SUMMARY: In which our heroine seeks help.
Lizzie Love - Part Four
Teyla wasn't in her room.
In fact, when Elizabeth walked into the room, it seemed...empty. Oh, there were signs that Teyla lived here once in a while - some small mementoes, bits and pieces, a spare fur on the bed - but the room smelled musty, unused.
Even more confused, Elizabeth went to the gym to see if the other woman was there. At least with Teyla she probably wouldn't have to worry about declarations of undying love.
You are our sun, our moon, our shining stars! We dwell in darkness without you!
She hoped.
The man moving through a series of stretches in the otherwise-empty gym definitely wasn't Teyla.
"Dr. Weir."
"Ronon."
Any other man would have asked if she was looking for someone. Most of the time, Ronon just waited for her to state her business or walk away, although he was getting better at social interaction with expedition members other than John, Teyla, or the marines.
"Have you seen Teyla today? I went to her room, but it looks like she hasn't been sleeping there for the last couple of nights."
It occurred to Elizabeth that Teyla might have been spending her nights elsewhere. And if she was spending her nights elsewhere, then one of the prime possibilities was that she was spending them with Ronon.
If John had been acting normally, then Elizabeth would have considered him a possible candidate, too. She could still hear Thalen's words in her head - a declaration that John had neither confirmed nor denied, stepping carefully around it in the discussion following the incident.
But John wasn't acting normally and Teyla wasn't anywhere to be found and Ronon was looking at her with the expression behind which he was wondering if she was crazy.
"Teyla's gone to the mainland," he said at last. He looked almost wary saying it, as though he expected her to throw a tantrum because Teyla wasn't in the city. "Dr. Weir--"
"Don't ask me if I'm okay," she warned, trying to manage a smile. "Everyone's already asked that today!"
"Okay." Ronon paused. "Why are you looking for Teyla?"
She hesitated about telling him. The last thing she wanted was one more person thinking the stress of the job had gotten to her.
But he hadn't been hovering over her, at least.
"I..." Elizabeth shook her head. "Never mind. It's...probably not important."
She nearly walked away, then turned back at the last minute. "Ronon?"
"Dr. Weir?"
"Would you..." She almost said, 'Never mind' again. Only the memory of John's earlier insistence that they were lovers moved her on. "Would you teach me some self-defence moves? You offered once before." And I turned the lessons down because I thought I wouldn't be needing them.
Ironically, the last time Ronon had offered her self-defence lessons, she'd been unable to defend herself against John.
Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, she thought with a touch of cynicism.
Ronon still hadn't answered her question. After she'd declined the previous time, maybe he'd decided she wasn't worth the bother.
Then, finally, he spoke. "You don't have anything to learn."
"I don't know anything about defending myself--"
"No," he agreed. "But I can't teach you."
"Why not?"
Ronon shrugged. "Just can't."
How can I not have anything to learn about defending myself? Elizabeth was staggered. "I don't want to know about how to shoot or...or execute missions, Ronon. I just want to know how to fend off someone bigger and stronger than me!"
"And I have nothing to teach you." He seemed bewildered by her insistence, standing tall and loose, his hands by his sides.
Irrationally angered by his refusal, Elizabeth crossed the room and picked up a pair of staves. "Okay, then," she said, "fight me."
His eyes widened in the midday light flowing through the windows of the gym. "Fight you?"
"If you've got nothing to teach me, then you won't be able to beat me." It was going to be a painful way to get her point across, but Elizabeth was willing to undergo a little pain to get the learning she needed.
Ronon winced, but when she added, "Please," he reluctantly picked up a couple of sticks and fell into a defensive position.
Watching him, Elizabeth realised she had very little idea of how to hold herself. She wasn't even dressed for combat in her fatigues and shirt and very-much-not-a-sports-bra. Still, it wasn't as though she'd ever had even half a chance against Ronon.
Usually.
She made a tentative jab towards him when she realised he wasn't going to attack. If the reticence seemed a bit odd, well, he was the better fighter and would be able to take her out without even breaking a sweat. He blocked her, but she saw him wince.
Wince?
Her follow-up blow had as much force behind it as she could manage - it wasn't as though she was going to be able to seriously hurt him!
Famous last words.
It all happened in slow-motion. Elizabeth saw his face convulse in a grimace as her blow took him in the shoulder. She heard the cracking wrench of the joint, and the grunt of agony he gave as his shoulder dislocated and he stumbled back.
"Oh, God, Ronon, I'm sorry!" She dropped the staves and took a step towards him, then stopped when he turned away. His breathing was harsh as he staggered away from her to the opposite wall. As Elizabeth watched in fascinated horror, he set his injured shoulder against the wall and pushed.
She flinched at the noise, revoltingly bone-and-meat in the quiet of the gym, but his face didn't look as badly contorted as before, although he was clearly still in pain. He rested his forehead against the wall for a few panting seconds, and when he stood up again, the arm no longer hung awkwardly.
"I'm sorry," she repeated quietly. "I didn't think it would... I didn't hit you that hard!"
He shrugged - and gritted his teeth as his shoulder protested. "I said I didn't have anything to teach you," he told her, gently testing the movement in the injured arm. His jaw worked as he did so, but he might have just been stretching a stiff muscle for all the pain he showed.
As Elizabeth watched him, her brain suddenly latched onto a random assumption that she'd made. "Ronon?"
"Dr. Weir?"
"You can call me Elizabeth."
Another shrug, this time with nothing more than a faint grimace. Carson had said Ronon's pain threshold was unbelievably high. He'd done the surgery to remove the Wraith tracer without an anaesthetic, and Ronon had only fallen unconscious at the end. Looking at him now, Elizabeth could well believe it. "Elizabeth."
"Have we... You said you didn't have anything to teach me. Have we...have we sparred like this before?" His expression said it all. "And you...I ended up beating you?"
"Yep." He seemed resigned about it - oddly so for a man who'd lived on the run for seven years. She'd have thought that the sheer insanity of a woman untrained in combat beating a hardened soldier - at least in anything short of a scenario where she had a gun and he was completely unarmed - would be humiliating.
Elizabeth was stunned. "When was this?"
"When I first arrived in Atlantis." He looked at her. "You okay?"
"Am I okay? You're the one who ended up on the floor!"
He eyed her. "Is that a yes or a no?"
The window seat beckoned, Elizabeth took it and rested her head in her hands, combing her fingers through her loose hair.
"No, then." There was an element of humour in his voice. "Dr. Weir--"
"Elizabeth."
"--do you want me to call Sheppard or--"
"No!" Her head came up. "No, not John." At his blatant astonishment, she explained, "I... He's been acting strangely. Everyone's been acting strangely."
"Have I?"
She eyed him. "A little. We don't talk a lot. I was hoping Teyla could throw some light on the matter, but she's gone to the mainland... Do you know when she'll be back?"
His eyes narrowed. "You never wanted to talk to Teyla before."
"What? Since when?"
"Since before I arrived in the city."
Elizabeth was beginning to think that Ronon was just as crazy as all the rest. "Teyla doesn't live in the city?"
Ronon shrugged. "I think she did for a while, then you objected because she was apparently stealing Sheppard from you."
"She was... What? I never..." Elizabeth trailed off. Yes, she'd sometimes been a little envious of Teyla - it was hard not to be when the other woman wasn't just 'easy on the eyes' as the marines joked, but also more than capable of looking after herself - but not to the point of...
John wasn't even 'hers' to be jealous over in the first place!
This is ridiculous!
"So, she doesn't come into the city at all?"
"When we go out on a mission, someone flies out to the mainland to pick her up." Ronon seemed philosophical about it.
Elizabeth wondered about that. "Don't you miss her?"
He eyed her. "Why would I do that?"
"Because...aren't you friends?" Then Elizabeth realised that if John thought he was her lover, everyone believed she was the most wonderful thing since Christ, Ronon couldn't beat her in a basic fight, and she'd told Teyla to get out of Atlantis in a jealous fury, then it might be that Teyla and Ronon weren't friends either.
Ronon shrugged. "I have other friends in the city."
Still, Teyla had referenced some of the alienation she felt living in Atlantis, the only 'stranger' in the expedition. Elizabeth couldn't imagine it was easier for Ronon, especially without Teyla.
This place was all so wrong!
She only realised she'd said the words out loud when Ronon arched a brow at her. "You only just noticed?"
Elizabeth grimaced. "This only started happening in the last day..." Since the translation in the room. She rose to her feet. A flash of light and then...everything was different.
She'd read the SGC reports from beginning to end when the President first asked her to take over the SGC. It had taken her a month to read through seven years worth of reports and she'd studied the ones on SG-1 with particular care.
While on a mission through the Stargate, Daniel Jackson had inadvertantly ended up in a parallel universe where things were rather different to his own reality. For starters, Dr. Jackson had discovered he'd never opened the Stargate to Abydos in the first place. Sam Carter of SG-1 - then a Captain - had speculated that the mirror was made by the Ancients.
And Atlantis was the city of the Ancients.
They'd already heard of machines that could travel through time - as the elderly Elizabeth had told them, and the SGC had discovered. Why not rooms that could move one through parallel universes?
"Elizabeth?" She hadn't even known she was moving for the door until he spoke.
"I think I know what's happened."
- TBC -
