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�You okay?� John asked gently.
�Fine,� Elizabeth replied. �Tired, but fine.�
Not at all placated, John continued. �You left kinda quickly back there. Are you sure you�re okay?�
Elizabeth nodded. �Just� nervous about tomorrow,� she said, deciding that a half-truth was better than an outright lie. She had never been able to successfully lie to John Sheppard anyway. He had a strange and slightly disturbing ability to read her like a book. She, in turn, had the same ability to read him the same way. �It would be easier if I could just shut off my mind for a few hours.�
�No it wouldn�t,� John replied. Elizabeth frowned at him and he continued. �You can�t be an effective leader if you can just shut down at the end of the day. Believe me. I�ve served under some people who don�t care, who can flick a switch when they leave the office and be a completely different person, someone who doesn�t hold the lives of others in their hands day in and day out. I know it�s hard, Elizabeth, but you can�t just shut down. You do that� and you lose a part of who you are.� He smiled at her softly. �And we all like you the way you are.�
Blushing slightly, Elizabeth smiled back at John. �Thank you,� she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. �So did I really keep you up with my exact time to departure countdown?� she asked, feeling more than a little guilty.
�Nah. I can block that stuff out without much trouble,� John said. �I�m just� restless.� He narrowed his eyes at her. �But, seriously, you�ve got to stop doing that. You know how I am with numbers. Now I�ve got one of those big honkin� bomb clocks in the back of my head, ticking down the seconds.�
�Sorry,� Elizabeth said earnestly. She really hadn�t intended on sharing with anyone her private countdown, it had just slipped out in a conversation with John earlier in the day and she hadn�t even realized she had said it until it was out there. �I�ll try to keep my mouth shut. But no promises. Like I said, it�s subconscious; it�s not something I control. Like you and math�you don�t try to manipulate numbers in the blink of an eye, you just do it automatically.�
John nodded, understanding what it was like to have a strange quirk that you tried so hard to keep from others. At least his quirk had come in handy in daily life, though. �Good. Now, are you sure you don�t want to talk about why you bolted out of the kitchen like a scalded kitten?�
Elizabeth shook her head, wrinkling her nose at the thought of a kitten being scalded even as she tried her best to avoid making eye contact with John. �I just didn�t want to hang around while three men talked about a hot blonde.�
Arching an eyebrow, John looked at Elizabeth, amused. �None of us said anything about how she looks�other than Rodney, but, really, it�s Rodney. He�s convinced this woman is secretly harbouring a desire to be his love slave,� John said sardonically. Elizabeth let out a soft laugh at that. �Serious delusions happening there. Probably a good thing he�s started seeing Heightmeyer,� he said, meaning it in jest, though, truthfully, John couldn�t think of anything better for his friend than some serious therapy�a lot of the things he�d seen in the last few months since coming to Atlantis were terrifying for someone who was experienced in the atrocities of war; for a civilian scientist to be on the front lines, doing what they did, the emotional and psychological fallout was, understandably, tremendous
�I didn�t know that,� Elizabeth said, her good mood evaporating, and John cringed internally. He had been hoping to cheer her up, not bring her to a lower depth of whatever not-positive state of being she was currently residing in. �Is anything wrong?� she asked, knowing that, like most ego-driven people, Rodney McKay did not like to talk about things, not the things that hit home. Give him a ZPM or a lab full of technology and he would babble for hours, days even, but one shred of human emotion and he would either clam up or resort to sarcasm.