Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or its characters…

Author's Note: Okay. So here's the next section, and some other characters finally make an appearance…not that I could ever get sick of John and Elizabeth. Although, I hope this serves to break up the monotony of Elizabeth's wallowing in misery and the bizarre dream sequences of frustration.

She sat bolt upright in bed, and sucked in a breath of air so sharply that everyone in the infirmary was startled. Rodney jumped back a few feet from the infirmary bed, his eyes growing large with shock and fear. The image of Elizabeth waking up had been so precisely horror flick that when she spoke he had half expected her voice to be low and raspy, as if she were possessed by some demon foretelling their doom. Instead, she spoke only one word in her normal tone and volume of voice. It wasn't all that loud, but it cut through the now silent air like a knife, and all present there heard it, and some stared while others turned away unable to bear the weight the word possessed.

And Rodney feared that it would be his burden to approach the bewildered woman whom he had been watching over, to correct her mistake, make her take back the word uttered from her lips, so laden with emotion. The scientist breathed a rather conspicuous sigh of relief upon noticing the approaching doctor. He had escaped reliving what was one of the more painfully sad moments of his life, if not the most heart-wrenching he had ever experienced. Why had he been the one to tell Elizabeth of his friend's demise? He would have rather suffered a thousand deaths at Wraith hands than see the look in her eyes after he told her that John was dead. He could've sworn that he had watched two people die that day.

"Good Afternoon, Dr. Weir," greeted Dr. Beckett in what Rodney would have been able to tell was a forced geniality, had he been able to remove his eyes from the expedition leader's disturbing form. Her hair was a mess from lying in an incomprehensibly deep sleep for days, in which her skin had grown pale, sallow even. And ironically, there were dark circles under eyes, making her look exhausted for the long sleep, not refreshed by it in the least. And her eyes themselves were the most disturbing, with their flat color and distant look. It wasn't even a thoughtful distant look. Her eyes looked empty and cold. It hurt the two men who stood by Elizabeth's side to look upon her. Rodney swallowed hard. He had thought her to look tortured during her sleep, but this waking moment of hers made the coma look downright peaceful.

"How are ye feeling?" the doctor tried again, unwilling to give up on the pretense that the patient wasn't currently creeping him out beyond reason. "Elizabeth?"

The mention of her name seemed to work like a switch, turning on something, everything in her mind. Her eyes regained some of the light they associated with Dr. Weir. Rodney recognized the intelligence return to her eyes, but there was still a hint of sadness within their depths. There always seemed to be that sadness about her, ever since… and it would probably always be there. He could only pray that the melancholy visible in her eyes would not expand and consume her from the inside.

"Mmm…" Elizabeth murmured quietly, shaking her head, trying to completely regain her consciousness. She obviously was in the infirmary, so she asked the next obvious question. "What happened?"

"Rodney here…" Carson said indicating the still unnerved man standing on the other side of the infirmary bed. "…found you asleep in your office and became a might concerned when he couldn't wake ye. That was four days ago."

Elizabeth looked concerned, but not as much as she looked confused, her eyebrows knitting across her forehead as she attempted to come to terms with what had occurred. "Do you know what caused it?"

"Uh..." Carson glanced at Rodney who gave the doctor a blank look and a small shrug. Then he turned back to Elizabeth. "No…not as such. Sorry, lass."

Something seemed to be dawning on Elizabeth, a look of concentration wiping away the confusion on her strained but still attractive features. "I remember sitting down to do paperwork at my desk. I had a fairly bad headache. I was having a bad day…"

"Sounds like every day around here," Rodney muttered under his breathe. The doctor gave him an annoyed glare, but Elizabeth didn't seem to notice. Or if she did, she paid it no heed and continued on her synaptic path of discovery.

"I remember being tired. I must have fallen asleep," she said, not to the two men watching her intently as much as to herself.

"Then you woke up here," Dr. McKay supplied, now at ease enough to allow sarcasm back into his demeanor. "Wow. That's not too particularly helpful, Elizabeth."

"Rodney!" Carson scolded, seriously rethinking allowing the acerbic scientist to hold watch over the leader while she lay unconscious in the infirmary. "It's not her fault she slipped into a coma."

"No, of course it isn't," McKay responded, but apparently not to the Scot's liking.

"And I don't remember you offering up any solutions," the doctor shot back, matching the scientist's sardonic manner. Pointing out Rodney's flaws and failures always served to silence the arrogant man, and succeeded this time as well.

Elizabeth winced. It wasn't meant to be a wince, but in her current state, she couldn't quite pull off a smile or even a smirk. And all she could think about was how some things would always remain the same, despite how significantly things had changed since John's death.

JOHN!

"It was him!" Elizabeth said, her face truly lighting up for the first time in months. She scrambled out of bed, yanked the heart monitor from her chest, and gritting her teeth, pulled the IV out of her hand. Carson didn't have a fast enough reaction time to stop her. If it had been someone else, he might have anticipated such a maneuver, but he had never expected such an escape stunt from Dr. Weir. She was supposed to be the responsible one. He was only able to watch in shocked awe as she grabbed Rodney's arm and pulled him out of the infirmary, dragging the dumbstruck scientist with her on some exigent mission unbeknownst to anyone but herself.

A/N: I also had this part mostly written, so I don't know when the next section will be completed, but I'll try my best to make it quick.