[email protected]
�So� how have you been?� Elizabeth asked, immediately cringing as the words came out of her mouth. �Wow, that was even more pathetic an opening line than it was in my head,� she apologized.
�Its okay, Elizabeth. This is supposed to be awkward.�
Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. �You have experience with this? Had a lot of women leave you for another galaxy?� she asked. Simon didn�t respond. �Lame. Again. And glib. Again, sorry.�
�I�ve been good,� Simon said, brushing aside her apology. �Busy,� he added after a few seconds of tense silence.
�Good. Busy is good. And good is� good. Too,� Elizabeth replied, her tone strained.
�Yeah. Good,� Simon agreed dully.
There were a million reasons that John was oh-so-thankful for Elizabeth and her tireless belief in him, and why he was relieved beyond words that General O�Neill hadn�t even blinked when John had told him that whether he went on the mission or not was very much about him despite the fact that there was something bigger and so completely amorphous that it was hard to even begin to comprehend out there.
After Elizabeth had asked him to join the expedition and General O�Neill had badgered him the entire flight back to McMurdo (interspersing the slightly-fatherly nagging with stories that seemed so fantastical and insane to John at the time) and John had agreed�though reluctantly, and mostly because agreeing meant a free trip back to the States and away from the constant snow and ice of the last continent he had to set foot on�there had been a huge weight released from his shoulders.
Of course, that old weight was immediately replaced with an even heavier load, the fate of not only the expedition but also the Pegasus Galaxy and the Milky Way as well, was dropped on him by two acts: the mercy killing of Colonel Marshall Sumner and the skewering of the Wraith Queen who was in charge of keeping all the other Wraith tucked in bed or whatever for the next fifty years or so. Both deaths were at his hand, and, while rationally he knew that the Wraith were set to wake up fairly soon anyway and his speeding up the process might not have actually meant anything in the long run because he knew he couldn�t be the only one stupid and crazy enough in the galaxy to try to get his people back, there was a part of him, a very small part that Elizabeth and Teyla and Kate Heightmeyer the base therapist all tried very hard to stamp down, that believed that if he hadn�t killed Sumner and the Wraith Queen�or maybe just the Queen, since Sumner had been shooting John pleading �kill me� looks that John had tried to ignore until he realized just how much pain the Colonel was in�all the people that had been culled since then would still be alive. Elizabeth said he was crazy whenever he brought it up. Teyla would serenely utter some Athosian maxim about guilt being the root of something or other. And Kate would tell him that they needed �to work on the god complex he was beginning to develop and could he come in three times a week for hour-long sessions?� to which he would always reply with a resounding �no�.
Going to Atlantis was something John couldn�t imagine not doing now that he�d spent nearly a year in the mythic city. Being back on Earth had been something that everyone seemed to be striving for during that nearly-a-year; almost from the moment they arrived in Pegasus it seemed like half the time they were defending themselves and the other half they were trying to get back to Earth. But, like many things, once they actually got what they wanted the reality was a massive let-down.
Apart from the debriefings and the belittling by superior officers and not seeing Elizabeth whenever he wanted to there was one thing about Earth that was driving John completely nuts.