Subject to Interpretation - Part Two

[jadesfire]

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"Don't touch anything," Rodney snapped. "Anyone." He went over to a console and brushed it clear of the long, Wraith tendrils.

"Teyla?" John asked, and she could hear the question in his voice.

Shaking her head, she turned to him. "I am not sensing anything. There are no Wraith in this city."

"Of course not." Although his head was still bent over the display, Rodney's voice was loud in the quiet room. "It's been ten thousand years."

"We've seen them survive that long before." John still had a tight grip on his gun, and he kept giving Teyla odd glances. Between them and the sickly-sweet, rotting smell of the Wraith tendrils, Teyla was finding it hard to keep a grip on her temper.

"Not without a food source," Rodney said, and he lifted his head quickly. "Oh God, you don't think-"

"There would have been a lot of Ancients here at some point."

John's words hung in the air as Rodney looked nervously round the room. "Yeah, but we would have seen them, right? I mean, bodies in the hallways, that kind of thing."

"Maybe it was tidy or threw them out of the window or something. There's a lot of this city we haven't seen yet." Sweeping the room with his flashlight, John turned back to Rodney. Teyla had just opened her mouth to point out that she still wasn't sensing anything when he asked, "Have you got anything yet?"

"What?" Dragging himself back to the present with visible effort, Rodney looked down at the console. "It's all in Wraith."

"Surprisingly."

"Which means," Rodney went on, ignoring John as usual, "that I need one of the linguists to help me translate it."

"Can you transfer the information to one of the consoles in the computer lab?" When Rodney nodded, John reached for his radio, still not quite meeting Teyla's eyes. "Then do it. I don't want us spread out more than we have to be."

"Right."

John moved across the room and began radioing the teams of marines, while Ronon drifted closer to Teyla.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I am fine." She was irritated and unsettled, but she still wasn't sensing anything at all. It would have been more comforting if she had felt that John believed her. She knew that she had been tense for the last few weeks, the strain of keeping her condition from the others, and not knowing if she would forced to tell them before she was ready, was making her touchy and much quicker to anger than usual. That John would doubt her like this made her feel all the more uncomfortable, and even more off-balance. It was becoming confusing.

"He's just being careful," Ronon said, following her gaze. Blinking, Teyla realized that she had been staring at the back of John's head, ready to say something when he turned back around.

"I know." Taking a long breath and letting it out slowly didn't seem to help very much, and Teyla was still feeling decidedly annoyed when John clicked his radio off and came over to join them.

"The marine teams are going to fall back to the computer lab," he said, talking to Ronon rather than her. "Go with McKay, would you? No one's to wander the hallways on their own."

"What about you?" Ronon asked, his hands resting lightly on his gun belt, but clearly ready for an argument.

"Teyla and I are going to do some more recon, just to be sure."

"It'll be dark outside soon," Rodney put in. "And I don't want to overtax the Naquadah generator unless we have to."

"I got it, McKay. We'll be back before nightfall."

Teyla waited until the others had left, Rodney half-absorbed in whatever he'd pulled from the console onto his tablet, Ronon giving both her and Sheppard a final hard look before grabbing Rodney's shoulder and steering him in the right direction.

Once she was sure they were out of earshot, Teyla turned to John, fully prepared to ignore the hand he raised to fend her off.

"Look, I'm not doubting you," he said quickly, and she tilted her head.

"You are giving every impression of doing so," Teyla shot back, annoyance threatening to solidify into anger. "I told you that there are no Wraith in this city."

"And I want to believe you, really. But you've said it yourself before now. They're Wraith. We still don't really know everything they're capable of." His voice was infuriatingly reasonable, and Teyla found herself deflating a little. "I just want to be sure, is all. We'll check out this tower and the next one over. If we don't see anything and you're not picking anything up, then we'll stick with the idea that there are no Wraith. Okay?"

Teyla clenched her jaw, knowing that John wouldn't listen even if she protested. Jerking her chin in a sharp nod, she headed for the door, not really caring if he had to scramble to catch up.

The hallways in this tower were just as empty and stuffy as all the others Teyla had walked through, the air still and dry, feeling every one of its ten thousand years. She still felt nothing, no tell-tale tingle at the back of her mind or warm shiver down her spine. Everything in her wanted to try to explain this to John, to tell him that she would know if there were Wraith here. She just...would. It had always been this way, and if all their previous experience could not convince John, then it was doubtful anything she could say would persuade him either.

So they pressed on, working their way through corridor after corridor, room after room, with nothing to be found except yet more sand and some collapsed ceilings. John eventually called a halt when he opened a door and a small avalanche of sand poured out onto his boots.

"Great." He stepped back carefully, shaking the worst of it off. "Glad I brought some spare socks. I really hate sand," he said, with more feeling than Teyla would have expected.

"I thought that you were accustomed to sand and deserts on your own planet."

"Yeah. Like I said. I really hate sand." As he straightened up from brushing the last grains from between his laces, he gave her a rueful smile. "We should probably think about heading back."

Through the broken windows on the far side of the room, Teyla could see the deep blue of the sky, much darker now, with a few stars just starting to appear. "We will lose the last of the light soon," she said, turning away from the doors.

John put a hand on her arm. "Look, Teyla. I just had to be sure, you know? You've been really off since, well-" He waved his free hand uncomfortably. "Which is-"

She stared at him. "My people are missing, John, and we have no idea where to find them. How do you expect me to behave?"

"Which is totally understandable," he went on, slowly and with more force. "But I need to know that you're not too distracted to not know something that we really need to know." Frowning a little, he added in a more normal tone, "I think that made more sense in my head, but you know what I mean."

There was nothing she could say to that, because she had been distracted and distant, needing time to absorb her situation before being able to tell the others. It still hurt that John would doubt her because of it, but then they had lost enough people in the last few months that she supposed he had a right to be overly-cautious.

"Look," he said, squeezing her arm a little. "You're off your game. I get that. And you don't want to talk to any of us about it. I get that too. But I need to know that when we're here, I can still depend on that spidey-sense of yours."

Teyla nodded, putting a hand over John's on her arm. "I am sorry if I have been…distant. Recently. But this is not something I could be uncertain of. Ever."

"Okay." John held her gaze for another long moment, then nodded in return. "We should really get back now." Setting off down the corridor again, he glanced at her. "So. Just so we're clear."

"No Wraith." Teyla caught the edge of a smile in his expression, and took the words for the apology they were.

'No Wraith,' he echoed.