-Periphery-

Disclaimer – Don't own, don't sue!

"... and I was afraid of this."

John heard Carson's familiar, strongly accented voice before he rounded the corner of the infirmary. He'd been called there by a very grim- sounding

Elizabeth and would've been worrying except that he had run into both Teyla and Rodney on his way and had passed the training room that held Ronon and about ten of his youngest marines.

His whole team accounted for so it would be one of the guys under his command.

"We have a problem." Elizabeth said, turning to watch John enter the room. He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"You're driving me insane with the whole cryptic thing you got goin' on." He drawled, stopping to lean a hip against the nearest infirmary bed. He could see from a quick survey that there was only one bed currently occupied. The curtain was half pulled around it and all he could see was a pair of small, pale feet. John sighed, knowing whatever the news was, it was going to thoroughly ruin Atlantis' current fatality standing.

They'd gone a whole thirty days without losing someone, which had seemed a minor miracle.

"I'm sorry Colonel, but we thought you should know. It's possible there's a problem with the gene therapy." Carson clarified. John remembered why he liked the doctor immensely. Always straight to the point, no holds barred.

"We lost someone about an hour after the injection." Elizabeth added, her face pale. Both she and Carson looked at John with concern when they saw that the colour had also drained from his face. His eyes had ticked back to the small pair of feet and a spike of cold dread touched his spine.

"Don't." He said in a small voice, holding up one hand.

Carson looked to Elizabeth, confusion plain on his features. "It was-" He started, gesturing towards the curtained bed.

"No." John barked. "She was fine. I saw her. She was excited."

Understanding dawned on Elizabeth's face and she reached out a hand to John. "John, did you know Doctor Sienne?" Carson glanced at her quickly and then back to John, his own face flooding with concern and sympathy.

"I'm sorry... it didn't even occur to me that... I called you here because of the health concern." Elizabeth said in a rush. John jerked away from her reaching hand and strode over to the bed, yanking the curtain back.

Carson and Elizabeth watched as his back stiffened.

xxxxxx

John was late for his training session with Teyla and knew he would be paying for it with a bruised backside for days. He was getting better with the sticks but Teyla still kicked his arse when she wanted to, and whenever he was late she really wanted to. As he got closer to the training room, he could hear the sound of sticks clacking and relief flooded him. She was always a little easier on him if she'd found someone else to train with when he was slack.

There was a telltale meaty sound of a stick hitting flesh and John grinned, wondering who was getting his punishment. His mouth dropped open in wonder though, when he entered the room and saw Teyla rubbing her forearm. A large, red welt was forming but she was grinning. "I was right." She said, nodding in what seemed like satisfaction. John scanned the room and his eyes finally fetched up on a small woman, her back to him and bent down over a satchel. She was wearing sweat pants and a black tank top and had a pair of sticks on the floor by her right foot.

She glanced backwards, too quick for John to make out anything except a blur of shaggy black hair and then she was brushing passed him, satchel over one shoulder. He leaned out the doorway and could see her retreating figure disappear around a bend in the corridor. John liked to think that he knew all under his command, if not by name then by sight, but nothing rang familiar about the woman.

"Don't tell me one of the newbies can actually get a hit in." John said, slightly awed. Teyla's easy smile had dropped off her face when she faced him and she crossed her arms in front of her chest, her sticks dangling from her fingers.

"You were late as usual. I had fortunately scheduled another session, anticipating as such." Teyla said. John was about to remark that he didn't understand why she was so mad if she had assumed he was going to be late, but bit it off before it could escape, knowing Teyla also had a tendency to accidentally hit him in the most sensitive of places when she was really furious.

John stripped off his sweatshirt and yanked his own sticks out of his backpack, dropping it to the floor. "Who was that? I didn't recognize her...back." John said, bouncing lightly on his feet and spinning the sticks in an effort to get warmed up before Teyla started really laying into him. He paused though when he noticed she was packing her own stuff away.

"Olivia." Teyla answered simply, as if that should tell him everything. John sighed expansively.

"I haven't gotten to a first name basis with any of the newbies yet." He said. He risked tapping Teyla lightly on the shoulder while she packed and she looked at him, patient exasperation evident on her features.

"What is a newbie?" She asked.

"Sorry, new recruit. One of the people that came through from earth only recently." John didn't understand why Teyla was shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

"Doctor Sienne is not new. She has been here as long as you have."

"Doctor Sienne?" John asked, incredulous.

"Yes. Rodney speaks of her often and fondly." Teyla stood, dragging her own pack off the floor.

"Yeah, well, I tend to tune out when Rodney starts rambling. I could've missed him mentioning her. She didn't look like any of the other scientists. They tend to all look... the same."

Teyla was looking at him with a puzzled frown. "They all dress in the same uniform, if that's what you mean, but so do your warriors and you seem to have no issue with telling one of them from the other."

"That's beside the point." John evaded, grimacing. "How on earth did a scientist hit you? I haven't been able to manage it yet, unless you let me."

"I have suspected for some time that training only with you, while increasing my strength, means I am also sacrificing speed."

"Hey!"

"You can rely on brute strength, Colonel, I cannot. I need to be faster than my opponent. I was speaking of my concern to Rodney and he suggested I propose training sessions with Doctor Sienne. He said she knew many of your world's Martial Arts and was of a similar size. That being the case, any training she had had would lend itself to speed rather than force."

Teyla smiled with genuine warmth, tapping the already fading red mark on her arm. "She is faster than I currently am. That will change." Teyla dropped her bag back onto the floor and pulled her sticks free.

"I thought you didn't want to rely on brute force." John said, still trying to work out whether he should be offended.

Teyla grinned. "I like our training sessions." She said, her grin growing wider.

"You are fun to hit."

xxxxxx

"How does he even know her?" Rodney, Elizabeth and Carson were gathered in the doorway of the infirmary, their voices pitched low. Elizabeth looked at Rodney and sighed.

"I don't think that matters." She said. She glanced back toward the infirmary bed. John had sat on the edge and had one hand resting on the girl's forehead, running his thumb across her temple. His face was carefully neutral but Elizabeth knew that he only really shut down like that when he was truly hurting.

She ached for him.

"Do we know it was definitely the ancient gene?" Rodney changed tack and Carson glanced at him.

"Not for certain. She was unconscious when she was found in her room and she died only a few minutes after she was brought here. I tried to revive her but she was already gone. Maybe if I'd gotten to her a little earlier-"

"Don't." Elizabeth admonished gently, placing a gentle hand on Carson's forearm. "She collapsed alone in her room."

Carson winced. "It got so routine. I didn't bother monitoring people. It either took or it didn't. I shouldn't have been so careless."

"Carson, you're not to blame. We're in a completely alien world and all of us are pretty much guessing. I've sent people out into the city for simple recon and they've died. Don't start second-guessing yourself, it'll drive you mad." Elizabeth said, still watching John.

"I'll need to do an autopsy to be sure." Carson said, regret in his tone.

They were both surprised when it was Rodney who said, "Give him some time."

xxxxxx

John spotted a back and shaggy black hair that he recognized when he entered the commissary. He crossed the room, heading toward the table off to the left of the large space with a single occupant, hunched over whatever she was eating. He pulled up directly in front of her and noted her bowed head and the arm curled protectively around her bowl.

"I thought only prisoners ate like that."

Sienne looked up and John knew he was in trouble immediately. Large brown eyes the colour of watered-down whiskey regarded him, taking in the uniform, swagger and general demeanor and seeming to dismiss them as unimportant.

"Or girls with five older brothers." She said simply.

"Is that cereal?" John exclaimed and Sienne looked up sharply, a scowl on her face. The inhabitants of the nearest tables looked up at John's raised voice and he lowered himself into the chair opposite, waving a dismissive hand.

"I would have put up posters around the place but your way of announcing it to everyone is much more convenient." She snapped, her arm drawing her plate closer to the edge of the table and her body.

"Did you sneak that through the 'gate?" John's voice was lowered and he eyed the bowl with longing. Breakfast MREs were boring as hell. His favourite meal of the day had always been breakfast. He had no idea why a bowl of food you had to dump milk all over held such sway, but he desperately missed it.

"Of course not." Sienne snorted.

"Where did you get that then?" John gestured forward and was surprised Sienne didn't end up wearing the cereal in her lap when she jerked it back defensively.

"A man on the mainland makes it for me. It's just a bowl of local grains and dried fruit but you dump milk over it and it's the closest thing you're going to get to cereal in the Pegasus Galaxy."

"I have to have some." John said. Sienne relaxed her grip slightly on her bowl and pushed it towards him a little way.

"I trade for it. What have you got?"

"What do you trade for it?"

"I make a shade of blue dye that the Athosians can't replicate naturally. Once a month I give them a supply and I get a large sack of this in return."

"How large?" John asked, quirking and eyebrow.

"Enough that I could spare some."

"What do you want?"

The bowl was edged closer to him. "Teach me firearms. Even the P-90."

John blinked.

xxxxxxx

"Did you…" Elizabeth trailed off, not sure now that she was in John's doorway how she wanted to phrase what she wanted to ask, or if she actually had any right to. "I mean, were you…" She tried and failed again, making a helpless gesture with her hand.

John was sitting on the corner of his bed in a t-shirt and fatigue pants, his bare feet pulled up beneath himself. He regarded Elizabeth for a few minutes until she was sure he was torturing her on purpose.

"I'm not answering a question you can't bring yourself to ask." He said and Elizabeth wasn't sure if his tone was teasing or annoyed. John had been in a black mood for since leaving the infirmary and Sienne to Carson's autopsy and had degenerated into a careful blankness that worried her more.

She preferred him pissed off.

"Were you and Doctor Sienne… together?" Elizabeth winced, knowing as soon as the question was out that she really didn't have any right to ask it. She looked at her foot and wondered vaguely why it wasn't lodged firmly in her mouth like it should have been.

"Olivia." John said absently.

"Sorry?"

"Olivia." John repeated. "Everyone keeps calling her Doctor Sienne and it seems so impersonal. You call me John. You should call her Olivia."

"I'm sorry. Olivia." She agreed.

"The answer is, I'm not sure. It's really stupid but there it is. I adored her and she drove me crazy but I didn't get enough… time." John's hands clenched into fists and some of the blankness eased, letting the anger seep back in.

Elizabeth entered the room and lowered herself onto the bed next to John.

They sat in silence, waiting for Carson to call them.

xxxxxx

"How did you find this?" John asked, watching Sienne snake her way up a ladder etched into the wall on Atlantis. She kept climbing even though from John's vantage there was no where to go but then she disappeared over a lip that couldn't be seen from below.

"Relax, it was checked out. I'm not completely reckless." Sienne said, her head appearing over the lip again and grinning down at him.

John followed her lead, carefully wending his way up into one of the spires of Atlantis and finally came out on what looked like a flat decking with a glass cone for a ceiling. An unobstructed view of the night sky surrounded him and John grinned.

"Cool."

"Come here." Sienne called and lay down, flat on her back, facing the glass roof. John trotted over to her and lay down as well. The stars were large overhead and seemed impossibly close and he remembered lying out on his roof at night when he was ten and wanting to fly.

Two broken arms and a sprained ankle later and his mother had finally nailed his window shut to stop him trying.

"I found it when I was doing some cataloguing. They keep a database of the explored sections of the city. Most of it has been just given a quick once over, especially if it's a big empty space like this with no gadgets." Sienne shifted slightly and John could feel the warmth of her arm brush his. "This looked interesting so I came up to check it out. I come up here now if I need to get some work done and don't want anyone to find me."

"Or just to look at the stars?" John prodded her with an elbow.

"Or just to look at the stars." She agreed.

xxxx

Of all the people John expected to turn up in his doorway after Elizabeth, Ronon was the last. He had been waiting for Teyla or perhaps Rodney.

They both regarded each other silently for a time and John realized Ronon was waiting for an invitation and wouldn't cross the threshold until he got one.

He wouldn't leave either.

"You can come in and sit." John waved a hand at the single chair by the small desk in the corner of his room. Ronon stepped in, folded his arms and leaned a shoulder against the wall.

"Did you get sent?" John asked, his lip quirking. He and Elizabeth had been waiting for Carson to let them know the results of the autopsy but she had been called to the control room. She'd been hesitant to leave John alone and he had figured she would send someone to keep him company. The fact that she chose Ronon at this particular time made John realise that she knew him better than he would have thought. Teyla might have tried to either cheer or comfort him and Rodney would drive him insane with distracting babble.

Only Ronon would let him wait in silence like he needed, without leaving him to wait alone.

"I was passing." Ronon said simply, inclining his head.

John nodded.

xxxxx

Olivia was flat on her back and John was laughing harder than he had in a long time. She scowled as he leaned over, offering her a hand up. She slapped his hand aside and scrabbled to her feet.

"Are you done?" Olivia snapped as John wiped his streaming eyes.

"I'm sorry, that was just… the funniest…" John subsided into hopeless giggles again.

Olivia was rubbing her shoulder and holding up Ronon's energy weapon like it would bite her. "It didn't look like it would do that." She grumbled, placing it carefully down on the table next to her hip.

"When it's being fired by a huge man, I'm sure it doesn't. Being fired by a tiny, weeney girl is a whole 'nother thing." John held his thumb and index finger close together to demonstrate Olivia's overall tininess.

Olivia moved faster than John would have believed and he suddenly found himself flat on his back with a tiny but furious woman straddling his chest. She grabbed his ears and twisted viciously and John yelped. "My brother's learned not to call me tiny." She said, releasing John's ears with a final, brutal twist that left John's ears ringing but no real damage done. "You'll learn, too."

xxxxxx

"How long can Carson take?" John grumbled, pacing his small room. He had thought about returning to the infirmary but couldn't bring himself to. Ronon watched him mildly.

"He needs to be sure." Ronon said and John stopped and looked at him.

"I can't-" John stopped, not really sure what he had been going to say.

"Why are you feeling guilty?" Ronon asked and John whipped around, blinking hard.

"What?" He revised his earlier impression that Ronon would let him wait in peace.

"Being a quiet person, I take in a lot. You're grieving, that's very apparent, but you also feel guilty about something. It's probably unfounded so if you tell me I'll probably be able to let you know how irrational and foundless your guilt is and it'll make this easier."

"Where did that big, quiet guy go that I liked so much?" John snapped, skirting the fact that Ronon was cutting straight to the meat of the matter and it scared him.

Badly.

"Still here, tell me the shutup and I will. I'm just offering." Ronon shrugged, as non-commital as if he had just asked John if he wanted to go catch a movie.

Because of this, John was able to tell him.

"The last thing I said…" John clenched his fists and started again. "She was great and pretty and fun. She was one of the most awesome people I ever met." John finally stopped his pacing and lowered himself back onto the corner of his bed, dropping his head into his hands. "She was all these things and the last thing I said to her…" John's voice broke and he looked at Ronon.

"The last thing I said to her before she died was that I loved someone else."

xxxxx

When John entered her room he had to stop and watch. Olivia was doing a kind of crazy, jerky dance that only became more vigorous when she noticed John in her doorway.

"Most people caught dancing like that would, you know, be embarrassed and probably stop." John said, chuckling.

Olivia danced over to him, sliding in her socked feet and slapped her palms against his chest. "This," she said, a little breathlessly, "is my happy dance. I share it with the world." She finally slowed to a halt and pushed her mussed hair out of her face.

John crossed the room in two steps and pulled Olivia to him, crushing her with a brief but very firm kiss. He hadn't been planning on it but he couldn't help himself, seeing her flushed and messy and dancing.

Olivia stepped back, looking more flushed than before and one hand drifted to her lips, fingers trailing over them as if she could still feel the kiss. "Um." She said and blinked.

"Yeah." John agreed, suddenly worried he'd crossed some barrier with the Doctor that would kill the whatever they had going.

"I mean I thought… you are… I mean, you are…" Olivia drifted towards her bed. There was a pile of clothing on the top of the covers and she picked up a shirt and started folding it absently.

"Do you often get the compulsion to do laundry after… you know." John said, gesturing vaguely towards Olivia's hands as she lowered the shirt and picked up a pair of pants. She looked down at what she was doing, a puzzled expression on her face and then dropped the pants.

"But you're… "

"Okay, you're going to have to finish a sentence for me." John tried to steer Olivia back to the land of the lighthearted, truly concerned about her reaction. "Unless of course I've just rendered you speechless because then, yay."

"This isn't fair." Olivia said, finally looking like she had pulled her thoughts into some kind of semblance of order. "On either of us."

"Okay, you're losing me. A simple 'never do that again you creep' would have sufficed." John was starting to feel awkward and a little hurt. Olivia's expression softened when she realized this.

"It's just that I'm… and you're…" Her brow furrowed.

"Again, full sentences needed." John snapped. He didn't like the petulant tone that had crept into his voice and he struggled to squash the feelings that rose on its heels.

"You know about what happened, don't you?" Olivia said, her voice small. It wasn't really a question but John was worried that ignorance was going to drive an irrefutable wedge between himself and the small but irrepressible scientist in front of him.

He was missing the happy dance.

John knew he had to be honest. Rodney had been happy with his hanging out with Olivia at first because John had been more tolerant for Rodney's babbling, but John had to admit that he had noticed Rodney growing concerned. Rodney had even cornered him after a mission only a week before and tried to tell him something but John had waved him off. He wished he'd let his friend talk.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about or why this is suddenly so weird and awful." John said, backing up until he was leaning on the wall farthest away from Olivia.

"Oh." Olivia's voice was now minute. "I thought… I mean I just assumed someone would have told you."

John felt his skin prickle. He fought the almost palpable urge to run from the room, pretend that none of this had ever happened. He wanted the happy dance back and the flushed and smiling girl that went with it.

"I think Rodney tried." John admitted and Olivia smiled sadly.

"He was probably trying to warn you. People tried to warn me." John looked up, eyebrows furrowed.

"Warn you? About what? Who?" John demanded, anger flaring.

"It doesn't matter. I knew already and it was fine. I just… it was good to be with someone who didn't seem to know and you were fun and gruff and everything I'd been missing. I thought we could go on the way we had. I assumed you were safe because-"

"I'm not sure I like where this is going." John said darkly.

"You knew Fielding didn't you? Why am I asking, of course you did!"

Fielding, John thought, feeling the dark emotion well beneath his heart that held the name of every man and woman he'd lost in combat. Fielding had been tall with dark red hair and blue eyes. He had always been with a quick smile and a gentle word. A quiet man who read a lot and only three months before his teammates had been ribbing him about a girl. They'd been teasing him the same day he'd…

Oh, John thought, the penny dropping.

"Everyone's lost someone here but I don't know, I got treated like I was going to break by everyone. You were the first person who didn't have that awful sympathy in their eyes when they looked at me. You weren't careful about what you said and it was a nice change. For a while I didn't have to remember. I know it was selfish, but it was nice."

"Okay, I wish I'd known." John said.

"It's fine. Anyway, with the Weir thing I figured it was okay to be silly and flirty."

"What Weir thing?"

"John, c'mon. There were about twenty or thirty people lining up to tell me how unavailable you were but I already knew."

"But Doctor Weir and I aren't…together." John protested.

"I know that, but you love her." Olivia said simply and John spluttered.

"I-!"

"It's okay. You can deny it or tell me why it's not feasible or whatever but it doesn't change anything. Anyway, we should have had this talk a little while ago but I was having fun with you and I do like you, a lot. Any other time-"

"Spare me." John said, holding up a hand. There was that petulant note again. He had to wonder if he'd picked that up from Rodney.

"I'm sorry. You deserve better than that." Olivia said sincerely.

John finally realized that with that one, simple kiss, he really had broken everything between himself and Olivia, probably for good. There was no going back for them and John hated it.

"Bad timing, for both of us." Olivia murmured. She had always been smiling or laughing or scowling when John had seen her and he thought she had been pretty. Seeing Olivia lost and sad made John realise she was breathtaking.

"Fielding was a good guy. He saved a lot of people that day." John said, knowing it was all he could offer Olivia.

"I know he was, and thanks."

John turned but paused in the doorway. "You were dancing?"

"What?"

"When I came in, you were dancing. A happy dance. What was it for?"

"Oh, Doctor Weir approved for me to get the gene therapy. I know it's geeky to be so excited." Olivia waved a hand is a dismissive gesture.

"No." John said, not looking back at her. "It's perfect."

"She's not going to wait forever you know." Olivia said and John winced and finally did glance back at her over his shoulder.

"It's complicated, loving her."

"John, don't be dense. That's what's fun about it."

xxxxx

"Anaphylaxis." Carson said, dropping his file onto the table. He looked partly relieved and partly upset and Elizabeth watched him carefully. She had worried that if the death was caused by something mundane then Carson would blame himself and here they were.

"Is that what I think it is?" John asked, pulling the file toward him but not opening it. Instead he toyed with one edge, tearing a small piece of folder free and then tearing that into smaller strips.

"A severe allergic reaction, yes. Doctor… Olivia had a tree nut allergy. Walnuts and the like. She was restricted to only eating MREs because there was no way to be sure that the Athosian food would be safe for her. We have five other people we need to take the same precaution with." Caron looked at Rodney who nodded slightly. Everyone knew about his citrus allergy.

"Could it have been something other than food then?" Elizabeth asked.

"She ate native food." John said quietly.

"What?" Carson exclaimed. "Why would she do that? She knew the risk."

John sighed. "Everything is a risk here, you said it yourself. Just because the gene therapy didn't kill her, doesn't mean it won't kill anyone. An Athosian made her a type of breakfast cereal and she had been eating it without any adverse affects for months."

"The seasons just changed on the mainland. Might have been different fruits and nuts blooming and she was given something she had not had before." Teyla explained and all at the table nodded.

"Well, that's that then. Back to dosing everyone, eh?" John stood and retreated from the room, not really wanting to deal with everyone's relief. Olivia was still gone and there was nothing good about it for him.

"Colonel?" Elizabeth's voice made him pause halfway down the hallway. He turned to regard her and she stood, wringing her hands and looking about as unsure as he had ever seen her. He realized that she didn't know what to say and it was strange to him to see Elizabeth Weir so unguarded.

"I'm glad it's not the gene therapy. I really am." John said and his lip quirked a little. "If anything, Carson can stop beating himself up."

"Oh, believe me, Carson is going to continue to beat himself up. I'd worry if he didn't. He cares so much. That's why I'm happy he's my chief surgeon."

"Me too." John agreed.

"He's not the only one beating himself up about this though." Elizabeth said gently, stepping forward. A hand raised and hovered toward John, before Elizabeth grimaced and dropped it. She'd hugged him when he'd survived the wraith attack but it was the last time they'd touched.

"I'm going to miss her. She was a… unique girl." John smiled at the memory of the happy dance and thought it was probably better to remember the smiling and dancing girl, rather than the still form on the infirmary bed. So pale with blue lips…

John shook himself.

"I'll be okay." He said and bridged the gap between himself and Elizabeth to squeeze her shoulder. With that simple gesture John realized that the gap between them had been yawning wide and might have never been crossed if it weren't for an annoyingly and ingratiatingly zany girl and the last conversation they'd had.

John had to admit that he had been holding himself away from Elizabeth because it was easier. He knew that Olivia would berate him for doing anything the easy way. He also knew that the best way to honour her memory was to make sure he never did again.

Elizabeth was smiling at him, her head cocked in curiosity. "Really?" She asked. She saw the lopsided grin surface on John's face that she had come to rely on.

"I think we both will." He said cryptically, an eyebrow raised.

Elizabeth sighed, resolving herself to the fact that she would never truly work out John Sheppard, but also knowing that it would always be fun to try.

John turned on his heel and headed down the hall.