Happy New Year you lovely lot! I hope you had a fantastic festive time! Here's hoping that 2021 is a much better year for all! My Muse finally returned so I could get this chapter written! Honestly, I WILL finish this story, just, please, bear with me and my writing outages.

Let's finally find out what promise John made to a Caronaa girl so long ago that drove the team into an unforseen battle...

Chapter 31

Water. Endless water and darkness.

It was all that existed for John. It pressed against his body, muffled sounds and impaired his vision when he had the strength to open his eyes. The time he spent in the birthing valleys literally went by in a speeding blur. But he'd been removed from them, which didn't make sense as he still felt like death.

John assumed he was in an underwater cave and could feel vibrations in the water as creatures passed. They brushed against him occasionally then swam on as dim lights pulsing in the gloom. By the silence in his mind it was clear that Primus was no longer within him. With no way to communicate and little to see or hear, John was left to float in darkness, alone with his thoughts

He gently moved his tight limbs, feeling their weakness but nonetheless happy he could move them at all. There was a pleasant numbness to his body. The agonizing ache in his chest was absent, as was the insanity-inducing sensation of the tiny Goh that had once tickled his insides. Despite still being in poor condition, he was alive and that was better than what he should have been, which was undoubtedly dead. He pressed his thumbs to his forefingers and rubbed circles on the wrinkled pads as he thought on why he found himself in such a predicament.

Kerria.

She was the true reason they had returned to Caronaa. Sure, he had dressed it up as part of an ongoing trade deal with the Caronaans, but it was mostly about her.

Kerria with her long blonde hair which curls seemed to sparkle in the sun. Kerria with her cherubic features and glistening blue eyes that had stolen his heart then smashed it to pieces.

Kerria, daughter of the village leader, Sama.

The Atlanteans received Caronaa's cry for help when a plague far deadlier but similar to Earth's Black Plague ravaged the population. Many Caronaans died in the first months while others, even now, rotted away in comas in the Central City hospital.

Kerria was one of them.

John had first seen her when Sama had approached their newly landed Jumpers the day they first answered their call over a year-and-a-half ago. She had stood strong and tall by her father's side, helped with the introductions and aided the Atlanteans in their mercy mission. She and John worked tirelessly together transporting Carson's cure to villages across Caronaa.

John was beguiled by, and besotted with Kerria.

He admired the fact she didn't use her social stature as a reason not to walk amid the sick and dying. Where he needed to be, she went with him, even on the distressing Jumper runs to the death pyres when necessary. She was strong-willed, caring, empathic and not unaware or uncaring of his growing feelings for her.

They developed a relationship of sorts, one which was strangled by the boundaries of their own separate lives. He was a visitor to her planet with a different life to hers. She was the daughter of the village leader and his eventual successor. It was an impossible relationship doomed from the get go, but no matter how casually they treated the relationship, neither could negate the feelings blossoming between them were real.

Then, one day, as they were delivering a medic to a remote village, Kerria had taken ill. One moment she was handing a box of vaccines to the medic, the next John was catching her in his arms. Even as she trembled with fever she smiled for him. When he carried her to the Jumper and sat her in the co-pilot seat, she fought to be strong and said she was and would be fine. His frantic flight back to central City saw the life rapidly drain out of Kerria, and John watched her steady decline with alarm.

"You better not die on me, Kerria! You hear me?!"

His own fear-tinged words echoed in his mind as he floated in the darkness and felt his heart shatter anew.

Kerria had been one of the first to receive the vaccination. As vital members of the village, all leaders were vaccinated so they could aid with the crisis. She should never have fallen to this accursed illness. And yet, she had, and John hurriedly carried her into the hospital and delivered her into the care of the nurses and doctors.

Later, Carson explained that the vaccine had failed to work for approximately ten-percent of Caronaa recipients. Some faulty genetic coding rendered the vaccine inert within their bodies and so they succumbed to the plague as if unimmunized.

Once John had done all he could and the majority of Caronaa had received the vaccine, he went to Kerria's bedside and stayed there for days on end. No one could move him, and certainly, not many tried. Even Sama sensed there was more to his presence than met the eye and left him alone.

John used up a year's worth of holiday-leave to remain by her bedside, but he couldn't stay there indefinitely. Eventually, John returned to Atlantis and back to work.

Sama promised to keep him up to date with Kerria's condition and remained a man of his word. Every month since John left Caronna, Sama had sent through a private data package with an update on her condition, even if it was just to tell John that Kerria remained the same as when he left her.

Perhaps it was for the best, John thought. It wasn't as if he could leave Atlantis and his life behind to be with Kerria, and she was unable to do the same for him. They both had responsibilities to the people in their care and their home planets. Knowing this didn't kill his feelings for her, nor did it extinguish the hope of ever seeing her bright blue eyes again.

Any notions of them enjoying a long term relationship were now little more than a dream, but he had promised to be there when she opened her eyes and he intended to keep that promise.

Less than a week ago, Sama had sent through a private data package for John, only a few days after the monthly update. It was a video file which John opened in the privacy of his quarters. When Sama's gaunt face appeared on the laptop screen, John saw how much the man had aged in the past year. He now also wore a haunted look and appeared to be as tired as a man could be. Then the reason for his broken appearance was told in a halting story of grief. He told John that many of the comatose patients in Central City hospital had finally succumbed to their illness and died, his own brother included. They had died as a result of a sudden onset of severe inflammation in the lungs and they had ultimately drowned in their own secretions. Many lasted a few hours after onset, coughing and choking away their final moments in agony. Some never woke to know they were dying, while others endured their final battle with terror-filled eyes wide open. Sama told John that if he wished to see Kerria alive again, he should return and be with her in those final moments as Sama felt he wasn't strong enough to watch her fight alone.

And so John approached Woolsey and requested to return to Caronaa, saying he wished to follow-up on one of the trade agreements tendered in the months following the plague. With no reason to question the request, Woolsey had said yes, even went so far as to commend John for his efforts to secure these trade deals. Woolsey had no idea of the real reason for the return.

But his team did.

Well, they knew as much as John let them know. Of them all, Teyla was probably the only one to have guessed there was more to Kerria and him than what McKay called his usual "Kirk" endeavours. Ronon stood by almost anything John asked of him without question, but McKay always had to try and get a dig in at John's expense.

None of them would ever really know how much Kerria meant to him, and he would keep it that way. When Rodney asked why they were returning, John had simply said "I have a promise to keep."

Of course, Rodney instantly thought along the lines of James T Kirk and guessed it had something to do with a woman, Kerria in particular. John let him have his fun and kept him guessing all the way to Caronaa.

And then the Groten stole what final chance John might have had to see Kerria one last time. Perhaps they had even stole his own life, for although he felt alive, he sure as hell felt dead inside.

John startled when a thunderous boom that even he could hear thrummed through the cave. The water around him vibrated so much it shook the bones within him. He heard cracking sounds and then felt hard, sharp objects strike his body. He floundered weakly in the water when another thunderous vibration shook the dark world around him.

Suddenly he felt hundreds of tiny bodies gather until every inch of him was covered. The Goh, he suspected, protecting him from harm. Then they were moving him and he felt the tug of the oxygen tank as the umbilical went taught behind him. There came another great booming but this time less intense as before, though it still rattled his teeth. Then everything fell silent and still again.

The Goh didn't leave him. He remained in place under their care, completely static as if they waiting for something. Then a flurry of agitation flowed through his tiny carers and they were moving again. This time he knew when he was taken into the birthing valley. One minute everything was calm, the next he was grabbed by the fast moving water and dragged into a speeding current. The umbilical strained as it pulled the oxygen canister behind him and he wished the Goh would notice and bring it under control.

But as soon as he entered the fast flowing fluid John felt calm and soothed. There was something about these waters that just made him feel that everything would turn out fine. And maybe they would, for him at least.

The thought fired something up in his brain and suddenly John was struck with an idea so completely obvious that he nearly missed it. He fought against the Goh and the current for a moment as the revelation caused him to struggle and wish to be still so he could think straight. The Goh ignored his weak stirrings and continued to hold him in firm and steady in his rapid motion. John forced himself to relax and allowed the revelation to unfold into an idea which saw fresh hope well within him.

Before he was brought here, John had stood facing the doors of death and watched them slowly open for him. He'd been on his way out; seen the light burst from behind those doors and beckon his soul onwards. There was no doubt in his mind that he would long ago have passed on to the afterlife had he not been plunged into these waters.

These were waters of life, of death, of knowledge and waters of supreme healing and regeneration.

The fluid he found himself carried by was the answer he'd been searching almost a year for. If the Goh waters could bring his sorry and broken carcass back to life, perhaps they could do the same for Kerria.

John allowed the Goh to speed him safely around the healing waters, now so sure he had the answer he'd prayed would come to him. He didn't believe in a God as such, but he did pray when he needed the universe to help him out. And this time it seemed it had provided the help he sought, even though it had a very painful and deadly way of providing it.

Behind the oxygen mask, a smile started in the corners of John's mouth and grew until he was grinning like an idiot. If he could ride out this healing process and get back to Caronaa, maybe, just maybe, he could save Kerria after all.

"I promised you then, and I promise you now. I'll be there when you wake up. Just please, Kerria, wait for me..."

..

to be continued!