Interlude
Uncertainty Principle

Staying on Earth for two weeks for the holidays turned out to be a better idea than Agatha had realized before the first clash with the IOA. The Sheppards' house was full of light and laughter, not to mention the traditions and trappings of Christmastide, and when Gen. Carter invited Agatha over for lunch one afternoon, they wound up chatting long into the night. Violetta and Krosp agreed that they'd all needed the respite more than they'd thought. All the same, by the day after New Year's, Agatha was ready to get back to Atlantis and finish the last stages of her plan.

Yes, she could say she'd been to America, and she had absorbed as much of the history and culture as she reasonably could in the time available. But everything was... strange, off, and not just because she was in America in the 21st century. The differences weren't the comfortable sort, like Atlantis, which was supposed to be alien but in some ways didn't look all that strange to Europan eyes. And she missed her friends. She wanted to go home.

The Daedalus was interesting for about a day. The books on hyperdrive mechanics and interstellar flight, which included Col. Sheppard's dissertation, kept Agatha occupied for another few days; they might not have lasted her quite as long if she hadn't kept getting distracted by jotting down her own ideas, but of course they would have lasted longer if she'd been allowed to do more than sketch those ideas. Getting to know the crew of the starship was fun for a few days more, especially the night sweet-faced Dr. Lindsey Novak prompted Agatha and Violetta to swap several hours' worth of stories about their horrible ancestors, which Krosp reported afterward had the intended effect of thoroughly discouraging anyone who'd gotten ideas about Agatha (as if the idiot airman with the broken nose hadn't been discouraging enough). Had the flight back to Atlantis been only a week long, Agatha wouldn't have had time to get bored.

Unfortunately, the journey was actually three weeks long. Fortunately, Gen. Carter had loaned Agatha a tablet loaded with hundreds of books for pleasure reading, including all published volumes to date of Girl Genius. Violetta was curious about them, and Agatha tended to spend too much time reading in their cabin during the day anyway. So while Krosp wandered the ship after supper to pick up snacks and gossip, Agatha and Violetta would take the tablet to an observation deck to read through the comic and discuss it together, usually covering a volume a night. The comic didn't yield much in the way of intelligence about Lucrezia's plans, though Agatha did gain a better appreciation of Gil's side of the story. (The revelation that her mother had in fact had an affair with Baron Wulfenbach before marrying Bill Heterodyne was... slightly disturbing.) But it was instructive, in a way, to take the time to review everything that had happened since that fateful morning in Beetleburg, to realize just how much she'd changed.

Then they reached the point in Volume 8 where Tarvek and Violetta had turned up in Castle Heterodyne, and Violetta left to get snacks, since she already knew what happened from that point. Left to her own devices, Agatha picked up her pace of reading until the beginning of the Si Vales Valeo discussion in Volume 9... and found herself sitting on the floor in front of the bench, hugging her knees and staring out at the purple streaks of passing hyperspace, trying to get a handle on everything she felt for Gil and Tarvek.

She'd had... a certain conversation with Lilith, of course. She wasn't as badly uninformed of the facts of life as had been the poor wife of a minor Tyrolean spark who made Dr. Mittelmind, with his orphans and hedge mazes, look like a kindly old crank. From what the papers had said, Count Gyrlani had married the girl and then tried to use psychological games to turn her into a living Muse, leaving her with only the Bible to explain her sudden, and cruelly unrequited, desire for children. When she killed herself, the baron charged the count with murder.* But knowing the scientific facts didn't help Agatha much when it came to dealing with the emotions, understanding what she really felt and for whom and why. So she hadn't been trying, quite frankly, not while she simply needed motivation to find a way back to save everyone. Now that the IOA was dealt with, her plan was very close to becoming reality, and with nothing better to do for the moment, she had no reason not to think through what would come next if she succeeded.

She was going to have to choose.

Most of Mechanicsburg would say she didn't need to, apparently. She hadn't been totally oblivious to the betting going on behind her after Tarvek had kissed her, with Van giving five-to-one odds on her keeping both Gil and Tarvek; and when it came to the ways of her ancestors, the fact that Castle Heterodyne had a seraglio spoke for itself. But Agatha wasn't like her ancestors, at least not... not that way. She was her father's daughter; she had his reputation to uphold, and Uncle Barry's, against that of the rest of the family. And she couldn't think of a stronger statement of her intent to remain true to the Heterodyne Boys' legacy than to marry one man and remain faithful to him. If he in turn freely chose to remain faithful to her... well, that spoke well of both of them, didn't it? And there was power, if one wanted to see it, in a wife knowing she could so satisfy her husband that he had no desire to seek another woman's company.

Yes, she was going to have to choose. And she was going to have to break the heart of someone who loved her. Someone she loved. Someone who had saved her life and whose life she had saved.

She didn't know how to decide.

The thing was, she did love Tarvek, in spite of everything that had happened in Sturmhalten. Yes, he was a sneak, but he was a good strategist and knew a lot more than she did about what her mother and the Knights of Jove had been up to. Yes, he had a bit of a gut, but the rest of him was—well—quite nice to look at, and he was a good kisser and a great fighter. And he had saved her life, helped her save her castle and her town, and generally been a good friend. He was a better man than he sometimes pretended to be.

Yet she wasn't sure she wanted to marry him.

Agatha sighed as she picked up the tablet again and jumped forward to the beginning of Volume 10, then paged through the depiction of the Si Vales Valeo, with Tarvek looking very impressive fighting what they thought at the time was Otilia. She'd missed out on that somehow... well, of course she knew how, since Violetta had taken the locket off Agatha both to get the last piece of metal off Agatha's body and to make Lucrezia be the one to feel the pain. The procedure hadn't burned Lucrezia out of Agatha's mind as readily as it had burned the Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation out of her body, alas.

... but... that wasn't the only reason why she'd missed that fight. And since this Herr Foglio had to show what was going on around her, he hadn't drawn what she'd seen.

It had taken both Gil and Agatha to get Tarvek through the process—Gil to keep the disease at bay long enough for the whole group to get the equipment repaired and the power restored, Agatha to bring him back from the brink of death, and Gil to bring him fully back to life. Even locked away behind Lucrezia, Agatha had sensed the flow of energy among them, taken quiet satisfaction in teaming up with Gil, felt Tarvek's roar of triumph as he lurched off the slab. But her body was weakening, so she prepared herself for the third switch, the one that would shunt her out of her body temporarily while the process stopped her heart long enough to kill the chroma igniters.

Once the switch was thrown, there was a brief moment of euphoria as she slipped free of her mortal form, of her mother's presence. But then she suddenly felt herself sliding sideways (how?) and accidentally bumping into Gil.

He was startled, and so was she. They pulled back from each other a little, just enough that she could perceive—how she could see without sight, she didn't know—perceive the contours of his soul, the brightness and the dark streak, the sharpness and the scars, the earnest eagerness and the noble courage. Somehow she knew he could see her the same way.

And then, though his body was nearly failing, she heard him whisper, I've got you, as he enveloped her in his pure, strong, shining love, anchoring her amid the chaos reigning all around them. She embraced him back.They simply held each other.

It was an instant. It was eternity.

It wasn't enough.

She wasn't sure it had been real, honestly. It shouldn't have been possible with the Si Vales Valeo circuit disengaged, though she now saw von Zinzer—thoroughly reformed and serving as her chief minion, much to his dismay—had clamped another device over her mouth to shut Lucrezia up. Maybe that had opened a secondary circuit between Agatha and Gil. But even if she had imagined it... she didn't know if she could send Gil away and marry Tarvek instead. She had noticed weak residual bonds among the three of them, though she had no way of knowing whether they'd been forged by the primary Si Vales Valeo circuit or by the secondary process in which she'd saved all their lives by distributing energy gained from the waters of the Dyne among them. Maybe that had something to do with the chimeric cells Dr. Beckett had found in her heart, where they were likely to remain the rest of her life. But the bond she'd felt with Tarvek was far weaker than what she'd felt with Gil. If something happened that Gil were killed, of course, that would be one thing, but even then, Tarvek wouldn't be the same as Gil.

In one of the many physics texts she'd devoured during her stay in Atlantis, she had encountered the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which relied in part on the fact that observing the exact location of an electron by striking it with another electron would irrevocably change both particles. If that were true of mere electrons, how much more so would it be of souls? There hadn't been anything untoward about that moment, for all its intense intimacy, but she could never have that again with anyone else.

Yet there were politics to consider, and she didn't want to hurt Tarvek's feelings because she really did care for him...

"Mind if I join you?" Teyla's quiet, gentle voice interrupted Agatha's train of thought.

Agatha drew a deep breath, straightened, and locked the tablet. "No, not at all. Please," she added, indicating the free end of the bench.

Teyla sat down. "What's the trouble?"

Agatha sighed. "Boys."

"Ah." Teyla smiled knowingly.

"Teyla... may I ask you something personal?"

"Sure. Go ahead."

"I hope you don't think it's impertinent, but... well, you see, my parents—Adam and Lilith, the couple who raised me—were quite literally made for each other. I don't think my father and uncle designed them to fall in love the way they did, or forced matters in any way, but since Adam and Lilith are constructs, they probably didn't have many other options to choose from. So there were some subjects Lilith and I never discussed."

Teyla raised her chin in understanding. "Your question concerns John and me?"

Agatha nodded. "How did you know that... that he was the one?"

Teyla's smile turned rueful. "I didn't for a long time. We cared for each other from the moment we met, but for several years, neither of us was sure of how we felt or how the other felt. And I was on John's team, under his command, and the expedition has strict rules about fraternization. Plus, John was also attracted to our first commander, Dr. Elizabeth Weir, and fraternization was an equal bar to that relationship. So... he dated other women, and I dated other men. But none of those relationships ever amounted to anything."

Agatha frowned. "Not even with Torren's father?"

"No. Kanaan and I were old friends, you understand, but—well, I still can't quite explain why we fell for each other so suddenly. Still, after he'd been kidnapped, turned into a hybrid between Wraith and human, and restored to himself, moving back to Atlantis was more of a strain than he could take. He started spending most of his time on New Athos with our people. He was on Atlantis when we flew the city to the Milky Way to save Earth, but when we had to return to the Pegasus Galaxy... well, to cut a long story short, he was killed in battle."

"I'm sorry."

Teyla shook her head. "Don't be. Torren was too young to remember his father, and I had been close to dissolving our joining anyway."

"And Dr. Weir?"

"She sacrificed herself to save the city—twice." Teyla sighed. "She was a good friend. All who knew her still miss her." She took a deep breath. "But to return to your question: there was always something between John and me that I could never quite define. We were friends and teammates, certainly, but so were Rodney and Ronon, yet Ronon was always more like a brother to me, and Rodney... is Rodney. He's very dear to me—he delivered Torren!—but... well, you know him."

Agatha chuckled. "And did you ever fear losing Col. Sheppard?"

"Yes. Many times. In one case, John was infected with a virus that started turning him into a... creature not unlike the Wraith. In fact, one of the early symptoms was that he kissed me for the first time. And it was not a gentle kiss, either."

"Oh. Oh, dear."

"He did apologize when he recovered."

"I should hope so!"

"I didn't know what to make of it at the time, but... the thing that he became haunted my nightmares for years. I think one reason was the fear of losing him the same way again—watching him become a monster."

Agatha nodded slowly. "Have you felt that same fear about others?"

Teyla considered. "Not to the same degree. Our work is often dangerous, and I do worry when my friends are in harm's way, but I can't say I had nightmares about Kanaan reverting to being a hybrid. I've had many more about leaving Torren without a mother."

"I see."

"Anyway, after Kanaan's death, John and I finally sat down and talked honestly about how we felt for one another. We couldn't make anything official until now, of course, but I think all our friends knew, and Torren's always been close to John."

As Agatha nodded again, footsteps down the corridor announced the approach of Col. Sheppard. "My ears were burning," he teased as he entered the room.

Teyla smiled up at him. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah, TJ just wants a goodnight kiss from Mom."

"You could have radioed," she noted as she stood.

He made a face. "Kid doesn't want that broadcast all over the ship."

Teyla laughed. "All right." She kissed his cheek, then turned back to Agatha. "I hope what we talked about helped."

"I think it did, thank you," Agatha replied truthfully. She wasn't quite sure how much it helped, but it was better than any advice she could have gotten in Mechanicsburg.

Teyla nodded. "You're very welcome. Feel free to come talk to me anytime."

"I might do that."

"All right. Good night." She kissed Col. Sheppard's cheek again and left.

He watched her go with a smile, then cleared his throat and turned to Agatha. "I, uh... couldn't help overhearing some of what you two were talkin' about. And... well, I don't know if this is something where you might want a guy's perspective, but..."

"It might not hurt," she admitted, blushing a little. "I understand you were somewhat in a similar position, unsure whether to choose Teyla or Dr. Weir."

He nodded and sat down where Teyla had been. "Thing is, I was married once before. It was a relationship my dad set up; she's a lawyer, was gonna go into politics. I went through with it to please my old man, but it really didn't work out, especially since I was in Special Ops and she resented all the things I couldn't tell her."

She thought of the baron, planning a political marriage for Gil, and her heart ached.

"Teyla... I dunno. I think I always knew she was something special—and not just because she was the first alien woman I'd met."

Agatha laughed at that.

"Now, you're right, I did care about Elizabeth. I don't know how things woulda gone if she'd lived." He leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees and ran his hands over his face. "But the thing I think really cinched it for me about Teyla was... well, lemme back up. You heard about the time I got sent 48,000 years into the future."

"Yes, sir."

"Did we tell you why? Apart from the solar flare."

She frowned. "Teyla had been kidnapped, I think? And you were looking for her."

He nodded. "Right. Well, in the future, Rodney had left me a data crystal with the address of the planet where Teyla had been taken, so when I got back, we went after her. But the place was booby-trapped, came down on our heads. Fortunately, Teyla wasn't there yet, but Ronon and I were caught pretty deep in the rubble, and I... was injured."

"How badly?"

"Enough that I lost consciousness for a while. I don't know how long I was out. I do know that for some reason... I had this dream. It's been five years, and I still can't forget it."

She shifted to face him more fully.

"Me and Teyla, we were back on Atlantis, having dinner—red wine, lots of candles, y'know. I think the candles were partly 'cause there were a couple of fires near where I was trapped. Anyway, we were talking, and she thanked me for rescuing her. And she said, 'I never gave up hope, because I knew. I knew that you would come for me, John.'" He paused. "The weird thing was, when it was all over, we'd saved her, she'd had Torren, we were back in Atlantis in the infirmary... she thanked me for real. And she said the exact same thing she'd said in my dream."

"Huh."

"Now, I dunno if it was... some kind of vision, or if Teyla or Torren sent me the dream—normally, even TJ can't connect with me using the Gift, but when they were working together while she was pregnant, they were pretty powerful. What I do know is that that was the moment I had to admit to myself once and for all that I hadn't just wanted to save her because she's my teammate, because she's my friend. I mean, I would have done the same thing for any of our people, but... there was more to it with Teyla. And I didn't have that with Nancy. Elizabeth had been close, but it wasn't the same." He paused again, then smiled ruefully. "Not sure I'm puttin' this very well."

"I understand what you mean, though." She didn't think she'd be able to verbalize that moment from the Si Vales Valeo or its aftermath as well as he'd explained his dream, even in Romanian, but she did understand. "And that... does help me, more than I can say."

He looked her in the eye. "You're a nice girl, Agatha. You deserve someone who's going to love you for who you are and will do everything he can to make your dreams come true because that makes his dreams come true. I couldn't give that to Nancy, but Teyla... let's just say we have a lot of the same dreams."

"If I... if I feel that way about him, that we share... something like that... how should I tell him?"

"Was there, like, a moment like that?"

"Similar enough."

He grimaced. "I'm not... really good at talking about things like that, but just thinking about it as a guy... maybe say something, something you said, something he said, just some word or phrase that was important in that moment, that he'd recognize and understand. That tells him he didn't imagine it, that you remember it and it was meaningful to you, too. I guarantee he'll react, even if he tries to hide it, like I did. And either he'll be scared off or he'll stick around because he actually does love you. Either way, you'll have your answer."

She nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Herr Oberst. That really does help."

He smiled back and stood. "You're welcome. Good night."

"Good night."

Just as he left, Violetta finally returned with a huge bowl of popcorn and a couple of sodas. "What did Col. Sheppard want?" she asked as she set everything on the bench.

"Oh, nothing," Agatha replied. "We were just talking."

"About what?"

"The uncertainty principle." Agatha smiled at Violetta's skeptical look and picked up the tablet again. "Here, let me back up—you've got to see this fight between Zeetha and Gil..."

.

* Story adapted slightly from the plot of the 1902 novella Die stilisierte Frau (The Stylized Woman) by Frieda von Bülow, which still infuriates me over a decade after I had to read it for a class. In the original, Count Gyrlani has sown his wild oats until they caught up with him, but despite his fragile health rendering him unable to perform certain husbandly duties, he marries a girl from a wealthy Protestant family (otherwise unmarriageable in Catholic Austria) and then not only refuses to consummate the marriage but emotionally abuses her in an attempt to make her look like the Madonna in the Pieta. The published ending implies that she's going to have an ongoing affair with his doctor out of sheer desperation, but in the first draft, she kills herself—and there's no one to avenge her.