John purposely took Elizabeth to the upper level of the infirmary to hold off her coming into direct contact with anything that could pass on the plague. He didn’t want her in the area at all but had learned over the last few months or so that she, if not both of them, needed to keep their authority in public and most of all in situations like this. Sure, he had wanted to argue, he always did and his instinct was to protect her at all costs. But he knew he couldn’t force her to stay behind and if they wanted their relationship to work he needed to know when to back down.
This situation, though, scared him more than anything. One wrong move and he could lose her, or the baby, or worse yet – both of them and any one of those possibilities was not acceptable. Though he had to admit what had happened to Bethan all those years ago frightened him just as much. For him to die and leave her to look after a baby alone – especially if history was going to repeat itself – was daunting and he couldn’t fight off the sense that he’d lived this life before.
They turned the corner at the end of the corridor and stopped. John’s brow rose as he took in the gap that ran the length of the next hallways, the cracks and bows in the metal walls.
“Well,” John said. “Either Teyla was underplaying the damage up here, or that quake did some serious reconstruction.”
“This is right above Josiah and the boys,” Elizabeth said. John watched her for a moment, eyes on the floor as though she could see into the rooms below.
Clearing his throat, John moved forwards and looked down into the space below. At first he thought there was nothing, but just as he was ready to turn away he caught sight of what looked like a hand. He turned, jumping slightly at how close Elizabeth was, and moved back towards the stairs. He could hear her behind him as he took the stairs two at a time and turned into the lower isolation corridor. Another giant gash in the floor greeted him and mindful that Elizabeth was following him, he navigated it to the ‘T’ junction.
“Oh... Crap!” He breathed. He’d turned to the spot he’d found Elizabeth at earlier and was presented with a horrific and blood churning sight.
All the chambers in this section of the corridor had been opened or crushed and he had already noticed the destroyed area where Bethan’s boys had been. Movement at his side had him turning and he realised too late that Elizabeth was making her way towards Josiah. His heart leapt when he saw the man move, still alive amongst the dead and reaching for John’s pregnant fiance.
“Carson,” John said activating his radio.
“It worked,” John heard Josiah breathe as Elizabeth reached him.
“We have a serious containment breach here. At least one of these people is still alive.”
”On my way,” Carson replied.
“It worked,” Josiah repeated as Elizabeth crouched down beside him. “You came.”
“What worked?” John asked stepping closer and feeling the hand of a very thin woman around his ankle. He watched her for a moment as she struggled to breathe and found himself wishing for the first time ever that he knew more than how to stick a bandage on a cut.
“The dreams,” Josiah said, taking a deep wheezing breath. “I wasn’t sure they could be retrieved, it has taken me years to find where they placed Bethan’s soul.”
“Placed her soul?” Elizabeth asked. “I don’t understand.”
One withered hand reached up and John watched as Josiah ran a finger down the side of Elizabeth’s face. The look on his face reminded him just how Elizabeth looked at him, loving and caring, with a touch of fear that one day it would all be gone. He was sure he gave her that look more than she gave it to him.
“You look so much like her,” he said. “Your eyes are what drew me to you, what drew me to her.”
The hand around John’s ankle relaxed and he looked down at the now dead woman, she reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t quite place her face. Carson turned the corner at the junction and John heard the breathed “oh god” he let out through the contamination suit.
“Our souls are recycled.” Josiah coughed hard as Carson settled beside him and began to examine him. “They started doing it shortly after my ancestors learned what ascension was, when they discovered our souls just lingered - trapped between our ascended selves and our dead bodies.” He winced and Carson apologised.
John moved back a step and turned to look into the desolated room of the twin boys. It was horrible sight, even though he couldn’t make out the difference between the destroyed room and the two five year old boys. He prayed they were wrong about the plague, that all these years later it had died in the bodies of these people, starved of nutrition and oxygen. He would pray hard for that if only to keep Elizabeth safe.
“Passing them on to a new life and hoping the memories and knowledge would continue or pass forwards,” Josiah continued, stopping every few words to cough. “It didn’t seem to always work. Then there were the few, over time that would gain the memories the more often they were recycled.” He stopped to take another deep breath as Carson listened to his heart. “Like you, both of you,” he said turning to look at John for the first time and raising a brow.
“I have a recycled soul?” John asked and nervously licked his lips.
“Yes, most people do,” Josiah said as John watched Carson shake his head at Elizabeth. He watched the tears slip down her cheek silently before Josiah continued. “Though you were probably selected carefully because of our status. The memories are there, buried deep in your subconscious.” He stopped to cough again. “I tapped into what I hoped were yours,” he said turning back to Elizabeth, “surfaced the dreams to show you what had happened to us, how our population was depleted so horribly and where it had started. I didn’t want to force the pain on you,” he said with a cough, “but I knew that the quakes here would soon destroy the city and virus would be released.”
“So why bring us here? To make us suffer like you did? So we can watch our baby die?”
“No,” Josiah said his breathing extremely laboured and the coughing started to grate more at his throat. “You are the cure,” he said more to Elizabeth than him. “We were too late in finding it, but together, you are the cure. You can stop it from spreading from the city out across the galaxy.”
“How?” Carson asked. “What’s so special about them?”
“Their combined,” Josiah started. He couldn’t finish, the coughing became too much and eventually his breathing was reduced to a few ragged breaths. “Just,” he managed to breathe, his eyes fixed on Elizabeth, “as beautiful as Bethan,” he managed before he went completely limp.
Elizabeth pushed back instantly, pressing her back against the cracked wall behind her and her eyes fixed on the now dead body of the man responsible for her dreams and relationship with John. John moved around him quickly and carefully touched her shoulder to get her attention; the pain in her eyes when she turned to him reminded him of how she had been when she’d first woken up from the dreams.
“I’m still here,” John said and wrapped his arms around her as she moved towards him. “Please tell me the virus didn’t get released with them,” John asked watching Carson, now moving between the other bodies scattered around the area. John’s radio activated, but he didn’t listen to the report, choosing to focus on Elizabeth and Carson.
“I don’t know that, yet,” Carson said. “I’m going to have to take fresh blood from you both and keep you separated from the others. At least for the time being.”
“Where do you want us?” John asked aware that Elizabeth had stopped crying and was resting almost completely limp against him.
“Main infirmary,” Carson said. “Get some rest while you’re there. Allison, can you take blood before they go?” he said turning to one of the nurses.
~~**~~
John sat on the bed next to Elizabeth in the infirmary, he’d looked around for a few minutes after she’d finally fallen asleep but he couldn’t find anything of interest. He was too confused; too concerned to think of anything except the details Josiah had given them. They were the answer, together. Did that mean a mixture of their DNA, some weird concoction that Carson could whip up to give everyone else? Or was it something else.
There was something niggling at the back of John’s brain; he could feel a sense of familiarity of the room, of sitting, as he did now, on one of the beds watching her. Watching Bethan and their doctor. But the memory was being illusive. He had to figure out what it was before it was too late for them; the answer was there, in front of him – literally. He gave a short, sharp laugh.
“How ironic,” he said aloud. “Find the woman you’re meant to be with, only to have her taken away by a twenty thousand year old virus.”
“Doesn’t get any weirder does it?” John turned at the sound of the voice and found a woman standing nearby, her hand just resting on the foot of his bed. Aside from the thinned face and hollowed eyes, she could have been Elizabeth.
“Bethan?”
The woman nodded. “I’ll be back to help you John,” she said. “Just as soon as you remember why this room makes your brain work overtime. But I will suggest you move back two beds. It’ll help.”
He blinked at her and she just smiled at him. He turned to look at the beds behind him and then turned back to ask why but she’d gone.
~~**~~
John pried his eyes open slightly confused about the level of noise in the room. Last he remembered he had been in the infirmary with Elizabeth, everyone else had stayed or returned to the gate room. Yet, now there seemed to be an abundance of noise. He pushed up slowly and looked around, it was the same room and he was in the same bed he’d fallen asleep in, only now there were a dozen or so people he didn’t recognise.
A man approached, dressed slightly different from everyone else. John guessed he was the doctor and gave him a smile, but when the man spoke an unintelligible noise came out, as though he was using a very old and extremely poor quality microphone. After a minute the man turned and as he said one last thing John caught sight of Bethan. He knew it was her - the differences between her and Elizabeth were clear in her younger years.
As the doctor moved her towards the next bed John started to picture Elizabeth in her mid 20’s. He was pulled out of the thought when Bethan said something, but as with the doctor, the words came out crackled and fuzzy. John just smiled and watched silently as a nurse took a blood sample from Bethan. He could understand why Josiah had fallen in love with her so easily, she was just as beautiful as Elizabeth - the same high cheek bones, gentle skin, playful eyes and, of course, kissable lips. John licked his own lips to remind himself of Elizabeth’s taste as the nurse moved away.
The doctor spoke again as he reappeared with a handheld device and as Bethan shifted to lay back, John noticed she was pregnant, just a little ahead of Elizabeth. John jumped off the bed and moved to the side of Bethan’s bed, she reached for him instantly and John took her hand without thinking. He looked down at her, picking out the slight fear in her eyes; she opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the strong steady beat of the baby’s heart.
“She looks perfectly healthy,” the doctor said and it took a few seconds for John to realise he had heard the words instead of noise. It was short lived thought as the next thing he said was back to the horrible sound of a bad microphone.
Bethan nodded at something and the doctor gave a smile and moved away. Confused, John waited patiently, looking anywhere but at Bethan until she tugged on his hand and asked him something. Not knowing what she’d said, John just smiled and hoped the doctor would return soon. Bethan managed to ask again before the doctor returned with a nurse and something that looked a lot like a needle. He talked for a few minutes, John assumed he was explaining what he was going to do, but as it all came out muffled and crackling, he couldn’t work out just what was going on. He quickly got the idea when the needled came into play and he watched as a sample of the baby’s DNA was collected.
“If I’m right,” the doctor began, but everything that followed was muffled again and John let out a frustrated sigh.
~~**~~
Carson huffed out a furious breath and turned away from the computer screen. He would have given anything at that moment to be able to rub his eyes in hopes of waking himself up. But the containment suit made that simple action impossible. He settled for a quick shake of his head and turned back to the blood tests. The first round had finished over an hour ago and had been clear of any pathogens, but those samples had been taken before the earthquake and he’d wasted quite a bit of time since then questioning himself, knowing that he could have avoided all of this if he’d just quarantined them and taken them back to Atlantis. He’d been stubborn though, thinking the whole place was contaminated and had forced them to stick to one of his protocols for disease control. He sighed again and forced the train of thought out of his mind in favour of working on the current problem.
John’s sample had come back with bad results, as had Lorne’s and Peters’, he’d done Elizabeth’s once already, but it had shown the same results as her previous test – nothing. It was her test he was doing now, for the second time and so far the same results had come up. To say he was confused would be a massive understatement. Lorne and Peters had found nothing in their search, aside from the main infirmary, there was only one other containment area and everything there seemed to be intact. Whatever this virus was, it spread fast. His computer beeped to indicate the end of the test and he scrolled through the results with a creased brow. Again Elizabeth’s results were clear. Carson closed them down and set up the test for Teyla, he’d have to go check on the parents to be soon and give them the bad and unusual news.
~~**~~
John felt odd the second he woke up, a heavy feeling settled over him as though he hadn’t slept at all. He rolled carefully onto his side and looked towards Elizabeth’s bed only to find her sitting on the one right next to him instead of three cots away.
“I take it you don’t want to sleep with me anymore,” she said in jest. He attempted a smile but all the muscles in his face stung in the action.
“Has Carson been back?” he asked finding his throat tight and rough.
“No,” Elizabeth said slipping off the bed and moving closer to him. “Not yet.” She placed a hand on his forehead and instantly stepped back. “Oh God,” she breathed.
“Tell me you feel alright,” John croaked.
“I feel fine, just as I did yesterday.”
“Good,” John said attempting to sit up. “Then you need to get as far away from me as possible.”
“John...”
“Elizabeth, if I’m infected and you’re not...”
“I touched Josiah, I should be infected.”
“But you’re not, so move away before you are.”
Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth and John tried his hardest to give his best ‘that’s an order’ stare until she finally moved away. He dropped back onto the bed, feeling completely exhausted and watched as a red suit moved into the room before he fell asleep again.
~~**~~
The tears started to fall the second she moved away from him, her heart felt heavy, drained as though something or someone had sucked the life out of it. She’d caused this; she’d brought him here, brought them all here and all to chase a dream. The heavy feeling quickly turned into pain and the closer she came to the corner of the room the worse the pain became. She’d barely managed to press her back to the wall before the door opened and Carson came in with a nurse in tow. She knew it was her pained sob that turned him towards her.
“Elizabeth,” he said, but her own pained sob cut him off. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything, not even to turn the doctor’s attention to John, now unconscious on the bed. Her self control seemed to have fled and all she could do for the moment was press herself further into the corner and slip down to the ground with her eyes fixed on John.
Carson finally turned, as though something had suddenly occurred to him and he quick footed across to John’s bedside. She couldn’t watch as he began checking John’s vitals, instead pulling her knees up until the pressure in her stomach became a little uncomfortable.
“Fever,” Carson started and Elizabeth looked up as John stirred. “Colonel, how do you feel?”
“Like crap,” John said, though the words barely carried to her ears from his rough throat.
“Beyond that?” Carson asked feeling for a pulse.
“More crap. Sore throat, headache, pain in my joints.” John stretched a little and shifted on the bed. “Correction, pain everywhere.”
“Sounds like flu,” the nurse said.
“Tired,” John muttered.
“Give him Vicodine for the fever and pain,” Carson said and the nurse instantly moved away.
Elizabeth’s eyes watched her, following her to the door and out as another nurse came in. She moved over to John’s side, taking the place of the other nurse and said something in a low tone that Elizabeth couldn’t quite hear. Carson turned sharply towards her and quickly closed the distance between himself and Elizabeth, he dropped down onto a knee in front of her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from John again.
“Elizabeth,” he said, trying to gain her attention. “Elizabeth,” he repeated, this time, taking her by the arm and squeezing enough to draw her away from John. “Do you have any flu-like symptoms?”
For a moment, the question didn’t register and she stared blankly at him. She was killing the man she loved, killing the father of her baby and several other people because she couldn’t stay still at night and had to wander off around the city – or to other, infected worlds. A slight tremor shook the room and seemed to jolt through her body to wake her brain up.
“No,” she whispered. “I feel fine.”
“Ashley,” he said turning towards the nurse. “Take Doctor Weir to one of the rooms along the East side of this tower, and then come help me in the gate room.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth almost pleaded. “I want to stay with John.”
“Elizabeth, you’re not infected and everyone else is. You need to stay as far away from them as possible.”
“Everyone?” she asked in a half sob.
“Yes, their symptoms aren’t as pronounced as John’s, but they are showing similar signs. We need to protect you, keep you healthy for as long as we can.”
She nodded slowly and Carson helped her to her feet. She paused, perhaps a little too long; to look at John, take in the sudden paleness of his skin before she followed the nurse out the other side of the infirmary and down the corridor.
~~**~~
John pried his eyes open to find his bedside empty; he let his brow crease slightly and listened to the level of noise in the room. Last he remembered he had been in the infirmary with Carson looming over him and no sign of Elizabeth. Again there seemed to be an abundance of unexplainable noise. He pushed up slowly, expecting the pain of illness and looked around, it was the same room and he was in the same bed he’d fallen asleep in, only now there were a dozen or so people he vaguely recognised.
A man approached, dressed slightly different from everyone else. The doctor, John remembered, a little confused about the setting of this particular dream. He gave him a smile, but when the man spoke an unintelligible noise came out, as though he had yet to get rid of that old and extremely poor quality microphone. After a minute the man turned and as he said one last thing John caught sight of Bethan. He knew it was her - the differences between her and Elizabeth were clear in her younger years.
“Lady Bethan,” the doctor said as he moved her towards the next bed.
“I still can’t figure out how you always manage to beat me here,” she said with a smile.
“I can move faster,” John teased and watched silently as a nurse took a blood sample from Bethan. He could understand why Josiah had fallen in love with her so easily, she was just as beautiful as Elizabeth - the same high cheek bones, gentle skin, playful eyes and, of course, kissable lips. John licked his own lips to remind himself of Elizabeth’s taste as the nurse moved away.
The doctor spoke nonsense again as he reappeared with a handheld device and as Bethan shifted to lay back, John noticed she was pregnant, just a little ahead of Elizabeth. John jumped off the bed and moved to the side of Bethan’s, she reached for him instantly and John took her hand without thinking. He looked down at her, picking out the slight fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the strong steady beat of the baby’s heart.
“She looks perfectly healthy,” the doctor said. “Fingers, toes, nice strong heartbeat, it’s as though nothing has happened to her. I’d...” whatever the doctor said next had returned to the horrible sound of a bad microphone.
Bethan nodded at something and the doctor said, gave a smile and moved away. Confused, John waited patiently, looking anywhere but at Bethan until she tugged on his hand and asked him something. Not knowing what she’d said, John just smiled and hoped the doctor would return soon. Bethan managed to ask again before the doctor returned with a nurse and something that looked a lot like a needle. He talked for a few minutes, John assumed he was explaining what he was going to do, but as it all came out muffled and crackling, he couldn’t work out just what was going on. He quickly got the idea when the needled came into play and he watched as a sample of the baby’s DNA was collected.
“If I’m right,” the doctor began, but everything that followed was muffled again and John let out a frustrated sigh. He closed his eyes as the doctor moved away and brought his hands up to cover his face.
~~**~~
The room Nurse Ashley had left her in seemed to taunt her. Scarcely decorated and too bright in the afternoon sun to fit with her current mood which screamed she was doing something wrong. She was. Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t be sitting here, staring at the walls that seemed to ooze and flex at her as though they themselves were contaminated by her presence, she should be back in the infirmary with John, holding his hand, reminding him that he had a child on the way that needed a father. Not to mention a fiance who needed his support.
On top of that, there was the rest of the people who’d come here looking for her. Lorne’s team, Teyla and Ronon back in the gate room starting the slow path of suffering she’d forced on them. The same path John was taking a quicker route down.
She stood up and started pacing. She’d been doing that for most of the time she’d been here, taking in the distance between the window and the door and one wall to the other. She could dictate off by heart how many steps covered the spaces and even tell you the square ‘footage’ of the room. She’d counted the windows so many times she couldn’t remember what number came after seven and was trapped between thankful she didn’t know the time and almost begging the gods for a watch.
She shouldn’t be here.
Her stomach gave an unhappy lurch and she paused to frown down at the raise where their child grew. A tentative hand came up to curl over the base of her belly and she considered for a moment at the feeling she’d just felt was her child moving and not the need for food. It had felt more like butterflies than it had like her tummy rumbling. A fresh wave of tears went along with the idea that was something she should be sharing with John. Something they should be sharing curled up in bed together, not separated by half a tower to protect her from becoming just as ill as he currently was.
Elizabeth dropped down in her spot, sitting on the floor of the room with her eyes fixed on the wall ahead of her and a hand resting on her stomach. She wanted the child more than anything else she could think of right now. But she also wanted John just as much and it frightened her that he could be dying in the infirmary right now and she wouldn’t know until someone decided it was time to tell her.
She tried hard not to let that thought take over, but failed and couldn’t help but cry out as the emotional pain rippled back over her chest and down through her stomach. Carson had only come to check on her once, taken another blood sample and made sure she wasn’t starting to get symptoms like the others, he’d made sure she knew John was resting, even if it was uncomfortably at the moment, but he hadn’t been back since and she knew the only thing that would keep him away, was an emergency. The only emergency they could possibly have now was someone dying.
Another short tremor shook the floor and the vibrations added to the fluttering in her stomach. Even if he wasn’t awake, even if he couldn’t feel the movements anyway, John’s hand should be there with hers, on her stomach waiting for their creation to grow stronger.
She took a deep breath and calmed her emotions for a moment before she climbed up from the floor and moved to the door. She paused, was it really what she wanted to do, leave the room and risk losing them both? No, but she loved John and she should be with him, encouraging him to fight the illness. The thought that he’d do the same for her guided her hand to the lock and she stepped out of the room and headed back to the infirmary.
~~**~~
“This is impossible,” Carson said a little frustrated as well as slightly amazed. He dropped the computer on the bed beside him and dropped back in the chair with a huff.
“What’s wrong?” Ronon asked from the bed behind him. Carson hadn’t realised anyone was awake; he’d ordered them all to rest, even if their signs of illness were light compared to John. Touches of dizziness and bad throats through the occasional fever.
Carson sighed. “No matter how many times I run Elizabeth’s blood work, she comes up clean. Either the computer’s broken, I’m missing a test or a pathogen, or...”
“She could be immune,” Ronon said finishing the thought he was having but didn’t see as possible. If anything, Elizabeth should be on the same fast track illness John was currently on, they’d both come in direct contact with the sick people in the isolation area. Yet somehow she was completely impervious to it, while John had taken on his own virus as well as hers.
“Aye, I refer to my original statement. Impossible.”
“You live in another galaxy, in a city built over ten thousand years ago by a far superior race,” Ronon pointed out. “The same race that picked Weir to be the... whatever you call it of their queen.”
“Reincarnation.”
“Yeah, that,” Ronon said shifting. “You have to ask why her? Why those particular dreams? Why show her all the relationship stuff with what’s-his-name? And most of all, why lead her to this outpost where they left the sick?”
“Why now?” Carson asked, but nothing came to mind. He had no answers to all those questions, only ideas and speculations. “I need to go check on Elizabeth and John,” he said indicating for a nurse to bring him some equipment. “Get some rest Ronon,” he added as he got up.
This situation, though, scared him more than anything. One wrong move and he could lose her, or the baby, or worse yet – both of them and any one of those possibilities was not acceptable. Though he had to admit what had happened to Bethan all those years ago frightened him just as much. For him to die and leave her to look after a baby alone – especially if history was going to repeat itself – was daunting and he couldn’t fight off the sense that he’d lived this life before.
They turned the corner at the end of the corridor and stopped. John’s brow rose as he took in the gap that ran the length of the next hallways, the cracks and bows in the metal walls.
“Well,” John said. “Either Teyla was underplaying the damage up here, or that quake did some serious reconstruction.”
“This is right above Josiah and the boys,” Elizabeth said. John watched her for a moment, eyes on the floor as though she could see into the rooms below.
Clearing his throat, John moved forwards and looked down into the space below. At first he thought there was nothing, but just as he was ready to turn away he caught sight of what looked like a hand. He turned, jumping slightly at how close Elizabeth was, and moved back towards the stairs. He could hear her behind him as he took the stairs two at a time and turned into the lower isolation corridor. Another giant gash in the floor greeted him and mindful that Elizabeth was following him, he navigated it to the ‘T’ junction.
“Oh... Crap!” He breathed. He’d turned to the spot he’d found Elizabeth at earlier and was presented with a horrific and blood churning sight.
All the chambers in this section of the corridor had been opened or crushed and he had already noticed the destroyed area where Bethan’s boys had been. Movement at his side had him turning and he realised too late that Elizabeth was making her way towards Josiah. His heart leapt when he saw the man move, still alive amongst the dead and reaching for John’s pregnant fiance.
“Carson,” John said activating his radio.
“It worked,” John heard Josiah breathe as Elizabeth reached him.
“We have a serious containment breach here. At least one of these people is still alive.”
”On my way,” Carson replied.
“It worked,” Josiah repeated as Elizabeth crouched down beside him. “You came.”
“What worked?” John asked stepping closer and feeling the hand of a very thin woman around his ankle. He watched her for a moment as she struggled to breathe and found himself wishing for the first time ever that he knew more than how to stick a bandage on a cut.
“The dreams,” Josiah said, taking a deep wheezing breath. “I wasn’t sure they could be retrieved, it has taken me years to find where they placed Bethan’s soul.”
“Placed her soul?” Elizabeth asked. “I don’t understand.”
One withered hand reached up and John watched as Josiah ran a finger down the side of Elizabeth’s face. The look on his face reminded him just how Elizabeth looked at him, loving and caring, with a touch of fear that one day it would all be gone. He was sure he gave her that look more than she gave it to him.
“You look so much like her,” he said. “Your eyes are what drew me to you, what drew me to her.”
The hand around John’s ankle relaxed and he looked down at the now dead woman, she reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t quite place her face. Carson turned the corner at the junction and John heard the breathed “oh god” he let out through the contamination suit.
“Our souls are recycled.” Josiah coughed hard as Carson settled beside him and began to examine him. “They started doing it shortly after my ancestors learned what ascension was, when they discovered our souls just lingered - trapped between our ascended selves and our dead bodies.” He winced and Carson apologised.
John moved back a step and turned to look into the desolated room of the twin boys. It was horrible sight, even though he couldn’t make out the difference between the destroyed room and the two five year old boys. He prayed they were wrong about the plague, that all these years later it had died in the bodies of these people, starved of nutrition and oxygen. He would pray hard for that if only to keep Elizabeth safe.
“Passing them on to a new life and hoping the memories and knowledge would continue or pass forwards,” Josiah continued, stopping every few words to cough. “It didn’t seem to always work. Then there were the few, over time that would gain the memories the more often they were recycled.” He stopped to take another deep breath as Carson listened to his heart. “Like you, both of you,” he said turning to look at John for the first time and raising a brow.
“I have a recycled soul?” John asked and nervously licked his lips.
“Yes, most people do,” Josiah said as John watched Carson shake his head at Elizabeth. He watched the tears slip down her cheek silently before Josiah continued. “Though you were probably selected carefully because of our status. The memories are there, buried deep in your subconscious.” He stopped to cough again. “I tapped into what I hoped were yours,” he said turning back to Elizabeth, “surfaced the dreams to show you what had happened to us, how our population was depleted so horribly and where it had started. I didn’t want to force the pain on you,” he said with a cough, “but I knew that the quakes here would soon destroy the city and virus would be released.”
“So why bring us here? To make us suffer like you did? So we can watch our baby die?”
“No,” Josiah said his breathing extremely laboured and the coughing started to grate more at his throat. “You are the cure,” he said more to Elizabeth than him. “We were too late in finding it, but together, you are the cure. You can stop it from spreading from the city out across the galaxy.”
“How?” Carson asked. “What’s so special about them?”
“Their combined,” Josiah started. He couldn’t finish, the coughing became too much and eventually his breathing was reduced to a few ragged breaths. “Just,” he managed to breathe, his eyes fixed on Elizabeth, “as beautiful as Bethan,” he managed before he went completely limp.
Elizabeth pushed back instantly, pressing her back against the cracked wall behind her and her eyes fixed on the now dead body of the man responsible for her dreams and relationship with John. John moved around him quickly and carefully touched her shoulder to get her attention; the pain in her eyes when she turned to him reminded him of how she had been when she’d first woken up from the dreams.
“I’m still here,” John said and wrapped his arms around her as she moved towards him. “Please tell me the virus didn’t get released with them,” John asked watching Carson, now moving between the other bodies scattered around the area. John’s radio activated, but he didn’t listen to the report, choosing to focus on Elizabeth and Carson.
“I don’t know that, yet,” Carson said. “I’m going to have to take fresh blood from you both and keep you separated from the others. At least for the time being.”
“Where do you want us?” John asked aware that Elizabeth had stopped crying and was resting almost completely limp against him.
“Main infirmary,” Carson said. “Get some rest while you’re there. Allison, can you take blood before they go?” he said turning to one of the nurses.
~~**~~
John sat on the bed next to Elizabeth in the infirmary, he’d looked around for a few minutes after she’d finally fallen asleep but he couldn’t find anything of interest. He was too confused; too concerned to think of anything except the details Josiah had given them. They were the answer, together. Did that mean a mixture of their DNA, some weird concoction that Carson could whip up to give everyone else? Or was it something else.
There was something niggling at the back of John’s brain; he could feel a sense of familiarity of the room, of sitting, as he did now, on one of the beds watching her. Watching Bethan and their doctor. But the memory was being illusive. He had to figure out what it was before it was too late for them; the answer was there, in front of him – literally. He gave a short, sharp laugh.
“How ironic,” he said aloud. “Find the woman you’re meant to be with, only to have her taken away by a twenty thousand year old virus.”
“Doesn’t get any weirder does it?” John turned at the sound of the voice and found a woman standing nearby, her hand just resting on the foot of his bed. Aside from the thinned face and hollowed eyes, she could have been Elizabeth.
“Bethan?”
The woman nodded. “I’ll be back to help you John,” she said. “Just as soon as you remember why this room makes your brain work overtime. But I will suggest you move back two beds. It’ll help.”
He blinked at her and she just smiled at him. He turned to look at the beds behind him and then turned back to ask why but she’d gone.
~~**~~
John pried his eyes open slightly confused about the level of noise in the room. Last he remembered he had been in the infirmary with Elizabeth, everyone else had stayed or returned to the gate room. Yet, now there seemed to be an abundance of noise. He pushed up slowly and looked around, it was the same room and he was in the same bed he’d fallen asleep in, only now there were a dozen or so people he didn’t recognise.
A man approached, dressed slightly different from everyone else. John guessed he was the doctor and gave him a smile, but when the man spoke an unintelligible noise came out, as though he was using a very old and extremely poor quality microphone. After a minute the man turned and as he said one last thing John caught sight of Bethan. He knew it was her - the differences between her and Elizabeth were clear in her younger years.
As the doctor moved her towards the next bed John started to picture Elizabeth in her mid 20’s. He was pulled out of the thought when Bethan said something, but as with the doctor, the words came out crackled and fuzzy. John just smiled and watched silently as a nurse took a blood sample from Bethan. He could understand why Josiah had fallen in love with her so easily, she was just as beautiful as Elizabeth - the same high cheek bones, gentle skin, playful eyes and, of course, kissable lips. John licked his own lips to remind himself of Elizabeth’s taste as the nurse moved away.
The doctor spoke again as he reappeared with a handheld device and as Bethan shifted to lay back, John noticed she was pregnant, just a little ahead of Elizabeth. John jumped off the bed and moved to the side of Bethan’s bed, she reached for him instantly and John took her hand without thinking. He looked down at her, picking out the slight fear in her eyes; she opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the strong steady beat of the baby’s heart.
“She looks perfectly healthy,” the doctor said and it took a few seconds for John to realise he had heard the words instead of noise. It was short lived thought as the next thing he said was back to the horrible sound of a bad microphone.
Bethan nodded at something and the doctor gave a smile and moved away. Confused, John waited patiently, looking anywhere but at Bethan until she tugged on his hand and asked him something. Not knowing what she’d said, John just smiled and hoped the doctor would return soon. Bethan managed to ask again before the doctor returned with a nurse and something that looked a lot like a needle. He talked for a few minutes, John assumed he was explaining what he was going to do, but as it all came out muffled and crackling, he couldn’t work out just what was going on. He quickly got the idea when the needled came into play and he watched as a sample of the baby’s DNA was collected.
“If I’m right,” the doctor began, but everything that followed was muffled again and John let out a frustrated sigh.
~~**~~
Carson huffed out a furious breath and turned away from the computer screen. He would have given anything at that moment to be able to rub his eyes in hopes of waking himself up. But the containment suit made that simple action impossible. He settled for a quick shake of his head and turned back to the blood tests. The first round had finished over an hour ago and had been clear of any pathogens, but those samples had been taken before the earthquake and he’d wasted quite a bit of time since then questioning himself, knowing that he could have avoided all of this if he’d just quarantined them and taken them back to Atlantis. He’d been stubborn though, thinking the whole place was contaminated and had forced them to stick to one of his protocols for disease control. He sighed again and forced the train of thought out of his mind in favour of working on the current problem.
John’s sample had come back with bad results, as had Lorne’s and Peters’, he’d done Elizabeth’s once already, but it had shown the same results as her previous test – nothing. It was her test he was doing now, for the second time and so far the same results had come up. To say he was confused would be a massive understatement. Lorne and Peters had found nothing in their search, aside from the main infirmary, there was only one other containment area and everything there seemed to be intact. Whatever this virus was, it spread fast. His computer beeped to indicate the end of the test and he scrolled through the results with a creased brow. Again Elizabeth’s results were clear. Carson closed them down and set up the test for Teyla, he’d have to go check on the parents to be soon and give them the bad and unusual news.
~~**~~
John felt odd the second he woke up, a heavy feeling settled over him as though he hadn’t slept at all. He rolled carefully onto his side and looked towards Elizabeth’s bed only to find her sitting on the one right next to him instead of three cots away.
“I take it you don’t want to sleep with me anymore,” she said in jest. He attempted a smile but all the muscles in his face stung in the action.
“Has Carson been back?” he asked finding his throat tight and rough.
“No,” Elizabeth said slipping off the bed and moving closer to him. “Not yet.” She placed a hand on his forehead and instantly stepped back. “Oh God,” she breathed.
“Tell me you feel alright,” John croaked.
“I feel fine, just as I did yesterday.”
“Good,” John said attempting to sit up. “Then you need to get as far away from me as possible.”
“John...”
“Elizabeth, if I’m infected and you’re not...”
“I touched Josiah, I should be infected.”
“But you’re not, so move away before you are.”
Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth and John tried his hardest to give his best ‘that’s an order’ stare until she finally moved away. He dropped back onto the bed, feeling completely exhausted and watched as a red suit moved into the room before he fell asleep again.
~~**~~
The tears started to fall the second she moved away from him, her heart felt heavy, drained as though something or someone had sucked the life out of it. She’d caused this; she’d brought him here, brought them all here and all to chase a dream. The heavy feeling quickly turned into pain and the closer she came to the corner of the room the worse the pain became. She’d barely managed to press her back to the wall before the door opened and Carson came in with a nurse in tow. She knew it was her pained sob that turned him towards her.
“Elizabeth,” he said, but her own pained sob cut him off. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything, not even to turn the doctor’s attention to John, now unconscious on the bed. Her self control seemed to have fled and all she could do for the moment was press herself further into the corner and slip down to the ground with her eyes fixed on John.
Carson finally turned, as though something had suddenly occurred to him and he quick footed across to John’s bedside. She couldn’t watch as he began checking John’s vitals, instead pulling her knees up until the pressure in her stomach became a little uncomfortable.
“Fever,” Carson started and Elizabeth looked up as John stirred. “Colonel, how do you feel?”
“Like crap,” John said, though the words barely carried to her ears from his rough throat.
“Beyond that?” Carson asked feeling for a pulse.
“More crap. Sore throat, headache, pain in my joints.” John stretched a little and shifted on the bed. “Correction, pain everywhere.”
“Sounds like flu,” the nurse said.
“Tired,” John muttered.
“Give him Vicodine for the fever and pain,” Carson said and the nurse instantly moved away.
Elizabeth’s eyes watched her, following her to the door and out as another nurse came in. She moved over to John’s side, taking the place of the other nurse and said something in a low tone that Elizabeth couldn’t quite hear. Carson turned sharply towards her and quickly closed the distance between himself and Elizabeth, he dropped down onto a knee in front of her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from John again.
“Elizabeth,” he said, trying to gain her attention. “Elizabeth,” he repeated, this time, taking her by the arm and squeezing enough to draw her away from John. “Do you have any flu-like symptoms?”
For a moment, the question didn’t register and she stared blankly at him. She was killing the man she loved, killing the father of her baby and several other people because she couldn’t stay still at night and had to wander off around the city – or to other, infected worlds. A slight tremor shook the room and seemed to jolt through her body to wake her brain up.
“No,” she whispered. “I feel fine.”
“Ashley,” he said turning towards the nurse. “Take Doctor Weir to one of the rooms along the East side of this tower, and then come help me in the gate room.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth almost pleaded. “I want to stay with John.”
“Elizabeth, you’re not infected and everyone else is. You need to stay as far away from them as possible.”
“Everyone?” she asked in a half sob.
“Yes, their symptoms aren’t as pronounced as John’s, but they are showing similar signs. We need to protect you, keep you healthy for as long as we can.”
She nodded slowly and Carson helped her to her feet. She paused, perhaps a little too long; to look at John, take in the sudden paleness of his skin before she followed the nurse out the other side of the infirmary and down the corridor.
~~**~~
John pried his eyes open to find his bedside empty; he let his brow crease slightly and listened to the level of noise in the room. Last he remembered he had been in the infirmary with Carson looming over him and no sign of Elizabeth. Again there seemed to be an abundance of unexplainable noise. He pushed up slowly, expecting the pain of illness and looked around, it was the same room and he was in the same bed he’d fallen asleep in, only now there were a dozen or so people he vaguely recognised.
A man approached, dressed slightly different from everyone else. The doctor, John remembered, a little confused about the setting of this particular dream. He gave him a smile, but when the man spoke an unintelligible noise came out, as though he had yet to get rid of that old and extremely poor quality microphone. After a minute the man turned and as he said one last thing John caught sight of Bethan. He knew it was her - the differences between her and Elizabeth were clear in her younger years.
“Lady Bethan,” the doctor said as he moved her towards the next bed.
“I still can’t figure out how you always manage to beat me here,” she said with a smile.
“I can move faster,” John teased and watched silently as a nurse took a blood sample from Bethan. He could understand why Josiah had fallen in love with her so easily, she was just as beautiful as Elizabeth - the same high cheek bones, gentle skin, playful eyes and, of course, kissable lips. John licked his own lips to remind himself of Elizabeth’s taste as the nurse moved away.
The doctor spoke nonsense again as he reappeared with a handheld device and as Bethan shifted to lay back, John noticed she was pregnant, just a little ahead of Elizabeth. John jumped off the bed and moved to the side of Bethan’s, she reached for him instantly and John took her hand without thinking. He looked down at her, picking out the slight fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the strong steady beat of the baby’s heart.
“She looks perfectly healthy,” the doctor said. “Fingers, toes, nice strong heartbeat, it’s as though nothing has happened to her. I’d...” whatever the doctor said next had returned to the horrible sound of a bad microphone.
Bethan nodded at something and the doctor said, gave a smile and moved away. Confused, John waited patiently, looking anywhere but at Bethan until she tugged on his hand and asked him something. Not knowing what she’d said, John just smiled and hoped the doctor would return soon. Bethan managed to ask again before the doctor returned with a nurse and something that looked a lot like a needle. He talked for a few minutes, John assumed he was explaining what he was going to do, but as it all came out muffled and crackling, he couldn’t work out just what was going on. He quickly got the idea when the needled came into play and he watched as a sample of the baby’s DNA was collected.
“If I’m right,” the doctor began, but everything that followed was muffled again and John let out a frustrated sigh. He closed his eyes as the doctor moved away and brought his hands up to cover his face.
~~**~~
The room Nurse Ashley had left her in seemed to taunt her. Scarcely decorated and too bright in the afternoon sun to fit with her current mood which screamed she was doing something wrong. She was. Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t be sitting here, staring at the walls that seemed to ooze and flex at her as though they themselves were contaminated by her presence, she should be back in the infirmary with John, holding his hand, reminding him that he had a child on the way that needed a father. Not to mention a fiance who needed his support.
On top of that, there was the rest of the people who’d come here looking for her. Lorne’s team, Teyla and Ronon back in the gate room starting the slow path of suffering she’d forced on them. The same path John was taking a quicker route down.
She stood up and started pacing. She’d been doing that for most of the time she’d been here, taking in the distance between the window and the door and one wall to the other. She could dictate off by heart how many steps covered the spaces and even tell you the square ‘footage’ of the room. She’d counted the windows so many times she couldn’t remember what number came after seven and was trapped between thankful she didn’t know the time and almost begging the gods for a watch.
She shouldn’t be here.
Her stomach gave an unhappy lurch and she paused to frown down at the raise where their child grew. A tentative hand came up to curl over the base of her belly and she considered for a moment at the feeling she’d just felt was her child moving and not the need for food. It had felt more like butterflies than it had like her tummy rumbling. A fresh wave of tears went along with the idea that was something she should be sharing with John. Something they should be sharing curled up in bed together, not separated by half a tower to protect her from becoming just as ill as he currently was.
Elizabeth dropped down in her spot, sitting on the floor of the room with her eyes fixed on the wall ahead of her and a hand resting on her stomach. She wanted the child more than anything else she could think of right now. But she also wanted John just as much and it frightened her that he could be dying in the infirmary right now and she wouldn’t know until someone decided it was time to tell her.
She tried hard not to let that thought take over, but failed and couldn’t help but cry out as the emotional pain rippled back over her chest and down through her stomach. Carson had only come to check on her once, taken another blood sample and made sure she wasn’t starting to get symptoms like the others, he’d made sure she knew John was resting, even if it was uncomfortably at the moment, but he hadn’t been back since and she knew the only thing that would keep him away, was an emergency. The only emergency they could possibly have now was someone dying.
Another short tremor shook the floor and the vibrations added to the fluttering in her stomach. Even if he wasn’t awake, even if he couldn’t feel the movements anyway, John’s hand should be there with hers, on her stomach waiting for their creation to grow stronger.
She took a deep breath and calmed her emotions for a moment before she climbed up from the floor and moved to the door. She paused, was it really what she wanted to do, leave the room and risk losing them both? No, but she loved John and she should be with him, encouraging him to fight the illness. The thought that he’d do the same for her guided her hand to the lock and she stepped out of the room and headed back to the infirmary.
~~**~~
“This is impossible,” Carson said a little frustrated as well as slightly amazed. He dropped the computer on the bed beside him and dropped back in the chair with a huff.
“What’s wrong?” Ronon asked from the bed behind him. Carson hadn’t realised anyone was awake; he’d ordered them all to rest, even if their signs of illness were light compared to John. Touches of dizziness and bad throats through the occasional fever.
Carson sighed. “No matter how many times I run Elizabeth’s blood work, she comes up clean. Either the computer’s broken, I’m missing a test or a pathogen, or...”
“She could be immune,” Ronon said finishing the thought he was having but didn’t see as possible. If anything, Elizabeth should be on the same fast track illness John was currently on, they’d both come in direct contact with the sick people in the isolation area. Yet somehow she was completely impervious to it, while John had taken on his own virus as well as hers.
“Aye, I refer to my original statement. Impossible.”
“You live in another galaxy, in a city built over ten thousand years ago by a far superior race,” Ronon pointed out. “The same race that picked Weir to be the... whatever you call it of their queen.”
“Reincarnation.”
“Yeah, that,” Ronon said shifting. “You have to ask why her? Why those particular dreams? Why show her all the relationship stuff with what’s-his-name? And most of all, why lead her to this outpost where they left the sick?”
“Why now?” Carson asked, but nothing came to mind. He had no answers to all those questions, only ideas and speculations. “I need to go check on Elizabeth and John,” he said indicating for a nurse to bring him some equipment. “Get some rest Ronon,” he added as he got up.