Strangers In An Empty Place
"So."
"Yeah."
"It wasn't real."
She looks at him - leaning against the balcony, staring out over the ocean but not really looking at anything. She can't tell if that was a statement or a point of clarification. "No," she replies, flatly.
"None of it?"
They've done this already. "None of it."
"For three months?"
Several times, actually. "For three months."
He runs a hand through his hair, and she knows what he's thinking. She shouldn't know, but she does. "I don't buy it."
She crosses her arms and sighs. A second later, his eyes are on her and there's a small smile on his lips. He knows things about her, too. "There's nothing to 'buy', John," she says, annoyance creeping into her voice. "It just...is."
"Still." He stands up straight again, facing her. His smile is now a grin, broad and wide and smug and exactly like she-- no. She shouldn't. She really shouldn't. She doesn't remember. She sees him lingering. "It wasn't all a lie."
She wants to - needs to - explain the difference between a lie and a group hallucination, but she can't. Can't find the words, not yet. She speaks before she thinks: "I never said that."
A moment later, her mind catches up: Why did she say that? And why did her voice get all soft and wispy like that when she did?
Something flits across his face. It would be recognition, she thinks, if she didn't know any better. "Liz--"
"Major," she snaps. She hates the way she thinks she can hear everything inside her breaking. "This is not up for argument."
She hears him swear into the wind when she turns her back.
Every time she glances at the clock on the table by her bed, she thinks about McKay and "God bless the Ancients, for giving us a planet with practically the same orbital rotation as Earth, lest we have to worry about a funny thing like time and our digital clocks here in the Pegasus galaxy." It sticks in her brain - "practically the same" - because there are calculations, and technically in about a thousand years, they'll be a day ahead of the Milky Way. She tries not to think that far ahead.
Her eyes find the glowing red numbers. It's past three already, and still no sleep.
There are nights like this sometimes. Nights when her mind won't shut off, when it won't stop processing and second-guessing itself and wondering what Simon is reading right now. Or about the person Simon is reading next to, because this project always had a launch-date, but nothing else. Nothing beyond.
She rolls over in bed, and finds empty space. Of course, it's empty. Of course, that body there was never real. Despite everything to the contrary, it was - and will remain - in their heads.
The water outside casts shadows on the ceiling. Sometimes, she walks on the balconies outside, and lets the waves crashing against the sides of the city and that gentle ocean air lull her into sleep. But not tonight, no. She would, but she can't - because despite everything to the contrary, he knows her too well. He'll be waiting.
Instead, she makes a list in her mind of all the things that happened, but didn't.
Her team went to an uninhabited planet and got themselves tangled up in a plant that meant to slowly digest them while feeding their brains hallucinatory fluids in order to convince them that, no, they weren't food. Of all things, this is the only thing in the last three months that she is completely sure of.
Her team escaped with the help of the rescue effort she led. Except, no, they didn't, not really, because she and they were pulled in, too. Belatedly, she hates herself for being so naÔve.
They never threw themselves back into exploring the galaxy too quickly, never pushed ahead without mourning properly. They never made that alliance with the Pholosians. There was never that party that John didn't want any part of - "because someone dying and alcohol has never been a good combination in my mind." She considers that phrase - 'in my mind' - and wonders if that damn plant had a sense of humor, too.
She never accused him of being too close to someone on his team, he never called the kettle black, and he never, ever forced her against the side of a building and ran his hand up her shirt and over her thighs. They never screwed there, for the first time, in an alleyway on an alien world.
Teyla died, but not really. Beckett wouldn't accept it; as a doctor, he didn't buy the idea that whatever made her sense the Wraith simply made her more susceptible to the hallucinations and unable to cope. But that didn't actually happen, and they didn't go to that planet, and he wasn't evaporated by that Wraith.
She sits up in bed. She keeps replaying it in her head: waking up in the Infirmary and seeing them staring back at her. Not believing it. Unwilling to accept that no one had died, that they had spent the last three months being slowly dissolved into plant food. That the lives they had lived had been an illusion.
Walking on the balconies usually calms her, but not tonight. Finding John leaning on a railing is hardly what she needs.
"I keep running it through my brain."
She came anyway, but he's the only one that speaks.
"...all that time. Could we have known?"
"I don't know, John," she says occasionally.
"Should we have known?"
Her face changes and the words escape before she realizes what-- "I don't know, we were pretty distracted."
He stops. He looks at her. He is surprised, and so is she.
"It wasn't real," he says. Like he's reassuring someone.
Where did that smile come from? "No, it wasn't."
A moment.
Two.
Three.
And then it's gone, and his body is sagging against the wall of the ancient city again. He runs a hand over his face, and she knows he is wiping the demons away. Trying, at least. "It's strange, still."
She takes a couple of steps toward him. She shouldn't, but she does. "I know."
"It's been a week, Liz." He waits for her to correct him, but she never does. "I shouldn't react the way I do when they walk by me."
Her voice is gentle. "To us, they've been dead for almost two months. You don't have to be so hard on yourself all the time."
There's only the moon and the ambient light from the city, and she doesn't realize how close she is until his fingers are wrapped around her wrist. She doesn't stop him. He kisses her once, and it's tentative and slow and not at all the John she knows, but then, she doesn't know him at all, really.
And then it's her open mouth and her tongue. This is familiar ground and undiscovered territory, all at the same time. She presses him against the wall. She's not thinking. His hand are hovering above her waist, thumb playing just under the hem of her shirt. He draws a small circle and she makes an 'mmm' sound into his mouth. She could call him on it.
He licks his lips, mouth against hers. He speaks, whispering into her mouth: "Do you really have a tattoo, right--" and his fingertips are dancing across her hipbone to illustrate.
She walks away, and doesn't know how. But then, she only does it because she knows he'll follow her.
They're following a protocol that their minds invented. She stands in the doorway of her quarters and counts to thirty, never doubting that he'll come. And then he is there, and he kisses her and she kisses him back and, fuck, this is not what she meant by "beating the insomnia." He is already playing with the drawstring of her cotton pants when she runs her fingers through his hair.
And then he is pressing against her and she is pressed against unmade sheets. He kisses her, and it feels like the first time -- it is the first time, her rational self reminds her. He's only ever fucked her in their heads.
"It wasn't real," she mumbles. He teases her, slipping two fingers inside her, and she gasps, too. He knows what she likes.
He breathes into her ear: "This is."
The rest follows. The harder he pushes into her, the easier it is to believe.
In her mind (his mind, their minds, everybody's minds), he's been pushing her toward orgasm for three months now, even if this is the first one that counts.
It isn't so terrible in the morning. It may have been all in her imagination, but it was never terrible, waking up beside him.
"It'll get easier," he whispers into her hair. She doesn't know what he's talking about.
He leaves quietly. She tries to remember what it felt like before, when he left her alone, and finds the feeling as barely a whisper in her mind. Like the dewy air in the air that blows off the ocean. Everything is suddenly blinking into contrast.
Real, not real. Here, there. Alive, and not.
Alive.
She feels alive, in ways she hasn't for a long while.