Chapter 27: How come you didn't come visit me today?

Finally Doctor Beckett cleared me to return to my quarters to recover. He'd given me permission to do light duty as long as I checked in with him once a day. The only thing that had bothered me about my last day in the infirmary was that John didn't visit. In fact I didn't hear from him at all. So instead of going to my quarters I decided to go to his instead.

"John?" I called when I got there, all ready to confront him regarding his absence from the infirmary. My mood deflated when I realised he wasn't there. I stretched out on his bed and waited for him to return.

I was asleep when John got there a few hours later ... slowly I made my way back to consciousness and opened my eyes to find him watching me.

"Hey," my voice was croaky with sleep. "You're back."

"Obviously you can sleep quite easily in my room when I'm not here," John's comment came completely out of the blue, "so it must just be when I'm here too that you have a problem!"

"Huh?" I sat up and rubbed a confused hand over my face. "Can you repeat that because I didn't get a word of it?"

"Nothing," John muttered, turning away tiredly.

"No," I didn't let him get away with pretending nothing was wrong. "Clearly it was something ... talk to me."

"If you can't figure it out for yourself there's no point," John persisted. "Besides, you just got back from being captive to the Wraith for three days ... now isn't the time to talk about it."

"Okay," I agreed uneasily, frowning as thoughts zinged through my mind at lightning speed. "How come you didn't come visit me today?" I decided to change the subject.

"Got a lot on my mind," John excused lamely.

"Can you tell me about it?" I asked, suddenly nervous that our relationship was wounded and I was the only one who didn't understand how.

"Tell me what happened to you first," John said quietly. He was still standing a few steps away from me and the distance between us felt ... uncomfortable.

"Can you put aside whatever's bothering you?" I asked hesitantly. "Because I need you over here ... with me ..."

Without a word John crossed the room and sat down on the bed, resting his back against the wall. He pulled me into him so that I could rest my back against his chest, and put his chin down on my hair. "Tell me," he invited.

It took me a while to work through the whole sequence of events – John hardly said a word during my recitation and remained silent once my explanation had drawn to a close.

"You know how I said that Teer had an Ancient gift – that she could see thoughts and people?" John asked a question that seemed unrelated to what I'd just been saying. When I nodded he continued. "Well what I didn't tell you is that she could also see future events. She claimed to have seen my face since she was a girl. Teer knew you were coming with the rescue team too – I didn't think that was gonna happen because you knew how I felt about you going off world. I thought she was full of crap until you guys turned up to rescue me and you were there too."

"Is that why you were angry with me at first?" I asked hesitantly.

"Partly," John admitted. "But more because of other things Teer told me would happen that were still in the future at that time. If she was right about you being there then she could be right about everything else and I really didn't like what she'd told me."

"She said something about me being captured by the Wraith, didn't she?" I asked but I already knew the answer.

"What she actually said was that it was necessary for you to come before a Queen," Jon quoted. "She said you'd return to the place where you were lost and that I had to be there when you did; otherwise you'd never return to Atlantis."

"That's how you knew to go back to M6B 373? And why you gave me those knives before the mission?" I asked. "That's why you taught me how to fly?"

"Yeah," John admitted. "Although I was gonna teach you how to fly the Puddle Jumpers eventually – Teer just sped up the timetable."

"So you arranged for me to be part of Major Lorne's team?" I asked, feeling slightly sick. "You knew what was going to happen and you said nothing?!" I jumped away from him and stood angrily in front of the bed looking down at him.

"I knew you'd react like this," John said nothing to excuse his behaviour. "I don't think there's anything I can say to make this all right for you ... when everything else Teer said came true I knew what she'd said about you would come true too regardless of what I did to stop it. I didn't want to risk making it worse – what if I'd warned you and then you hesitated when you would have acted if you didn't know what was going to happen?"

"I don't see how it could have gotten much worse!" I was still feeling very angry.

"You could have not returned at all," John's comment silenced us both. My anger dwindled away as I realised he was right. I could have changed any one of my actions and ended up as Wraith food instead of escaping with a Dart.

"You're right," I admitted. "That must have been hard," I walked back to the bed and sat down beside him again. "Waiting for something bad to happen and knowing you couldn't do anything to stop it."

"I wracked my brain for days trying to find a way around it," John admitted. "In the end the best I could come up with was to make sure you had weapons to help you and that you knew how to fly something should the opportunity present itself."

"And it's a good thing you did," I acknowledged. "I couldn't have escaped from the storage pod without the knives – we both know what would have happened then. As for the Dart – it was hard enough with all the flying lessons – it would have been impossible without them. How did you know it was going to be that particular mission?" I asked curiously.

"Teer also said that I'd know it was time when we both went to a Spire of Atlantis where none should exist. She told me that you had to travel to the Spire with me or else be lost forever.'

"Did you memorize all that?" I asked incredulously.

"Didn't have to – she must have done something to make sure I wouldn't forget," John admitted.

"So is there anything else you haven't told me?" I held on to his hand. "Apart from whatever it is you didn't want to tell me before?"

"Nah," John said easily. "That's it."

"Good!," I flopped down on the bed and pulled him on top of me. I grinned up at his startled expression.

"Aren't you injured?" John asked.

"Yeah but I'm sure you can ... get around that somehow," I looked at him hopefully.

"I'll see what I can do," John said with a smile.

Authors Note:

Hope you all liked my "episode" ... next up it's back to the real episodes with The Long Goodbye. As always, thanks for reading!