Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

Previously: It's the worst day ever. What with people dying (in chapter 52), relationships being made (for Radek, in chapter 83), discovered at all the wrong times (for Radek, in chapter 87; Anna, in chapter 92), and general bad feelings due to it being the anniversary of Radek's ex-wife's death, this day couldn't possibly get worse. Oh, yeah. Atlantis is also under a bomb threat currently. And Radek just knows that he's done a fine job of screwing everything up. So, in an effort to make up for it a little, he brought Anna to the planet with all the kids for that job he has to do. And hope that distracts Anna at least a little from how terrible she must be feeling…

Also Important Author's Note at the end.

Chapter 95. But I Am.

"And you are here." Neleus stood in front of a large tent hanging between two trees. With two to a tent, Major Ivanov's team took up two, the other scientists shared a tent, and this last one was for Radek and Anna. It was on the ground, it smelled like a campfire, and all Anna wanted to do was go back to Atlantis and cry herself to sleep.

She hoped it didn't look that way.

"I hope it's comfortable," Neleus added.

"It will be fine, thank you." Radek stood to one side of the tent's opening and held it for Anna to duck inside. "I haven't seen Keras to tell him the field generator is back up and functioning perfectly."

"I'll tell him," Neleus said. He paused. "You will be here for the celebration tomorrow?"

"Probably," Radek said.

Neleus nodded, looking pleased. He thanked them.

Anna wondered if Neleus comprehended the incredible danger their friends were in at the moment. Probably not. He lived in a tent, free of danger from the Wraith. The only thing he had to worry about was eating squirrels for dinner. Anna had never worried about that before today. It was a little more concerning than she thought it might be.

"We will see you in the morning, then," Neleus said.

"Yes, in the morning. Good night." Radek ducked into the tent with Anna, letting the flap fall behind him.

Anna heard Neleus walk away while she got her bed ready. The ground was hard and dusty, but the sleeping bag was stuffed very nicely and would keep her warm in the cool night air. She crawled under the blanket and watched Radek spread his sleeping bag on the other side of the tent. He wasn't going to bed immediately, though. He pulled out his tablet.

They didn't talk. Well, they'd more-or-less argued all day, but she wasn't mad about that. She couldn't even remember what they talked about today at all. He apologized, didn't he? She never did… but she didn't really want to. Not for that.

She tried to ignore how nervous she was, but abandoned that track almost as soon as she tried.

She rolled over, away from Radek.

Her friends. Her home.

"Do you think they're okay?" she whispered.

"Who?"

"Atlantis."

"They'll figure it out. Eventually. Rodney is incredibly motivated when the word 'bomb' is mentioned." He paused. "Understandably." He must have gone back to reading, because he said nothing else.

Anna sighed and turned so she could see him again. That wasn't exactly what she meant. Wasn't he concerned about them? Radek considerded Doctor McKay a friend, as much as she heard him complain about him. He didn't seem bothered, though. Maybe he was just so sure Rodney could take care of himself and everyone else.

She couldn't close her eyes. She wasn't quite sure why. Her heart shivered with the possibilities that the hours held. For all they knew, Atlantis was scattered, smoking flotsam on the waters.

He must've noticed she was looking at him. "No reason to be worried."

A few little words didn't change the reality of the situation. Atlantis was in mortal danger and they were stuck here.

"But I am."

There was a long silence. He was probably trying to figure out what to say, but he couldn't know what to say. How could he? He had been away for so long and she was not the same person as the seven-year-old girl he knew when he left. That girl would have taken him at his word: there was no reason to be worried.

But that girl didn't know what the future held any more than Radek did.

The vision of a burnt, blistered, stiff body stuck in her vision whenever she closed her eyes. White room, gray smoke. Whenever her eyes were open, all she could see was an open casket surrounded by flowers. But she couldn't see inside. She hadn't looked.

She wasn't sleeping. Not tonight.

Wasn't he nervous? Did he ever have nightmares of the gruesome deaths that could befall them or their friends? Was he ever sad about losing his friends to the unpredictable whims of exotic particles and Rodney's uncontrollable ego? If he was nervous, he never talked about it. If he was sad, he didn't really let on.

Kind of like Anna.

"I was thinking about Collins…" She stared at the tarp over their heads, berating herself. That was about the stupidest, most obviously-a-lie thing she'd ever said in her life.

He set the tablet down but kept his eyes on it like he didn't really want to talk about this. Like he wanted to keep working. Anna should have kept her mouth shut.

"That was a bad day." He looked up at her, as if to ask her to go on, but he spoke before she got the chance to. "Today was a bad day." Just in case she didn't think he was paying attention, he saw her obviously-a-lie much easier than she expected.

But to hear him say it seemed to make it ten times worse. She wasn't sure until a few moments ago that he knew it was the one-year anniversary of her mother's death.

Of course, he knew.

"Yeah." Anna sat and drew her knees up, resting her arms across them. Now she could see better. But only barely.

"I hoped being offworld would help."

Anna wanted to believe that was a generous thought he had. But he didn't understand. He didn't understand it at all—how could he? It didn't matter where she was. It hurt no matter what. Being on another planet, in another galaxy. None of it made any difference at all.

"You want to talk about it?"

She shrugged. "Collins or…?"

He wasn't fooled by her suggestion, but he treated it like he was. "Anything."

What was she supposed to say that he would understand? She remembered the last day with Mom, dwelling too much on her uncertain future to be present that day. In the end, she was glad. It hurt enough. She could say something about that. Or something about this aching hollow in her chest. How her tears stung whether she cried or not.

A year. Another galaxy. Nothing was far enough away to put distance on this hurt.

She put her forehead on her knees and sobbed. "I miss Máma. So much."

He sighed.

She wasn't sure if she was surprised or not when he slid next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She was surprised when she leaned against him.

"I'm sorry."

She wanted to say something but she wasn't sure what. She couldn't speak anyway. She had tried so hard not to cry for so long. Her tears meant nothing, even less than nothing. She learned that quickly. It didn't matter what she did—she only ever felt worse.

"I miss her so much sometimes I don't know what to do."

"I know." He stroked her hair quietly.

"I try not to."

He paused and took a breath. "It's not a bad thing to miss her."

"I mean, I try not to be sad." She could taste her tears, feel her lungs spasm with sobs. She tried not to bring it up. She didn't want him to know. That was what she meant. Didn't mean to cry. Didn't mean to be obviously sad or miserable. "I don't mean to bother you. You don't have to be sad with me."

"But," he said suddenly in a low voice. "I am."

She sniffed and held her breath.

He patted her shoulder. "Just because you can't live with someone doesn't mean you don't care… or don't love them."

She leaned her head on his shoulder and listened to him breathe. That almost made sense. Maybe that was what happened. Of course, Radek would care about Mom, at least a little. He'd loved her once, enough to marry her. Maybe Mom, somehow, cared about him.

"I'm sorry if I ever made you think you couldn't talk to me about her. Or if I gave the impression that I didn't care about her. I always cared about her, and I always thought… well, I guess it doesn't matter anymore what I thought."

There was a long pause, and Anna tried to think about anything but her. It wasn't working too well. A tear hanging off her nose caught her attention. A moment later, it fell on his khakis. If tears could stain… it would seem more appropriate. But they just washed off. Like they'd never been there.

"I wish I could have seen her," he said, his voice small. "Said goodbye."

Anna glanced up at him. She wished that, too.

He didn't look at her, though. She turned back to staring at the floor, his arm across her shoulders.

"She was a good mother," he offered. "And she loved you more than anything."

Anna turned to bury her eyes in his jacket. He shifted to rest his chin on the top of her head, took a deep breath, and just let her cry. Tears rose in her chest, like she was drowning in them. Why was he better at articulating her loss than she was?

Her mother loved her. Anna was her life. She was always glad to see her, she was happy when Anna laughed. When Anna cried, she was sad. She kept tabs on Anna, but not in a possessive or overly-protective way… she just wanted to know Anna was content.

"Next to your mother's care for you, I know it doesn't seem that I do." He paused for a short time, shook his head. His next words were spoken into her hair. "But I love you, Anna."

It was really something. Those three words. * It felt like it had been an eternity since she'd heard them, and she didn't know she missed them. They were just words… but they weren't only words, either.

"Forgive my mistakes, will you?" he asked. "I'm hopeless at this. I know I can't be like her, but I'm trying."

Anna didn't know what he meant, figured he had no idea, either. It was probably the thought that counted.

But it wasn't just a thought, was it? Every day she waited in the hospital, she hoped he would come for her. She hadn't been so naïve to think that things would be just as they were when she was little. She wasn't so naïve to think that he would be at all like her mother… but that wasn't what she wanted, was it?

She didn't know what to think.

Before she understood the words coming out of her mouth, she whispered, "I know."

"You know?"

Anna nodded and curled up just a bit closer under his arm around her. "I know."

Maybe it was one of life's unfair bits. People could have as many children, husbands, or wives as they wanted. Only one mother, though.

Only one father.

She had fifteen years to learn what her mother meant when she made Anna tea, when she sat at the table and listened to Anna talk about school, when she put notes of encouragement with ribbons in her lunch sack to help her through the day, or bought her new clothes just because she thought Anna would like them. When Mom did all those things, she meant to say, I love you, Anna.

Instead of making tea and listening to complaints about school, Radek shared his lab. He cleared a desk for her. She never used it, but it was just a few meters from his desk. He stayed right where she knew he'd be, all day, in case she needed him. It was unfair that she didn't notice until now how often he'd helped with her homework. Instead of buying things for her, because he didn't know what she liked, he tried to give her the ability to do the things she wanted to. He gave her the keys to a spaceship. She was allowed to go to the mainland. And here she was on another planet.

Days she spent in the hospital wondering if he'd come for her… and he was willing to give up this adventure of a lifetime, for her.

Radek didn't have the same words, but they meant the same thing.

She didn't miss being loved. She just missed the way her mother said it.

"I just really miss her," she whimpered.

Radek sighed. "I miss her, too, Little." He paused, corrected himself. "Anna. Sorry."

She shrugged and looked up at him. He was blurry past her tears, and bright with the tablet's light blue glowing on him.

She wrapped an arm around him. "Actually… you can call me Little. I don't mind."

#

It was the middle of the night and Anna was soundly asleep against his arm. Radek didn't want to wake her to move across the tent to his own pillow, but he figured he'd have to at some point. Tomorrow was bound to be another day of hiking through the woods, eating dangerous and adventurous foods, and anxiously eying the radio in case the Daedalus should call.

Maybe sleeping in past a breakfast of squirrels wouldn't be too awful, though.

He finally just sighed and leaned back on the tree the tent was set up against. He didn't know what to expect when Anna came with him on this mission, but he didn't expect this to happen. Anna might just have easily maintained her stony exterior and justified anger.

But even the disaster of the past several weeks hadn't been bad enough to overshadow Eliška's death.

Radek sometimes wondered what happened. Somewhere along the line, he must have made some kind of terrible mistake. Or maybe Eliška had. Or maybe the mistakes were mutual. No one person could take all the blame. Placing and remembering that blame was pointless. He couldn't remember what happened anymore, and he didn't want to. He only wanted to remember the woman he'd fallen in love with, the woman he'd hoped to share his life with.

Life had other ideas, one way or another.

Anna shifted, moving to rest her head on her own arm instead. She sighed. So she wasn't sleeping, after all. She whispered, "You didn't hate her, did you?"

"No, no, no…" Radek was surprised how much that question hurt, even though he didn't quite know how to answer it. "No, I never hated her."

Anna turned to look up at him. Her eyes were red and shiny from her tears earlier in the night. "I wouldn't blame you if you did…"

"I would."

Anna nodded a little, turning back to rest on her pillow. "She wished I knew you better."

Radek wished that, too, and in some ways his wish had been granted. But this, under the shadow of Eliška's death? This was never how he wanted to spend time with his daughter. Probably not on another planet, either, but…

Life had other ideas.

He didn't realize before right now how much he regretted never seeing Eliška again. Not saying a proper goodbye. The last words he spoke to her were on the telephone, and he wasn't even sure what he said. It was probably something horrible, because everything he said was horrible in the end. He didn't mean any of it, but he said it anyway.

"It's complicated, you know," he said. He moved to the other side of the tent, to his own sleeping bag and pillow. He couldn't quite see her in the dark at this distance, but he could see her rubbing tears from her eyes. "Just like you never love someone for just one thing, you'd never give up on someone for just one thing, either."

Anna might have thought about that while Radek zipped up the side of his sleeping bag.

Just when Radek thought he could finally sleep, she said, "I wish you loved each other as much as I loved you both."

"I wish we could have."

If he were telling the truth, he didn't know what happened most of the time. Sometimes he was sure he knew, and he hated himself for it. Sometimes, he was sure he was justified in hating Eliška. But he was older now. Wiser. He would have liked to go back to fix the things he'd broken.

He finally just sighed. "I wish a lot of things."

He once wished for something like this, another chance to be worthy of that little girl who once worshipped the ground he walked on. He'd never be, probably, but he wasn't wasting this chance to try.

Czech Things

* So, yes, for those Czech-challenged members of my audience (including myself), if you ever read Radek-centric stories, you may know that "miluji tě" is two words, and it means "I love you"... in a romantic sense. So, naturally, I had to figure out if it is the same in a non-romantic sense, like in English. So I found "mám tě rád(a)" also means "I love you" and is apparently the phrase used between parents and children? I dunno, man, just be careful with words. Even the ones you grew up speaking. Anybody out there want to offer any insight? And correct me if this is wrong?

A/N: Guys. I'm so sorry. I am drowning in school stuff right now, since I graduate in... a month? Yeah. But I'd like to wrap this story line up here before taking hiatus for another month (or two) to finish up classes and (hopefully) find a job. I also realized to my eternal shame (and I will turn in my "Radek Zelenka fangirl" card immediately) that I forgot to post a chapter on Radek's name day. So I will be posting this today to make up for the missing name day post, another chapter tomorrow that is for last Friday that I missed, and then one on Saturday that is for tomorrow. And then, I guess, I'll see you all later.

Apologies again. ;-;

Next time: More like "previously."