Author's disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis and its associated characters. MGM does, for which, for the most part, they have my utmost respect. No copyright infringement is intended in writing these stories.

My deepest respect also goes to the talented actors that brought to life the characters we see in Stargate Atlantis. My portrayal of the characters here is based on my perception of the work of Joe Flanigan, Rachel Luttrell, Paul McGillion, David Hewlett, and Connor Trinneer for their portrayal of such wonderful characters.

With the exception of personal interpretation and expansions, extract from The Prodigal remain copyright of the story and teleplay writer: Carl Binder.

Other original material presented here is © Eirian Phillips 2009.

Story is rated for mature readers, according to whatever rating system is adopted these days for Fan Fiction. It changes on a site by site basis… It was so much easier way back when…

Characters and events are purely fictitious, and any similarity to anyone living, transformed, dead, cloned or in any alternate universe or timeline is entirely coincidental.

Stargate: Atlantis

"…without one whom I have wronged."

Turning, tumbling she fell like down over him, under him, her copper brown hair a halo around them as she threw back her head, then settled close, like a blanket over him… around him… her skin, parchment soft against his chest, the sensitive inside of his arms. He whispered her name, his lips still swollen with their desperate, hungry kisses…

Beckett woke cold – alone. Always alone… the memory of sensation burning through his oversensitive skin. He sat up and covered his face with his hands while he breathed out a long breath, trying to be quiet. Though the bed was long since cold, it didn't necessarily mean that she wasn't nearby and he didn't want her hearing the emotion in his breathing; returning to see the trembling in his limbs.

He glanced over to the open balcony window when the silken drapes blew inward to brush their whisper against the ancient tile that made the floor of the quarters… of the secret he so carefully guarded.

She hadn't rested a whole night through in over two months, and it was taking its toll. He could see this, where others did not because of the intimacy they shared. Day to day she managed to keep it all under wraps – appearing to be her normal self, but when night came, when the moons rose over Atlantis and shone in through any window she was near, the cracks began to show and it wouldn't be long before the bubbling pot spilled over.

Teyla Emmagan was coming apart.

It didn't sit comfortably with him, and with another sigh, Beckett climbed wearily out of bed, pulling on sweat pants that were lying, discarded in the heat of the earlier moments, nearby. Then he picked up the comforter and headed for the open window. She'd be cold. It was what she did when the guilt was strongest, as if she was trying to freeze it out of herself… cold as the death that haunted her.

It was what brought them together after all… that and the ghost of his own desires that seemed strangely, ironically, tragic to him now.

"Teyla… Teyla, love, it's Carson," Beckett gestured to McKay to stay outside the Athosian's quarters while he stepped quietly inside. He worried – terribly. It wasn't like her to miss the beginning of a mission, especially not one as important to them as this one would be. There had to be something wrong. "If you can hear me, Teyla, try and make a sound… let me know where y'are, love. It's going to be just fine."

The darkness in the early hours of the day hindered his visual search, pierced only by two shafts of silver, coming in through the opened blinds.

"Can you see her?" McKay hissed from the doorway. "Is she all right?"

"Rodney," Beckett said quietly as he spotted the slight movement in the blinds. "I'll take it from here. I'm sure she's just fine. I'll radio if I need any help."

"Are you sure?" McKay was obviously reluctant to leave. "I mean, I can stick arou—"

"I'm fine," he answered. "Thanks, Rodney."

Muttering, McKay moved away from the door, and Beckett closed behind it him it with a thought, darkening the room still further. He stood still, listening for any sound carried in on the slight draught that crept in under the waving blinds. It was a while before he heard it, and the sound of it broke his inertia. A single sob, whispered in the dark spaces between the moonlight.

"Teyla," he hurried without regard to the silver daggers to either side of his pathway to the partly open door, and stepped outside. He saw her at once, on her knees in the middle of the balcony, beside the rail, curled up on herself, no regard to her state of undress… and no more had he. He was at her side in an instant, reaching for her – a hand to her shoulder. "Teyla…? Dear God, love, you're freezing."

He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. He'd worry about getting her inside in a moment. Just then his priority was to stop her from losing any more body heat.

"Carson," she whimpered, and moved under his touch, unfolding and turning toward him in a single motion to reach for him – fit herself into his instinctive embrace as she craved, "Hold me."

"What were you thinking?" he asked, rubbing his hands almost briskly over the fabric of his jacket, over her back. "What were you—?"

She sat up away from his embrace enough to take his face between her hands, and imploring him with her eyes as well as her tone she said, "How am I still living? How… when I feel so lifeless?"

"I don't—" he stammered, starting to tell her that he didn't understand.

"Show me," she begged. With no warning she captured his lips with her own. No delicate overtures, no soft tentative brushing as he had always imagined; always hoped, but the desperate crushing presence of a life trembling in doubt. She pulled away enough to crave, "make me feel again!"

He pushed her back, tore himself away from the overwhelming arousal he suddenly felt. For so long he'd dreamed of her lips on his, under his… surprised he had been granted that part of himself considering his creator's fierce jealousy where Teyla was concerned. He must have seen.

"We… we can't do this, Teyla," he told her, trying to brace his arms against her attempts to fit herself to him again. "I'm sorry, we—"

"I need," she gasped breathily. "I need you, Carson."

It was some kind of perverse triangle. Did she see him as some kind of link to the one she truly wanted? Had she always known the way he felt about her? Was she playing with his heart and did it matter?

She needed him, and God knows he wanted her – always had… though of course not him, but his true self, the original Carson Beckett – who had secretly worshipped her beauty and strength, and had wound his unrequited love around him like a shield against the corruption he had been to her… could be again. The emotions remained though, long after the death of the donor – in this rekindled flesh and soul – like some mirror of Herbert's Duncan Idaho, recreated with all his feelings and desires intact to be triggered by the right key.

When she kissed him again, there was no fight, no hesitation, just surrender to the sweetness and warmth of her mouth, the sharpness and arousal of the nips her teeth wrought against the tenderness of his lips… a descent into passion.

His eyes automatically drifted to the space on the balcony where they had been… where she always ended her nocturnal self condemnation. The space was empty. She was not there, and he frowned, turning to the dark corner of the outdoor space. Once – not long after Kanaan had left – he had found her there, but the space was empty.

With growing worry, he turned to go back inside. Perhaps the bathroom – though in the pit of his stomach he had a bad feeling, and where Teyla was concerned those feelings were not usually wrong.

He'd never been able to work out whether that was because of the way he'd been made, or because, in the course of their relationship, they'd each formed some kind of deep connection that allowed the other to understand their needs, their emotions, because on a number of occasions, she had surprised him by knowing exactly how to reach him.

Closing the door behind him after stepping back into the quarters they shared at such times, his eyes fell on the bed again, the evidence of their earlier activity still clear in the rumbled sheets and twisted blankets. Today had been one of those times that she had reached to comfort him, and not the other way around…

He hadn't heard her enter, but felt her hands settle on the back of his neck, and sweep to his shoulders, her strong fingers kneading away the tension gathered there, drip by drip with each loss.

"It was bad?" she asked him softly, her breath at his ear, and he could feel the warmth of her body wrapping around him from behind as she reached over his shoulders to begin unfastening his shirt.

"Oh, Teyla," he leaned back into her, shuddering with each breath he took, and she soothed his aching temples with soft kisses. "I've no seen anything like it since Hoff itself. It's almost as if they were infected with the previous strain and not the one that Michael and I perfected."

"Michael perfected," she said, trying to absolve him. She always did, but they both knew it was an empty gesture and today he was not prepared to accept it. It had been too close… the children, the women he had treated in vain reminded him—

"You are thinking of Perna," she told him, moving around him to straddle his lap as she pushed back the unfastened shirt and stripped it from him.

"I'm thinking of all of them, Teyla," he said, dropping his head to her shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her to steady her in his lap. "I did this, not Michael. If I hadn't assisted Perna, given the Hoffans a viable treatment, none of this—"

She cut him off, lifting his chin in her hand to press her soft lips to his, stealing his breath with the gentle intensity of her kiss.

"Then at the root of it, of this chain of cause and effect, it begins with the Wraith," she said.

"Aye," he said, beginning to relax in spite of himself, "and it'll end there too."

"Yes," she acceded. "On that we are agreed. One way or another it will end with the Wraith."

She pushed him backward, suddenly, and crossing her arms, reached to lift off the asymmetric shirt she wore, and he reached for her, to soothe the ache in his fingers with the softness of her skin as he ran the touch over her taut belly, upward toward her breasts, whispering her name.

She moaned softly and leaned in to his touch, running her own fingers over him, and coming to him as his fingers ceased their sure and knowing caresses over her nipples, feeling them peak against his fingertips, and then the press of them against his chest as she stretched out over him, to meet his waiting kiss.

He tried to turn them, but she resisted, leaning up again, pushing at his shoulder and shaking her head as she moved aside to reach for the fastenings of his pants… kissing hotly over his shoulders and chest.

"Today, for you," she murmured softly between kisses that felt like the warmth of gentle down over his skin, a balm to wash away the pall of sickness and death that hung over him.

With each kiss, as his passion rose, his tension eased away until he was filled with tension of a different kind, his body burning with a need to be surrounded in her, a part of her – emotions meeting in the physical, and in the physical the intangible essence of what she mean to him; had meant to the him-before.

Only then she moved away, teasing to slowly finish disrobing, taking her time, as if she could feel the way he moved his eyes over each coffee-gold inch of her, that she bared to him, turned so that he could see more, or so that she could delay him in his sight of her – he never did know which.

The burning tension became an ache, centred deep in his groin; his hardness bereft without her, and smiling she turned, returned to him and tumbling, she fell like down over him, her copper brown hair a halo around them as she threw back her head, then settled close, like a blanket over him… around him… her skin, parchment soft against his chest, the sensitive inside of his arms. He whispered her name, his lips still swollen with their desperate, hungry kisses, as she moved with him, alternately sheathing and releasing the ache at his centre, moaning softly; becoming more and more breathless herself as she came to life. He could see the passion ignited in the way her eyes darkened and her face became a vision of near ecstasy.

He didn't ask what was in her mind; didn't look – he never did.

"Stop thinking," she told him, moving away to kiss her way down his sweat-slicked body, nipping at his chest, his belly, before the heat of her breath caressed his engorged shaft in the moment before she took him into her mouth.

He couldn't help the cry that escaped him, nor the way his fingers found their way into her hair as she took him deeper, her tongue swirling over him as her lips stroked up and down all of his length, as if she revelled in the taste of their joint fervour.

She moaned again, the sound vibrating against him and he answered her unspoken bidding. Drawing her away, he pushed her gently until she lay back, until he could take her in his arms, and bury himself inside of her again – deep inside, kindling the secret they both knew and leaving her trembling with greater need still.

All thought vanished, and it was lips and teeth and fingernails and the glide of skin upon skin, flesh upon flesh, within and without… a pulsing, thrusting abandon that climbed higher within them with each moment. Each cry, each moan, each shared breath was a testament to everything they shared, and as she called out, shattering and trembling around him, he lost himself, surrendering his very life to her with the rush and spill of his hot seed – his own climax filling him with the intense dissolution of self. Here – like this – he belonged.

Carson blinked, and breathed out, swallowing hard, but she was in his breath, his thoughts… every part of him – except his arms, where she should be… resting.

"Teyla?" he called softly, almost afraid as he moved toward the bathroom and then jumped when the call came, and his heart rate doubled in an instant.

"Beckett, this is Sheppard." Something in the tone of Sheppard's voice alerted him in an instant that something was wrong, and the something was with Teyla and even as he picked up his radio headset he was moving toward the door, fixing it in place.

"Go ahead, John," he tried to keep his voice free of the worry coursing through him.

"I need you up on the top of the Control Tower, and I need you here now," Sheppard answered.

"I'm on my way," he said, this time letting the concern show. "What's going on?"

Instead of answering, Sheppard turned his attention elsewhere, but his mic was still open, and Beckett could hear every word, his blood becoming a frigid mass inside of him.

"Teyla, listen to me… whatever it is, we can talk about it… it'll be all right, just… please… step away from the edge…"

The last words broke through his inability to move, and he virtually ran through the whole of the city, taking the steps two and three at a time until he could feel the buffeting winds on his face from the open doorway at the top of the Jumper Bay.

The murmur of Sheppard's voice, soft but filled with tension reached him, though the words did not, as the wind took them from him, as they did his breath, but not so much as the sight of Teyla, shivering and lost… and dangerously close to the edge of the ledge on which she stood.

Forcing himself to slow his steps, Beckett stepped out to join Sheppard, reaching out with the fragile connection he and Teyla had discovered Michael had left them in creating him with the compulsions he gave to all his creations. It wasn't a constant, but at times, like earlier, or when – in times of great emotion – they both sought comfort of each other, he could hear, and she could feel his presence.

"Carson," she turned to him, her eyes as wild as the wind. "Please, Carson, I have to know. I have to."

He stepped closer, and said softly, apologetically, "We've been through this, sweetheart. Even if there were anything salvageable, the chances are I wouldn't be able to use it. We've no way of telling. I'm sorry."

"No…" She shook her head, taking a half step back away from him as he moved closer, holding out his hand. Her tiredness, clear on her face, the hurt of it all in her eyes, she teetered on the edge.

"Take my hand, love," he said softly. "Come back to me. I promise you, we'll find out."

"But I… I cannot, I—"

"Please, Teyla," he whispered, "Don't do this."

It wasn't your fault.

He inched closer, catching the expression on Sheppard's face from the corner of his eye, realised that perhaps it would be better if the colonel wasn't a witness to the ensuing conversation.

"It's all right, Colonel. I think I can take it from—"

"Teyla!"

Sheppard's cry stopped him cold and he turned in time to see Teyla, caught by a gust of wind that blew even him backward, lose balance, and turning, begin to fall. He and Sheppard both lunged for her, too slow even as they began.

"Teyla!" Beckett echoed Sheppard's cry, and rushed to the edge, barely breathing until he saw her, hanging by the tips of her fingers… her breath coming in huge, terrified sobs.

On his knees in an instant, Beckett reached down to close his hand around her wrist, pull her to safety, but before he could, the fingers of her left hand slipped, the fierce wind catching her to draw her body out with an invisible hand.

"Carson!" she cried out to him. Her eyes met his, full of the desperation of everything she felt in that moment – she did not want to fall.

This must have been how he felt.

Her thought reached him, as clear as if she'd spoken it, and drawn into her – through those eyes – he shared in her terrible memories…

She looked down at him, boiling… burning with anger… her belly churning with the perversion of feeling – wrong side of the coin… he'd pushed too far, too hard. She could feel the strain, pulling… aching in her own arms as if they were his, and at any other time would have been moved to help. Why could she not? Why would she not?

Her breathing quickened as she watched him hanging, feeling his breath growing short as the strain on the muscles in his chest grew more and more with each passing moment. He looked up at her and their eyes met, and for a second only along the connection a hint of doubt flared. How could he doubt? Why would he?

She kicked at the fingers of his left hand and he gave a wordless cry as the fierce wind caught him to draw his body out with an invisible hand, his desperation pierced her gut as his voice reached her at last – a single word – her name.

"Teyla!"

And with it came indecision, of the doubts she felt from him, that he would never feel; of her own inability to act; of the faltering bond, frayed and coming apart as if the wind picked at it, tore it away piece by dissolving piece.

And of a love – unrequited – that could never be.

She pulled back her foot and kicked again, watching as he fell to his death… taking her with him, which no one would ever know.

Beckett sobbed once, the wind concealing the evidence as it tore his tears away. Her pain coursed through him, an arrow at his breast as he realised it all… through these long months she'd been nothing but a spectre – caught in the thrall of her own guilt, her own agony at doing as she had done to free herself and Michael both, but he knew that there was no escaping fate. What the universe would have of you, it would have – even if it had to bring you back from death to take it…

…or, as Teyla, hanging there on the point between an existence of lifelessness, and death, would keep you. What freedom was this that she had tried to take for herself?

The triangle dissolved inside of him, knowing that what little time he'd had he borrowed from a greater power than his; than own feelings and that of his original self. They were so strong they were painful, stealing his breath even as they gave him the will to act.

He took a breath and closed his eyes allowing the thought to travel out into the universe as he locked his eyes with hers and reached for her hand…

I'm not him, but I still care for you.

Fin

Author's Note: The Title is a quotation from The Egyptian Book of the Dead – The Address to the Gods. 1700 – 1000 BCE

Pardon the screwy formatting, did it, not me, and I can't be doing with fighting with it any more.

This was written for the 'rarepairings' ficathon 200 and stands alone from anything else I have written. Work continues on the Virtual Season 5 - fear not.