John held back near the door, waiting for the drinks he'd requested to arrive. He knew how much Elizabeth liked her coffee, and it seemed only right to provide her with a cup since she was likely to be doing a lot of talking.

Rodney sat on a chair several feet away from her, making awkward small talk. Of course, he'd been told not to share anything about the condition of Atlantis with his former commander, not until she had jumped through all the hoops and proved she hadn't been compromised, but finding other things to talk about was difficult for him. McKay lived and breathed his work, and had no real hobbies as such. He did have Katie Brown, however, so focussed his conversation around her and the dinner they'd shared the previous evening. Although Katie wasn't his type, Sheppard felt a certain amount of envy that Rodney had someone to share his down time with, even if it had only been twenty minutes while grabbing a bite to eat. Sometimes, he wished he had someone he could turn to at the end of a long, hard day. Then again, considering how badly his marriage had turned out...

Elizabeth seemed genuinely pleased to have someone other than medics to listen to, someone who wasn't purely there to monitor her current health status. Sheppard experienced a moment of guilt because he was shortly going to have to bring things back on track and grill her about exactly what Oberoth had done in the short time she'd been in his clutches. This was so hard; if it had been anyone other than one of his closest friends he'd have had little trouble with it, but Elizabeth was the one who had shown faith in him when others had doubted his abilities, the one who had inspired him to even consider making the trip to the Pegasus Galaxy, although his ultimate decision had actually hinged on the flip of a coin. O'Neill had tried to apply pressure, had even set him away from McMurdo for a few days to get his head sorted about where he wanted his career in the air force to go. Yet, without her request to Colonel O'Neill that he allow him to go to Atlantis, he wouldn't have even had the opportunity to wonder whether or not he should go. He owed her a debt of gratitude for this opportunity, for this chance at a better life that the restricted roles the air force back on Earth had offered him. He'd grown so much since his arrival there. At first, it had all been a great adventure, but the bonds he'd formed with his team and Elizabeth had made it into something far bigger than that. Atlantis was his home, and the people there were his family. He felt the urge to protect each and every one of them...though for some that feeling ran much deeper he now realised.

A knock on the door announced the arrival of their refreshments, three cups of coffee and a selection of pastries. He hadn't asked for the food, but it did make him realised how hungry he was again.

'Oh, thank God!' Rodney gasped, jumping up and rushing over to choose from the plate. 'I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throat has been cut!'

Sheppard snatched the tray back from his grasping hand, casting him a warning look. 'Perhaps we should let Elizabeth choose first,' he suggested.

Rodney backed off. 'Yes...we could do that,' he agreed, but Sheppard could see his eyes were still fixed on the largest pastry on the plate.

John set the tray down and let Elizabeth pick out a croissant to eat with her coffee. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' she smirked, flashing an amused look Rodney's way.

Sheppard collected the tray again, knowing Rodney wouldn't want to get too close to Elizabeth, and the scientist snatched up the apple and cinnamon Danish, the biggest thing available. He was devouring it even before he resumed his seat.

Rolling his eyes, Sheppard took what was left, setting it down on a small equipment table the technicians had wheeled into the room to set their recording gear up on. 'Rodney, you want to check the camera's focused so we can record this session?' he asked.

With his cheeks bulging like a demented hamster, McKay nodded, licking his fingers clean of apple sauce as he lined up the camera to get a clear shot.

'Make sure you get my best side,' Elizabeth joked, primping her hair again and flashing Sheppard a self-conscious smile.

'Relax. You'll do fine,' Sheppard assured her, returning the smile.

He waited for her to finish eating, and then suggested they make a start; she nodded that she was ready and he set things running. Sheppard ran through the necessary information of who was present and stated the time and date index, then asked his first question.

'For the record, can you state what happened four days ago during the mission to retrieve a ZPM from Asuras, in your own words.'

Elizabeth swallowed deeply, then cleared her throat as she began. 'Four of us, that is Colonel Sheppard, Dr McKay, Ronon Dex and I embarked on a mission to acquire a functioning ZPM from the Asurans. After sustaining damage in the Asurans' attack, Atlantis was adrift in space and unable to continue its journey to the designated site without the power a ZPM could supply. Dr McKay had reactivated the dormant nanites in my body to save my life due to the grave injuries I suffered during the Asuran assault, and realised we might be able to use them to gain a tactical advantage. He determined that I might be able to tap into their systems and find a safe way in and out of their city, and I agreed to do it.'

Sheppard glanced to his right and saw McKay looking a little green around the gills, far from comfortable with reliving those moments. Hopefully he'd find a way to come to terms with his part in things as he listened to more of Elizabeth's story.

After taking a pause to sip her coffee, Elizabeth pressed on. 'The mission was going according to plan. We approached the Asuran city in a cloaked jumper and managed to land undetected. I was then able to steer Colonel Sheppard and Ronon through the city to the closest ZPM without them meeting any resistance. The mission went well and they returned to the jumper with the power source they needed. While they were en-route I was able to locate the original attack command the Ancients had programmed into the Replicators when they'd first created them. It was dormant, switch off by the Wraith themselves, but when I told Dr McKay what I'd found, he was able to writing a program to reactivate it. When Colonel Sheppard and Ronon returned to the jumper, we advised them of the situation, and the fact that reawakening the attack command might stop the Asurans trying to assault us again, so Colonel Sheppard said he would enter the instruction into their systems. He moved the jumper to the area of the city where we could access the Replicator base code, then Dr McKay extended the shield downwards into the city to shield our activities while Colonel Sheppard and Ronon transferred the unlocking sequence into the Asurans' system. Unfortunately, things didn't go according to plan and several complications arose, meaning the colonel and Ronon would be trapped and unable to return to the jumper with the power source we so desperately needed. I knew it was in my power to do something to help, so I headed out to intercept Oberoth and stop the Asurans from finding them.'

John felt his throat constrict painfully at the memory of seeing her holding the huge Asuran and his minions at bay, so fragile and yet so determined. Beside him, Rodney fidgeted in his seat; apparently the memories of his role in all this were still giving him trouble, too. This interview wasn't having the beneficial effect on either of them he'd hoped for.

'Can you clarify what happened after that?' Sheppard asked, urging her to finish the story up to the point he already knew. The IOA already had three reports explaining things from their point of view, but he felt it was important for Elizabeth to make her take on things known, too.

She nodded, pushing her drying locks behind her ear as she looked down at her feet. 'On their way back to the jumper, Colonel Sheppard and Ronon located me and tried to rescue me and get me to safety. But I realised if I released my hold on Oberoth to retreat it would put the whole mission in jeopardy. I made the decision to stay and ordered Colonel Sheppard and Ronon to get back to the jumper with the ZPM.'

She paused, pressing her lips together as she stifled her emotions. It was evident the recollection of being left behind was painful to her, too, and he wondered what it was about that situation that caused her the most difficulty.

'Colonel Sheppard...'

She stopped again, and John felt Rodney's eyes burning into the side of his face. He turned to see the accusatory look on his face, as if the upset Elizabeth was experiencing was all down to him, Sheppard resisted the urge to point out he wasn't the one who had activated the nanites and put her in that situation, and Elizabeth continued.

'Colonel Sheppard was reluctant to follow my instruction, but thankfully realised it was more important to escape with the ZPM than it was to extract me, a decision I was in full agreement with.'

Sheppard knew what she was doing. His action to shoot Colonel Sumner, even though he knew in his heart he had seen the colonel give his consent, had caused him years of grief and regret. She knew superior officers, critical that he had made no attempt to save the man, had pulled him up on the act. But there had been nothing left to save; he'd witnessed that, but those superior officers, and he used the word 'superior' in the loosest possible sense, who had never had the misfortune to meet the Wraith found that impossible to accept. This time, she was making sure whoever saw this recording knew Sheppard had acted with her full consent, and his choice to leave her behind had not been any kind of attempt to work his way up the ladder of success. Not that he care about what anyone else thought of what he'd done; only her opinion mattered.

'What happened after the rest of your team retreated?' he asked, his stomach now churning in anticipation of her answer. His mind had been conjuring up all kinds of horrors since that fateful mission; now he was about to find out if what he'd imagined was anywhere close to the mark.

'Oberoth was furious, of course. He wanted to go out after you, but with the jumper cloaked he had no way of tracking where you had gone. So he did the next best thing. He probed my mind for clues about where we'd been headed before we'd come to our unscheduled stop.'

'Should we be worried?' Rodney asked, his voice quavering slightly, though he did his best to mask it.

She shook her head fervently. 'No. I would have told you immediately if they'd forced any information from me.'

'Can you be certain they didn't?' John asked. He didn't like to make her think he didn't trust her, but the Asurans had ways of convincing you of things that weren't true, so they couldn't take any chances.

'I don't suppose I can't be one hundred percent sure that they didn't get something from me, but I know I didn't give anything away voluntarily...no matter how persuasive they tried to be.'

'What do you mean?' Rodney asked, his face blanching.

She seemed to shudder as she cast her mind back to recount what had happened to them, and John steeled himself to hear about the abuse she'd endured.

'First off, they just probed my mind, making the process as uncomfortable as they could, over and over. I think they thought they could grind me down just with the sheer pain and confusion it caused. It was like someone shoving barbeque skewers into my head as far as they would go. But the nanites active in my brain kept me strong. Each time they thought they were getting somewhere, I just threw them a false memory, or something banal that was no use to them at all. I don't think they were too impressed with the memories I shared of hosing Sedge down after he took a particularly sticky mud bath.'

Sheppard smiled at the thought of just how unimpressed Oberoth would have been, but at the same time couldn't help but be afraid of how powerful Elizabeth had become in her own right if she could block the replicators' attempts to gain information over a protracted period of time. He knew only too well the physical strain that put on a body.

'When they realised hurting me wasn't going to work, they moved on to hurting people I cared about, feeding me images of my mother, Simon, you people – all of you suffering horrendous torture at their hands, or having accidents, or falling prey to the Wraith. But they couldn't convince me any of it was real. I'm not saying it didn't hurt to see those things anyway, but I could see through the images to what lay beneath and I held on to the fact it wasn't real and it got me through. I knew I had to get back to you...to all of you.'

It was a minor correction, but it stopped Sheppard in his tracks. She'd been looking at him as she spoke, and the fact she felt compelled to adjust her wording seemed to suggest she thought she'd said too much, as did the colour now burning in her cheeks as she averted her gaze to the floor. Thinking he was reading too much into it, Sheppard glanced over at Rodney, seeing the same surprise in his reaction. Momentarily stunned, Sheppard couldn't think of any more questions he needed to ask.

Looking decidedly uncomfortable, McKay cleared his throat and broke the silence. 'So, what kind of things did they make you see?' he asked, his sense of the macabre kicking in as it always did. Though he had a morbid fear of pain and death, as any sane man would, he also had an odd fascination with it, as if he might find clues to some great unsolved mystery if he learned enough about it.

Snapped out of his shock, Sheppard was quick to step in. 'You don't have to answer that, Elizabeth. I don't think we need to know that level of detail.'

'Well, if the IOA want me to recount it some time, I will. But I'd prefer not to have to recall those things unless I have to,' she admitted. 'The important thing is they didn't fool me.'

Keen to wrap things up, Sheppard brought the questioning back on line. 'When they didn't get anywhere with that tactic, what did they do?' he asked, struggling to keep his body language as open as it had been prior to her 'slip'.

'That was when they decided to abandon me on that uninhabited planet. They knocked me out and transported me there while I was unconscious. When I woke up I was sitting in the dust all alone and their jumper was soaring away from me. At first I thought it was another illusion they'd created to trick me, but when I tried to see through it, to detect the programming behind it, there wasn't any to see. That was when I knew they'd left me there to die.'

'That's inhumane...even by their standards,' Rodney gasped.

But Sheppard was more concerned with another detail. 'So you were unconscious for a while?'

'Yes.' Her large eyes lifted now and held his confidently. She had no fear that he meant to catch her out. She appeared to trust him implicitly, answering as honestly as she could.

'So it would be fair to say there was a substantial length of time when you were unaware of what the Asurans were doing to you.'

'Yes, it would be fair to say that,' she agreed, 'But I doubt they can access information or memories from an unconscious mind since they can have no way of manipulating it.'

Any other unconscious mind, perhaps, but since her neural pathways were held together by nanites, he suspected it might not be that black and white. Sheppard shared another glance with McKay. The look of horror on the scientist's face told him Rodney had come to the same conclusion.

'Interview terminated at 10:35 hours,' Sheppard announced, bringing the session to an abrupt end. 'Thanks for that, Elizabeth.'

She looked surprised it was all suddenly over. 'Is that it?' she asked

'Yeah. I think that's as much as we need for now,' he replied, flicking her a tight smile as he helped McKay to gather up the equipment. 'I'll send Keller along to check you out in a moment.'

She nodded, but he could see she was shaken by his sudden desire to be out of the room. He wondered if she, too, now recognised the significance of what she'd said. He hoped not; he was scared enough for the both of them right now. He didn't want her to worry, too. Or perhaps she sensed the other reason he needed to put space between them...

'Will you come by and see me again soon?' she asked. 'It would be nice to chat on a less formal basis.'

Though he wasn't sure if he could handle that, he made himself agree to her request, knowing he wouldn't want to let her down once he'd given her a promise to be there. 'I'll stop by before I turn in for the night.'

'Thank you,' she said, but her face was sad as she gazed at him, silently expressing the same wish he had – the wish that things could be normal between them again.

He swallowed down the lump of anxiety building in his throat and grabbed the mobile table full of recording equipment, sweeping from the room with Rodney close on his heels.

'Is there any chance they could have tampered with Elizabeth's nanites while she was out?' he asked the scientist as soon as the door had closed.

'Well, there's always a chance, but I haven't found any sign of it,' Rodney told him.

'Is it possible they built in some kind of time delay, you know, to lull us into a false sense of security and then take us down when we drop our guard?'

'Yes...yes, I suppose they could have, but so far I can find no sign what-so-ever that they tampered with her at all. Is it so hard for you to believe that they really did think she was insignificant enough to abandon out there? You know arrogant they are. They look at us like we're some kind of nuisance to be swatted out of existence. They're probably off chasing the Wraith right now as we speak.'

'Yes!' Sheppard snapped. 'It is too hard to believe. They knew she was Atlantis' leader and what the kinds of information she potentially held. I honestly can't believe they would toss her out like a piece of garbage after only one day of trying to break her.'

'But that's probably because the attack code kicked in. And you saw her in there, Sheppard. There was no sign of subterfuge in anything she said. Well, other than that one thing...'

Sheppard knew he was referring to her correction, and refused to be drawn into conversation about it. 'The Asurans aren't the only ones guilty of arrogance, McKay. You still refuse to accept that their technology is way beyond our full understanding.'

'Be that as it may, I'm sure she isn't lying. That's still our Elizabeth in there.'

'No, she isn't, Rodney. Don't you get it? While those nanites are inside her, she can never be 'our' Elizabeth. She can't lead Atlantis, can't be involved in any decisions on the future of this place, she can't even be briefed on what's going on with the city at the moment. And while she can't play any part in this city's life, she is not 'our' Elizabeth. Now, I want you to get back to that lab of yours and find a way of fixing her and shutting those nanites down. And I don't want it to take two weeks. Is that clear?'

'Well, it's clear, but it's also impossible. These things take as long as they take, Sheppard. I can't just wave a magic wand and wish the damn things away!'

'Find a way to do it, Rodney,' Sheppard ordered, pushing the table of recording equipment into Rodney's midriff by way of an order that the scientist should get the material they'd gathered to where it needed to go.

'Now you're really starting to sound like a commander,' Rodney hissed

'I'll take that as a compliment.'

As he strode away, Sheppard heard McKay call out after him. 'You blame me for all this, don't you?'

He faltered to a stop, every nerve in his body buzzing with the desire to punch something – anything – to relieve his frustration. He took a deep, calming breath, and without turning called back, 'We all played a part in this, Rodney. Now we all need to do whatever it takes to fix it.'

'So, are you going to just ignore what she said to you in there?'

Closing his eyes, Sheppard tried to imagine why Rodney would think now of all times was a good one to push him on that. 'I'm not having this conversation with you Rodney,' he warned. 'Now get your ass back to the lab and get working...and make sure your people make the hyperdrive their priority. I think we may need that sooner than we thought.'

Silence followed. He hoped he'd said enough to make Rodney push himself just that little bit harder than he already was. They were relying on McKay to sort this problem out; Sheppard had no doubt about that. He was good at dealing with things he could point a gun at, but these things were so tiny and insidious he knew nothing he could do would make a difference. Once again, the pressure was on McKay and his science team to get them out of a horrible mess. He just hoped they all had enough strength left in their reserves to see them through.