sg_five_things | Prompt 65.05

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Prompt 65.05

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

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Her decision to leave is cumulative, made over a year, small steps that she does not realise she is making until she reaches the end of the path. It begins with the explosion, with the deaths of Dr Hewston and of Carson. With the week after, when she is alone in Atlantis, her team gone to Earth with Carson’s body, and she craves the comfort of the three of them, the ease with which Ronon offers touch, Rodney’s constant words, John’s brittle distance, the way it allows her to touch him when otherwise she cannot. She has nightmares, of a disaster on Earth, of a trap to keep them there, of one of them not returning. The nightmares are nothing but dreams, gone before they can truly scare her. What scares her is the loss she feels in the dreams, stronger than any before, for the loss of her parents, of Charin. Of that, she is terrified.

*

The loss of Elizabeth feels too soon after losing Carson. They do not commemorate her loss in the city as they did his, John rigid in his refusal to accept that she is gone, fallen to one of their greatest enemies. It is a heroic fall, by one of her closest friends, of which Teyla should be proud. She tries to be, very hard, but every thought of Elizabeth brings tears to her eyes, her heart aching for their loss.

“Do you not feel it also?” she asks John, trying to make him see.

He barely lifts his head from his computer, only enough for her to see his tired eyes. Teyla thinks she would have been better not to ask, that he will not wish to speak of it, but John is like her, saw Elizabeth as someone like him, as Teyla did, the two of them the only two who did, recognizing their leadership in Elizabeth’s. She wishes, desperately, to share that loss with someone.

“She’s not dead,” John says.

When Colonel Carter arrives, it is as though Elizabeth was never there. Teyla cannot help wondering if she – if any of them – would be so easily forgotten, so easily replaced. She wonders, troubled, at a people who can forget their own stories so easily, what it means for them to be so untouched by their own past, in a galaxy that can never escape its own.

*

They do not think John dead for so very long, when he is shot at and disappears on the way to the research station, and indeed, it is not the thought of his death that troubles Teyla. She has learned that John is not so easily killed as they might think.

What troubles her is the way that Rodney says, “I’m sorry, but sometimes there is just nothing we can do,” as though they have searched for months, not hours. As though it is not *John* who is taken from them. It is not even that she finds Rodney’s words uncaring. It is, instead, that he will give up so easily, abandon hope so swiftly for his often-stated best friend.

Even when Rodney tracks John’s call for help back to Larrin and the travellers, evidence that he has not abandoned the search as he said, Teyla cannot shake the sense of unease. She has never before doubted that her team would come for her, through any adversity, no matter what it took. It is a great discomfort to learn that perhaps she was wrong in that faith.

*

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

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)

1) In the beginning, she was intimidated by the city. It was the place of the Gods and she was not worthy to walk its halls. It made her want to run back to the familiar safety of her humble village.

2) Dr. McKay was so very mean sometimes it made her angry. He was impossible to deal with even on a limited level much less serving with him on a team. He made her want to throw up her hands in surrender and run away as far as she could get from him.

3) In all her years of trading for her people, she'd never met a group so distrustful as the people of Earth. They judged her without knowing her and withheld their trust even after she'd proven herself many times over. She felt like she would never break through their fears and she longed for the gentle camaraderie of her people.

4) She found out people had been speculating about her relationship with Col. Sheppard and it disgusted her. He was her leader, not her lover. It made her want to seek out her childhood friend with whom she shared more than her history.

5) After a time of feeling lost and lonely and thinking that perhaps she had sacrificed enough for her people, she sat in the cafeteria one day and looked around her and saw friends. The people who sat at the table with her had grown to be like family. They had faced death together and survived. They had fought Wraith and had won. If there was to be any future for her people, she needed to be here to represent them, to fight for them and to make a safe place for them to thrive. That was worth any sacrifice.

And if she could steal one of Dr. McKay's chocolate puddings off his tray while Sheppard was distracting him, well, that was just a perk.

Edited 2009-03-01 08:01 (UTC)

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

Love it. I always think about what it means to Teyla to be in the City of the Ancestors and learn who they really were - warts and all, as they say. It must be difficult to learn your saviors were far from perfect.

Thank you

That was an aspect of Teyla that they didn't really deal with and I'm sorry they didn't take the time to do that because I saw her spirituality as being an integral part of her. Thanks for reading and commenting!

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.

Very nice! We forget about how strange the Earth people had to seem to Teyla in the beginning, because it's so easy to joke about how strange they still seem. But she must have been uneasy and lonely and doubted her place in Atlantis.

But the final line proves that didn't last. :-)

Thanks sid! I'm glad she stayed a character I could admire right up to the end.

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.

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Prompt 65.05

Part One (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

Part Two (Spoilers up to early SGA season 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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