sga_flashfic | Kryptonite in the Palms of Her Hands by Mhalachaiswords (Superpowers challenge)

mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com posting in

Kryptonite in the Palms of Her Hands
The Secret Superpowers Challenge by

Characters: Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard, others
Genre: Gen, friendship.
Setting: Set generically after season 2, no spoilers for anything.
Rating: PG
Word count:: 2,790

cover art by the lovely and talented

obaona (won first place in

stargate_still's special challenge #5)

Three Days

Teyla hadn't spoken in three days. Not since the Ancient retrovirus raging through her veins twisted up her vocal cords, finally stopping her agonized screaming as her DNA rewrote itself.

She slept now. John sat slumped in a corner, watching her take in slow, raspy pants of air. He hadn't been able to do anything for her, not since this started, but at least he could sit here and keep her company. Just... just in case.

He hadn't been able to close his ears, hadn't been able to stop himself from overhearing Elizabeth and Carson talking in the corner where they thought no one could hear. John hadn't needed to know that the retrovirus had reacted violently with Teyla's Wraith genes, that her internal organs had been all stirred up under the strain. Carson's soft voice hadn't hidden his weariness from a week at Teyla's bedside, when he told Elizabeth that he doubted Teyla would ever be able to have children, or if she would ever be able to walk properly again.

John let his head fall back against the wall. Teyla didn't look all that different, lying on her side under the thin white sheet. One of her hands lay on top of the sheet, her slim fingers curled into the cloth.

It wasn't her fault that this had happened. As far as Carson could tell, the retrovirus was designed to give a human with the Ancient gene something like superpowers, greater strength, hearing, speed. It was not designed to work on someone with Wraith DNA.

It was the strangest thing, to know that when Teyla woke, John would once again see Wraith-like eyes in Teyla's face. Strangely, once he got over the shock, the eyes didn't bother John.

John had tried to tell Teyla that he understood; he'd turned into a bug once, after all. But the words hadn't come.

Three Weeks

The physical therapy was working, Carson said. Teyla was walking again, and they were pretty sure that she'd be able to leave the infirmary for good in another week.

John wasn't so sure. Teyla might have been doing okay physically, but Carson hadn't seen her huddled in the corner of the infirmary, hair hanging down to hide her eyes from passers-by, as she stared at the unmarked palms of her hands.

Everyone on Atlantis knew what had happened. John had his hands full, shutting down the whispers between Marines about Teyla becoming a monster, a danger to the expedition. He wasn't able to do the same to the scientists, so he mentally catalogued every word he heard, filed it away to the part of his mind that never forgot.

The people from Earth weren't John's only problem. Ronon categorically refused to see Teyla, even going so far as to disobey a direct order from John. Ronon hadn't said why, but John read it in his eyes. Teyla was no longer us. She was them.

Finally, on a day that might have been a Friday, John offloaded his work onto Lorne and headed down to the infirmary. Teyla was curled up on a chair on the far side of the room, her hair loose and hiding her face as she stared down at the book in her lap.

"Hey," John said as he approached. Teyla didn't look up, only closed her book. "Mind if I sit down?" He stood beside the empty chair until Teyla nodded, a jerky movement of her head. "Thanks."

Teyla laid her book on the ground. With a glance around the infirmary, she took a deep breath and tucked her hair back behind her ear, giving John a steady stare with her changed eyes.

John stared back. "How's the physical therapy going?" he asked, slouching down in his chair.

The corner of Teyla's mouth twitched as she pointed at her throat. Then she pointed at John, then at the far door.

"I'm not leaving." As if to illustrate his point, he crossed his arms over his chest. "I came down to see how you were."

Teyla stood, the new muscles in her legs giving her movements a slithering grace. She tried to walk away, but John sprang up and grabbed her wrist. She pulled back in a blur of speed, wrenching John's arm. Her hands were up, warding him off, and John saw something there that made his blood run cold. He grabbed her hand again, this time holding her palm up to the light.

On the flat of her right palm, a long red scratch marked the skin, echoing the feeding mark of a Wraith.

John ran his thumb over the scratch, smearing tiny drops of blood. "I'm going to get Carson," he said around the panic in his chest. "He'll--"

Teyla shook her head, gripping his arm.

"Teyla, if there's another change--"

Teyla squeezed his arm painfully, shutting him up. She brought up her left hand and mimed dragging her thumbnail down her right palm.

Oh. For a moment, John felt intense relief, that Teyla wasn't turning into a Wraith, that she wasn't going to have to start feeding on humans. Then his heart sank. "You did this?"

Teyla pulled away, clenching her fists tightly as she went back to her chair. She refused to look at him.

After a minute, John joined her. Everything about her body language screamed 'back off, don't touch', so he only pulled his chair a little closer. "You're not... you're not like that."

No reaction.

"Carson said the retrovirus has run its course," John continued. "No more changes." Teyla turned her head and stared at the far end of the infirmary. Not sure if she had heard something or was just ignoring him, John pressed on. "You should know, you're not... We're still here for you."

Even as the words left his mouth, John knew they were a lie. Ronon sure wasn't, and Rodney... well, Rodney was the reason Teyla had been infected in the first place. In his arrogant and unthinking attempt to give himself superpowers, he'd accidentally subjected Teyla to the same airborne retrovirus.

The retrovirus didn't work on anyone with the ATA gene therapy, anyway.

Still watching the far end of the infirmary, Teyla pressed her lips together and paled. She turned her head to John a moment before Carson and Elizabeth walked in the door.

John knew she had gotten some of the benefits from the retrovirus, but it occurred to him, as Carson walked toward them with the face of a man about to deliver bad news, that Teyla had been listening to a conversation three rooms away.

The chill that ran up his spine had nothing to do with the temperature.

Three Months

John danced back as Teyla swung her sticks in his direction. He hadn't been a match for her before her abilities increased; now, it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

Teyla watched him, and John now knew that her new eyes could see infrared as well as ultraviolet, the whole gamut of the spectrum. Still, it was just like old times as Teyla turned to the side, telegraphing her next move to him. Confidently, he stepped into the attack, a dance burned into his muscles' memory. They had started this routine to help Teyla adapt to her new strength and speed to dealing with humans, but it was more to it than just the physical. This was a tie to Teyla's past, something she could still do after the change.

It was one of the only things. Even after Carson had declared Teyla fit for duty, Elizabeth hadn't let her go off-world. John had argued until he was blue in the face, but Elizabeth had been unmoved. They couldn't risk it, she said.

Unable to sway Elizabeth, John had essentially disbanded his team, sticking Ronon with Lorne's team and keeping Rodney on Atlantis. He told everyone it was only temporary, until Teyla had permission to go off-world... but deep in his heart, he suspected it wasn't ever going to be the same again. Ronon had even taken to leaving the room whenever Teyla entered. As for Rodney, he and Teyla had apparently come to some kind of understanding, but he wouldn't say what and Teyla... well.

John ducked again as Teyla twirled her sticks, gliding over the floor on the balls of her feet. She was a sight to behold, a little more alien than before but still completely Teyla. John would never get tired of watching her in action.

Elizabeth had been the one to go to the mainland to talk to the Athosians. Teyla refused to set foot in the Jumper, and John knew that if things went badly, he would have done something unfortunate. As it was, even Elizabeth had come back furious. When the Athosians had heard the changes Teyla had experienced, they had essentially abjured her.

No one had seen Teyla for two days after that, until John shanghaied Rodney into jury-rigging the life-signs detector to find her, in a remote corner of the south-east pier. She seemed too calm when John caught up with her, but he didn't know how to ask her how she was doing. She wouldn't have been able to tell him, anyway.

Now, Teyla stepped in and disarmed John with a flick of the wrist. John yelped at the sting, but he didn't flinch as Teyla's sticks flew toward his face, stopping less than an inch from his nose. He trusted Teyla not to hurt him. That much hadn't changed.

Teyla stepped back, lowering her sticks and bowing formally. John bowed back, then headed over to the side of the room where he left his water bottle. After a swig, he offered the bottle to Teyla. She declined with a small shake of her head.

John shrugged and sat on the bench, needing to rest for a moment before he stretched. Teyla gathered up the staves and laid them on the shelf before joining John on the bench.

Silence with Teyla had always been companionable, and that hadn't changed now that she couldn't speak. "So," John said. "Coming to movie night tomorrow?"

Teyla raised an eyebrow.

"It won't be that bad," John protested. "I hear it's a new movie from Earth, and even Elizabeth wants to see it."

Teyla smiled, but shook her head. She lifted her hand and tapped a finger to her ear.

"Too loud?" John asked. He had always been able to read her body language, and the modified gestures she now used to communicate with him were easy enough to understand.

She nodded, then dropped her gaze. With a sigh, she held her hand an inch from her hair and mimed raking her hand through her hair.

"Yeah, I guess Ronon would be there too," John admitted. "Hey, maybe we can set up a feed in one of the labs."

Teyla snapped her fingers, mimicking one of Rodney's nervous gestures, then pretend to type.

"McKay's busy, yeah, but we can interrupted him for this."

Teyla smiled faintly. She slipped a little closer to John on the bench. Her face lost its amusement as she hesitated for a long moment, then reached for his hands.

"What's up?" John asked. This was new.

Teyla pressed his hands together.

"You want me to do something?"

She nodded, releasing his hands. She held out her own hands, palms up, then traced her left thumb over the unmarked skin on her right palm.

Unease pooled in John's stomach. "I don't understand," he said.

Teyla glared at him. With jerky moments, she pointed at her eyes, then at her throat, then repeated the gesture with her hand.

John pulled back. "This isn't-- no. No, Carson said you're not going to change any more. This is as far as the retrovirus goes."

For the third time, Teyla dragged her thumb over her palm.

The air seemed a little thin. John sucked in a deep breath. "I still don't get it."

Teyla hesitated for a moment. She tapped her chest, repeated the palm thing, then reached out with her right hand and pressed her palm against John's chest in a disturbing echo of a Wraith feeding.

Then Teyla pulled her hand back, curled her fingers up, leaving her index finger and thumb straight, and brought the mimed gun up to her temple.

"No," John exclaimed, grabbing her hand. "You're not going to change any more, so stop thinking like that!"

Teyla deliberately pushed John off her, then repeated the motions. John winced as she mimicked the recoil of a gun.

"You're not going to change."

Chest tap. Thumb scraped over palm. Hand pressed to John's chest. Gun to her temple. Bang.

"I can't do that."

Her hand pressed to John's chest, hot though his sweaty t-shirt.

"Don't ask me to do this."

Ronon could do it, and sleep the sleep of the just. Rodney would never be able to kill Teyla... unless she tried to feed on him.

Teyla curled her fist into John's shirt, holding on. He didn't need her to speak to feel the pain vibrating in her limbs. Hadn't he felt the same thing when he changed into the Iratus bug? The terror that he would lose himself to the monster, and no one would know in time to stop him?

She opened her mouth and moved her lips, almost begging.

"Don't make me promise this."

Don't make me be on the other end of the gun again.

"You're not going to change any more."

Don't make me promise to kill you.

Silence.

"I won't let you hurt anyone."

Don't do this to me. But the promise had been made, and the tightness in Teyla's eyes eased.

The room was silent, testament to what he had just sworn he would do.

Three Years

John sat across the campfire from Teyla, watching the light of the yellow flames flicker over her face. They were on second watch, the sun about to rise on this alien planet. Three yards away, Rodney snored in his tent while Tor'neh, a Jaffa recruit from the Milky Way galaxy, kel-noreemed his way through the night.

This was John's team now. It stung that Ronon had opted to work with Lorne, but not as much as John had expected. At least the former Runner had softened toward Teyla.

Of course, it hadn't hurt that on their first mission out after Teyla's change, she had single-handedly saved the team from a Wraith attack. Ronon had been particularly impressed with the stories of how Teyla decapitated one Wraith with her bare hands. The memory still gave John chills, but Ronon thought it was a funny tale to tell over dinner.

People found it easy to pretend that since Teyla couldn't talk, she couldn't hear them when they spoke about her. John wanted to scream at them that she could hear a footfall a mile away, that she heard every whisper and taunt, but he held his tongue and kept track of the names. He'd play along with her fiction, the thin veneer of normality she held in place over herself in Atlantis.

Off-world, however, in only the company of her team, Teyla dropped the facade. She let herself use the increased agility and speed, the strength that lay coiled in her limbs. Each time she smiled off-world, a little bit of the guilt eased from Rodney's face. Every time that she saved their necks from the enemy, Tor'neh, a veteran of the Earth-Orii war, was just a little more impressed with Teyla as a warrior.

Every night, when they sat like this in the dark, John remembered the promise he'd made, almost three years before. Since then, he'd often wondered about the price that came with every gift in the Pegasus Galaxy, every blessing and its accompanying curse. He'd been really into comics book as a kid, especially Superman. Had Clark Kent's parents ever thought about what would happened if their superpowered adopted son had become a monster? Had they ever had that conversation about the what ifs?

Teyla's eyes caught the firelight with an odd glow. Soon, the sun would rise, John would drag Rodney out of his sleeping bag, and they'd set off for another day in search of the rumored ZPM on the planet.

It wasn't ever going to be like the old days, but even those days hadn't been normal. So what if Teyla was able to hear an alien squirrel a mile away, or lift Rodney over her head with one hand? She wasn't a monster, no more than the rest of them. She was still her, Clark Kent and Superman in one.

John just hated thinking that he was her kryptonite.

-fin

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allisnow.livejournal.com

Wow. Very freaky, very impressive. *gets chills*

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