sg_five_things | Prompt 65.05

Four things that made Teyla decide to leave Atlantis (and the one thing that made her stay).

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Teyla fights every day, for the first weeks after her people disappear, against the urge to leave Atlantis, to go and find them. It is John who keeps her there, the confidence in his voice when he says, every day, “We’ll find them,” just as Teyla is at the point where she feels most strongly that she must leave. She does not know how it is that he always times it so perfectly, when he has frequently claimed to be so bad with people, but he does. She thinks that this may be the one thing that keeps her in the city. Or, perhaps, one of two things, her child inside her demanding protection.

And it is these two things which drive her, finally, to the decision to leave: John’s betrayed face, his anger when she tells him that she is pregnant. Ronon tells her that he is only scared, that it is fear which makes him so distant, and Teyla does not have words to make him see that it is not even this which drives her decision. She longs for Elizabeth, for Kate, for someone who would understand how it feels to be told by the man she respects and cares for more than anyone else, even the father of her child, that the fact of her pregnancy – of her motherhood, eventually – will always mark her as different from the other three. Outside of them, unable to decide her role for herself.

She will not leave until her people have been found, but then, when they find a new home, she will go with them.

*

It is John who tells her of his trip into the future, of the terrible world Rodney’s hologram detailed for him. They are alone in the infirmary, John still unable to walk after his surgery, the lights dimmed for the evening, Torren sleeping in Teyla’s arms as she listens to halting words of her friends’ heroic, tragic deaths, carried forward for 48,000 years and placed in the memory of something that will go on forever, though the people in that world do not. Of Rodney, alone and lonely, working for years to find a way to bring John back to them, to save Jennifer from dying of illness, John from dying alone and abandoned, Teyla from Michael’s hand, Ronon and Sam from giving their lives against the Wraith. Of her team, who came for her, when she was fated to die without them. Secrets he swears her to keeping, things he has told no-one else, and will not.

“It was for you,” John says at the end, looking away as Teyla has become accustomed to him doing. “Rodney – the hologram – said it was because he lost Dr Keller, but it was you first. We can’t do without you, Teyla.”

He is nothing like the man who cast her out of the team without a thought, as though her pregnancy made her worthless as a fighter. He is only, once more, her best friend, shaping a place for her in a city they both call home. She knows he will never say, but she knows, anyway, that when she wishes to return to the team, she will do so, on the same terms as always.

There is so much still to decide, with Kanaan, with Torren, but she knows, in that moment, that she will remain on Atlantis, and make her choices there.

Edited 2009-02-23 00:21 (UTC)

Wow. Powerful reasons to go, and to stay. Great job.

Thank you

Great job getting inside the mind of Teyla-the-outsider. And her relationship with John is a real highlight, and such a linchpin in her decision-making.

And her relationship with John is a real highlight

Thanks. I really love their relationship - I think I'm on a male/female friendship kick at the moment.

Prompt 65.05

Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

Re: Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

Re: Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

Re: Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

Re: Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)