Title: Ancient Treasure
Author:![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
heimedall and angelsdee
Pairing: Elizabeth/John
Season/Spoiler: None, but set in season 3
Rating: NC-17
Beta:angelsdee
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just play with them.
Summary: John finds out something unexpected about Elizabeth and somehow, its all Rodney's fault!
Notes: This story is seriosuly old, I think I started writting it last summer but never got around to finish it. There is no real connection to season 3, I guess you could call it an alternate story, so be nice :)
Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Chapter 7
John woke the next morning on his front and knew instantly that he wasn't in his own bed. It took a moment for his fogged brain to realise he'd spent the night with Elizabeth and it was her pale blue sheets that he was laying on.
He tried to moved and heard Elizabeth groan and her weight press down on him. She was up close against his side, her head on the back of his shoulder, arm draped across his back and knee tucked between his legs.
He shifted, turning his face so he could edge slowly onto his side and wrap his arms around her. She was more beautiful asleep, relaxed and really at ease for once. This brought on the memory of a dream; he'd gotten up in the middle of the night and stood watching her for a few minutes before he left her room.
'What did you mean?' she muttered and John realised he'd woken her as he moved.
'Did I wake you?'
'No,' she said, 'I was awake before you moved. What did you mean, last night? You said you knew why we'd been chosen.'
'That's... complicated,' John said wishing he'd never mentioned it at all. She propped herself up to look at him and he knew he wouldn't be able to hide it any longer. 'McKay may be responsible for what happened.'
'How exactly is this Rodney's fault?'
'You remember that lab he found below sea level at the base of this tower, the one he spent three days asking you if he could check out.'
'Yes,' she said suspiciously.
'He went ahead and checked it out.'
'What?'
'The night we can't remember... he turned on some device at low power and left it running for a few hours.'
'Okay, firstly, when did you find out about this?'
'Day before yesterday,' he said quickly and truthfully.
'And why didn't Rodney tell me, even after the test was done?'
'I don't know that, he only told me because I was looking for something to explain why I can't remember making love to you. Not that I put it that way to him.'
'He tested a device we know nothing about, in the middle of the night at the base of the personnel tower,' she confirmed and John nodded. 'I am seriously getting annoyed with him,' she said throwing the covers off and climbing from the bed. He couldn't resist watching her as she walked completely bare to the bathroom and vanished through the door.
Her mood didn't improve, not that John could blame her. He hadn't realised how stupid it was to test something under where they slept, not until she added it to the list of things McKay did wrong.
They washed and dressed and John followed her out of the room, ignoring the stunned look on Lorne's face as they passed him and turned the corner. McKay is going to have a bad day, he thought as he followed Elizabeth though the city to the main lab.
'Where's Rodney,' she demanded of who ever wanted to answer.
'He said something about a lab under the west tower,' Radek said quickly and John suspected he'd picked up on Elizabeth's bad mood, 'but I didn't know there was one under that tower.'
Elizabeth glared at him for a moment and then turned and left quickly. John thanked Radek and followed her, having to jog slightly to catch up with her fast pace. Rodney had lied to his own team about where he was going, but it seems Elizabeth had put the information together.
There were three sets of stairs to go down in order to reach the very bottom of the tower and all three of them were below the water. They always freaked John out, as all the walls in these levels were made of clear glass and anyone down there had a very good view of the sea life; or lack thereof.
'Rodney,' she said sharply making the scientist jump and swing around.
'Elizabeth,' he said shocked and stole a glance at John, 'what are you... I was just... you told her?'
'You ran an experiment on an unknown device under the personnel wing?'
'Well yes and no,' he said.
'Yes,' she said not giving him the option to tell her otherwise. 'You ran an unauthorised experiment when the majority of our population was in this tower, Rodney.'
'I didn't use full power,' he said smugly. 'Besides, nothing happened.'
John raised his eyebrow; there was no way that was a good thing to say. He could feel Elizabeth tense and watched Rodney fidget uneasily under her stare.
'Seventeen weeks ago last night, you ran this,' she said calmly and Rodney nodded. 'Then explain to me, how it is that I'm seventeen weeks pregnant and I have no idea how it happened?'
'I meant at the time, I thought nothing happened.'
'Rodney.'
'I've been going back over the log data, the stuff the ancient computers pick up, not what our computers got. It seems the microbes that this device releases have the ability to seek out what they call "the perfect grouping".'
'What does that mean?' John asked stepping into the room for the first time as Elizabeth moved to check out the panel.
It hit him like a cold wave, starting from the top of his hair and shuddering down through his whole body only to die at the ends of his toes. Instantly he knew he didn't like this room.
'Elizabeth, maybe you shouldn't be in here,' he said without even knowing why. They both turned to look at him.
'Why?' She asked, but all John could do was shake his head.
'Anyway,' Rodney said, ignoring John and attempting to draw Elizabeth's attention back, but she eyed John with concern for a few more minutes. 'I was reading in the database that this was a failed experiment to ensure the gene was passed on through procreation. Apparently, it had strange side effects on the people who naturally had the gene.'
He paused to flick open his laptop and scanned an open report.
'There's one record that shows a man who lost the ability to have children altogether, and another who lost the ability to walk and some even lost their genetic coding, so they all matched each other and...'
'Rodney.'
'It's designed to pass a boosted version of the gene on to the opposite sex, but have the gene lay dormant in their system only to be passed on to their...' he indicated Elizabeth's stomach showing greatly through her tight black pants, 'progeny.'
'So I now carry the ancient gene?'
'Yes, but you can't use it, it's only there to be picked up by your children.'
'So why can't we remember...'
'Err, yeah, that's a part of the programming problem. Apparently they couldn't find out how to stop people acting without remembering. They always reacted at night, but they had a lot of unexplained pregnancies, most of which they couldn't match up because of the genetic problem. On full power, this thing would put the top twenty gene carriers on breeding over drive and they would each head for the lowest twenty carriers or in this case, twenty of the people who don't have the gene.'
'Why me?' Elizabeth asked, 'I'm only one of many people in this city who doesn't have the gene, Teyla, Heightmeyer...'
'I would guess,' Rodney said glancing at John, 'that some attraction helps. Anyway, look at this,' he said and moved over to another panel to the left of the one he'd been talking about. 'That one is a fake, it's just the casing, I guess they were gonna make another one.'
John watched as Rodney turned on the device and messed with the display for a moment. He closed his eyes against a sharp pain that shot through his back.
When he opened his eyes, he was in his room, sitting at his desk typing at his laptop, he stopped and stared at the screen reading back the report he'd typed in the middle of the night just over four months ago.
He glanced at the clock, 03:58 and then quickly around his room, it was four in the morning over four months ago, the clock on his bedside matched the one on his computer and he saw it flick over to 03:59.
Was this the night that Rodney was running his experiment? Would he in a few minutes time set about switching off the security camera outside Elizabeth's room and then go and join her?
He glanced at the clock and watched it turn to 04:00 but nothing happened. He waited, wondering if he was just dreaming; perhaps he'd passed out back in the lab and was using his own imagination to put the pieces together.
As he considered this, he reached out and began tapping at the keyboard, bringing up the security log and accessing the cameras. Maybe this was the day before the experiment, he thought, he'd been up late three days in a row after all.
He entered his command code and watched as the camera's display went blank. He pushed back reconsidering the date and climbed to his feet, he looked at the clock again now reading several minutes past four and headed from the room.
The cool night air washed over his topless shoulders and chest as he walked bare foot through the corridors and into the no longer recording view of the camera. He stopped at her door only to ruffle his hair before he opened it and stepped in.
Elizabeth was awake, sitting on the end of her bed watching the door; or him as he stepped inside. She stood up and John ran his eyes down the small skin tight black shorts and top she wore, but he was distracted as she pulled the top off over her head and wrapped her arms around him and they kissed.
John staggered backward, his back hitting the wall on the other side of the corridor to the lab. Elizabeth and Rodney were watching him, Rodney with curiosity, Elizabeth with concern. She moved away from the panel and stepped out of the room, she reached out and touched him and instantly they pulled apart almost as if they'd been given an electric shock.
'He turned it on,' John said almost sounding stupid in the comment, 'you're all wrong for me now.'
'Of course,' Rodney said, 'Colonel, are you considering who would be the best person to...'
John bit his tongue, he didn't want to say what he was thinking, it was wrong, he was with Elizabeth and she was carrying his baby. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling that she was useless and there were so many other women who were right for him.
'Rodney?'
'It'll wear off before tonight,' Rodney said, 'I only had it on for a few minutes.'
'What's going on?'
'He's the one with the strongest gene in the whole city, when that thing is on, he'll have the urge to procreate and as you now possess the gene and you're pregnant, you're at the end of his list of...'
'And you switched that thing on knowing this?'
'Well I wanted to show you the log.'
'Are you sure this will wear off by tonight?'
'Relatively sure, yes,' Rodney said.
'I'm placing him under guard for the day and I want that thing destroyed.'
'Elizabeth...'
'Rodney, you said yourself, it can destroy the natural gene carrier in some way. Do you really want to do that to John?'
'Can I save the log first?'
'If you can do it without activating the device, then yes. John, I think...'
John knew he shouldn't have walked away; he should have waited for Elizabeth. He could hear her calling to him as he vanished around corners and up stairways, he even saw her as he activated the transporter and vanished.
~~**~~
He ignored the sound of someone calling his name as he turned the corner quickly and took the last few long strides to the door.
He couldn't explain what led him to this particular room, it felt wrong and perfectly natural all at the same time. He stepped in and closed the door behind him hoping whoever had followed would give up when he ignored them.
John just stood there, his back to the door and his eyes wandering around the room, the bed to his left where he'd spent the night. This was Elizabeth's room, not his and he found he felt strange in it.
He wasn't completely sure that he would have felt normal in his own room, but he did know that here, he could at least be reminded that she was what he wanted.
When he'd left the lab, he'd wanted to go to so many places, Kate Heightmeyer's office; the gym to see who was there, talk some random woman out of the corridor into his room. But he had fought it all, the need to create a new life, pass on the gene he'd been blessed, or cursed with depending on his mood.
He didn't want to impregnate half the city; he hadn't intended to do it to Elizabeth. He loved her, he'd known that for a long time, and knowing that she loved him just as much made him very sure that going to find someone else would be the biggest mistake of his life.
He moved away from the door and over to the desk that sat under the window. Her computer was gone, probably left in her office over night, but her Palm computer was there along with several small ornaments.
He picked up the nearest one and studied it, the eloquent design suited her perfectly yet the Athosian ornament was completely out of place amongst the other items.
A sudden feeling that he'd lost her washed over him, as if he were sitting in her room after her funeral remembering the good times and chiding himself for annoying her. Yet he knew where she was, or at least where she would go next.
His heart sank with that feeling then skipped as he remembered the feel of her body from last night, the raise of her stomach in his hands as he caressed his baby.
His baby! His heart sank again at the thought, the possibility of what he would or could have just done, instead of finding himself the willing father of one baby Weir; he could have been the unwilling father of more than one.
He turned; slinging the ornament across the room and watching it shatter against the bathroom door. He was going to lose everything, the dread was taking over. By now the IOA had heard the whole story, everything except how and why it had happened.
They were probably right this minute sitting in a cosy conference room on Earth discussing the future of Elizabeth and himself. If anyone would be blamed for this, it would be him, he'd lose his career, he'd lose his command and above all he'd lose his family.
He seized another ornament off the desk and studied it. Would she hate him, for just resigning, get it over with, go out with dignity? Would she despise him if he ran away like Ford had; vanish into the galaxy. He could arrange something, so that someone knew where he was, perhaps they could sneak him pictures of his baby.
He didn't want that, just pictures of a pretty little face, not feeling it move inside Elizabeth, not feeling the first kick or seeing the birth he wanted it all. The first time it sat up on its own, when it started crawling, walking and above all, hearing the first words.
The ornament flew across the room to join the other one in pieces on the floor by her bathroom and it seemed this time that he'd caught someone's attention. The door beside him opened and Ronon stepped in to look around the room.
'I'm not sure Elizabeth would like you destroying her room.'
'Don't call her Elizabeth,' he spat not even knowing why. Perhaps it was just too familiar hearing Ronon use her given name as he usually just called her Weir in front of everyone else and Doctor Weir to her face.
'Why not?'
'Just don't,' he said unable to convince himself that he was being unreasonable.
'Okay,' Ronon said, 'but either way I don't think she'll appreciate you wrecking her room.'
John got to his feet, hatred for this man piling on high. His mind ran quickly through all the time's he'd seen Ronon with Elizabeth since this started. The meal's they'd shared, the times he'd seen him outside her room or alone with her.
He hated this; his instincts were telling him the complete opposite to his brain. Elizabeth was wrong, she wasn't worth being near him, yet he loved her. Ronon was in his way, hitting on the woman he loved, yet he was his one of his closest friends. Teyla… this was the first time Teyla had come to mind and it only served to add to his confusion. She was just as wrong to him as Elizabeth, but for a completely different reason, she was evil like the wraith, yet she was another close friend.
'Get out,' he growled at Ronon unable to control the disgust he was starting to feel for himself. His face was burning, his skin heating up with the venom of the situation he wanted to leave, run; do something to kick this feeling out of him. Or better yet, be somewhere else.
'I'm just making sure you don't…'
'Get out,' he repeated again catching hold of the stylish glass paperweight off the end of Elizabeth's desk as he moved towards Ronon.
A rush of relief flooded him suddenly; he felt the whole burden of everything he'd thought over the last few minutes dissipate and the fear of fatherhood return.
He looked around trying to catch sight of something familiar that would tell him where he was, but the room span wildly and before he could gather his senses he felt something solid against his back and watched Ronon step up to his side to look down at him.
'Sheppard,' he heard his name as if he was a million miles away and then darkness took over.
To be continued...
Author:
heimedall and angelsdeePairing: Elizabeth/John
Season/Spoiler: None, but set in season 3
Rating: NC-17
Beta:
angelsdeeDisclaimer: I don't own them, I just play with them.
Summary: John finds out something unexpected about Elizabeth and somehow, its all Rodney's fault!
Notes: This story is seriosuly old, I think I started writting it last summer but never got around to finish it. There is no real connection to season 3, I guess you could call it an alternate story, so be nice :)
Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Chapter 7
John woke the next morning on his front and knew instantly that he wasn't in his own bed. It took a moment for his fogged brain to realise he'd spent the night with Elizabeth and it was her pale blue sheets that he was laying on.
He tried to moved and heard Elizabeth groan and her weight press down on him. She was up close against his side, her head on the back of his shoulder, arm draped across his back and knee tucked between his legs.
He shifted, turning his face so he could edge slowly onto his side and wrap his arms around her. She was more beautiful asleep, relaxed and really at ease for once. This brought on the memory of a dream; he'd gotten up in the middle of the night and stood watching her for a few minutes before he left her room.
'What did you mean?' she muttered and John realised he'd woken her as he moved.
'Did I wake you?'
'No,' she said, 'I was awake before you moved. What did you mean, last night? You said you knew why we'd been chosen.'
'That's... complicated,' John said wishing he'd never mentioned it at all. She propped herself up to look at him and he knew he wouldn't be able to hide it any longer. 'McKay may be responsible for what happened.'
'How exactly is this Rodney's fault?'
'You remember that lab he found below sea level at the base of this tower, the one he spent three days asking you if he could check out.'
'Yes,' she said suspiciously.
'He went ahead and checked it out.'
'What?'
'The night we can't remember... he turned on some device at low power and left it running for a few hours.'
'Okay, firstly, when did you find out about this?'
'Day before yesterday,' he said quickly and truthfully.
'And why didn't Rodney tell me, even after the test was done?'
'I don't know that, he only told me because I was looking for something to explain why I can't remember making love to you. Not that I put it that way to him.'
'He tested a device we know nothing about, in the middle of the night at the base of the personnel tower,' she confirmed and John nodded. 'I am seriously getting annoyed with him,' she said throwing the covers off and climbing from the bed. He couldn't resist watching her as she walked completely bare to the bathroom and vanished through the door.
Her mood didn't improve, not that John could blame her. He hadn't realised how stupid it was to test something under where they slept, not until she added it to the list of things McKay did wrong.
They washed and dressed and John followed her out of the room, ignoring the stunned look on Lorne's face as they passed him and turned the corner. McKay is going to have a bad day, he thought as he followed Elizabeth though the city to the main lab.
'Where's Rodney,' she demanded of who ever wanted to answer.
'He said something about a lab under the west tower,' Radek said quickly and John suspected he'd picked up on Elizabeth's bad mood, 'but I didn't know there was one under that tower.'
Elizabeth glared at him for a moment and then turned and left quickly. John thanked Radek and followed her, having to jog slightly to catch up with her fast pace. Rodney had lied to his own team about where he was going, but it seems Elizabeth had put the information together.
There were three sets of stairs to go down in order to reach the very bottom of the tower and all three of them were below the water. They always freaked John out, as all the walls in these levels were made of clear glass and anyone down there had a very good view of the sea life; or lack thereof.
'Rodney,' she said sharply making the scientist jump and swing around.
'Elizabeth,' he said shocked and stole a glance at John, 'what are you... I was just... you told her?'
'You ran an experiment on an unknown device under the personnel wing?'
'Well yes and no,' he said.
'Yes,' she said not giving him the option to tell her otherwise. 'You ran an unauthorised experiment when the majority of our population was in this tower, Rodney.'
'I didn't use full power,' he said smugly. 'Besides, nothing happened.'
John raised his eyebrow; there was no way that was a good thing to say. He could feel Elizabeth tense and watched Rodney fidget uneasily under her stare.
'Seventeen weeks ago last night, you ran this,' she said calmly and Rodney nodded. 'Then explain to me, how it is that I'm seventeen weeks pregnant and I have no idea how it happened?'
'I meant at the time, I thought nothing happened.'
'Rodney.'
'I've been going back over the log data, the stuff the ancient computers pick up, not what our computers got. It seems the microbes that this device releases have the ability to seek out what they call "the perfect grouping".'
'What does that mean?' John asked stepping into the room for the first time as Elizabeth moved to check out the panel.
It hit him like a cold wave, starting from the top of his hair and shuddering down through his whole body only to die at the ends of his toes. Instantly he knew he didn't like this room.
'Elizabeth, maybe you shouldn't be in here,' he said without even knowing why. They both turned to look at him.
'Why?' She asked, but all John could do was shake his head.
'Anyway,' Rodney said, ignoring John and attempting to draw Elizabeth's attention back, but she eyed John with concern for a few more minutes. 'I was reading in the database that this was a failed experiment to ensure the gene was passed on through procreation. Apparently, it had strange side effects on the people who naturally had the gene.'
He paused to flick open his laptop and scanned an open report.
'There's one record that shows a man who lost the ability to have children altogether, and another who lost the ability to walk and some even lost their genetic coding, so they all matched each other and...'
'Rodney.'
'It's designed to pass a boosted version of the gene on to the opposite sex, but have the gene lay dormant in their system only to be passed on to their...' he indicated Elizabeth's stomach showing greatly through her tight black pants, 'progeny.'
'So I now carry the ancient gene?'
'Yes, but you can't use it, it's only there to be picked up by your children.'
'So why can't we remember...'
'Err, yeah, that's a part of the programming problem. Apparently they couldn't find out how to stop people acting without remembering. They always reacted at night, but they had a lot of unexplained pregnancies, most of which they couldn't match up because of the genetic problem. On full power, this thing would put the top twenty gene carriers on breeding over drive and they would each head for the lowest twenty carriers or in this case, twenty of the people who don't have the gene.'
'Why me?' Elizabeth asked, 'I'm only one of many people in this city who doesn't have the gene, Teyla, Heightmeyer...'
'I would guess,' Rodney said glancing at John, 'that some attraction helps. Anyway, look at this,' he said and moved over to another panel to the left of the one he'd been talking about. 'That one is a fake, it's just the casing, I guess they were gonna make another one.'
John watched as Rodney turned on the device and messed with the display for a moment. He closed his eyes against a sharp pain that shot through his back.
When he opened his eyes, he was in his room, sitting at his desk typing at his laptop, he stopped and stared at the screen reading back the report he'd typed in the middle of the night just over four months ago.
He glanced at the clock, 03:58 and then quickly around his room, it was four in the morning over four months ago, the clock on his bedside matched the one on his computer and he saw it flick over to 03:59.
Was this the night that Rodney was running his experiment? Would he in a few minutes time set about switching off the security camera outside Elizabeth's room and then go and join her?
He glanced at the clock and watched it turn to 04:00 but nothing happened. He waited, wondering if he was just dreaming; perhaps he'd passed out back in the lab and was using his own imagination to put the pieces together.
As he considered this, he reached out and began tapping at the keyboard, bringing up the security log and accessing the cameras. Maybe this was the day before the experiment, he thought, he'd been up late three days in a row after all.
He entered his command code and watched as the camera's display went blank. He pushed back reconsidering the date and climbed to his feet, he looked at the clock again now reading several minutes past four and headed from the room.
The cool night air washed over his topless shoulders and chest as he walked bare foot through the corridors and into the no longer recording view of the camera. He stopped at her door only to ruffle his hair before he opened it and stepped in.
Elizabeth was awake, sitting on the end of her bed watching the door; or him as he stepped inside. She stood up and John ran his eyes down the small skin tight black shorts and top she wore, but he was distracted as she pulled the top off over her head and wrapped her arms around him and they kissed.
John staggered backward, his back hitting the wall on the other side of the corridor to the lab. Elizabeth and Rodney were watching him, Rodney with curiosity, Elizabeth with concern. She moved away from the panel and stepped out of the room, she reached out and touched him and instantly they pulled apart almost as if they'd been given an electric shock.
'He turned it on,' John said almost sounding stupid in the comment, 'you're all wrong for me now.'
'Of course,' Rodney said, 'Colonel, are you considering who would be the best person to...'
John bit his tongue, he didn't want to say what he was thinking, it was wrong, he was with Elizabeth and she was carrying his baby. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling that she was useless and there were so many other women who were right for him.
'Rodney?'
'It'll wear off before tonight,' Rodney said, 'I only had it on for a few minutes.'
'What's going on?'
'He's the one with the strongest gene in the whole city, when that thing is on, he'll have the urge to procreate and as you now possess the gene and you're pregnant, you're at the end of his list of...'
'And you switched that thing on knowing this?'
'Well I wanted to show you the log.'
'Are you sure this will wear off by tonight?'
'Relatively sure, yes,' Rodney said.
'I'm placing him under guard for the day and I want that thing destroyed.'
'Elizabeth...'
'Rodney, you said yourself, it can destroy the natural gene carrier in some way. Do you really want to do that to John?'
'Can I save the log first?'
'If you can do it without activating the device, then yes. John, I think...'
John knew he shouldn't have walked away; he should have waited for Elizabeth. He could hear her calling to him as he vanished around corners and up stairways, he even saw her as he activated the transporter and vanished.
~~**~~
He ignored the sound of someone calling his name as he turned the corner quickly and took the last few long strides to the door.
He couldn't explain what led him to this particular room, it felt wrong and perfectly natural all at the same time. He stepped in and closed the door behind him hoping whoever had followed would give up when he ignored them.
John just stood there, his back to the door and his eyes wandering around the room, the bed to his left where he'd spent the night. This was Elizabeth's room, not his and he found he felt strange in it.
He wasn't completely sure that he would have felt normal in his own room, but he did know that here, he could at least be reminded that she was what he wanted.
When he'd left the lab, he'd wanted to go to so many places, Kate Heightmeyer's office; the gym to see who was there, talk some random woman out of the corridor into his room. But he had fought it all, the need to create a new life, pass on the gene he'd been blessed, or cursed with depending on his mood.
He didn't want to impregnate half the city; he hadn't intended to do it to Elizabeth. He loved her, he'd known that for a long time, and knowing that she loved him just as much made him very sure that going to find someone else would be the biggest mistake of his life.
He moved away from the door and over to the desk that sat under the window. Her computer was gone, probably left in her office over night, but her Palm computer was there along with several small ornaments.
He picked up the nearest one and studied it, the eloquent design suited her perfectly yet the Athosian ornament was completely out of place amongst the other items.
A sudden feeling that he'd lost her washed over him, as if he were sitting in her room after her funeral remembering the good times and chiding himself for annoying her. Yet he knew where she was, or at least where she would go next.
His heart sank with that feeling then skipped as he remembered the feel of her body from last night, the raise of her stomach in his hands as he caressed his baby.
His baby! His heart sank again at the thought, the possibility of what he would or could have just done, instead of finding himself the willing father of one baby Weir; he could have been the unwilling father of more than one.
He turned; slinging the ornament across the room and watching it shatter against the bathroom door. He was going to lose everything, the dread was taking over. By now the IOA had heard the whole story, everything except how and why it had happened.
They were probably right this minute sitting in a cosy conference room on Earth discussing the future of Elizabeth and himself. If anyone would be blamed for this, it would be him, he'd lose his career, he'd lose his command and above all he'd lose his family.
He seized another ornament off the desk and studied it. Would she hate him, for just resigning, get it over with, go out with dignity? Would she despise him if he ran away like Ford had; vanish into the galaxy. He could arrange something, so that someone knew where he was, perhaps they could sneak him pictures of his baby.
He didn't want that, just pictures of a pretty little face, not feeling it move inside Elizabeth, not feeling the first kick or seeing the birth he wanted it all. The first time it sat up on its own, when it started crawling, walking and above all, hearing the first words.
The ornament flew across the room to join the other one in pieces on the floor by her bathroom and it seemed this time that he'd caught someone's attention. The door beside him opened and Ronon stepped in to look around the room.
'I'm not sure Elizabeth would like you destroying her room.'
'Don't call her Elizabeth,' he spat not even knowing why. Perhaps it was just too familiar hearing Ronon use her given name as he usually just called her Weir in front of everyone else and Doctor Weir to her face.
'Why not?'
'Just don't,' he said unable to convince himself that he was being unreasonable.
'Okay,' Ronon said, 'but either way I don't think she'll appreciate you wrecking her room.'
John got to his feet, hatred for this man piling on high. His mind ran quickly through all the time's he'd seen Ronon with Elizabeth since this started. The meal's they'd shared, the times he'd seen him outside her room or alone with her.
He hated this; his instincts were telling him the complete opposite to his brain. Elizabeth was wrong, she wasn't worth being near him, yet he loved her. Ronon was in his way, hitting on the woman he loved, yet he was his one of his closest friends. Teyla… this was the first time Teyla had come to mind and it only served to add to his confusion. She was just as wrong to him as Elizabeth, but for a completely different reason, she was evil like the wraith, yet she was another close friend.
'Get out,' he growled at Ronon unable to control the disgust he was starting to feel for himself. His face was burning, his skin heating up with the venom of the situation he wanted to leave, run; do something to kick this feeling out of him. Or better yet, be somewhere else.
'I'm just making sure you don't…'
'Get out,' he repeated again catching hold of the stylish glass paperweight off the end of Elizabeth's desk as he moved towards Ronon.
A rush of relief flooded him suddenly; he felt the whole burden of everything he'd thought over the last few minutes dissipate and the fear of fatherhood return.
He looked around trying to catch sight of something familiar that would tell him where he was, but the room span wildly and before he could gather his senses he felt something solid against his back and watched Ronon step up to his side to look down at him.
'Sheppard,' he heard his name as if he was a million miles away and then darkness took over.
To be continued...
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