Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or its characters…
Author's note: Sorry to those of you actually following this story for taking so long. For some odd reason, this story has begun to take a more light-hearted, even humorous turn. I think that it will remain light for a few more chapters before turning somewhat darker, like in the first few chapters, again. Anyway…enjoy…if you can…
They arrived at one of the many science labs in Atlantis, Elizabeth shoving and pulling Rodney all the way there. She finally released his arm once they were inside. He had never thought of her as a pushy person before. Even when she became impatient with his brilliance, she would urge him to the point in a strict but polite manner. It would often serve to annoy him when she cut him off mid-explanation, but after this episode, he'd never think she was being unreasonable again. But for the moment…
"What's the rush, Elizabeth?" he asked breathlessly, which dulled the acidic edge that the sarcastic statement would have held had he not been desperate and heaving for air. He watched her move swiftly around the room searching for something. He would have chastised her for being so careless in one of his labs, but he was too winded at the moment, having been forced to run the entire way and getting a nasty shove whenever he slowed to protest.
"Where is it, Rodney?" she asked, finally giving up on figuring out the McKay organizational processes.
"Where's what!" He snapped at her, finally able to breathe normally again. She was confusing him and he didn't like it. Plus, he seriously thought she might have suffered brain damage. That would explain the coma and the sudden and complete turn around in behavior. He never had liked seeing her sad. But seeing her suddenly excited and happy was just as disturbing. Not to mention, he still couldn't get the image of her waking up Evil Dead style out of his head. It had been so freaky.
"The device from Peconia," she told him desperate for an answer. She needed to get this done quick, before Beckett sent his henchmen to find her and haul her back to the infirmary. When he failed to move, it was her turn to snap. "Tell me where it is!"
The familiar tone of authority caused him to take action like it was a reflex. He led her to a dusty corner of the lab, and pulled a coverlet off with a billow of dust, revealing a cylindrical device about one and a half feet in height. It still glowed from within, reminiscent of a lava lamp. They had never bothered turning it off. They had just stashed it in a corner, not wanting to recall what it had taken from them. She reached out to touch it. Remembering herself and the horrible capabilities of the device, she pulled her hand back quickly.
Seeing Dr. Weir so mindlessly lured by the glow of the dangerous piece of alien technology, Rodney regained his senses.
"What the hell are you doing, Elizabeth!" he scolded. "That's not something you should be messing with!"
"Be quiet, please," she said in a low voice that he had to calm down in order to hear. She held up her hand in a gesture of passivity. "For once, doctor, would you trust someone else?"
She thought back to what John had showed her during the…dream. Yes, it was a dream. But despite how silly it seemed to be following instructions received while unconscious, she had to try. This was no time to lose her resolve. Besides, the damage had been done. They already thought she was crazy with her escape from the infirmary. And if there was any doubt as to that, it was gone as she noticed Rodney slowly sidling back towards the door of the lab reaching his hand to his earpiece, contacting Dr. Beckett, no doubt. She needed more time. How could she stop him, delay his call for reinforcements?
"I could use your help, Dr. McKay," she said in her most formal and gentle diplomatic voice. It had to work on him. She even believed it sounded like the "old days," before John die-disappeared. He paused, his hand dropping to his side and took a reluctant step forward. He couldn't deny science.
"With what exactly?" he asked, at first hesitant then concerned. "What is it you're trying to do? You do realize that this is the device that ki-killed Major Sheppard, don't you? This is really something that you shouldn't be screwing with, Elizabeth."
"It didn't kill him," she replied. The certainty in her eyes scared him, so he responded the only way he knew how…with sarcasm.
He waved his hand in front of her face. "Atlantis to Dr. Weir: Are you still in the Pegasus Galaxy? John is dead. I saw it with my very own eyes. Poof! Vanished! Just like in a disappearing act, cloud of smoke and all. Only it wasn't smoke. It was him, his molecules being scattered and floating away on the alien breeze of that godforsaken planet!"
"You're wrong, Rodney," she said evenly after he was done haranguing her. "He didn't die. It just unphased him-"
"Unphased him?" he was still worked up and the tirade of sarcastic criticism continued. She wondered how he still had a tongue with all the acid that poured off from it. "Are you a scientist? Do you have any clue how ridiculous that sounds!"
"No! I'm not a scientist!" she snapped, her patience finally breaking. She took a deep breath and counted to three as he stared her down critically. "That's why I could use your help."
"You need help alright." He wasn't buying it. He turned and stalked out of the lab shouting over his shoulder, "Go ahead and screw with the thing. Don't blame me when you get yourself killed!"
With Rodney gone, she breathed a sigh of relief, and attempted to calm herself. She had to recall the information John had given her, and fast. McKay was no doubt calling for help now that she had angered him. "Think, Elizabeth. Think!"
"The device activated and there was a blinding flash of light," John told her as they sat by the edge of a pristine babbling brook. "Next thing I know, no one is listening to me or obeying my orders…I mean less so than usual…" he smiled. "…a lot less…I went back through the 'gate with them and found out I was dead at the same time as you did."
"Go back a little," Elizabeth said, attempting to force the painful memory of learning of his demise from resurfacing... "Can you remember in more detail what you did to activate the device?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "You know how that damn stuff turns on whenever I'm nearby."
"This could be important, John," she urged him to remember. "It's information I might be able to use to help you."
He hadn't needed to say anything. The look in his eyes said it all: If you remember. But he seemed to concentrate on providing the information she requested anyway. It was probably because he didn't want the conversation to end, for her to wake up, to be alone again.
"I may have touched a couple of the…button-things on the dealie," he confessed after a few moments.
"Do you remember where they were located?" she asked. Details would be vital, provided that she remembered any of this at all.
"I think I put my hands around the base, where the symbols were…" he said slowly as he strained to recall the information... "Yeah. Like this." He demonstrated holding his hands out parallel to one another.
"Which ones did you touch?" Elizabeth asked, although unsure of whether he had been paying enough attention to notice the symbols in the first place. A look of concentration took over his face, and he bit his bottom lip a little. She almost laughed at the gesture. It was a habit of her own, but she had never seen him succumb to the nervous tendency, and never thought the confident man would.
Finally realization seemed to dawn upon his face. He stood and looked around, finding what he was searching for he took a few strides away from Elizabeth along the edge of the babbling brook and crouched down near a patch of white sand. Elizabeth got up to follow him and frowned at the realization that her brain had gotten it wrong. She might not have been a scientist, but even she could tell that this type of sand only belonged on an oceanic beach somewhere. It started to change before her very eyes and she had to concentrate hard to keep it the way it was; it would be easier for John to draw the figure he had already begun amongst the homogenous grains.
He finished the outline of the glyph, from what he could remember, and looked up at the woman that was his only hope in the universe of returning to the land of the living. "That was one of the symbols I may have tapped with my hand when I was…ahem…studying the device."
Elizabeth smiled, laughing inwardly. He had so been playing with it, like she had seen him do dozens of times in Rodney's lab.
"Do you remember what the other one looked like?" she asked. He shook his head in the negative. That was understandable. It was lucky he recollected one of them at all. She studied the symbol carefully, trying to commit it to memory.
"What does it mean?" John asked, watching her scrutinize the drawing intently.
"I don't know," she confessed. "It's ancient, but without context, it's basically meaningless."
"But it will help you to figure out the device if you remember?"
"I hope so."
Elizabeth shook her head, putting an end to the flash of dream she had dredged up. She had the information she needed. Now she had to put it to use. She had to help John as she had promised she would.
The device still pulsated from within, glowing in an eerie yet alluring manner. She resisted the urge just to reach out and touch it, instead forcing her attention to the device's base and the symbols adorning it. They were laid out in sets of three per side, but she did not recognize the symbol that John had drawn for her among them. She felt panic rise within her. Time was very, very swiftly running out. Her concerned expedition members would soon arrive to "aide" her.
Taking a deep breath she tentatively placed her hand on the device, and reassured that it would not explode upon touch, she turned it so that she could see the symbols on the obscured side of the base. And it appeared before her suddenly, like when she drove to her grandmother's house which would magically appear from amongst the trees as they went around the bend in the road. The revelation contained that same feeling of joy, anticipation and excitement as when she was a child going for a visit to her grandmother, who always had a fresh cherry pie cooling just for her. It was the promise that the image of the quaint little cottage held that was exciting. It was the promise that the symbol held, the potential that it represented that lifted her spirits.
So, she had identified one of the symbols that had caused the alien technology to take John from them. The other one had to be in the exact opposite position on the other side. She looked back at the other side. Unable to ascertain the meaning of the glyph, she asked the only question that came to mind. "Now what?"
Faint voices coming from the hallway outside the lab informed Elizabeth that no matter what the next pertinent action may be, she had to take it promptly. She wished she had time to think about it logically, but she knew they would never listen to her, let alone help her, and they were even less likely to let her continue to fiddle with the device by herself when they thought it had killed the major. Instead, she took another deep reassuring breath, reached out her hands and gingerly placed her fingers on two opposing glyphs on the sides she had determined not to be the ones John had messed with. She closed her eyes and pressed them.
A brilliant light flashed. Elizabeth could see it even through her tightly shut eyelids. She opened them, slowly at first, then confirming the brief existence of the light that would have put a solar flare to shame had ended, her eyes widened to their full breadth. And there filling up the right side of her vision was the sight she had longed to see for months.
"John!" she exclaimed, as she moved forward to embrace him, all sense of decorum and formality forgotten. He held out his arms to accept her, a lopsided but very pleased grin across his handsome face.
Instead of being encompassed in a warm body and strong arms, Elizabeth found herself continuing to move forward. She stopped herself and turned around to look at the figure she had just passed through, her eyes wide with fright and shock.
John's face fell from the smile he had as he greeted Elizabeth. He had been so proud of her and she had fast become his favorite person in the galaxy as he had watched her remember him, and the promise she had made him. The excitement over her apparent success faded quickly as he realized the failure for a true resolution, but he was still relieved that she could see him.
"Well, that's not good," he told her nonchalantly.
"Neither is that," she said, looking rather unhappily past him.
He turned to see Rodney, Dr. Beckett, several of the medical staff, and even a couple of people he recognized as military personnel. At least they were unarmed. But Beckett wasn't. John recognized the all-too-familiar makings of a med kit, as the doctor approached their position, talking to Elizabeth coaxingly in his Scottish brogue.
Elizabeth felt like a jumper, someone threatening to hurl themselves off a skyscraper to their death, as Carson was sent in to try and talk her down and an audience had gathered to watch the horror unfold. She noticed personnel that weren't medical staff. Maybe she was more like a hostage taker, then, or someone with a bomb, if they felt the need to call in the SWAT. No matter how they viewed her, Beckett's attempts to talk her down went unnoticed. She hadn't paid attention to a word he'd said. She just kept looking pensively at John, then to the horde closing down upon her, then back to John.
He knew that the others more than likely couldn't see him, because although he didn't expect an ecstatic welcome with fireworks and cake and lots of lots of alcohol, he didn't expect them to ignore his resurrection from death either. Still, Elizabeth's eyes pleaded with him to do something, so he stepped in between her and the ever-approaching and talking doctor. It didn't do much except confirm his suspicions that he was just as nonexistent to the others as he had been for the past several months, for the doctor passed straight through him as Elizabeth had.
John didn't like sharing the same space as another person even if they existed on different planes or whatnot, so he moved out of the area Dr. Beckett was currently occupying, which happened to be only a couple feet in front of Elizabeth.
"Any suggestions?" she asked her ethereal companion, desperately fighting the urge to back away from the approaching doctor.
John looked her straight in the eyes and offered in the most serious manner he could muster the advice he always tried to follow when Dr. Beckett was after him.
"Run?"
She rolled her eyes at him, and even as she surrendered herself to the medical staff, she didn't feel completely disheartened. John was alive. She couldn't deny that now. Neither could she deny how much she missed him. She would have to deal with the horrible conundrum they currently found themselves in at a later time, for the others seemed to be in a less-than-receptive mood and she had no clue how she was going to convince them of her happy revelation.
A/N: The next chapter shouldn't take as long as this one to be posted. Any advice would be appreciated as to the cohesiveness of the story. Does this chapter (and the last) flow with the first few? Or should I try harder not to change the tone? Or would you like some lighter chapters?
A/N2: Oh yeah…I almost forgot. Does anyone know what kind of system they use for naming planets? Is it like SG-1? I think I've heard a number-letter designation before, but I can't really remember. Is what I used for a planet name from somewhere else? I don't know…it just popped into my head? Anyway…I'll let you get on with your life, if you haven't stopped reading this far earlier ;-)