John, however, had both noticed Elizabeth�s abrupt departure and was not otherwise occupied with matters of food and drink. He bid the two doctors a goodnight before heading off in the direction Elizabeth had gone, his bare feet making strange, echoing slapping sounds against the cold floor. He hopped in the first transporter he came across and hit the symbol that would get him within forty feet of Elizabeth�s room.
When Elizabeth had selected her quarters she had looked for two things, John remembered: a balcony and a transporter. Since she had been able to select her quarters before the masses started house hunting it hadn�t been hard for Elizabeth to find a space that she decided could feel like home, given enough time, and John remembered helping her move her sleeping platform so that the early morning sun�the sun on their new home planet rose in the North and set in the South, or at least what Rodney assured them was North and South�would hit her face should she ever sleep past dawn. John, similarly, had chosen quarters to his specifications, though he had avoided quarters with balconies, preferring to make his home in the inner ring of Atlantis, away from windows and sunlight and things that would distract him from sleeping, which was the only thing he did in his quarters anyway. The transporter stipulation, however, was the same for John. Both he and Elizabeth had practical reasons for the placement of their quarters, easy access to a transporter got them from their beds to the control room or the labs or the Infirmary within seconds of being alerted to a problem, response time often being key to survival.
The transporter let him out in the hallway that Elizabeth�s room was off of, and John moved toward her door, coming to a stop outside of it and stopping, wondering, if only for a moment, if what he had thought he saw before she left the kitchen was real or if Elizabeth really had just wanted to try to get some sleep. Ultimately, though, John sided with his initial instincts.
�Elizabeth, open the door,� John said, both through the door and over the headset, as he knocked on the door.
�John, I�m trying to get some sleep,� Elizabeth replied through the headset, her voice wavering ever so slightly.
�Just open for the door for a second. I need to talk to you,� John insisted.
Elizabeth let out a long sigh on the other side of the door. �Give me a second,� she said as she moved to the small mirror that hung on her wall. She made sure that she looked alright, that John wouldn�t be able to tell that anything was wrong with her, though she was still sure that John would be able to know that there was something wrong with her. He always did.
Once she was sure she was as professional as she could be�bunny slippers and her chosen sleepwear notwithstanding�Elizabeth went back to the door and unlocked it, allowing John to open it from the outside as she moved back to her bed, sitting down on the thin mattress with her arms wrapped around her body in a protective self-hug. �Come in,� she called, wishing that, for once, John would have left something that picked at his ever-present white knight complex.
John opened the door and stepped inside her room. He hadn�t been in it since he cleared the area when they first arrived on Atlantis, had never had reason to step foot into a place so private and personal, Elizabeth�s only true sanctuary. Sure, there was the Control Tower balcony where she would go to contemplate command decisions, lost friends and allies, and John never hesitated to join her when she was out there, but that was a public place and, though it was an unspoken rule that no one interrupted Elizabeth when she was on what most people thought of as her balcony, it was also an unspoken rule that John was the only one who was allowed to cut into Doctor Weir�s alone time. But the balcony was something entirely different from her quarters.
His hazel eyes were moving quickly, taking in every detail. The bookshelves lined with books on every subject, from botany to astrophysics to military tactics to archaeology to medicine to computer sciences to several books on diplomacy. The small stack of novels on her bedside table, none of which he recognized the titles of. The silver pocket-watch that she always had with her was lying on top of her dresser next to a hairbrush and a half-empty bottle of lotion. Her uniform, neatly folded, sitting on a chair beside her closet which lacked in a door, as over half the closets in Atlantis seemed to for some reason or another, showing uniforms and some casual clothes hanging neatly, on the floor of the closet sat three pairs of running shoes, a pair of hiking boots, a barely-worn pair of combat boots, and a pair of sandals that John vaguely remembered her wearing the one time he had managed to drag her to the Mainland for a day at the beach not long after the Athosians started building their colony there. Her laptop was sitting on a table that she obviously used as a desk, a few files stacked beside it, her cup sitting on top of the files, making John believe that Elizabeth had intended on going back to work rather than trying to get some sleep. Beside the desk sat her offworld backpack, filled with what John assumed was whatever personal things that she would be bringing back to Earth with her.