Fic: "... and I will sin no more"
Title: “… and I will sin no more”
Pairing: John/Elizabeth
Type: AU
Genre: drama, romance, John - centered
Rating: very mild R
Spoilers: 5 x 19 “Vegas”
Beta: the awesome the_scary_kitty who did an amazing job with my grammar :) If there are any mistakes left, they're mine.
A/N: althought "Vegas" felt like dream come true the way it was, I wanted to play with it a little bit. Here I offer you an ending with a little more hope. Also, a credit when credit is due, one of Elizabeth's quotes comes from my very dear friend, fex_84 - darling, I hope you don't mind for using your words, they are wonderful and I think it's something Elizabeth would have said. Also, the quote in the title comes from "The Godfather III". I hope you'll all enjoy, comments are loved.
*
First day
She stuck out. It wasn't because she was beautiful - in some non flashy way, or so John thought, she held herself with grace. Even when she was tired, or perhaps especially then, reminding him there were things one should never forget about. There was no impression of regret for being here about her, it rather seemed she was content to be exactly where she was.
She worked hard. That day when he first saw her in the infirmary she told him to wait his turn, until she tended for people who were in need of urgent care, and left him to wait for an hour to have his cut hand looked at. Her hands were fast and efficient and while she worked on his ugly looking cut, she kept glancing at his face. Before he knew it, he was fixed. Then she gave him a short smile, one with teeth.
“Watch your hands, Captain,” she said, and he responded with a smile.
“Yes, ma'am,” he answered, saluting sloppily with his bandaged hand. She watched as he was leaving the barrack that was used as a field hospital. He looked back, shortly, and noticed her watching. Then he smiled to himself.
*
Ninth day
He kept running into her. There was limited number of permanent personnel in the camp after all, and she was new. Another reason why she stuck out. John found out her name was Elizabeth. It suited her. She was a daughter of someone important, and for a moment he wondered if she was one of those spoiled kids who wanted to put up a show by doing something charitable. It turned out that she wasn’t that kind of person.
Gibson was the one who usually piloted her and her team around. Then Gibson broke his arm and John's downtime was suddenly canceled. When he saw her waiting by the chopper he decided that maybe his day hadn’t take a turn for the worse. Elizabeth smiled at him, watching his always messed - up hair with interest as he was finishing gearing up. The team of five medics, accompanying her were looking at him expectantly.
“Captain,” she greeted, offering her hand. “Thank you for coming so promptly. I'm afraid this is very urgent.”
He nodded, looking at her for a moment. Wind blew into her face - the wind didn't seem to cease around here - and a few stray curls that escaped the regulation bun flew freely around.
“I'm John. John Sheppard.” Another chopper was lifting of not too far away and he had to shout. She shielded her eyes with her hand and smiled, wrinkling her nose a little bit.
“I know,” she answered. “I'm Elizabeth. Elizabeth Weir.”
“Yeah, I know,” he echoed.
*
Second week
The sound of chopper blades above his head, muted by the headphones he was wearing, seemed strangely calming. The day was over. John was tired, everyone was tired, but the warm feeling of accomplishment was spreading through his hands. The desert stretched on before him, and the sun was blinding, but John knew where he was headed to.
Next to him, Elizabeth Weir slept in her seat. Never before had he seen someone fall asleep in a helicopter, but almost thirty hours of pulling wounded and bodies from under the rubble, fighting clock, wind and fire; trying to save as many as possible. She was tired and she slept. Perhaps she was content too, but John had a nagging feeling the last thirty hours, while she was tending the wounded, left scars which couldn’t be seen.
Her task was done. John’s eye caught a gleam of a silver chain and a small cross hanging about her neck. He averted his gaze, for not everyone had their peace with God, or could call themselves useful. He felt that he couldn't, more often than not. Here, he could afford not to think of it, because there were things to do.
He had a task. There were a dozen people, some physically injured, some not, but wounded nevertheless, in the back of the huge steel beast he was steering through the air.
Elizabeth took care of them, patched them up, day after day after day. His task was to take them to safety, and thus, John Sheppard knew where he was headed to.
*
Fifth week
He wondered if his staring at her and not knowing how to start a conversation could be deemed as stalkerish. He couldn’t really use the private excuse of observing her scrubbing her hands after day’s work, awash in the glow of the setting sun - he wasn't a poet, he only played guitar reasonably well. Last night, when he played (Gibson and Marshall talked him into it after three beers), she watched him the entire time, with that cryptic smile on her face. If she noticed how he confused some lines in the song she didn’t let it show.
They were showing “The Godfather” tonight, and here he was, standing in the doorway, trying to will enough nerve in himself to ask her if she’d like to go with him. It wasn’t like he was asking her on a date, and it was precisely the problem, even dreaming of a date with her was way out of his league. He felt ten or so years younger, but eventually she looked at him and smiled tiredly and he remembered where they were. It wasn’t like he could take her to a Ferris wheel ride and buy her cotton candy, or take her to a dinner. It would be just rows of roughly cut stools and a not big enough TV screen. Not good enough for her, he mused.
“Hey,” he greeted. “Long day?”
She nodded and her smile grew. John stopped thinking about the proper wording, he definitely wasn’t a poet, but he’d be damned if he didn’t do this. She needed a break. She looked at him expectantly as if she sensed he had some higher purpose here this evening.
“Listen,” he begun. “I was wondering if you’d like to watch a movie?”
*
“So, do you think he is a good or bad guy?”
She grinned like she expected that very question. Her eyes looked into the distance, where the desert met the nightly sky, wrapping her regulation jacket around the thin frame.
“Michael? It's hard to say, especially because I like him a lot. I'm biased,” she said with a small grin. They walked slowly toward the barracks, where he shared the room with seven more guys. John was sleepy, it was a long day behind him, but he didn't want to go to bed just yet. The air here on the outside was already chilly, and he never got used to it - the days were scorching hot, and the nights were cruel and cold. Such an unfortunate place. “I think he has the right reasons, but keeps doing the wrong things,” she looked at him calmly, expecting his reaction.
“That's a very diplomatic answer, Miss Weir,” he teased. She lowered her face slightly, and for a moment he thought she was sad.
“You did ask me a demanding question. There's no simple answer, really.”
“Then give me the complicated one,” he prodded as they paused near the outskirts of the camp, where the water pump stood. He wanted to listen to her talk. Elizabeth took a few steps further and then stopped, turning her back to the desert to look back at him. She grinned again, like she knew what he was up to; how he put off saying good night just to be with her a little longer.
“People are complicated and fascinating. Michael is devoted to his family, he wants to protect them. In order to do so, he must become cruel. To him it seems inevitable. Actually, that is his choice, and then the consequences follow, one leads to another, and then, there is no way out. Michael chose his path,” her eyes looked up at him.
“But does that make him good or bad?” he pressed, and for some reason it was important what she was going to say.
“I think it makes him... an unhappy man. A sad and tragic man,” her eyes got lost in some unknown distance, and then turned back at him. “But that's cheating, I watched the other two,” she grinned, turning slightly serious in the next moment. “Why is Michael so important?”
The question was personal, at this point she was intrigued with him, obviously, just like he was with her, and John wondered what was he exactly doing, although he already knew. She was smart and attractive and talking to her was better than most things he got to do here; he would be a fool to say he wasn't interested in her. But he didn't think the interest would be returned, he honestly didn't, he wasn't anything special.
He could see on her face that she was waiting for an answer.
“I could never figure it out,” he shrugged. Her lips parted slightly in surprise, and she stepped closer, raising her face toward him. “Not why he did it... but was it worth it? For him,” he explained.
Her face had changed completely as she regarded him seriously.
“I think you intended to do good. Colonel Sumner knows it too. But the risk,” she lowered her face and to his surprise, gently grasped his hand. “It could have been too dangerous.”
“But I was right,” he protested, and she gave him an infinitely tender smile. “If I didn’t they would have been killed.”
“This time. But what about the next time?” he watched her face, as it turned worried. An unpleasant feeling filled his chest, because she was right, but every time he found himself in a situation like this recent one, he wasn’t thinking about tomorrow, or his own safety. Pressing her lips she turned away from him, and the hand that has been holding his, wrapped itself around the frame of her body, the other following. “I heard you were caught in the crossfire. Everyone here was just... waiting, and I was wondering how many of you... wouldn't come back.”
Her voice was a whisper, but her eyes spoke loudly. In that one moment he could imagine her, waiting and searching the sky with her eyes; that was something he didn’t think of when he played the big damn hero.
“Hey,” he wanted to say something reassuring, something good. But as he stepped into her space, he felt he had claimed too much, and that he could hurt her by simply being himself. She stood there, in the cold of the evening, with hands wrapped around her body, shielding herself from the wind, and perhaps other, indefinitely more dangerous things. He was, obviously, doing wrong things for right reasons, or at least they turned out badly, and not how he wanted. “I'm here. I'm okay,” was what he said instead.
One delicate hand touched him briefly.
“Thank God you are.”
*
Three months
It was the first time that he saw her eyes so empty.
It was understandable, expected even in this place, in this war - sometimes John had a clear vision of why he was here, the other times it was blurry and there was no beginning or the end, and the ongoing chaos wounded even the bravest of souls.
Elizabeth had seen it all; people screaming and running and dying; she held them with her hands, prevented them from bleeding out and leaving this world before their time. Perhaps this was the first child that died on her hands. Perhaps it was because she had found the abandoned little boy and he wouldn't stop crying, just like he knew.
She probably knew it too, they came too late for him.
She was sitting near the water pump, alone. The sun was setting and the wind was getting stronger. John sat beside her, on the hard and scorched soil, not looking at her for a moment. She first shook her head and then spoke.
“I came here to change something. I spent... half of my life in expensive schools, aiming to do something with my life. But last year I think, something in me snapped. I was to be a diplomat, and I never really saw what the world was like, not the world I wanted to help some day.”
“How did you decide to come here?”
“I wanted... I thought I wanted to show people, ordinary people who were hungry, sick and in danger that the entire world is not against them,” she said, but in her eyes he could see that she wondered if she really believed it. With lowered head she continued, “But how could anyone believe that there is still good in the world when a three year old dies, because someone poisoned the only water source!?”
John had no answer to the helpless anger in her eyes. He never really knew how to offer comfort, and this time perhaps there was no comfort to offer. He couldn't explain this, just like he couldn't explain himself and who he wanted to be, but he knew, for certain, that what she did here made sense, it made a difference - but he could have been wrong. Who was he to say h How the grand scheme of things worked? He never wanted to see her doubt, he never wanted to see her like this, and when he couldn't find the words strong enough to redefine reality, the only thing he could offer was a temporary shield, a moment of forgetting just where they were.
Elizabeth didn't resist his arms when he pulled her close. John wondered was it possible, to mean well, to have the right reasons, and still to do wrong or make no difference at all.
*
Five months
It was Christmas, one without a tree or shopping for presents. The real gifts were letters from home, messages of care and love. John knew it already, and told himself he shouldn't expect them - no care packages, no well wishes, no hand drawn cards. He volunteered to fly the supplies on that day, dull hours across the dry sand, just to be somewhere else. Perhaps that was the best thing about what he did, a job stressful and hard enough to make his body tired and send his mind to sleep. Sometimes he could forget how little he had left behind, and it was good, not having much to lose.
It was evening when he came back, tired and dirty, dragging across the camp toward the second barrack in the third row. He would survive the guys in the quarters, pull the covers over his head and pretend to sleep, and he was determined in his plan to treat this day just as any other, but then the sound of familiar laughter made him stop.
The infirmary door was open wide and he could see her, dancing with Nurse Hampton, while other people in there, soldiers, medics and nurses celebrated. And in that one moment it wasn't so simple any more, because there was one thing he wanted.
Suddenly she stopped, because a shoe fell off her foot and while she was picking it up, she saw him. Her face spread into a smile, a kind of smile that promised things he shouldn't wish for, because he could've have it.
He didn't join the ongoing party, and ten minutes later he stood alone in the wind, with face barely washed and body craving rest. She walked over the sand barefoot and the silky brown curls flew around her face.
John's throat was tight when she stepped next to him. Her smile was heavenly, and he thought of rain, something he hadn’t seen ever since he gotten here as he was looking at her face.
“Where were you the whole day?” she asked, like she had missed him and although he was pretty good at hiding it, her face slowly begun to reflect what he didn’t want to feel today.
“Someone had to fly for the supplies,” he said. She came even closer, her body almost touching his and touched his arm carefully.
“Today, John?”
“It’s as good as any day,” he said, but her hand was touching him and he knew he couldn’t backpedal any more. She smiled sadly and touched the corner of his lips with her fingertips, it was enough for him to give up running away from inevitable. He closed his eyes and felt her lean onto him as she stood on her toes to reach his lips properly. There was certainty in the touch, telling him she knew she liked him; why she did, he wasn’t certain, but as he gave in to insistent, teasing lips and two small hands buried in his hair, it wasn’t important any more.
He was falling for her, because she was amazing and beautiful, because with her near he believed he could be a better person. It was much more likely that he wouldn’t do much with his life, but in her eyes, he could see Christmases, warm nights and playing his guitar, maybe even walking down a beach when they both would be wrinkled and gray. It could be good, it could be so much better than anything he planned for himself.
*
Six months
On the day he almost lost her it finally had rained.
It wasn’t the kind of rain he was used to. It was short and it left the thirsty soil wanting, reminding him that you could never give enough to this place. It took everything away, courage, good intentions and best laid plans, it took away human lives. That day a villager tried to blackmail them for food and weapons, he wanted the bullets and explosives, holding the knife under her throat and dragging her toward an old truck, using her as a shield. When he fired the shot over her shoulder and into the man's body, John knew he could have killed her easily.
It was he who came to the room where she slept alone, and as the wind soared over the empty land, he undressed her and touched her; he made love to her for the first time.
They lay spooned next to each other under her covers, clinging to body warmth as the night turned colder, when she told him she thought she would die - until she saw him.
That night he promised her he would protect her, always. She trusted him, and fell asleep in his arms, but he stayed awake and watched her, listening to her breath and feeling her heartbeat under his hand.
He knew he shouldn’t have made that promise.
*
Three years
He banished himself into the desert. He didn’t do it on purpose, though. On days he could work and on nights he could gamble, and it was just a sad coincidence that the gambling paradise was in the middle of a desert. Maybe it was what he had deserved. He didn’t think about it much, but every time his eyes met the dry land and endless, cloudless sky, John wished for rain.
Sometimes the desert had her face, lost somewhere in a place he couldn’t reach in time. He could never fulfill that promise, but he tried, and it had led him here, his right reasons and wrong choices. He was a bad gambler and a fairly useless detective, existing instead of living. To him it was good enough. He had no task to do, no higher purpose to his life - better that way, he would have ruined it all - and didn’t know where he was supposed to go. This damn place was as good as any.
*
Seven years
John possessed one small mirror. It was enough to see his face, although he rarely bothered to look at it. That day, however, he did. It was kind of pathetic, because one was supposed to look deep into his own eyes and find some higher meaning, find something good. All John could see was the face he didn't like any more, and more gray hairs than he remembered. It didn’t tell him any grand truth and he didn’t feel better about what he was going to do. It wasn’t because it was the right thing to do; he was simply tired of being useless.
Knowing that he could have been better, if he only did that one thing right; knowing that somewhere, in some other reality - it was still a concept he couldn’t grasp - existed a different him, who knew how to do good things, right things - only made everything worse.
The cross on the silver chain lay on the nightstand in his rented room. It was so small in his hand when he picked it up, smaller but somehow heavier than he remembered. John could still remember that day, perfectly, when she wished him a happy birthday and apologized for not having a proper gift. Then she took the chain off and put it around his neck, touched the cross where it lay on his chest and smiled. Back then she believed in him and he believed her.
Now, as he put the chain about his neck, John hardly believed in anything. It had been such a long time since anyone said anything good of him, but the words of that slightly arrogant scientist wouldn’t leave his head. It was like a proof that he could have done more, he could. Only he chose not to, and maybe his reasons were right, but the things he ended up doing were wrong, and there was no excuse. Was it worth it?
John pressed his lips and stared at his reflection, fingering the silver cross that hung just above his chest. Maybe it wasn’t worth it, and he had lost more than he could say, but he realized, as he stared at his own empty eyes and face that had aged too early, that he would fly that chopper back, in any reality. If that made him a failure instead of a hero, then so be it, because he had promised, because back then, he knew whet he was supposed to do.
He picked up a clean shirt and buttoned it quickly, slipped on the boots and walked to his rusted, dirty car.
Today he could do one thing right, for no particular reason. And then he could leave this place and do his best to forget.
*
The new day
The car pulled into the driveway, slowly, and Doctor McKay turned the engine off. It was a cloudy day but John stubbornly kept his sunglasses on his nose. They sat there for a few moments in silence, but eventually, John spoke.
“What is this?” asked John, although the explanations weren’t necessary. A woman was waiting on the porch, and all of his possessions, including the Johnny Cash poster that miraculously - just like him - survived the shootout with the Wraith were packed in one single suitcase in the back of the rented car. McKay smiled, almost wistfully, his mind obviously somewhere else at that point. Then he looked at John.
“Remember when I told you about the other version of you?” he asked and John nodded, still wondering why this man kept helping him. “I guess it’s safe to say that in that reality…. or maybe any reality there is out there, you seem to get a second chance. So, I guess this is it. She’s alive, and this, this is your second chance.”
John just sat there, swallowing hard. It was simple, and it was too big at the same time. He could see her, clearly, and couldn’t decide if she changed a lot, or not at all; the thing he didn’t want her to see was how much he had changed.
McKay explained how she was imprisoned for months and then her father, an influential diplomat then, decided to keep her away from everything even remotely connected to Afghanistan, or the Air Force for that matter. It was Agent Woolsey who found out she was still alive. John was already in a hospital bed when that happened.
“She’s waiting for you,” said McKay almost gently, and John gave him what he hoped could pass for a thankful look. Then he got up, carefully, because his side was still sore, and his arm, in a sling, hurt like hell. He got out of the car and McKay helped him with the large suitcase, putting it down on the nicely trimmed grass. John was still shielded behind the black SUV, but he knew he couldn’t stay there forever. “You have enough time to think it over,” continued the scientist quietly, still standing next to him. “You don’t have to join the program, but with your genes who knows what you could do,” John looked at his own roughened palm, splayed on the shiny surface of the car, still not comprehending something inside of him could be so important. “You saved us all, already. Now go and do something for yourself.” A grin spread on McKay’s face and John licked his lips. Then he looked toward the house and the woman standing there and blinked the prickling in his eyes away.
McKay told him she was at the hospital before he woke up, that she stayed with him, through day and night. Then she had to go. John couldn’t remember any of it.
Right now, he couldn’t stall any more. Taking the suitcase with his good hand he limped slowly across the grass, willing the battered body to obey him. He saw her near the fence, the hands and fingers he never forgot opening the wooden gate for him and wordlessly he walked inside, wondering how much the Air Force was paying for the house. McKay kept saying they owed him. That was new for a man whose life consisted of debts of various nature he couldn’t repay.
He held a breath and set his heavy load down and Elizabeth was standing in front of him. Maybe he did die after all, but he doubted someone like him would end up in heaven. If he was still alive, this was the moment when he had to redeem himself somehow.
Elizabeth's eyes searched his face, as if she was seeking something. He wanted to smile, but he couldn’t - how was he to tell her what kind of man he was now? How could she look forward to get to know that man?
But then she did smile, although somewhat sadly, when her eyes saw the cross he was still wearing. Her hand stopped tentatively just above it and when he didn’t move away, she touched him lightly, and then touched the side of his face.
“First they told me you got killed. And then they told me you were alive, but nobody knew where you were.”
He swallowed and nodded. She was waiting, waiting for him to say something, he could hear it in her voice, that a part of her kept waiting all this time. John took off the glasses and she could finally see the damage of those seven years, but her eyes were still tender.
“I thought you were…,” he tried but didn’t finish. She nodded.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
John stood before her, trying to think of what he was supposed to do with himself. How and where, at what point down the line should he pick his life up and continue? Wasn’t it a little bit too late to teach an old dog some new tricks?
“Are you hungry?” asked Elizabeth, smiling at him tentatively. John nodded, and she her smile broadened, turning toward the house -“I have lunch ready,” she said and then reached for his suitcase. John did the same, and their hands touched. Something in John gave up, completely, and without asking permission he pulled her in an embrace. She didn’t protest, although he could tell she was surprised and just a little bit stiff, but then she relaxed. She was hugging him back. Telling her what a broken mess he turned into was difficult with her warm face on his neck and when they pulled apart, he still wasn’t letting go.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. She nodded.
“I know you are John. But you’re here now. You’ll be okay.”
He doubted it was possible. But he was still alive, and perhaps there was a reason for that, just as McKay kept saying. Elizabeth slipped out of his embrace and took his suitcase, and John followed her slowly. He wasn’t certain where he was headed, just like a few weeks ago, when he resigned from his job and sat in the old red car, but unlike then, he couldn’t make himself believe that he didn’t care any more.
Pairing: John/Elizabeth
Type: AU
Genre: drama, romance, John - centered
Rating: very mild R
Spoilers: 5 x 19 “Vegas”
Beta: the awesome the_scary_kitty who did an amazing job with my grammar :) If there are any mistakes left, they're mine.
A/N: althought "Vegas" felt like dream come true the way it was, I wanted to play with it a little bit. Here I offer you an ending with a little more hope. Also, a credit when credit is due, one of Elizabeth's quotes comes from my very dear friend, fex_84 - darling, I hope you don't mind for using your words, they are wonderful and I think it's something Elizabeth would have said. Also, the quote in the title comes from "The Godfather III". I hope you'll all enjoy, comments are loved.
*
First day
She stuck out. It wasn't because she was beautiful - in some non flashy way, or so John thought, she held herself with grace. Even when she was tired, or perhaps especially then, reminding him there were things one should never forget about. There was no impression of regret for being here about her, it rather seemed she was content to be exactly where she was.
She worked hard. That day when he first saw her in the infirmary she told him to wait his turn, until she tended for people who were in need of urgent care, and left him to wait for an hour to have his cut hand looked at. Her hands were fast and efficient and while she worked on his ugly looking cut, she kept glancing at his face. Before he knew it, he was fixed. Then she gave him a short smile, one with teeth.
“Watch your hands, Captain,” she said, and he responded with a smile.
“Yes, ma'am,” he answered, saluting sloppily with his bandaged hand. She watched as he was leaving the barrack that was used as a field hospital. He looked back, shortly, and noticed her watching. Then he smiled to himself.
*
Ninth day
He kept running into her. There was limited number of permanent personnel in the camp after all, and she was new. Another reason why she stuck out. John found out her name was Elizabeth. It suited her. She was a daughter of someone important, and for a moment he wondered if she was one of those spoiled kids who wanted to put up a show by doing something charitable. It turned out that she wasn’t that kind of person.
Gibson was the one who usually piloted her and her team around. Then Gibson broke his arm and John's downtime was suddenly canceled. When he saw her waiting by the chopper he decided that maybe his day hadn’t take a turn for the worse. Elizabeth smiled at him, watching his always messed - up hair with interest as he was finishing gearing up. The team of five medics, accompanying her were looking at him expectantly.
“Captain,” she greeted, offering her hand. “Thank you for coming so promptly. I'm afraid this is very urgent.”
He nodded, looking at her for a moment. Wind blew into her face - the wind didn't seem to cease around here - and a few stray curls that escaped the regulation bun flew freely around.
“I'm John. John Sheppard.” Another chopper was lifting of not too far away and he had to shout. She shielded her eyes with her hand and smiled, wrinkling her nose a little bit.
“I know,” she answered. “I'm Elizabeth. Elizabeth Weir.”
“Yeah, I know,” he echoed.
*
Second week
The sound of chopper blades above his head, muted by the headphones he was wearing, seemed strangely calming. The day was over. John was tired, everyone was tired, but the warm feeling of accomplishment was spreading through his hands. The desert stretched on before him, and the sun was blinding, but John knew where he was headed to.
Next to him, Elizabeth Weir slept in her seat. Never before had he seen someone fall asleep in a helicopter, but almost thirty hours of pulling wounded and bodies from under the rubble, fighting clock, wind and fire; trying to save as many as possible. She was tired and she slept. Perhaps she was content too, but John had a nagging feeling the last thirty hours, while she was tending the wounded, left scars which couldn’t be seen.
Her task was done. John’s eye caught a gleam of a silver chain and a small cross hanging about her neck. He averted his gaze, for not everyone had their peace with God, or could call themselves useful. He felt that he couldn't, more often than not. Here, he could afford not to think of it, because there were things to do.
He had a task. There were a dozen people, some physically injured, some not, but wounded nevertheless, in the back of the huge steel beast he was steering through the air.
Elizabeth took care of them, patched them up, day after day after day. His task was to take them to safety, and thus, John Sheppard knew where he was headed to.
*
Fifth week
He wondered if his staring at her and not knowing how to start a conversation could be deemed as stalkerish. He couldn’t really use the private excuse of observing her scrubbing her hands after day’s work, awash in the glow of the setting sun - he wasn't a poet, he only played guitar reasonably well. Last night, when he played (Gibson and Marshall talked him into it after three beers), she watched him the entire time, with that cryptic smile on her face. If she noticed how he confused some lines in the song she didn’t let it show.
They were showing “The Godfather” tonight, and here he was, standing in the doorway, trying to will enough nerve in himself to ask her if she’d like to go with him. It wasn’t like he was asking her on a date, and it was precisely the problem, even dreaming of a date with her was way out of his league. He felt ten or so years younger, but eventually she looked at him and smiled tiredly and he remembered where they were. It wasn’t like he could take her to a Ferris wheel ride and buy her cotton candy, or take her to a dinner. It would be just rows of roughly cut stools and a not big enough TV screen. Not good enough for her, he mused.
“Hey,” he greeted. “Long day?”
She nodded and her smile grew. John stopped thinking about the proper wording, he definitely wasn’t a poet, but he’d be damned if he didn’t do this. She needed a break. She looked at him expectantly as if she sensed he had some higher purpose here this evening.
“Listen,” he begun. “I was wondering if you’d like to watch a movie?”
*
“So, do you think he is a good or bad guy?”
She grinned like she expected that very question. Her eyes looked into the distance, where the desert met the nightly sky, wrapping her regulation jacket around the thin frame.
“Michael? It's hard to say, especially because I like him a lot. I'm biased,” she said with a small grin. They walked slowly toward the barracks, where he shared the room with seven more guys. John was sleepy, it was a long day behind him, but he didn't want to go to bed just yet. The air here on the outside was already chilly, and he never got used to it - the days were scorching hot, and the nights were cruel and cold. Such an unfortunate place. “I think he has the right reasons, but keeps doing the wrong things,” she looked at him calmly, expecting his reaction.
“That's a very diplomatic answer, Miss Weir,” he teased. She lowered her face slightly, and for a moment he thought she was sad.
“You did ask me a demanding question. There's no simple answer, really.”
“Then give me the complicated one,” he prodded as they paused near the outskirts of the camp, where the water pump stood. He wanted to listen to her talk. Elizabeth took a few steps further and then stopped, turning her back to the desert to look back at him. She grinned again, like she knew what he was up to; how he put off saying good night just to be with her a little longer.
“People are complicated and fascinating. Michael is devoted to his family, he wants to protect them. In order to do so, he must become cruel. To him it seems inevitable. Actually, that is his choice, and then the consequences follow, one leads to another, and then, there is no way out. Michael chose his path,” her eyes looked up at him.
“But does that make him good or bad?” he pressed, and for some reason it was important what she was going to say.
“I think it makes him... an unhappy man. A sad and tragic man,” her eyes got lost in some unknown distance, and then turned back at him. “But that's cheating, I watched the other two,” she grinned, turning slightly serious in the next moment. “Why is Michael so important?”
The question was personal, at this point she was intrigued with him, obviously, just like he was with her, and John wondered what was he exactly doing, although he already knew. She was smart and attractive and talking to her was better than most things he got to do here; he would be a fool to say he wasn't interested in her. But he didn't think the interest would be returned, he honestly didn't, he wasn't anything special.
He could see on her face that she was waiting for an answer.
“I could never figure it out,” he shrugged. Her lips parted slightly in surprise, and she stepped closer, raising her face toward him. “Not why he did it... but was it worth it? For him,” he explained.
Her face had changed completely as she regarded him seriously.
“I think you intended to do good. Colonel Sumner knows it too. But the risk,” she lowered her face and to his surprise, gently grasped his hand. “It could have been too dangerous.”
“But I was right,” he protested, and she gave him an infinitely tender smile. “If I didn’t they would have been killed.”
“This time. But what about the next time?” he watched her face, as it turned worried. An unpleasant feeling filled his chest, because she was right, but every time he found himself in a situation like this recent one, he wasn’t thinking about tomorrow, or his own safety. Pressing her lips she turned away from him, and the hand that has been holding his, wrapped itself around the frame of her body, the other following. “I heard you were caught in the crossfire. Everyone here was just... waiting, and I was wondering how many of you... wouldn't come back.”
Her voice was a whisper, but her eyes spoke loudly. In that one moment he could imagine her, waiting and searching the sky with her eyes; that was something he didn’t think of when he played the big damn hero.
“Hey,” he wanted to say something reassuring, something good. But as he stepped into her space, he felt he had claimed too much, and that he could hurt her by simply being himself. She stood there, in the cold of the evening, with hands wrapped around her body, shielding herself from the wind, and perhaps other, indefinitely more dangerous things. He was, obviously, doing wrong things for right reasons, or at least they turned out badly, and not how he wanted. “I'm here. I'm okay,” was what he said instead.
One delicate hand touched him briefly.
“Thank God you are.”
*
Three months
It was the first time that he saw her eyes so empty.
It was understandable, expected even in this place, in this war - sometimes John had a clear vision of why he was here, the other times it was blurry and there was no beginning or the end, and the ongoing chaos wounded even the bravest of souls.
Elizabeth had seen it all; people screaming and running and dying; she held them with her hands, prevented them from bleeding out and leaving this world before their time. Perhaps this was the first child that died on her hands. Perhaps it was because she had found the abandoned little boy and he wouldn't stop crying, just like he knew.
She probably knew it too, they came too late for him.
She was sitting near the water pump, alone. The sun was setting and the wind was getting stronger. John sat beside her, on the hard and scorched soil, not looking at her for a moment. She first shook her head and then spoke.
“I came here to change something. I spent... half of my life in expensive schools, aiming to do something with my life. But last year I think, something in me snapped. I was to be a diplomat, and I never really saw what the world was like, not the world I wanted to help some day.”
“How did you decide to come here?”
“I wanted... I thought I wanted to show people, ordinary people who were hungry, sick and in danger that the entire world is not against them,” she said, but in her eyes he could see that she wondered if she really believed it. With lowered head she continued, “But how could anyone believe that there is still good in the world when a three year old dies, because someone poisoned the only water source!?”
John had no answer to the helpless anger in her eyes. He never really knew how to offer comfort, and this time perhaps there was no comfort to offer. He couldn't explain this, just like he couldn't explain himself and who he wanted to be, but he knew, for certain, that what she did here made sense, it made a difference - but he could have been wrong. Who was he to say h How the grand scheme of things worked? He never wanted to see her doubt, he never wanted to see her like this, and when he couldn't find the words strong enough to redefine reality, the only thing he could offer was a temporary shield, a moment of forgetting just where they were.
Elizabeth didn't resist his arms when he pulled her close. John wondered was it possible, to mean well, to have the right reasons, and still to do wrong or make no difference at all.
*
Five months
It was Christmas, one without a tree or shopping for presents. The real gifts were letters from home, messages of care and love. John knew it already, and told himself he shouldn't expect them - no care packages, no well wishes, no hand drawn cards. He volunteered to fly the supplies on that day, dull hours across the dry sand, just to be somewhere else. Perhaps that was the best thing about what he did, a job stressful and hard enough to make his body tired and send his mind to sleep. Sometimes he could forget how little he had left behind, and it was good, not having much to lose.
It was evening when he came back, tired and dirty, dragging across the camp toward the second barrack in the third row. He would survive the guys in the quarters, pull the covers over his head and pretend to sleep, and he was determined in his plan to treat this day just as any other, but then the sound of familiar laughter made him stop.
The infirmary door was open wide and he could see her, dancing with Nurse Hampton, while other people in there, soldiers, medics and nurses celebrated. And in that one moment it wasn't so simple any more, because there was one thing he wanted.
Suddenly she stopped, because a shoe fell off her foot and while she was picking it up, she saw him. Her face spread into a smile, a kind of smile that promised things he shouldn't wish for, because he could've have it.
He didn't join the ongoing party, and ten minutes later he stood alone in the wind, with face barely washed and body craving rest. She walked over the sand barefoot and the silky brown curls flew around her face.
John's throat was tight when she stepped next to him. Her smile was heavenly, and he thought of rain, something he hadn’t seen ever since he gotten here as he was looking at her face.
“Where were you the whole day?” she asked, like she had missed him and although he was pretty good at hiding it, her face slowly begun to reflect what he didn’t want to feel today.
“Someone had to fly for the supplies,” he said. She came even closer, her body almost touching his and touched his arm carefully.
“Today, John?”
“It’s as good as any day,” he said, but her hand was touching him and he knew he couldn’t backpedal any more. She smiled sadly and touched the corner of his lips with her fingertips, it was enough for him to give up running away from inevitable. He closed his eyes and felt her lean onto him as she stood on her toes to reach his lips properly. There was certainty in the touch, telling him she knew she liked him; why she did, he wasn’t certain, but as he gave in to insistent, teasing lips and two small hands buried in his hair, it wasn’t important any more.
He was falling for her, because she was amazing and beautiful, because with her near he believed he could be a better person. It was much more likely that he wouldn’t do much with his life, but in her eyes, he could see Christmases, warm nights and playing his guitar, maybe even walking down a beach when they both would be wrinkled and gray. It could be good, it could be so much better than anything he planned for himself.
*
Six months
On the day he almost lost her it finally had rained.
It wasn’t the kind of rain he was used to. It was short and it left the thirsty soil wanting, reminding him that you could never give enough to this place. It took everything away, courage, good intentions and best laid plans, it took away human lives. That day a villager tried to blackmail them for food and weapons, he wanted the bullets and explosives, holding the knife under her throat and dragging her toward an old truck, using her as a shield. When he fired the shot over her shoulder and into the man's body, John knew he could have killed her easily.
It was he who came to the room where she slept alone, and as the wind soared over the empty land, he undressed her and touched her; he made love to her for the first time.
They lay spooned next to each other under her covers, clinging to body warmth as the night turned colder, when she told him she thought she would die - until she saw him.
That night he promised her he would protect her, always. She trusted him, and fell asleep in his arms, but he stayed awake and watched her, listening to her breath and feeling her heartbeat under his hand.
He knew he shouldn’t have made that promise.
*
Three years
He banished himself into the desert. He didn’t do it on purpose, though. On days he could work and on nights he could gamble, and it was just a sad coincidence that the gambling paradise was in the middle of a desert. Maybe it was what he had deserved. He didn’t think about it much, but every time his eyes met the dry land and endless, cloudless sky, John wished for rain.
Sometimes the desert had her face, lost somewhere in a place he couldn’t reach in time. He could never fulfill that promise, but he tried, and it had led him here, his right reasons and wrong choices. He was a bad gambler and a fairly useless detective, existing instead of living. To him it was good enough. He had no task to do, no higher purpose to his life - better that way, he would have ruined it all - and didn’t know where he was supposed to go. This damn place was as good as any.
*
Seven years
John possessed one small mirror. It was enough to see his face, although he rarely bothered to look at it. That day, however, he did. It was kind of pathetic, because one was supposed to look deep into his own eyes and find some higher meaning, find something good. All John could see was the face he didn't like any more, and more gray hairs than he remembered. It didn’t tell him any grand truth and he didn’t feel better about what he was going to do. It wasn’t because it was the right thing to do; he was simply tired of being useless.
Knowing that he could have been better, if he only did that one thing right; knowing that somewhere, in some other reality - it was still a concept he couldn’t grasp - existed a different him, who knew how to do good things, right things - only made everything worse.
The cross on the silver chain lay on the nightstand in his rented room. It was so small in his hand when he picked it up, smaller but somehow heavier than he remembered. John could still remember that day, perfectly, when she wished him a happy birthday and apologized for not having a proper gift. Then she took the chain off and put it around his neck, touched the cross where it lay on his chest and smiled. Back then she believed in him and he believed her.
Now, as he put the chain about his neck, John hardly believed in anything. It had been such a long time since anyone said anything good of him, but the words of that slightly arrogant scientist wouldn’t leave his head. It was like a proof that he could have done more, he could. Only he chose not to, and maybe his reasons were right, but the things he ended up doing were wrong, and there was no excuse. Was it worth it?
John pressed his lips and stared at his reflection, fingering the silver cross that hung just above his chest. Maybe it wasn’t worth it, and he had lost more than he could say, but he realized, as he stared at his own empty eyes and face that had aged too early, that he would fly that chopper back, in any reality. If that made him a failure instead of a hero, then so be it, because he had promised, because back then, he knew whet he was supposed to do.
He picked up a clean shirt and buttoned it quickly, slipped on the boots and walked to his rusted, dirty car.
Today he could do one thing right, for no particular reason. And then he could leave this place and do his best to forget.
*
The new day
The car pulled into the driveway, slowly, and Doctor McKay turned the engine off. It was a cloudy day but John stubbornly kept his sunglasses on his nose. They sat there for a few moments in silence, but eventually, John spoke.
“What is this?” asked John, although the explanations weren’t necessary. A woman was waiting on the porch, and all of his possessions, including the Johnny Cash poster that miraculously - just like him - survived the shootout with the Wraith were packed in one single suitcase in the back of the rented car. McKay smiled, almost wistfully, his mind obviously somewhere else at that point. Then he looked at John.
“Remember when I told you about the other version of you?” he asked and John nodded, still wondering why this man kept helping him. “I guess it’s safe to say that in that reality…. or maybe any reality there is out there, you seem to get a second chance. So, I guess this is it. She’s alive, and this, this is your second chance.”
John just sat there, swallowing hard. It was simple, and it was too big at the same time. He could see her, clearly, and couldn’t decide if she changed a lot, or not at all; the thing he didn’t want her to see was how much he had changed.
McKay explained how she was imprisoned for months and then her father, an influential diplomat then, decided to keep her away from everything even remotely connected to Afghanistan, or the Air Force for that matter. It was Agent Woolsey who found out she was still alive. John was already in a hospital bed when that happened.
“She’s waiting for you,” said McKay almost gently, and John gave him what he hoped could pass for a thankful look. Then he got up, carefully, because his side was still sore, and his arm, in a sling, hurt like hell. He got out of the car and McKay helped him with the large suitcase, putting it down on the nicely trimmed grass. John was still shielded behind the black SUV, but he knew he couldn’t stay there forever. “You have enough time to think it over,” continued the scientist quietly, still standing next to him. “You don’t have to join the program, but with your genes who knows what you could do,” John looked at his own roughened palm, splayed on the shiny surface of the car, still not comprehending something inside of him could be so important. “You saved us all, already. Now go and do something for yourself.” A grin spread on McKay’s face and John licked his lips. Then he looked toward the house and the woman standing there and blinked the prickling in his eyes away.
McKay told him she was at the hospital before he woke up, that she stayed with him, through day and night. Then she had to go. John couldn’t remember any of it.
Right now, he couldn’t stall any more. Taking the suitcase with his good hand he limped slowly across the grass, willing the battered body to obey him. He saw her near the fence, the hands and fingers he never forgot opening the wooden gate for him and wordlessly he walked inside, wondering how much the Air Force was paying for the house. McKay kept saying they owed him. That was new for a man whose life consisted of debts of various nature he couldn’t repay.
He held a breath and set his heavy load down and Elizabeth was standing in front of him. Maybe he did die after all, but he doubted someone like him would end up in heaven. If he was still alive, this was the moment when he had to redeem himself somehow.
Elizabeth's eyes searched his face, as if she was seeking something. He wanted to smile, but he couldn’t - how was he to tell her what kind of man he was now? How could she look forward to get to know that man?
But then she did smile, although somewhat sadly, when her eyes saw the cross he was still wearing. Her hand stopped tentatively just above it and when he didn’t move away, she touched him lightly, and then touched the side of his face.
“First they told me you got killed. And then they told me you were alive, but nobody knew where you were.”
He swallowed and nodded. She was waiting, waiting for him to say something, he could hear it in her voice, that a part of her kept waiting all this time. John took off the glasses and she could finally see the damage of those seven years, but her eyes were still tender.
“I thought you were…,” he tried but didn’t finish. She nodded.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
John stood before her, trying to think of what he was supposed to do with himself. How and where, at what point down the line should he pick his life up and continue? Wasn’t it a little bit too late to teach an old dog some new tricks?
“Are you hungry?” asked Elizabeth, smiling at him tentatively. John nodded, and she her smile broadened, turning toward the house -“I have lunch ready,” she said and then reached for his suitcase. John did the same, and their hands touched. Something in John gave up, completely, and without asking permission he pulled her in an embrace. She didn’t protest, although he could tell she was surprised and just a little bit stiff, but then she relaxed. She was hugging him back. Telling her what a broken mess he turned into was difficult with her warm face on his neck and when they pulled apart, he still wasn’t letting go.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. She nodded.
“I know you are John. But you’re here now. You’ll be okay.”
He doubted it was possible. But he was still alive, and perhaps there was a reason for that, just as McKay kept saying. Elizabeth slipped out of his embrace and took his suitcase, and John followed her slowly. He wasn’t certain where he was headed, just like a few weeks ago, when he resigned from his job and sat in the old red car, but unlike then, he couldn’t make himself believe that he didn’t care any more.