When Teyla woke at last, she did not at first know where she was. The world seemed fogged over in a haze of pain and her body did not work the way it should. She tried to move, and found herself restrained. Restrained and tucked into bed.

"Hello?" Restrained was one thing, but tucked into bed implied that it was for her own good, and given the white hot jagged edge of pain that pressed against her chest and she tried to struggle against the restraints, she was inclined to both believe that her unseen captor at her best interests at heart and to agree with him. A broken collarbone, a broken rib, something.

In bits and pieces, her memory of the last few hours returned. Or at least, what she thought with the last few hours. The shuttle's survey team with two scientists and another Athosian, a magnetic anomaly that had disabled the Jumper's systems, the impending crash. The pilot warning them to brace themselves for impact. Darkness.

Suddenly it became imperative that she get out of bed. "Hello?" she called, a little more urgently. "Is anyone there?"

There was someone there. She knew someone was there, she heard the person's footsteps approaching her. But she didn't see who it was, not when they came up behind her and injected her with a sedative. In minutes she was unconscious again.

Awake again. In less pain, this time, although whether that was due to pain killers or to the natural healing process, she didn't know. She still didn't see anyone, but her unseen benefactor had given her a new perspective on the room. She was raised up a little more now, and could see around her.

More than that, she could see a bed with the sheets still wrinkled, as though someone had been lying in it recently. There was some medical equipment next to it, all of it disconnected and folded neatly into a position that indicated it was not expected to be needed at any time soon. Perhaps she had not been the only survivor, but simply the only one to survive so long.

Teyla tried to move her fingers, and was more than a little relieved to find that she could. She might not have been able to undo the restraints, but she could at least feel and move all of her limbs.

"I am in less pain now," she said, a little louder so that if anyone else was in the room they might hear her. "I am healing, thanks to you."

No answer. Perhaps they simply weren't there.

Rapidly, she began to realize why Sheppard and McKay could be such poor patients. It was incredibly boring being strapped to a bed for hours on end. It was enough to make anyone wary of prolonged medical treatment.

"I would like to thank you," she tried again, after what felt like hours and hours. "And I am curious as to the fate of my companions, although I suppose you would have communicated to me in some way if they had survived as well." Or perhaps that was overdoing it.

Still silence. It was getting wearying, and she was a little afraid of the echo of her voice. The longer the silence went on, the more strange possibilities had time to work their way into her mind. The Genii? The Replicators?

"I hoped you did intend to feed me," she said finally, before the needle came again and she was unconscious.

This time when she awoke, her restraints were somewhat more unusual and inspired.

One hand was free, the other still tethered to the bed. She could sit up, a very little bit, but enough to bring her head vertical and her shoulders as well, just a bit. It seemed as though the whole contraption had been jury rigged from bandages, ties, and medical tape of some kind. There was also a tray in front of her, and a bowl of soup. One of the MREs of which Dr. McKay was so fond.

There was a flash of familiarity there, that was dismissed out of hand as being ridiculous. But she did note that whoever her caretaker was, they seemed to have made good use of the Jumper's supplies.

She ate carefully, mindful that it was still hot (and what did it say about how recently her captor/caretaker had been there?) And that she would quite likely not be able to eat very much in the way of solid food for now. When the bowl was nearly empty she pushed it a little ways out in front of her, settled back into the bed, and closed her eyes.

Meditation was good for many things, and this was not the first time she had tried this trick. Whoever her captor was, they were most likely watching her to make sure she didn't choke on her food, and to see when she had finished. If she fell asleep voluntarily it might make them more inclined to come out and take the bowl away, giving her her first good look at the person.

As skilled as she was at keeping her body relaxed and her face composed, her eyes just opened far enough to be able to see beneath the lashes, it wasn't enough to silence the telling beep of the monitor as her pulse jumped.

He stopped, not much more than halfway into the room but close enough to be well-lit and very recognizable. "You might as well open your eyes, Teyla. I know that you're awake."

"Michael." She opened her eyes, not bothering to conceal the shock and astonishment on her face. "What have you done with the others?"

The words were out before she could give them consideration, and yet even if she had she didn't know if it would have made a difference. His face twisted a little, and his stride as he moved up closer to her to take the bowl away was angry. He didn't say anything.

"Michael." She tried to catch his arm with her free hand, but he stepped out of the way more quickly than she could move. "I did not mean it that way. We crashed, you have..." she didn't know what to call it. "You have saved my life, but are any of the others still alive?"

He was quiet for a moment, standing there with bowl in hand. "The pilot was dead on impact," he said finally. "The two scientists shortly thereafter. The third lived for another two days."

She wanted, a little bit, to ask if he had gotten hungry. Perhaps she had been hanging around with Sheppard a little too much. "Thank you."

Michael gave her a startled look, as though he hadn't expected her to thank him. He might not have expected anything of her at all. She hadn't been terribly sure, herself. The last time they had both been in this position he had been in the process of feeding her to an Iratus bug.

Which reminded her of a question she might want to ask. "What are your intentions?"

He took the bowl over to what appeared to be a tray of dirty things, wheeling it over to the door before he answered her.

"Your friends are already looking for you. It would not be safe for me or for them for me to keep you here. I have already moved the bodies of your friends to the crash site, and since you seem to be stable I will move you there as well. And I will trust," he added, with particular emphasis on that so very dangerous word. "I will trust that you will not tell them about me."

He left before she could answer, which was all right, since she didn't know how she would answer anyway. It was hard for her to imagine that he would believe that they would believe what happened, that ridiculous story about a crash with no survivors but her when she had so obviously had medical attention. She asked him as much, when he came back to undo her restraints.

"How can you believe that they will not have questions for me, how did I survive, who aided me?"

Michael snorted. "They will be so grateful to have you back and alive that they will not ask questions they do not want to know the answers to. They won't want to think about what might have happened."

"That is..." insightful, was what that was. She hadn't expected that kind of insight from him. But why not? He had been insightful about every other point of interaction between them. "You may be right."

He didn't say anything. He also didn't help her off the bed, and started to push it just as she tried to get off, herself. "Don't..."

Her legs crumpled down to the ground, weak and failing her. She hit the floor in a heap of limbs and a position that would've been painful even if she hadn't been injured, crying out with the shock and pain of it.

Instantly he was kneeling down beside her, one arm around her shoulders and one hand carefully wrapped around her upper arm, helping her uncurled her wounded torso. "That was stupid," he all but snarled.

"So I see," she said, strained but trying to put a rueful smile on her face. Everything hurt. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move, and her world swam before her eyes in waiting patterns and little red dots of light. Seemingly without effort, he scooped her up in his arms and laid her very carefully out on the bed again.

"Do I need to tell you not to move again?"

"No," she whispered, deciding not to waste more breath on louder speech. "Thank you, again."

He gave her what she thought was an odd and slightly puzzled look, before wheeling her out of the room and down the corridor. Whatever this complex was, outside of that medical room it looked very worn down. The walls and ceilings seem to be eaten away with moss, and she wondered a little whether or not he was worried about the ceiling collapsing in on them. Probably not.

It only occurred to her then that he must have been living here at least for some time, on the planet, with them. "Did you follow us here?" she asked, trying to understand. "How did you find us?"

He didn't answer. Decaying and broken hallway gave way to a place that looked at least a little more lived in, fixed up. She craned her neck around to look at her surroundings, to try and get an idea of where this place was that he lived and how long he had lived here. Again, the pain stopped her, pushed her back against the bed with a hiss.

"Stop that," he said, more sharply.

She closed her eyes, nodding as much as she could without straining herself. "How long have you lived here?" Perhaps that was a question he would answer.

They were out of doors by the time he did. "Less than a month," he said, and his voice was more subdued now. Strange how attentive she was to his moods, or perhaps that was simply a response to being his captive again. "Long enough to have some room to breathe."

Teyla was fairly sure she wasn't supposed to have heard that part.

It was harder going on the soft earth, but he went slower, and kept her as still as possible. "How did you find us? You must have been nearby..." although the crash or at least the preceding magnetic surge would have wiped out all records of where they had been. And then it occurred to her that the rescuing Jumper would be able to record exactly where they landed.

Hopefully that magnetic surge was a one-time thing.

He still wasn't answering, and she didn't press. There were a number of questions she wanted to ask him, and even more answers she was afraid of getting. And now she could see the Jumper ahead, and she wasn't sure what to say.

No. She did know one thing to say. "And what have you done with your army?" Her voice might have been just a little more bitter and angry than it should have been. At least, if she wanted an honest response. Or a response at all.

"They have been destroyed." He said it quietly, with no discernible emotion. She wasn't sure whether or not to believe him. "You will be safe here, at least for as long as it takes them to arrive. I've activated the Jumper's distress beacon."

"How will...?"

"Be quiet." He told her, enforcing it with another injection that silenced any more questions more surely than his words would have. And which was an answer in and of itself, although to which question and what kind of answer she wasn't sure.

Teyla's eyes opened again, and she was in the infirmary on Atlantis. She didn't remember having been picked up in another jumper, although she was not surprised to see Sheppard sprawled out and asleep in a chair by her bedside.

"Hey you," Ronon smiled at her with ill-disguised relief, pulling up another chair. She felt a little guilty for the fact that her first thought was, looking as calm as that, they must not have found any trace of Michael.

Still, she gave him an exhausted smile. "It is good to see you again," she told him, squeezing his hand when he wrapped it around hers.

"It's good to see you," he told her. "We thought..." the statement ended in a shrug, but she could finish the rest of his sentence well enough.

"I am all right." With particular emphasis on those last two words. She wasn't unharmed, but they could see that she was all right, and would recover. And that was the important part. There were four people back in the wreckage of the Jumper who would not recover.

Which reminded her. "The others?" Although she looked around the infirmary as if to see who else was there, knowing there wouldn't be anyone but doctors and visitors and patients with minor ailments or injuries.

"No one else survived. I'm sorry."

Teyla closed her eyes, nodding, feeling as though she could allow herself to grieve for them now. She wasn't quite there yet, perhaps, still processing everything that happened in the last however long it had been. "How long have I been here?" she asked, opening her eyes again.

"You've been out for about a day," Sheppard said, sitting up a little and stretching. "Apart from the dehydration from sleeping a lot, and the injuries of course, Keller says you're doing pretty good."

Teyla forced herself not to show any kind of alarm or undue concern at that. "I was lucky," was all she said, since they weren't asking her any questions.

Both men seem to agree, although neither of them said anything. Since Ronon had claimed the other hand Sheppard took her free hand in his, both of them clinging in their own quiet and stoic way. She closed her eyes rather than make herself dizzy looking back and forth between the two of them, but she was smiling. "I'm sure you to have duties you should be attending to," she told them, knowing it wouldn't do much good.

"Probably," Sheppard agreed, not moving. Ronon only snorted and said nothing.

She leaned back in the bed and allowed herself to relax, not to think about Michael or the bizarre rescue or anything but what drifted through her mind at the time. Which was when she realized that she would have to force herself to stop thinking about Michael if she wanted to avoid those thoughts at all. The circumstances had been less than she would have wanted, and yet. He hadn't harmed her. He had helped her, as little as he could. He had done nothing that she would have expected.

If she had even expected to see him again. Of all the people who could have been keeping her captive or hostage, he would have been the last she would have expected on their very own, very new planet. And how had he gotten here in the first place?

She was busy trying to figure that out when she slipped into actual, undrugged sleep for the first time in days.

"I really do not think anything would come of trying to explore that part of the continent."

It was harder than she would have thought to convince them not to go back to the crash site. Apparently the magnetic phenomenon was either less intermittent than she had thought, or Michael was controlling it. Sheppard had had difficulties trying to fly over that area as well, and only experience with a previous and similar phenomenon had enabled him to recognize it for what it was and land some distance off before he crashed, too.

Carter, on the other hand, seemed determined to explore. "There's no reason to think that there's any hostile presence there, Teyla, you said so yourself."

Teyla managed not to wince. She had, and it was not a lie, if only because she didn't think Michael would be hostile until they intruded upon his sanctuary. And then he would be the familiar, hateful presence they had all come to know. Or rather, the rest of the team had come to know.

She wondered how it was that she had come to see a different side of him. And if she was the only one.

"I do not think there is any hostile presence there, no. If there were, I would not have ..." Both Sheppard and Ronon looked uncomfortable at what she was starting to say. "Well, I do not believe I would have been so well off as I was. Even so, there does not seem to be anything of value in that part of the continent that cannot be found elsewhere, and the magnetic anomaly is unstable. It would take resources to enter the area on foot, resources that would be better spent elsewhere."

"But we don't even know what's causing the anomaly!" The argument from McKay, she had all but counted on. "There could be some kind of technology there, something we could use, there could even be a Zed-PM down there..."

"Rodney, if there was any kind of technology we could use on this planet, I think we would have found it by now."

Teyla made herself not look at Sheppard when he said it, or at least, not with the kind of gratitude she wanted to express. A rueful smile, perhaps, sharing sympathy with him for McKay's constant struggle against what she thought he saw as a military dictatorship uncaring of his need for scientific advancement.

Sheppard gave her a similar smile in return, but she thought there was something more behind it, some kind of question. Perhaps he suspected that everything was not as it seemed with her survival. Perhaps Michael had been wrong about their relief overshadowing their observations.

Perhaps not. The conversation went on around her, without her.

"All right," Carter said finally, and Teyla wondered what she had missed that had made the woman acquiesce so easily. "I'll post a warning and have that quadrant prohibited to all Jumper flight."

They disbanded, Teyla lingering behind. "Colonel Carter... John. I know that what I just said will make this seem... unusual. But..."

"You want to go back to the crash site," Sheppard interrupted, finishing her sentence with a tiny smile and that same strange look in his eyes.

Colonel Carter looked back and forth between the two of them as though she genuinely had no idea what they were talking about. "Is that true?" she asked Teyla, who resisted the urge to shift about uncomfortably. This was not a conversation she wanted to have, as necessary as it seemed to be.

"It is. One of my ... one of my close friends," she amended, although she and Erich had not been as close in the last few years as they had been in the past. "Died at that crash site. I would like to... say goodbye. I would go in on foot, of course. It would likely take a few days, perhaps a week." And she held her breath, wondering if that would be met with opposition or confusion at best.

Carter only shrugged. "I don't see why not. We're not under a threat of any kind,"

"For once," Sheppard muttered.

"And there's no reason we can't spare you for a week. Do what you have to do," Carter nodded. "Did you want to take someone with you?"

"No," Teyla smiled a little, grateful, for the first time since she had come to Atlantis, that none of her friends from Earth had bothered to ask or learn anything about Athosian customs. "Thank you, this is something I would rather do by myself."

"I'll fly you in, if you want," Sheppard offered. "Drop you off, pick you up when you're ready."

Carter nodded, moving on from the subject and from where they had stopped in the hallway, leaving them to arrange it between themselves. Teyla tipped her head up to give Sheppard a curious and searching look, wondering why he had offered. If there was something more to it, if he had suspected something, or if he was simply grateful that she was alive. Things had been changing between them, she realized again, in one of those strange little moments where the obvious seemed to catch up with her all of a sudden. She wasn't sure where they stood in relation to each other anymore.

"Thank you," she said, after she still hadn't answered for a minute or two. "I would be grateful. I would like that," she amended it to something a little more personal. "I really would."

John's fingers brushed over her shoulder, an expression of simple and wordless sympathy that should not have moved her almost to tears the way it did. "Whenever you're ready," he said after a minute, and headed off down the corridor. Teyla watched him go, wondering both just what it was that he thought he knew, and what there was to know in the first place.

They stopped just outside of the coordinates of the first known encounter with the magnetic field, setting down in a clearing in the woods. Teyla picked up her pack without a word, moving slowly as she went towards the Jumper bay doors, but still moving.

"Hey..." John was leaning against the inner hull, frowning, some sort of expression on his face that suggested nervousness but that she still couldn't entirely read. "Are you sure you'll be all right for a week out there?"

Out there with Michael. That was the tricky part; she had spent longer days than simply a week in the woods by herself with little ill effect. But Michael was unpredictable and she still didn't know how he felt towards her. He hadn't killed her or fed on her when he could have, though, and that was something.

"I will be fine," she assured him, smiling. And then: "I need to do this, John."

"All right. Gimme a call if you need me."

The flaw in this plan, she realized, was that she was heading off into the woods with no real idea of where she was going. She knew where the crash site was from here, and would make her good-byes when she got there, but after that she had less than any sort of idea where to go. Where Michael's base was, if she had ever even been there, or what direction to take. She was not the tracker Ronon was, and though she would try, she had to wonder if she would find any sign of Michael.

Not, she reminded herself, if she didn't get moving. She cast one look over her shoulder; Sheppard was still standing in the Jumper doorway, watching her. Teyla looked down, then squared her shoulders and moved on.

There was no one at the crash site. No bodies. The jungle or forest had already started to reclaim the wreckage in the time it had taken for her to heal from her injuries. She didn't remember the last few minutes of the flight, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she didn't want to remember. The part she wanted to remember, the direction of approach on the gurney, was foggy as well.

Teyla backed out of the wreckage again and took her time walking around it. Surely there was some angle from which this crash site would be familiar. She had been awake when he had brought her here again. There had to be something.

There was, a little something. A flash of recognition, or... something.

She turned, heading straight back along the angle of approach that she thought she had discovered. As she walked, she focused herself. Her mind. Could she remember what it had felt like the last time? She had sensed him, not quite a Wraith, the last time. Second to last time.

"Michael," she muttered, slipping through the trees. "Where are you."

Nothing.

Teyla closed her eyes and leaned up against a tree after nearly two hours of walking, breathing slow, frustrated. This was pointless. She didn't know how far away he was from the crash site, but the site he had brought her from hadn't been this far. Or, if this far, not much further. There was no point in exhausting herself like this until she was sure, and she had sensed him the last time they had met, at the Taranan's settlement.

Which brought up the uncomfortable question of how he was surviving. How he was feeding. "And then again," she told herself, mind racing, "The Queen survived under the water for thousands of years on the complement of an entire crew..."

There was no way of knowing. She closed her eyes and reached out the one way she could think of that was left to her, that did not involve wandering in the woods. "Michael..." she sighed. "Where are you."

It was slippery, and almost gone. He did not feel like a Wraith. He did not feel like anything she had experienced before. And there was something in the background, and she had never stretched so far or for so long, or to sense one specific person so acutely. Had never tried to use her gift in this way before. It was easier, after a moment, or perhaps closer.

"Michael, please."

"What do you want."

Her eyes flew open. From behind her, from... she whirled.

At least he was unarmed.

"Teyla. What do you want."

"I..." It was almost dark now. "May I join you?" Gesturing at the way he seemed to have come, and hoping it was the right direction.

His expression didn't exactly change, but she had the sense of incredulity and amusement. "For dinner? For conversation? There is nothing we have left to say to each other." And bitterness, from his tone. Deep bitterness but none of the anger she had gotten from him earlier. Strange, that.

"If I believed that were true," she said, and took a step towards him. "I would not have come out here to find you. Alone," she added, just in case he was looking for the ambush. Which he probably had been.

"Alone," he repeated, not quite believing it. "And Sheppard and your too-hasty friend allowed it?"

Ronon. Teyla shook her head. Ronon would never have let her come out here alone, let alone for an entire week, if he had known Michael was out here. "They do not know you are here. I did not tell them, they did not suspect..." Sheppard suspected something, but whatever it was he thought he knew, she wasn't sure.

"And how did you convince them to bring you out here, and leave you all alone for..."

"A week. I told them... It doesn't matter what I told them." She did not want to tell him, wasn't ready to share that part of herself with him. If she ever would be. If this went bad she would be calling Sheppard to come and pick her up a lot sooner.

"A week?" That startled him.

Teyla nodded, a little more at ease and sure of herself for having startled him. Or possibly simply now possessing the confidence of having gotten the upper hand, the surer conversational footing.

"You said, some time ago, that you did not believe that I would like to be your friend. But now I am here, and I would like to," her words slowed as she chose them more carefully. "Prove to you that it is no more or less than the truth." Very, very carefully.

He didn't say anything for long enough to make her nervous, and shift her stance just a bit. He looked angry, but that didn't mean he was, and it didn't mean he wasn't, and given how he had reacted every time they had argued over the necessity of what they did to each other... which gave her an idea.

"Every time we have encountered each other before it has been in a situation where we felt compelled to act. Here, now... unless there are other circumstances of which I am unaware... neither of us is compelled to do, or, or say any certain thing."

Michael nodded slightly, acknowledging that that was true. Which was a good thing, because she hadn't been certain that it was, on his part.

"Then ..." She was rapidly losing the thread of what she wanted to say. "Could we not go somewhere, to talk? Please." There was really no other way to put it so simply.

And even with that, he stared at her for a long time before turning and heading off in another direction. She stayed where she was, uncertain as to whether or not she was supposed to follow. Too much history led to too much tension in the air between them. He might have just been saying no without ...

"Are you coming?" Drifted back from the trees ahead.

Or, indeed, perhaps not. She followed, wondering where he was taking her, what she had gotten herself into this time.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.

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