people? No homemade basket would suffice. No matter how long you lived, you could not commit enough kind acts to repay such a debt.
The Atlanteans do not seem to notice this. For them, there is no debt. There is another word: trust. They ask for your trust, and you give it to them. Not just because they live in the city of the Ancestors and are willing to fight the Wraith instead of merely running from them. But because they are your friends, and you trust friends unconditionally. They are like your family.
Yet you know well that friends can let you down and family can vanish in the next culling. You don't always agree with the Atlanteans' actions; occasionally, you even wonder at their sanity. And it hurts when they do not trust you in return, when they question your motives and allegiances. But you forgive them for this, since families must forgive one another to survive. Gradually, you win back their trust.
And when there is one who trusts you above all others, someone who will defend you from his own people as strongly as against the Wraith, you try even harder to earn that respect. You fight alongside him, you spar with him, you learn about strange things like football from him. You know he is far from perfect, but you can tell that he is unique. He trusts without reservation or qualification. For him, it is simple: good or bad, friend or enemy. He may not express it in so many words, but family and trust are just as important to him as they are to you.
So you don't mind being in debt to this man and his people. You know that even if your debt were somehow repaid, you would still want to save his life many times over, to keep his trust and respect. You would still be fighting at his side. And you would still thank him for all the things he has done, and all the things he meant—but couldn't quite manage to say.
A/N: Reviews make the world go round...well, that and rotational momentum.