CHAPTER TWO

Though he thought that Elizabeth's sudden departure was strange, Carson was too hungry and tired to investigate further, so he went to the large refrigeration unit—Ancient designed and just as hard to repair as the Electrolux he had had back home, though it kept food fresh much longer—and found his dinner, the plastic wrap over top bearing loopy writing in red Sharpie saying DOCTOR C BECKETT'S PROPERTY – DO NOT TOUCH ON PAIN OF IMMENSELY LARGE NEEDLES IN UNMENTIONABLE PLACES followed by a happy face and the scribbled signature of Sheryl Potter, one of the few people they had brought along on the expedition who was brave enough to volunteer for regular kitchen duty.

Similarly distracted by his own quest for something to put in his stomach—even if his target was liquid rather than food—Rodney started preparing a full carafe of extra strong coffee, something he hadn't been able to indulge himself in since coming to Atlantis because of the rationing of things like coffee.

John, however, had both noticed Elizabeth's abrupt departure and was not otherwise occupied with matters of food and drink. He bid the two doctors a goodnight before heading off in the direction Elizabeth had gone, his bare feet making strange, echoing slapping sounds against the cold floor. He hopped in the first transporter he came across and hit the symbol that would get him within forty feet of Elizabeth's room.

When Elizabeth had selected her quarters she had looked for two things, John remembered: a balcony and a transporter. Since she had been able to select her quarters before the masses started house hunting it hadn't been hard for Elizabeth to find a space that she decided could feel like home, given enough time, and John remembered helping her move her sleeping platform so that the early morning sun—the sun on their new home planet rose in the North and set in the South, or at least what Rodney assured them was North and South—would hit her face should she ever sleep past dawn. John, similarly, had chosen quarters to his specifications, though he had avoided quarters with balconies, preferring to make his home in the inner ring of Atlantis, away from windows and sunlight and things that would distract him from sleeping, which was the only thing he did in his quarters anyway. The transporter stipulation, however, was the same for John. Both he and Elizabeth had practical reasons for the placement of their quarters, easy access to a transporter got them from their beds to the control room or the labs or the Infirmary within seconds of being alerted to a problem, response time often being key to survival.

The transporter let him out in the hallway that Elizabeth's room was off of, and John moved toward her door, coming to a stop outside of it and stopping, wondering, if only for a moment, if what he had thought he saw before she left the kitchen was real or if Elizabeth really had just wanted to try to get some sleep. Ultimately, though, John sided with his initial instincts.

" Elizabeth, open the door," John said, both through the door and over the headset, as he knocked on the door.

"John, I'm trying to get some sleep," Elizabeth replied through the headset, her voice wavering ever so slightly.

"Just open for the door for a second. I need to talk to you," John insisted.

Elizabeth let out a long sigh on the other side of the door. "Give me a second," she said as she moved to the small mirror that hung on her wall. She made sure that she looked alright, that John wouldn't be able to tell that anything was wrong with her, though she was still sure that John would be able to know that there was something wrong with her. He always did.

Once she was sure she was as professional as she could be—bunny slippers and her chosen sleepwear notwithstanding—Elizabeth went back to the door and unlocked it, allowing John to open it from the outside as she moved back to her bed, sitting down on the thin mattress with her arms wrapped around her body in a protective self-hug. "Come in," she called, wishing that, for once, John would have left something that picked at his ever-present white knight complex.

John opened the door and stepped inside her room. He hadn't been in it since he cleared the area when they first arrived on Atlantis, had never had reason to step foot into a place so private and personal, Elizabeth's only true sanctuary. Sure, there was the Control Tower balcony where she would go to contemplate command decisions, lost friends and allies, and John never hesitated to join her when she was out there, but that was a public place and, though it was an unspoken rule that no one interrupted Elizabeth when she was on what most people thought of as her balcony, it was also an unspoken rule that John was the only one who was allowed to cut into Doctor Weir's alone time. But the balcony was something entirely different from her quarters.

His hazel eyes were moving quickly, taking in every detail. The bookshelves lined with books on every subject, from botany to astrophysics to military tactics to archaeology to medicine to computer sciences to several books on diplomacy. The small stack of novels on her bedside table, none of which he recognized the titles of. The silver pocket-watch that she always had with her was lying on top of her dresser next to a hairbrush and a half-empty bottle of lotion. Her uniform, neatly folded, sitting on a chair beside her closet which lacked in a door, as over half the closets in Atlantis seemed to for some reason or another, showing uniforms and some casual clothes hanging neatly, on the floor of the closet sat three pairs of running shoes, a pair of hiking boots, a barely-worn pair of combat boots, and a pair of sandals that John vaguely remembered her wearing the one time he had managed to drag her to the Mainland for a day at the beach not long after the Athosians started building their colony there. Her laptop was sitting on a table that she obviously used as a desk, a few files stacked beside it, her cup sitting on top of the files, making John believe that Elizabeth had intended on going back to work rather than trying to get some sleep. Beside the desk sat her off-world backpack, filled with what John assumed was whatever personal things that she would be bringing back to Earth with her.

Finally John's eyes landed on Elizabeth herself. Curled up upon herself, wearing baggy sweatpants and tight tank top, not to mention the bunny slippers, her ponytail barely holding any hair in place anymore, she looked so fragile that John was overcome with the desire to wrap her up in his arms and take her to a planet where she could never be hurt in any way. Then, as quickly as that desire had come, it disappeared when his eyes met hers and he saw the undying determination and strength that he loved so much about her and he was reminded of just how strong Elizabeth really was and how a lot of her power lay in the fact that few thought of her as the powerhouse she truly was.

"You okay?" John asked gently.

"Fine," Elizabeth replied. "Tired, but fine."

Not at all placated, John continued. "You left kinda quickly back there. Are you sure you're okay?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Just… nervous about tomorrow," she said, deciding that a half-truth was better than an outright lie. She had never been able to successfully lie to John Sheppard anyway. He had a strange and slightly disturbing ability to read her like a book. She, in turn, had the same ability to read him the same way. "It would be easier if I could just shut off my mind for a few hours."

"No it wouldn't," John replied. Elizabeth frowned at him and he continued. "You can't be an effective leader if you can just shut down at the end of the day. Believe me. I've served under some people who don't care, who can flick a switch when they leave the office and be a completely different person, someone who doesn't hold the lives of others in their hands day in and day out. I know it's hard, Elizabeth, but you can't just shut down. You do that… and you lose a part of who you are." He smiled at her softly. "And we all like you the way you are."

Blushing slightly, Elizabeth smiled back at John. "Thank you," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "So did I really keep you up with my exact time to departure countdown?" she asked, feeling more than a little guilty.

"Nah. I can block that stuff out without much trouble," John said. "I'm just… restless." He narrowed his eyes at her. "But, seriously, you've got to stop doing that. You know how I am with numbers. Now I've got one of those big honkin' bomb clocks in the back of my head, ticking down the seconds."

"Sorry," Elizabeth said earnestly. She really hadn't intended on sharing with anyone her private countdown, it had just slipped out in a conversation with John earlier in the day and she hadn't even realized she had said it until it was out there. "I'll try to keep my mouth shut. But no promises. Like I said, it's subconscious; it's not something I control. Like you and math—you don't try to manipulate numbers in the blink of an eye, you just do it automatically."

John nodded, understanding what it was like to have a strange quirk that you tried so hard to keep from others. At least his quirk had come in handy in daily life, though. "Good. Now, are you sure you don't want to talk about why you bolted out of the kitchen like a scalded kitten?"

Elizabeth shook her head, wrinkling her nose at the thought of a kitten being scalded even as she tried her best to avoid making eye contact with John. "I just didn't want to hang around while three men talked about a hot blonde."

Arching an eyebrow, John looked at Elizabeth, amused. "None of us said anything about how she looks—other than Rodney, but, really, it's Rodney. He's convinced this woman is secretly harbouring a desire to be his love slave," John said sardonically. Elizabeth let out a soft laugh at that. "Serious delusions happening there. Probably a good thing he's started seeing Heightmeyer," he said, meaning it in jest, though, truthfully, John couldn't think of anything better for his friend than some serious therapy—a lot of the things he'd seen in the last few months since coming to Atlantis were terrifying for someone who was experienced in the atrocities of war; for a civilian scientist to be on the front lines, doing what they did, the emotional and psychological fallout was, understandably, tremendous.

"I didn't know that," Elizabeth said, her good mood evaporating, and John cringed internally. He had been hoping to cheer her up, not bring her to a lower depth of whatever not-positive state of being she was currently residing in. "Is anything wrong?" she asked, knowing that, like most ego-driven people, Rodney McKay did not like to talk about things, not the things that hit home. Give him a ZPM or a lab full of technology and he would babble for hours, days even, but one shred of human emotion and he would either clam up or resort to sarcasm.

"I dunno. I don't think so. It's just recently…" John trailed off with a shrug. "He doesn't talk to me about it… I hope he talks to Heightmeyer about it… but that thing with Gaul on the planet with the crashed Wraith ship… it's got him pretty freaked."

"Watching someone you work with commit suicide is, I assume, fairly traumatic, John."

John nodded. "I know. Actually, I'm kinda proud of him."

" Gaul?" Elizabeth asked, shocked.

"No. Rodney. He sought out help independently. I honestly can't say that I'd do the same thing in his position. I doubt most people would, especially not people like Rodney," John said. He didn't mention that he had been in Rodney's position before and he had certainly not sought help of his own accord. "It really surprised me when Heightmeyer sent me an evaluation report for him. I mean, I knew I would be getting one for Teyla, but I sent Teyla to Heightmeyer when she started having those nightmares."

Elizabeth frowned. "Doesn't that break doctor-patient confidentiality? Kate sending you reports on Teyla and Rodney?" she asked.

"There wasn't anything privileged in the reports," John said. "Basically it confirmed that they had been to see her, that they had participated in a therapy session of an unspecified nature X many times in the past week, and that they are both still cleared to be in the field." He shrugged. "Honestly, that's all I need to know; that, while they've got issues, they're working on them and they're fit for duty. I don't need details, and unless they come to me, either as their commanding officer, or as their friend, I'm not going to push it."

"You're not worried about them, though?" Elizabeth asked.

"I'm always worried about them; I worry about everyone. But, relating to their mental health? No. No worries. I mean, Teyla was reluctant—to say the least—at first, but Heightmeyer helps her deal with the nightmares and helped her figure out why she could sense the Wraith, and they have a standing appointment when we're not off-world for what Teyla says Heightmeyer has termed 'maintenance'. And Rodney… he recognized that he might have a problem before it got to actually be a problem, which is the first step to fixing things, at least if the first step of any 12 step program actually does any good."

Frowning, Elizabeth looked down at her hands. "I feel like I should know this stuff, too," she said. "Not just Rodney and Teyla, but everyone. I know the medical details and the specialties and bankable skills but… I've never put much stock in psychology. I don't really understand it. And I really don't like people trying to get into my head—I've spent years making sure that no one can read me on any level beyond what I want them to see, which is problematic for friendships and anything deeper, but for my job it's a necessity. But… all this… the Wraith and the death and the isolation and the culture shock that is Atlantis…" she sighed heavily and tucked a loose curl of hair behind her ear. "There's a psychological price to being here, and I've been hoping that if I ignore that fact it'll go away; like if no one else is having problems with being here, living this life, then there's no reason for me to have problems with it, either." She shook her head. "Maybe when we get back here I should make an appointment with Kate myself."

"Or, if you don't feel comfortable with her trying to get inside your head, you could just talk to your friends more," John suggested gently. "You'd be amazed how much just telling your friends about whatever has your stomach tied up in knots helps."

Elizabeth nodded, though she knew that she wouldn't, couldn't, share the problem that was tying her stomach up in knots with her friends. Not when she had barely just admitted it to herself.

TBC...

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