Dr. Keller assures her that she is protected by an Earth standard known as doctor-patient confidentiality and her secret is safe with her, but Teyla begins to doubt that, when two weeks after her first visit with the new head of medicine, offworld, she becomes distinctly aware of a shift of dynamics within the team. Rodney, formerly satisfied with walking behind her and her P-90, begins taking point. With Ronon at her flank and John on her six, it is not difficult to see what is going on. She is being escorted.
Dr. Keller swears when Teyla radios Atlantis angrily that she has not told them anything. Colonel Carter suggests that perhaps her teammates are simply too nosy for their own good, and Rodney admits under pain of torture (she grabs him by the ear, twists, and asks politely) that when they realized she'd been in the infirmary no less than three times in two weeks, he and John took the liberty of hacking into her medical records. She's so touched that she kisses him firmly on the mouth. John and Ronon look suspicious, and she notices that Rodney spends the rest of the mission outside their good graces, which strikes her as odd, since Ronon and John are the two men in all the universe who love Rodney most, as much as she does, and just as unconditionally.
It is another two weeks when Rodney comes to her room to find Ronon there. They are meditating, but there are many candles lit, and it is not difficult to see how Rodney might misread the situation. Teyla has discovered that holding Ronon's hands is the best way to keep him from falling asleep during their meditation, and they sit with their knees touching and their hands clasped together. Rodney excuses himself hastily; later, Teyla finds Ronon eating his evening meal alone while John and Rodney shoot nasty looks in his direction from the other side of the mess hall.
Thankfully, Teyla convinces Elizabeth to call a team meeting before Ronon and Rodney can gang up on John.
Fingers are pointed in all directions and there is much yelling; Teyla listens to her teammates accuse one another of, among other things, soiling her virtue, with a placid expression. Only Elizabeth notices the hint of sadness in her eyes.
"Okay, okay, all of you, stop!" Elizabeth exclaims. The three men fall silent. "Teyla?"
Teyla closes her eyes. "The child's father is gone. There is no cause for your concern."
"Gone?" Rodney says, sitting up straighter. "The bastard knocked you up and left?"
"I'm gonna find him," Ronon growls. "And then I'm gonna kill him."
"Wait," John says, frowning. "Gone how?"
Rodney deflates. "Oh, crap. Teyla..."
"It is all right, Rodney. I am told he... did not suffer."
John looks thoughtful. He has his suspicions, but he won't voice them yet. "How?" he asks.
Teyla looks uncomfortable; she does not want to lie to John or the others. She settles for, "Saving the life of another." John's suspicions, as far as he's concerned, are confirmed.
After they're dismissed, John corners Rodney in his lab. "What would happen if a person with the ATA gene and a person with the Wraith gene had a kid?"
Rodney blinks. "I don't know. Genetics was Carson's field." He pauses, looking at John. John is looking back, willing Rodney to get it. "Carson. You don't think..."
"I kinda do."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
~*~
"It is healthy?"
Carson smiled and patted Teyla's cheek fondly. "Aye, it is. Would you like to know the baby's sex?"
"You can tell the gender of the child so soon?" she asked, her voice an awed whisper.
"We can have a wee peek on ultrasound and see if anything sticks out, no pun intended. Have you told Colonel Sheppard yet?"
"There is much on his mind. When the time is right, I will tell him."
"And the father?"
Teyla looked thoughtful. "The father," she said finally, "is the only person who does know."
Carson ducked his head and blushed.
~*~
Teyla awakens quite suddenly, her stomach uneasy. She makes it to the bathroom in her quarters before what remains of yesterday's evening meal makes its way out of her body. At breakfast, Rodney pulls her chair out for her. She punches him.
"Hormones," Ronon snorts while John helps Rodney mop up his nosebleed.
"I thidk she broke id," Rodney complains. Teyla looks at her scrambled eggs and bolts for the bathroom again.
~*~
Carson's heart nearly stopped beating when he saw Teyla's wound. His first thought was for Teyla, but his second thought was for their child. "Teyla," he gasped, rushing to her side.
"Carson," she said weakly. Her eyes reflected his own fear, and she held out her hand. He took it and squeezed.
"I’m here. You’ve been in an explosion, Teyla, and a piece of debris has impacted your side. We’re headed to the infirmary to take it out and patch you up. Easy-peasy – I can do this one in my sleep." Teyla closed her eyes, entrusting herself to Carson's care. It was the last thing she would hear him say to her.
~*~
"Everything looks good," Keller says brightly. "Baby girl Emmagan is developing normally. How are you feeling?"
"Ill, in the mornings," Teyla admits. "And sometimes in the afternoons. And I hit Rodney."
"Wouldn't we all love to do that once in a while," Keller grins.
"Beckett."
"Sorry?"
Teyla closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Baby girl Beckett."
Keller blinks and then makes a note on her chart. "Oh. Okay. I'll just, uh... okay."
Teyla is grateful that Keller does not ask questions she is not ready to answer.
~*~
"It is an odd sensation," Teyla laughed, squirming away from Carson's lips.
"You're ticklish," he accused, looking up at her from the general area of her navel. She hoped their child would have his eyes, bright and full of mischief. "I'll stop if you like."
"I did not say it was unpleasant."
Carson kissed Teyla's abdomen again before resting his cheek against her soft skin. "It's hard to believe in a place that's so full of death, we've made a new life."
"It is the way of my people," Teyla smiled. "So long as there is love and procreation, the Wraith cannot be triumphant."
Carson was silent for a moment, before saying with casual amusement, "Rodney tells me you've a wee crush on one of the new marines."
"That is what I have chosen to let him and the others believe, yes," Teyla agreed. "I am not ready to share this with them yet."
Chuckling, Carson moved to lay beside her, drawing her into his arms. "Neither am I, love. Crazy buggers, the lot of them."
Teyla smirked. "They were your friends first."
Clucking disapprovingly, Carson says, "Ah ah ah, no blaming Rodney on me, now."
~*~
Rodney grows increasingly anxious as Teyla's belly swells. John's irritation is directly proportional to Rodney's anxiety, and if Teyla did not know better she might think he was jealous, though of whom she is unsure. Jeannie Miller sends care packages with vitamin E oil (for the stretchmarks) and chocolate (trust me, you'll know when you need it) and a list of conversation topics guaranteed to scare Rodney out of the room when she wants to be rid of him. Teyla understands that Rodney is fussing over her because he was unwilling or unable to do the same for Jeannie. She finds it endearing.
Ronon cooks for her. Traditional Satedan fare, not game like he ate during his years on the run. It has been a long time since he has had someone to take care of, he tells her, and makes a dessert that his woman -- not his wife, as John assumes -- loved when she craved sweets. It is too sweet and Teyla imagines it makes her teeth ache, but she will not tell him that for anything. She asks for seconds.
John reads. He requisitions every book he can think of on the topics of pregnancy, childbirth and infants, and enlists Zelenka's help in compiling a list of supplies they'll need once the baby comes. "Diapers," Zelenka tells him sagely. "Many, many thousands of diapers." By the time Teyla enters her third trimester, there are two storerooms dedicated to baby supplies. Baby girl Beckett still does not have a first name.
~*~
"You're stubborn, I'll give you that," Carson said archly. "At the current moment there isn't much else I'll say for you."
Teyla smiled. "It was not my stubbornness that kept me here, Carson. It was faith."
Carson looked mildly confused. She was coming down from pain meds still, after all. "Faith?"
"I had faith that John and Rodney would find a solution to the problem with the whales," she explained. "And I had faith that you would not let me come to harm."
"Yes, well," Carson said, the tips of his ears pinkening slightly. "I'm just a surgeon, love, not the second coming. You might've developed an aneurysm like Sgt. Bell, and then where would we be?"
"I might have, but I did not," Teyla pointed out. "There are many things which might happen."
"Aye, there are," Carson conceded. "But I would have felt better with you aboard the Daedalus, nonetheless."
"Might you have gone with me?"
Carson sighed; Teyla knew the answer to that question. He would not leave the city when he had an infirmary full of people who needed him, regardless of whether his team could handle it. "Teyla..."
"It is your dedication to others which makes you who you are. I would not ask you to change that which endears you most to me." Teyla took his hand and smiled. "Might you join me tonight, at sundown, on the west pier?"
Carson absolutely dimpled, and Teyla was charmed by his smile. "Aye, that I might."
~*~
Teyla is put on bedrest in the last weeks of her pregnancy. When her teammates are not offworld, she has three dedicated manservants to bring her whatever she desires to eat, to rub her swollen feet and ankles, and to tell her she looks more lovely now than ever before. She ignores this last as idle flattery until Rodney adds, "and Carson would think so, too." Teyla weeps on his shoulder, and Rodney pats her back and smooths her hair awkwardly. He's never known what to do with crying women.
They go offworld the next day, and are not heard from for three days after that. When they return, Emma Charin Beckett has arrived in Atlantis, and so has her father.
~*~
"I would not think you, a doctor of medicine, would be so surprised. It is a matter of simple biology." Teyla looked far too amused. "Shall I explain it as Charin once explained it to me?"
"Another time, perhaps. I just didn't want to assume," Carson said quietly, his fingers tracing designs on her skin. "Our worlds are... very different, to say the least. Relationships--"
"Do you not practice monogamy on Earth?" Teyla teased.
"You're a beautiful woman, Teyla, and as charming and sweet as you are lovely. Any man would be lucky..."
"You are not any man. You are Doctor Carson Beckett, and you are one of the greatest men I have known. Why should I choose to settle for less?"
Carson's smile lit Teyla's darkened quarters more than the rows of candles that burned on every available surface.
~*~
"Physically he's fine," Keller says, waving a hand in the direction of the bed Carson is sitting on. Teyla is sleeping on the bed beside his, and between them there is an ancient device which looks suspiciously like a bassinet, carefully monitoring Emma's bio signs.
"No memories," Rodney huffs. "Yes, we'd figured that much out. Not that I didn't suspect it the minute I saw him. Have none of you read the SG-1 mission reports?"
"So... Carson ascended?" John sounds doubtful, but looks hopeful.
"No," Rodney retorts. "He just blew up into a bunch of bitty little pieces that somehow magically put themselves back together on a completely different planet from where the initial explosion took place. Yes, he ascended."
John shoots Rodney a glare before adding, "So then he must have screwed up and got booted from the club."
Keller looks uneasy. "Screwed up? Screwed up how?"
Elizabeth speaks up, finally. "Obviously I can't know for certain, but I believe Carson has broken the Ascended Beings' highest law. I believe somehow, he's interfered."
"Please," Rodney scoffs. "Of course he's interfered somehow. He's a doctor. That's what you people do," he says, directing his comment at Keller. "No offense."
Keller rolls her eyes. "None taken."
~*~
"Rodney is truly dying," Teyla said softly. Carson looked up from the printouts of Rodney's latest attempt at meditation and gave her a sad smile.
"Rodney is spectacular at saving his own skin in the eleventh hour," he told her. "What happened to having faith?"
Teyla sat down on an exam table. "There is a time and a place for faith. When Rodney himself doubts his abilities..."
Carson stood and crossed the room, sitting beside her and putting his arm around her shoulder. "What did he say?"
"He said nothing. He served me tea," she said, blinking back tears. "To honor the anniversary of my father's passing. It is tradition. But more than that, it was thoughtful."
"That is worrisome," Carson teased. "Rodney will be fine, dear. He always is."
~*~
They tell him his name is Carson Beckett, and he is a doctor. They tell him that he died, and he does not doubt them. There is a woman sleeping in the bed beside him, a woman who is achingly familiar, somehow, in the same way that the men who found him are, but more; he cannot quite place it. Between his bed and hers, there is a machine, not quite an incubator but perhaps a monitor of some kind. In it lies an infant, pink and squirming. It cannot be older than a day. He wonders if the woman is his wife, and if the child between them is theirs.
Over time he learns that she is not his wife, but the child is theirs. The woman's name is Teyla, and when she looks at him, there is a deep sadness in her eyes, a pain he understands he has caused but is unable to heal. But he is a healer, and he will find a way.
Emma is a colicky baby; there are only two things which calm her: Ronon, singing Satedan lullabies in a slightly off-key baritone, and John making faces at her over Rodney's shoulder as he holds her. Carson regains his memories of practicing medicine and returns to work, but he does not remember these people who call him friend. He watches while these strange people form a cohesive family unit, centered on his child, and is jealous.
Emma is six months old when Carson dreams of the night she was conceived. He is in a Genii prison with Teyla, Ronon and John, and they are awaiting rescue courtesy of Rodney. Emma is safe in Atlantis, under Elizabeth's watchful eye. He sits up, shakes Teyla awake and exclaims, "I loved you!"
John and Ronon glower at him as Teyla squares her shoulders and does not cry. "Yes," she agrees. "And I, you." This is not the cure for her pain Carson has been praying for. He suspects it only deepens her wounds, and he tries again.
"You don't understand," he says, softer in hopes that John and Ronon will stop glaring murder at him. "I remember loving you, Teyla. I feel it, just here," he says, placing her muddy hand on his chest. "There's a hole there, love. For you and the baby." For the first time in six months, Teyla smiles at him.
A week later, back safe in Atlantis, Carson goes to Teyla's quarters and knocks hesitantly on the door. It opens for him.
"Carson," she greets him warmly. "Emma was just about to go down for a nap. Perhaps you would like to hold her?"
"I would," he agrees, taking the baby from her arms and cradling her close; he's never seen anything so beautiful, but he can think of one that comes close. He looks up from the tiny, trusting face and catches Teyla's eye. "Might you meet me tonight, at sundown, on the west pier?"
Teyla's smile this time is blindingly brilliant. "Yes, that I might."