A Kingdom, Broken

epilogue

There was a relief and pleasure to sitting in the infirmary with her son and her team-mates - a moment of peace amidst the madness of the day they'd been through.

Teyla savoured the banter between Rodney and John, along with Ronon's broad grin, and the weight of her son's body on her lap where she rested against John's pillows. Then, seeing Rodney's hand questing after the tub of chocolate pudding on John's tray, she neatly snatched it away from beneath his fingers.

"Hey!"

"That is not yours."

"Well, he's not eating it!"

"He has not yet decided to eat it." She held the pudding cup out to John as Rodney settled back at the foot of the bed, huffing.

Carefully extracting his hand from Torran's limp grip, John flashed her a brief smile and his fingers rested on hers for a moment before he took the cup from her. "Thanks, Teyla. Go get your own pudding, Rodney. I'm sure the mess hall has plenty left."

"They ran out," said Rodney sulkilyl. "Apparently Hoshi and his group did a pudding run yesterday and left them short today!"

"Wasn't there an alternative?" Ronon asked, shifting his hip on the other side of the bed.

"Apple pie. The one they make with lemon juice so I can't eat it!"

"They don't make it from lemon juice so you can't eat it, Rodney," John said, sounding exasperated. "And that doesn't mean you can steal my pudding!"

"It'll make you fat."

Ronon arched a brow. "Won't the pudding make you fat, too?"

"I'm already fat, so what difference does it make?"

"The difference is that it's my pudding." And, as though to make a point, John peeled back the lid and stuck the spoon in, levering out a chunk of the chocolatey mass and sticking it in his mouth with obvious pleasure. "And you can't have it."

Teyla grinned as Rodney rolled his eyes and muttered about going through the infirmary to see if anyone had left their pudding. "You will only find yourself disappointed, Rodney," she said, brushing back her son's hair. "It is one of the more popular desserts."

"Story of my life."

"I thought the story of your life was how nobody recognised your genius," said Ronon with a grin.

"That, too. Good thing they do now." He smirked at his friends.

"Teyla got you into the system."

"And John cleared out the virus," she added, biting back a smile.

Rodney's airy wave held none of the injury it might have back when Teyla first met him. "Hey, I got us out of the lockdown! And that was even before you did your Jedi mind trick with Michael. Speaking of which, did Woolsey say anything to you about--" On the edge of her vision, John shifted. "Um, about taking on some of the...uh...technical training. You're not bad for--"

The change in topic was very obvious. Teyla contemplated ignoring it for a moment, then looked to John. She wanted to know this. "What did Mr. Woolsey wish to speak to me about?"

"What makes you think I know?"

Teyla gave him a very level, very steady look - the one that Laura had called her 'I wasn't born yesterday' look. "John."

To give him his due, he held firm, and Rodney refused to look at her at all. Teyla turned to Ronon, trusting that common sense would override whatever qualms either John or Rodney was holding regarding that which Mr. Woolsey had wished to discuss with them."

"They want to find Michael's lab and the clones," he said immediately. When her brows drew together, he elaborated on their hesitation. "They thought it might be traumatic for you. Or the wrong time."

Ahh. "It is not," she said, simply. "The clones are dead."

Ronon nodded. "It'd be good to be sure, though."

"Woolsey wants to be sure," John said after a moment. "So do I."

"We don't want him coming back after Atlantis again."

"Or Torran and Teyla."

"He is dead."

"But what if he's not?"

"Then we'll hunt him down and kill him again." Ronon bared his teeth in a feral grin. "And if there's another one, I get the next one."

"As many times as necessary," John added, and if he was not so bloodthirsty as their team-mate, there was an element of vengefulness to his voice.

Teyla looked from him to Ronon and back and shook her head at them, half-amused, half-rueful. "It will not be necessary. He is dead." She remembered the echo-back of his minds, delicately connected through the mental link of the Wraith - the link through which she had struck to end him, once for all time.

She did not blame them for being if not precisely skeptical, uninclined to believe what they had not experienced. John and Rodney were men of proof, after all. While they trusted her, they would believe that she could be mistaken or wrong. And they and the city had suffered much at Michael's hands.

It would be a long time before Atlantis could reassure itself that Michael was dead.

Teyla knew.

"Do you know where Michael had his lab?" John asked after a moment. "Look, I believe that you killed him, Teyla, but...a lot of people aren't going to be comfortable without knowing."

"And if you know where his lab is...it might help us find a solution to the Wraith that doesn't effectively involve genocide."

"Unlike all the other solutions you proposed?"

Rodney shot Ronon a glare and began to protest that they hadn't been his solutions. Teyla decided to move in before they could start an argument. It had been a long day and she was tired.

"I do not know where it is," she explained. While she remembered going through the entirety of Michael's mind in her search for his plans, she had retained only part of the whole.

"But?"

She met John's gaze over her son's head, not asking how he'd known there was to be more. "There were things I remember from his mind that made no sense. They do not fit with his plan for the galaxy."

"Not what we know of his grand plan for the galaxy," Rodney corrected.

"Not what we know," she agreed.

She should know better than to underestimate Michael by now.

Teyla looked down at the son Michael had coveted, not for his laughter or his trust or his spirit - not for any of the things Teyla adored in her son - but purely for what his DNA could bring the hybrid Wraith. The knowledge of his plans was there in her mind, she suspected - no, knew - but she could not bring it back to recall so easily.

She did not want to.

And yet, much might hinge on it...

"Perhaps, under meditation, it might be possible to remember more," she began.

A hand touched her wrist. "Not tonight," John said firmly, sliding his fingers into hers. "It's not a rush, we'd just like to find more of his labs and work out what he was doing."

Teyla smiled at the warmth of his hand in hers. "Maybe tomorrow," she conceded, smiling down at him.

His expression softened, recalling nights spent sleeping and nights spent awake, conversations by dusk and firelight and screenlight, arguments that ended in silences broken only when conversation became needful, and arguments that ended in bed with the delicious glide of slick flesh agaist hot skin.

Teyla's mouth curved and her cheeks heated at his gaze, only to be startled when Rodney groaned from the foot of the bed.

"Can't you guys at least get a room?"

"We have rooms, Rodney," said John mildly.

They had their own rooms.

Teyla stared down at her son. She had not thought about it until now, but when Carson came to tell them that visiting time was over, she and Torran would be going back to her rooms where Michael had tried to rape her.

She had avoided thinking about it until now - Kanaan's beloved face, twisted in a vicious parody of passion as his hips ground into hers, his desire unmistakeable and unavoidable. Until today, she had never tried to avoid it - she had never needed to.

"Teyla?"

"I am fine," Teyla said swiftly, before any of them started fussing or called for Jennifer. "I... It has been a long day."

"You sure you'll be okay tonight?" Ronon asked. He looked from her to John and something passed between the two men - one of their silent messages on what Rodney called 'fighters channel.'

"I do not need your protection," she said, interpreting Ronon's expression as a query as to whether John wanted him to keep an eye on her. "Torran and I will be fine."

And if she spent a sleepless night or two, then she would live with that. There were other nights she had spent awake, haunted by the nightmares of what was and had been.

"Actually," said John in the tone that Teyla had always thought sounded like he was clearing his throat to say something important, "I was thinking..." He hesitated, then took a deep breath. "I thought you and Torran and I might...move in together. When Carson finally lets me out, that is."

Beyond, in the broader infirmary, it seemed to Teyla that the chattering noise of other visitors hushed a little, as though John's statement had been audible to them.

She could barely hear through the rushing in her ears.

His cheeks were pink but his eyes were steady on hers, flicking only from one eye to the other to gauge her reaction to his proposal - for it was a proposal. Teyla was under no misapprehension that this was a casual move for him. It was meaningful to him, important.

Still, she was surprised.

"I..." A glance down the end of the bed showed the other two watching them. Rodney was looking expectant, Ronon had a smirk on his face. Both expressions fell as she said firmly, "If you would excuse us?"

It was not that this was private or personal - as she had told John all those months ago, she had lived in the space between what was personal and what was important for the length of her life. But this was a discussion that should not have onlookers - as much for John's sake as hers, if not more.

Much to her surprise, Rodney went without a word, Ronon a mere step behind him.

John dropped his eyes to Torran's slumbering form between them.

"John..."

"I shouldn't have put you on the spot," he said hurriedly. "I just thought you mightn't want to stay there after what happened. If you're okay with it, then...that's fine. You shouldn't feel you have to."

The uncertainty was not new. The willingness to be unsure was.

This morning, he had stood on the path from the river and his gaze had slid from hers as though ashamed. John had always wished to believe himself worthy, and yet so often had never been able to find the belief within himself, needing instead to rely on others for that belief.

Within his spirit, something still desired that affirmation; but there was something new in the look he gave her.

Teyla hesitated over asking, but the change had made her curious. "You said you spoke with the dead while you were unconscious."

It was a change of topic, but she would bring it back to his offer eventually. There was more to this than merely a brief question and an even briefer acceptance.

He had told them briefly of what had passed in his consciousness while he was in the grip of the chair - the pain, the city, the dead with whom he'd spoken. While Rodney had made jokes about someone called 'Joel Haley Osmont', Teyla had spoken only briefly of her 'conversation' with Kanaan in the woods of Old Athos.

Kanaan would always be with her in her heart and in their son.

Yet if she had gained comfort and wisdom from Kanaan's presence, then surely there had been someone who had given John strength. He had spoken of Elizabeth, of Ford, of Kate, and Colonel Sumner - people whose lives or deaths had been meaningful to John...and yet, those seemed...not enough.

He stared at their linked fingers for a long while.

"I saw my dad," he said at last. "My dad and Kanaan."

Teyla stared at him. She understood the first - John's father had died without resolving the old bitterness between the two men - but Kanaan?

"What--? How--?" The questions formed in her mind but splintered as they reached her lips.

John snorted softly. "Rodney would say this sounds like a bad Lifetime movie. I don't know how. But I think... I think I needed to hear from them."

It seemed...ridiculous. And yet...

Teyla remembered speaking with Kanaan in Old Athos: his affection, his open honesty as he spoke of the things they had not addressed while he lived in Atlantis. He did not begrudge her love for John; they had been friends long before they had been lovers and he had always understood her better than most.

Was it so strange to think that there might be things left unfinished between Kanaan and John?

Strange enough.

"You needed to hear from them?"

John grimaced. "Heitmeyer - or the part of my mind that sounded like Heitmeyer - said that they were the things I didn't know I didn't know and that I needed to know."

It took her a few seconds to work out the meaning of his statement, and still she was not sure she had grasped the full of it. "I believe you have confused me," she said after a moment.

"I think I confused myself," he admitted with a smile to match her own. "But...."

He seemed to have more to say, so she let the silence rest while he searched for words, his eyes focusing on something beyond her shoulder. But after a few seconds, he shook his head and his gaze clung to her face, sliding over her features with all the tenderness of a caress.

"You cared about Kanaan enough to have Torran and move in with him. I don't... I don't expect the same from you, Teyla. Well, it'd be nice, but..." He shrugged and seemed embarrassed. "I'm fine with how things are if you're okay with them, Teyla."

"But you would like to change how things are."

"Well, yeah. I...I'd like...more. But you don't have to feel obligated--"

His frankness disarmed her, the emotional directness endearing him more firmly than all the smoothly loverlike words in the universe.

Teyla lifted her hand and let her fingers brush his cheek, rough with the growing stubble of his beard. Then she leaned in, feeling the welling tenderness that tightened her throat and loosened her belly as their lips met and sweet softness bloomed between them.

"You are asking me to share tents?" Teyla asked when she lifted her lips from his.

It was an Athosian phrase, and John knew of it. He understood it just as well as she'd understood what he was offering in asking her to move in with him: togetherness, commitment, and as much permanency as life in Pegasus would grant them.

At least today, if tomorrow was not certain.

To Teyla, that meant much; to John, she knew, it meant even more.

"Yes," he said without hesitation or prevarication, and although his eyes lingered on her lips, there was tension in the muscles of his jaw, beneath her fingertips.

This was a new side of John.

And as she stroked her fingers along the rasping edge of his chin, Teyla reflected that she rather liked this new aspect of him.

"Then, yes," she said, feeling her mouth quirk to one side. "I will share tents with you."

His eyes widened a little, became intent, even as something in them softened, heated with a promise. "You're sure?"

Teyla laughed a little at the wondering note in the question and kissed him again.

This time, he leaned in, his mouth teasing her with a promise of more, and when their lips parted, John looked smugly pleased with himself. If some things had changed, there were some things that had not. Whatever peace he had found in his sojourns through his mind, he would still question himself. And that was no bad thing.

At least on this, she would never leave him to question very long.

"I have always been sure, John."

He swallowed. Nodded. And shifted in the sheets, as though he was setting his shoulders. "All right. Then let's do this thing."

Together they would live and love and laugh, and if it ended too soon, Teyla would never regret having loved him. Together, they would fight the Wraith and other threats to their peoples with Ronon and Rodney at their backs, and would show her son how to be a man of Pegasus and Atlantis. Together, they would deal with whatever Michael had left behind in his attempt to control the galaxy.

Together.

- fin -

LAST THINGS:

Thankyou to everyone who has supported me over the years, especially those who recommended me to their friends and others around them. I'm not a particularly popular writer, being unable to produce the romances far more popular on , and so your support and reviews have meant readers and reviewers and is one of the two reasons I have kept writing.

I wish I could write each of my regular reviewers their own personal story - you deserve it! - but my time to write is limited, and so, too, is this fandom. Other stories may pop up in future, but they are unlikely to be very often or very extensive. Such is the nature of show fandom. Still, as the original challenge said: "We'll Always Have Pegasus."

And so I say to you all: "Thank you very much, and good night!"

with great affection,

Tielan.