Sheppard insisted on being there when they met. She could understand the need for security, for him to make sure she was safe and Atlantis was safe, but Teyla was not all that happy about the thought of Michael's response. Neither of them liked or trusted each other. Both of them could very quickly turn this into a deadly, brief meeting.

He landed the jumper a little ways outside of the magnetic field and somehow she was able to persuade him to walk a little behind her; she still wasn't sure how she had managed that. Maybe simply the idea of all of them dying in a blaze of crossfire. Maybe she was giving him too little credit for trusting her and trusting her judgment. Which was more likely, she admitted finally to herself.

"I'll be right back," she told him, lightly touching his arm to keep him where he was. It seemed to work; he gave a curt nod and stayed back.

As long as it worked so well on Michael.

She took a step forward, then another, then slowed her pace. Hard to tell where he might be, but she could reach out with her mind and try to find him. It couldn't be that hard, could it? She had practiced. She had sensed him before, in the bunker.

Her breathing was coming faster. Anticipation, difficulty, she wasn't certain what. Labored, she felt as though she was sweating. No, she was sweating. [Michael. Are you there?]

Displeasure and near-anger slammed into her almost hard enough to knock her over. She kept her balance only by remembering that if Sheppard saw her stumble and attributed it to an attack by Michael this would all be over very, very quickly. Teyla caught her breath, braced herself and squared her shoulders back, and made herself stand tall. "Michael." This time aloud. He was close, she had gotten that much in his last sending. Close enough to be in earshot, hopefully.

[What. Do you want.]

He'd seen Sheppard; that was the only reason she could think of why he would be this upset. And if he had seen Sheppard that probably meant that he had some sort of weapon trained on both of them.

"Michael. He offered to fly me out here, he is no danger to you..."

Which brought Sheppard running up, of course. "What the hell do you mean? Of course I'm a danger to him..." It wasn't quite a whisper. She hoped it wasn't loud enough for Michael to hear.

"Do you mean to do him harm?" she hissed back.

"Not at the moment..."

"Then be quiet and let me talk to him."

Sheppard scowled, but was quiet after that. Teyla took another step, then another, closer towards Michael. Further away from Sheppard. She wasn't sure which was more accurate towards her goal.

"Michael. He only wanted to meet you, and I had no way of coming out here by myself without drawing further attention. It was the only way." Please. Surely he had to see that. Please.

She projected the plea more silently when she received no response, taking a breath and attempting to focus as best she could. She had reached him before, they had spent some time discussing her telepathic abilities and skill, at least as compared with his. She should be able to do this. [Michael.] She tried again.

She perceived several things at once: the sound of fabric and metal as Sheppard raised his P-90, the crunch of footsteps as Michael stepped out behind her, between her and Sheppard. The abrupt surge of emotion from Michael, which gave her an almost-instant headache. She took a step back and made herself say "Stop!" before either of them did anything rash. They didn't move any further, at least, but Sheppard did not lower his gun either.

Michael, it seemed, was unarmed. She wondered if that was by choice or simply because he didn't have any weapons in the complex.

"John, please." She held out a hand, gesturing for him to lower his weapon. Michael glanced back and forth between them, expressionless. "Please."

The moment stretched out between the three of them until Teyla thought her heart chest would cave in on itself from the pressure. Finally, slowly, Sheppard lowered his weapon. Michael seemed to relax, if only the tiniest bit. And then there was more staring.

"What do you want?" Michael asked finally, and Teyla started to answer. But he was facing and addressing Sheppard, and she kept quiet when she realized. And almost held her breath. Sheppard wasn't half so bad as Ronon, but all the conversations about jealousy and protectiveness were playing through her head now, reminding her that Sheppard had as many reasons, good ones too, he probably thought, to shoot Michael now as he had bullets in his gun.

"I don't know," Sheppard said finally, relaxing just a little bit as well. "Teyla?"

"I only wanted to talk."

"What do you think we have to talk about?"

Whatever progress she had made in those clandestine visits seemed to have been entirely undone. His tone was as hostile as it had been when she had first realized who he was, although thankfully not as bad as when he had first found out, when he had been human that first time.

"I think..." Teyla said, moving slowly towards him, one hand out. "We could continue any one of a number of conversations we have begun. There is still much we can learn from each other, and ..." she paused there, not really sure she wanted to say it with Sheppard standing back there.

Whether because she had been in contact with him or because he was simply perceptive, Michael's expression softened enough that she thought he understood what she hadn't said anyway. "I see."

"I don't," Sheppard said, and then didn't finish whatever he was thinking as both Teyla and Michael looked at him with varying degrees of irritation and concern. He sighed. "Teyla, are you sure you're going to be all right?"

It was a monumental leap of faith, and Teyla smiled gratefully at Sheppard, trying not to wonder why he was giving in so suddenly and so easily. Perhaps he was simply tired of the fighting.

"I'm sure, John," she told him, crossing back to him and putting her hand on his arm again. He looked down, seemed to be avoiding her gaze. "John."

She wished he wasn't so upset over this, or at least he seemed to be. She wished she could make it better, or tell him that it would be all right. Truthfully she did not know how things would turn out, but she wanted him to think better of this. He did look at her, finally. The fact that his eyes reflected more hurt and disappointment than the righteous anger of a commander was disarming.

"You be careful," he told her. Again, really, since he had been telling her the whole flight out. And then, louder, so that Michael could hear. "I'll be back to pick you up in a few days."

She didn't turn around to watch Michael's face as Sheppard turned and headed back to the Jumper. She kept her eyes on Sheppard's back, tense and rigid, until he was out of sight. And then she kept her eyes on the Jumper until it lifted off, watching until it was gone. Behind her, she had the feeling Michael was watching it too.

He was still angry when they sat down to dinner that evening, although he tempered it with fixing her food from the MREs along with her supplements that she had harvested with the botanists. Which meant that he had been watching her then, somehow. She wondered why, how she hadn't noticed him, what he had been thinking that he had been watching her for, possibly, days.

"I cannot pilot the Jumper by myself, and I cannot go out unescorted for days at a time without someone noticing," she pointed out, when the silence between them stretched too long and too far. "This way, if someone asks, Sheppard will ... back up my story." Exactly what story that was, she wasn't sure yet. Most likely Sheppard would be the one coming up with it.

Michael nodded, but he didn't say anything. She watched him, waiting for him to argue with her or ask her something, but he didn't do that either.

His head tilted back to look at her. It was a peculiarly Wraith-like gesture, and then it struck her as peculiar that she thought of it as odd that he should act Wraith-like. Was he not more Wraith than human? At least at the moment.

"Michael..." she reached out before she could figure out what she was she meant to say. And in the end the only thing she managed was that one word, his name, and her hand covering his.

He smiled a little at her, turning his hand upwards to hers and his fingers against her palm, and it was only then that she realized which hand was open underneath hers. And that was a strange sensation, as much mental as physical, she suspected. Knowing what she knew.

His smile had faded by the time she regained enough focus of thought to realize that he had picked up on her confusion.

"How do you do that?" she asked, picking on another subject and closing her hand around his before he could withdraw. "How do you hear what I am going to say without my saying it?"

"How do you imagine I do that," he said, but he looked away, as though embarrassed or ashamed of what he had done. "It is not something I should be doing."

"Why?"

It wasn't so much for the sake of knowing as for the sake of making conversation. And even so, he gave her a look as though he were wondering if she were stupid. She gave it to him right back.

"It's not polite to listen in on the thoughts of others."

Again, before she could think about what she was saying: "You are free to listen to my thoughts, if you want to know them."

He looked at her warily, measuringly, and with what appeared to be some shock. The shock was understandable; opening her mind up to his took a great deal of trust, which she felt he had earned in their last few meetings. The wariness was likely because of what tended to happen when they touched minds, always in bad circumstances. Measuringly, she wasn't sure.

"You aren't..." he said, then seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. "This is not something you are used to. I am a Wraith, I was born into this. Are you sure this is something you want to do?"

Teyla nodded slowly, certain of her intent.

It was strange. His presence in her mind, alien and yet somehow not so at the same time. It was akin to having a teacher's hands over hers as she practiced at the bantos sticks, or someone looking over her shoulder while she deciphered some text. He guided her, showed her where to go, but did not push her in any one direction and he was an amazingly good teacher.

[I am beginning to see ...] But she couldn't think of a way to end that sentence. And if they had been speaking aloud that would have been where it ended, before a completing thought.

In mind to mind contact he saw at least the shape of her intent of the rest of it, and she understood that he saw, and that too was very strange. He saw that she was understanding some of what he must have lost, leaving a world that communicated entirely on a different level than the humans, being lied to by another Wraith community.

[Outright lies are difficult, mind to mind. It is why most hives will communicate with each other through speech, presuming that the hives are not in alliance.]

She knew he was putting concepts into limiting words for her, and she was grateful. And still, Teyla felt herself almost overwhelmed by the ideas behind them, the concepts and thoughts that drove the words and thoughts sliding along each other and...

... she opened her eyes, not realizing she had closed them. It took her a couple of moments to gasp for air.

"Are you all right?"

His hand was on her shoulder, concern evident in his voice. His Wraith voice. Somehow, between their minds, she had forgotten. Had heard only Lieutenant Michael Kenmore, the man she had come to know and care for during his brief stay.

"I believe I will be," she said, forcing a smile to at least reassure him that no harm had been done. "Thank you."

Both for the lesson and for the concern. He nodded, standing and moving across the hall to the kitchen for a glass of water, which he pressed into her hand. She smiled gratefully at him, this time, for real.

"I didn't realize it would be so difficult for you," he said, a backhanded sort of apology and a tacit way of asking if she would like to continue, she thought. "If you would like..."

"Not difficult," she hastened to amend. "Merely... more intense than I was expecting."

There was an expression there that almost might have been a human smile, a tiny flicker of calm and casual amusement. No malice in it, not even wariness or antagonism. And she found it more strange that she did not find it strange at all.

"I'm afraid I won't be a very good teacher. It is not something I ever thought I would have to teach..."

"Because it is as natural to your people as learning how to speak aloud is natural to mine," Teyla nodded.

"Exactly."

The contact made the silence less oppressive. For a little while she simply sat, drank the water, let herself recover. He watched her with that same tiny almost-smile expression, and although she was more than a little curious as to what it meant, she did not ask. Not yet. Perhaps on her next visit.

"You ..." she started to say something and then stopped again. He tilted his head at her, quizzical expression more recognizeable now, perhaps because of the telepathic contact. "There is something I ... would like to ask you about, I suppose. And yet I am not sure how to ask you without sounding offensive."

The quizzical look became more pronounced. "And having said that..." he shrugged. "Ask what you want to ask."

She smiled a little crookedly, fairly sure that he wouldn't take it well regardless of her warning. But she had brought it up, she might as well ask. "You appear... more human now than you did after the first time we..." What was the right word. She didn't have any sense of how to say it. Facts seemed to be the least damaging, without inviting more tirades or at least anger. "Injected you with the retrovirus."

He did close off somewhat. But rather than angry he only looked tired, no more upset than he had been during their past several meetings. "The retrovirus was a greater success than Beckett first thought. Every injection left me halted further and further from what I was. As I reverted the second time..." He stood, looking away.

"I am sorry," she said quietly, but didn't approach. She wasn't sure what else there was to say.

"I know."

She reached out without quite knowing what she was doing, trying to attune herself to what he was thinking the way he seemed to have attuned himself to her. He flinched, and she drew her hand back where she had extended it to give herself a physical focus as well as the telepathic component.

Michael shook his head. "It's all right. You were being..." she watched him searching for a word. "Loud."

"Loud?" Teyla almost laughed. It didn't sound like a word she would have used, at any rate.

[Loud.]

Ow. At that volume, she winced, and then smiled a little ruefully. And continued to wince. "Ah. I see."

[It is a habit of children.] And by children she had the distinct impression that he means Wraith children. [You will learn more control in time.]

[I hope so. I would hate to cause you such discomfort every time I attempt to speak to you in this way.] That was gently teasing, and seemed to be at a more acceptable volume, because he smiled rather than winced that time.

She had meant, thought, to express that she was sorry, her sorrow and sympathy in a way that might be more acceptable to him, or a way that he was more used to. It was easier when they started off with telepathic communication. She had a sense of proportion, where to pitch her mental voice, how hard to push.

There was a sense of startlement, or she might have only thought that because his eyes widened a little. It was somewhat unnerving as well, to be aware of what he was feeling although he was directly across the room. It seemed somehow more intimate than they should be at three or four feet distant. She took a breath, let it out again, and tried to focus her emotions. She truly did regret what had happened between them, and she was sorry that he was in pain.

None of which meant that she had forgotten what he had done to the Taranan colony, and here there was a spark of acknowledgement. A quiet and simple admission that he was not a very nice person and, no.

No, she disagreed with that. He was not necessarily not a nice person, simply one in an untenable position. He had been victimized by both her people and his, and it would be foolish not to expect him to be upset about it.

Again the startlement. And she tilted her head at him, still not used to this method of communication and a little disturbed by how easily she was falling into it. "You did not believe me?" It felt as though she had to hear her voice aloud to remember how to speak. She was pretty sure Sheppard would not appreciate if she came back to Atlantis mute.

"I was.. not entirely sure I could believe you. Not because you were not sincere," he added, and she realized he'd withdrawn herself so neatly from her mind that she hadn't noticed she was no longer receiving his emotions any longer. "But I was not sure how much you believed, yourself."

Words, she understood now, could be so limiting. And yet she thought she understood what he meant. "I wondered. And that is part of why I come to speak with you, I want to try to understand..."

Michael shook his head again. "I do not know if you can."

"I would still like to try."

His smile was a little more broad that time, a little more real. But sadder. She wondered when it was that she would stop seeing Michael Kenmore, the human lieutenant, and simply see Michael. It was the mouth, more than anything. His mouth was particularly human, and there was absolutely no reason she should be focusing on that right now. Especially not where he could potentially hear her.

Teyla dragged her focus back to him and smiled to cover the moment. She had no idea whether she was successful or not. "May we try again?"

Walking through a Wraith ship was no longer a nightmare sensation that reduced her to a child again, quivering and fearful. Michael's memories turned it into something like home, although underneath there was still the awareness that they were the enemy, that she was food. From him, the awareness that was sad and lingering, that this was no longer home and never could be again. The images were blurry and drifted as he took her on a tour of his Hive ship, information now three years old or so. Not for the sake of intelligence or even learning more about Wraith culture, but simply sharing.

They sat crosslegged across from each other, hands clasped around each other's hands and foreheads touching. A part of her culture and a part of his, sharing memories. It seemed oddly natural to share memories. To trade experiences back and forth, her learning how to fight at the bantos, his learning hand to hand combat as a young child tusseling with other children.

[What is this?]

They asked it, over and over again, focusing on one particular memory that was incomprehensible or incoherent to them, until they weren't even saying it mind to mind anymore but conveying a sense of query.

Teyla gasped when she came out of it, sweating, breathing hard, had to step away for a little while and bring herself back. He waited, watching her, still seated on the floor and calm enough that she was grateful for his steadying influence. He seemed unsure of whether or not she would come back at first. After the second time he didn't seem to worry so much.

It was a more intimate experience than she was used to, and while she was no longer so apprehensive of being in an intimate situation with a Wraith, the fact remained that he was essentially crawling down into her soul and seeing her private thoughts and imaginings in a way she had never believed another person could. Not uninvited, of course, never that. He had told her, when it had come up in conversation and gently with repetition, that he would not invade her mind. And, between his words and his actions, she believed him. Had faith in his sincerity, as strange as that sounded when she tried to explain it out loud.

And yet if that explanation would have sounded strange to John had she tried to tell him, it would have been eclipsed by Michael himself. He smiled, a real smile of companionship and other things as yet too new to their relationship to name. They talked, moved around each other calmly and quietly, as two friends might in any other place or circumstance.

In fact, apart from his hands and his eyes, certain aspects of his face, it was hard to remember sometimes that he was a Wraith at all.

It was hard to believe that so little time had passed, either.

"Why is it that you no longer seem to hate us?" she did ask, once, during a brief respite from their exchange sessions.

He smiled at her. "Why is it you no longer seem to hate me?"

"I never hated you," she corrected him, but she smiled back. "I was angry with you, yes, but that is not the same thing. I ..."

She stopped. He waited.

"I do not know. Perhaps it is because we seem to understand each other better now than we ever did. I reserve the right to be angry with you in the future," she pointed a finger at him, and he laughed with her. "But I do not think I could hate you now."

Michael's eyes dropped to the floor, something weighing on his mind, or perhaps unwilling to let her see how that affected him. She reached out, one hand light on his shoulder, but didn't otherwise move.

"You think I don't hate you anymore," he said to the floor. "But you would be wrong."

There was a threat underneath the words, and the same weariness that he had had since she came to him after the rescue. The only difference was that this time the weariness seemed to be more on the surface, threaded all through his voice and making it rougher than his usual deep tones. Making it waver. He turned, sat down heavily. Teyla watched him for a long moment before she found herself kneeling in front of him.

"Not all of us."

"No. Not all of you." His hands curled around hers automatically. They needed to touch each other these days, she found. Even when they weren't joined mind to mind, as though they needed the security of that connection.

"We turned your life upside down and took away your home, your family..." She didn't mean to make him remember and yet she wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop, not yet. "I cannot imagine how you wouldn't hate us, some part of you, at least."

He didn't answer for a time. Her fingers traced along the edge of his hand, wrist to the tip of his thumb and back again. It was an intimate gesture that seemed so much less out of place than it would have the last time they spoke.

"There are times when I do hate ... certain people," he said, and she wondered until she realized who those certain people must be. "For what they have done to me. But they are all beyond my reach, and what good does it do to continue to ..."

He trailed off there, and she thought about reaching for him, mind-to-mind, to see what it was he meant to say or at least the shape of it. She did want to know, if he wanted to tell her. His fingers laced through hers and she barely noticed, extending her mental invitation and query without so much as a second thought. It was reflex by now, almost, to ask him in that way.

Sadness, and weariness, and not knowing what to do. Where to go. He was sitting here in limbo, wasting time when she was not here and stealing moments when she was. Hate no longer kept him busy, and he had nothing else. The emptiness she felt in small part when their minds separated after one of their sessions was constantly with him, the loss of his Hive. And when they touched, he was no longer alone, but it was only a finite source of relief.

She wished it didn't have to be that way. Wanted to offer to bring him back to Atlantis, but they both knew how that would turn out. Even if no other person on Atlantis remembered who he was or what he had done, there was Ronon. And Sheppard, now, for different reasons. He was amused that Sheppard thought of him that way; a Wraith was hardly a suitable romantic rival. And, was there some truth to that?

She thought, perhaps, there might be.

It startled him, but not half so much as she startled herself when she realized she had closed the distance between them. Neither Wraith nor human anymore, not any one thing particularly, he was simply Michael to her. And Michael was someone she cared for, very much. Perhaps even in the way that the kiss, the way her lips touched his and held there, was only the natural conclusion of their many conversations both aloud and not so much.

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

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