He indulged in a ten-minute shower, half that time spent just standing and letting the nearly scalding water pour over him. After, a quick detour to the mess hall provided him with coffee and a bagel before he checked in with the control room. Assured that nothing had gone critical overnight and that nothing required his immediate attention, John headed where he most wanted to be.

The infirmary was mostly quiet when he entered, with a few nurses working and no sign of Keller; John wondered if she'd finally gone to get some rest as well. He made his way across the room with as little noise as possible, trying not to disturb the two patients who were still asleep.

The first thing John noticed as he slipped into Elizabeth's room was Rodney. He sat in the chair by her bed, head tilted back and mouth gaping as he snored quietly. John smiled fondly, wondering how long his friend had been there.

The second thing he noticed was a pair of familiar green eyes.

John faltered for a second, the force of seeing her awake and watching him unexpectedly fierce. "Elizabeth," he all but whispered, and why the hell was he so nervous? He almost couldn't breathe.

"John." Her voice was raspy from weeks of disuse but her smile was bright and she recognized him. He had no idea until that moment how terrified he'd been that she wouldn't know him.

He skirted Rodney to stand beside the bed, taking her hand out of habit. She squeezed back. "How are you feeling?" he asked quietly, out of deference to the sleeping man. Besides letting Rodney get some much-need rest, John selfishly wanted a few minutes alone with Elizabeth.

"I feel fine." He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Really, I do. What happened?"

God, where to start? "What's the last thing you remember?"

Her eyes lost their focus and her forehead scrunched a little. "We were launching," she said eventually. "We pushed an asteroid in front of the Asurans' beam and were rising out of the atmosphere so we could take Atlantis somewhere safe." She left off there but still seemed caught up in her memories, so John stayed quiet until she shook herself and looked up at him. "I take it we didn't blow up."

"We didn't. You kind of did." John pushed away the automatic guilt at not getting the city into space fast enough.

She frowned. "I what?"

He eased a hip onto the gurney, their hands still entwined. "We didn't get the shields up in time and the Asuran beam hit the central tower. You were—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat before continuing. "You were thrown down the stairs by the force of the blast. That was three weeks ago."

Elizabeth was pale. "Three weeks," she repeated faintly.

John studied her hand in his, unable to meet her eyes. "You were in a coma until last night." There was so much more that she needed to know but he needed a minute to work out how to tell her what they'd done, what Rodney had suggested and what John had allowed them to do to her. Risking a glance at her face and taking note of her pallor, he decided that maybe giving Elizabeth a few minutes would be a good idea.

They sat in silence. In the chair, Rodney snorted and shifted position but didn't wake. "I should feel worse," she said suddenly, startling him. "If I was blown down a flight of stairs and spent three weeks in a coma, I should feel a lot worse than I do." She was looking directly at him now.

John flipped her hand over, tracing his thumb over her palm and wondering which crease was her lifeline. Then he looked up and met her gaze. "It was bad, Elizabeth. You were brain dead. Keller said there was nothing...." His voice failed him and he closed his eyes for a moment.

"Tell me." He looked at her. "Tell me, John."

Sucking in a deep breath, he told her everything.

Halfway through his narrative he caught sight of Rodney waking, but he didn't interrupt as John finished the story. After, the two men sat silently and watched Elizabeth.

Her eyes were closed, her breathing a little shallower than usual and her free hand, the one not still John's, clutched the sheets tightly.

When she still hadn't spoken after a few minutes, John became concerned. "Are you okay?" He ran his thumb over her palm again.

She let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. I just.... It's a lot to take in."

He could understand that; hell, he was still trying to understand most of it and he'd had much longer to process it all. "Can I ask you something?" She lifted an eyebrow at him and John tried to phrase the question in his head before asking it aloud. "The last time you were infected by these things, they tried to convince you that Atlantis never existed. Did they do anything like that this time?" His biggest fear about letting the nanites infect her again hadn't been that the procedure wouldn't work, but that she'd be trapped in a hell of their making. If the five hours she'd been pulled under the last time had seemed like months to her, then two days would have felt like years. If he'd been responsible for putting her through that—

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "I don’t think so. I don't remember anything like that, although I think I remember dreaming. It's just vague images, though."

"They may come back to you, but it's more likely that even that will fade in a day or two." All three of them looked up as Keller entered the room. "Though from what I understand it may be better if you don't remember. How are you feeling, Dr. Weir?"

John and Rodney ducked out as Keller started examining Elizabeth, knowing that the doctor would be running dozens of tests and it would be hours before she was through.

"You checked in with your team recently?" he asked Rodney as they headed for the control room; John had a couple of meetings in an hour and a whole pile of reports he wanted to get through before Elizabeth was freed of Keller's tests. He knew her well: she'd want to know every last detail of how her city was doing and he planned to tell her.

"Most of them were still sleeping but the team working the overnight shift continued working on figuring out where we are. We still don't know, by the way."

"Any idea when we will know?" He didn't like the idea of drifting through space with no idea of where they were or how to get home.

"There's no way to tell. We could go for weeks or months without knowing, or we could find it in the database later today if we happened to gain access to the right part of the computer mainframe." Rodney shrugged, looking frustrated. "The Asurans did a number on our computer – a lot of things are still scrambled and will be for some time. There's information we may never recover."

John sighed. "Alright. Just... let me know when you find something." Rodney made a sound – John wasn't sure if it was a snort or a laugh – before veering off in the direction of the labs. John contemplated the size of the pile of paperwork waiting for him and decided that another cup of coffee was in order before tackling it.

**

By the time John got through the latest batch of reports and firearms practice it was nearly dinner, so he stopped by the infirmary.

Elizabeth was looking much better than she had that morning. She was sitting up, a book open in her lap, and she was much less pale than she had been just hours ago. Someone had brought her a change of clothes – not her uniform, but something more casual and definitely an improvement over the scrubs he'd gotten used to seeing her in the past three weeks.

"You're looking better," he remarked, stopping a few paces from the side of her bed. He fought the urge to be closer, to take her hand and feel the warmth of her skin, but she was awake and aware and looking so much like herself that he automatically reverted to the carefully maintained distance he'd always tried so hard to keep around her.

She smiled at him, rolling her eyes a little. "I wish Dr. Keller agreed. The tests all came back clear but she's insisting that I spend the night for 'observation'." He could practically hear the quotation marks around the last word.

"You hungry?" He took an unconscious step closer.

"Starving. What did you have in mind?"

"Why don’t we see if Keller will spring you long enough for supper in the mess hall?"

She looked almost as thankful as she did when he'd returned safe and sound from saving Atlantis from one enemy or another. Barely a day of being conscious and she was already sick of the infirmary. He marvelled at how healed, how whole she was. John never thought he'd be so grateful to nanites. "Sounds good."

Surprisingly, Keller agreed to let Elizabeth leave the infirmary as long as John promised he wouldn't let her out of his sight for a second – like that was a possibility anyway – and that he'd have her back within an hour.

In the end, they took their meals to her office to eat because what seemed like the entire population of Atlantis kept stopping by their table to speak to Elizabeth. She kept up a good front and took time to talk to each person, but John saw how quickly she was tiring and got her out of there with a few well-placed warning glares.

He brought her up to date on the main points while she ate, figuring the details could wait until the next day. She took in most of it silently.

"Does Rodney have any idea how long it will take to fix the computer?" she asked when he'd finished, taking a sip of water.

"No idea. Apparently they could stumble on the solution tomorrow or it might never be repaired."

She raised an eyebrow. "Let's hope it's closer to the former."

Glancing at his watch, John reluctantly stood. "It's been almost an hour. We'd better get you back."

She made a face but rose, only to sway unsteadily. John was quick to support her with a hand on her hip and shoulder.

"You okay?" he asked worriedly, wondering if he should page the infirmary.

"Yeah. I guess after three weeks in bed I should expect a few side effects, hmm?"

After three weeks of being brain dead, he thought, she shouldn't even be here at all. If the worst she suffered was a head rush from standing too quickly, she was quite possibly the luckiest person in the universe.

To his surprise, she slipped her arm around his waist as they moved past the control room into the deserted corridor beyond. Tentatively he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, holding back a sigh when she leaned into him. It was just because she was tired, he knew, but he still revelled in the feeling of her so close.

He slowed as they approached the infirmary, part of him unwilling to enter the bright and busy facility; he wished he could spend just a few more minutes alone with Elizabeth to reassure himself that this was real and not just a hallucination brought on by stress and lack of sleep.

Elizabeth twisted to face him and John regretfully let his arm fall from her shoulders. She left her hand on his waist. "What is it?" she asked quietly.

He wouldn't meet her gaze. "Nothing."

"John?"

Dammit. "It's just…." He shrugged as though it were nothing important. "I'm glad you're okay."

Her expression softened and she moved as if to touch him, pulling back at the last moment. "I wouldn't be if it weren't for you."

John couldn't say if she reached for him or he for her; all he knew was they were hugging each other in the middle of the hallway, just beyond the light spilling from the infirmary doors. Her breath was hot against his neck and he buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent.

Elizabeth pulled away first and he let her, stepping back and clearing his throat. "Breakfast at 0800?" It was something of a tradition of theirs to do their first briefing of the day over coffee and food.

She smiled. "Sounds good." She leaned up then, catching him off-guard and pressing a light kiss to his cheek. "Good night, John." She was gone before he could answer.

Grinning stupidly, John headed for his quarters.

**

Elizabeth ended up being discharged in time for breakfast amid Keller's disbelief that she had healed so quickly and thoroughly, but she refused to sign Elizabeth off as fit for duty. At the very least, she maintained, she would have to talk to Dr. Heightmeyer first.

Their meal was once again interrupted by a steady stream of well wishers, but Elizabeth refused to leave. John understood; they hadn't had an easy month and seeing their leader alive and well was a symbol of hope that they just might get through this.

She spent most of the day with him as he dealt with the minutiae that came with running a flying city that was lost somewhere in the universe, using the opportunity to get caught up on Atlantis' situation. He left her on the couch reading through reports when he went to meet Ronon for a sparring session, and returned two and a half hours later to find her sound asleep in much the same position.

Moving the laptop to a safer place, he dug out the blanket she kept in her office and covered with it before turning down the lights and ensuring the rest of the city knew the room was off limits.

**

Sometimes John wondered why he bothered getting the details from any of the scientists. He didn't understand most of what they told him and when he did get it, it usually seemed to be bad news. At the moment, they were telling him that Atlantis ran the risk of draining its remaining ZPM.

He glanced at Elizabeth, who was halfway across the lab frowning at a computer screen, then turned his attention back to McKay and Zelenka. "What if we landed on an uninhabited planet for a while, until you guys figure out where we are and how to get home? Then we could turn off the shields and the life support."

The two scientists did that silent talking thing that John didn't usually get, but he caught the undertones even before Zelenka started speaking. "It's hard to say. We would save energy by landing, yes, but the amount of power needed to lift off... it is immense. It could very well deplete our remaining power."

"How long 'til drifting through space does the same thing?"

The other two men exchanged glances again. "I'd say three—"

"Five."

"—maybe four months? There are too many variables to say with any certainty."

Four months? John knew that the computer geeks were having trouble but he'd still figured it'd take them a few more weeks at most. Four or five months was almost inconceivable.

Thankfully, the decision no longer rested on his shoulders alone; though she hadn't officially been cleared for duty, Elizabeth would definitely want a say.

He turned to see her typing rapidly at one of the laptops scattered around the room. Her brow was creased in concentration and she was barely even blinking. "Elizabeth?" She didn't respond and he called her name again, a little louder. This time she started, looking over at him and blinking rapidly as if trying to focus her gaze. "What're you doing?" he asked, curious what had held her so rapt.

Elizabeth looked almost confused. "I don't know." The laptop beeped suddenly and then Rodney was rushing over to stand next to her, muttering under his breath about amateurs playing with lab equipment. He tapped a few keys and then abruptly froze, jaw dropping as he stared at something on the monitor. Then he spun towards Elizabeth.

"Did you do this?"

Elizabeth shrank back in the face of Rodney's forcefulness and John took an instinctive step forward. "I think so."

Rodney continued to gape at her. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Now John decided to intervene. "Look, McKay, I'm sure that you can fix whatever Elizabeth might have—"

"Nonononono. You don't understand. Look at this!" He spun the laptop around to face him. John squinted, halfway hoping the technical jargon would resolve itself into something recognizable. Beside him, Zelenka whispered something in Czech. He sounded awed.

He looked at the other three. "Someone want to clue me in here?"

Zelenka still sounded almost reverent. "She found it."

John raised an eyebrow. "Found what?" He was asking the room at large but he was looking at Elizabeth. She merely stared back.

"Our position." McKay seemed stunned. "She found our position in the universe relative to Pegasus and the Milky Way."

Holy shit. Even John understood the significance of that. "How'd you do that?" he asked Elizabeth, who was starting to look a bit freaked out.

"I don't know. I saw the program running and I just sort of... knew where to look for the information. It was right where I knew it would be."

His hope they'd soon be able to head for Earth was quickly waning in the face of the implications this held for Elizabeth. A quick look at the other two men told him they were realizing the same thing: Elizabeth had just figured out in a matter of minutes what two dozen computer experts couldn't find after three weeks of exhaustive searching. While she was admittedly better with computers than he was, she still had the tech guys looking at her laptop once or twice a month. She shouldn't have been able to do what she'd done.

Elizabeth herself realized what all this might mean, because she smiled weakly at him and asked rhetorically, "I'm going to have to undergo more tests, aren't I?"

**

John woke with a start, eyes darting around the dark room as he fought to even out his breathing. Gripped by a sudden and unshakeable urge, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and headed for the door.

He hesitated outside Elizabeth's room, feeling foolish that a dream had driven him to seek her out well past midnight. Even though Keller hadn't been able to find any reason why she'd suddenly become a computer savant and didn't think there was anything to worry about, he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Going with his gut, he knocked.

She called her permission to enter almost immediately , and his suspicions that she was still awake in spite of the late hour were confirmed when he found her sitting up in bed, laptop open and a game of solitaire in progress. "Hey."

She smiled at him. "Nice pyjamas. Are we having a sleepover?"

John glanced down at his clothing, taking in his sweats and t-shirt. "I was sleeping," he started self-consciously. "I—"

He wasn't sure what to say. I had a bad dream and needed to make sure you're okay? Yeah – John didn't think so.

The smile faded slowly from Elizabeth's lips as he stood silently. After several moments she set her laptop on her bedside table and stood, coming to stand before him in the middle of her room. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head in automatic denial. "Nothing."

She gave him that look. "John."

He offered her a crooked half-smile in response. Still unsettled from the nightmare, he reached out and gently touched her arm. "How are you?"

Elizabeth tilted her head as she searched his face. "I'm fine. Keller and Heightmeyer will back that up." Her fingers grazed his cheek. "Why are you here, John?"

"I can go." He deliberately misunderstood her meaning.

She scowled at him. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

He stared at her, at this woman who was standing here in front of him in spite of all the odds, and he gave in to the yearning he'd had the past several days – hell, past several years, if he was being honest with himself. Leaning forward, he touched his lips to hers.

The kiss was chaste, but there was no mistaking the intent behind it. After just a few moments John pulled back, but then Elizabeth leaned up and their second kiss was anything but innocent. His arms slid around her waist and she took a step closer so that her chest brushed his, sliding a hand around to the back of his head to hold him to her. She made a quiet sound when his tongue stroked over her lips and John's body tightened with arousal. He took an instinctive step forward, then another and another until he'd backed her across the room and they crashed into something solid, the force of it pressing their bodies flush against each other. His hips moved into hers and she whimpered, one hand fisting in his shirt, the other sliding just beneath the waist of his sweats.

He forced himself to pull away, resting his palm against Elizabeth's flushed cheek and brushing his thumb over her lips, wet and red and he did that to her. "I should go."

"Stay."

He hesitated. "I really should—"

"Stay, John."

He stayed.