Reciprocity
by Bil!

K+ - Angst, Episode addition – John, Elizabeth - Oneshot

Summary: He was a monster and she brought him back. She was lost and he found her. Together, they are strong. Conversion and Real World episode addition.

Season: 2 and 3.

Spoilers: Conversion, The Real World

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: This story came about because I was watching a music video which showed a clip of John breaking containment and grabbing onto Elizabeth in TRW and it reminded me of Conversion in mirror. They're both Infirmary-type episodes with John and Elizabeth playing the roles of the afflicted and the chief supporter, just swapping places. Being there for each other. I really love their friendship.

The creature that had worn his skin hadn't been interested in memory. It had worked on instinct, on basic commands. It had Done, it hadn't Thought. The past had been immediately lost to it, leaving only the ever-present Now.

John knew this because it meant his memories from the time he had been more bug than human were so sketchy as to be little more than half-faded fragments of some nightmare. A nightmare in which some other Thing had been in control of his body. Not him. Something that was gone now, leaving him alone in his head. Leaving not even real memories.

So he tried to forget them. Tried to make himself believe that none of what It had done had been his fault. Tried to bury the aching guilt in the same overcrowded graveyard in his head that contained every one of his failures, every mistake he'd ever made, and all his dead. At least he could sometimes forget.

(You should have fought harder, whispered that little voice in the back of his head that never got loud but went on and on and on, unsquashable, unstoppable. You could have stopped it if you'd just tried harder. Just a little harder. If you had you wouldn't have hurt any of them, wouldn't have attacked any of them, wouldn't have turned into that Thing that was just a monster in your body. You could have stopped it.)

But he apologised to Teyla, he thanked Carson, he thanked his teammates, he stood tall and straight at Walker and Stephens' memorial service... And sometimes he failed to forget.

In his dreams he chased through blue corridors after some beast that stayed forever just out of sight and the bodies of his fallen friends were scattered across the floor. And then he was the beast, hiding from himself, always running, running, running. Faint memories mixed with imagination: the strength and power of his new form, the ease with which he took out the soldiers sent to stop him, the fear on his teammates' faces as they stared at the Thing that was him.

And in the background, tying him by a thread to the humanity lost inside him, the flash of red and the sound of reassurance: Elizabeth.

He stands on the balcony and wraps his fingers around the railing because otherwise he will do something he will regret. And he remembers. "You were in my room! Even when I told you not to come. I told you I was dangerous, Elizabeth, and you came back! Did you want me to prove it?"

His hand around her throat, her skin soft and so fragile under his grip, the fear in her eyes as she gasped for breath, the strength in his arm, the power in his hand – the power to hurt her. The desire.

"Why would you do that?" he asks, horrified, hating himself, desperately bewildered. She knew what he was turning into, she knew how dangerous he was becoming. "Why would you risk it? Why would you do that?"

She looks at him, eyes steady. "Because you needed me."

The shadows haunted her. Even though Elizabeth knew now that that shadowed figure that had chased her through the too-real fictional world had been John, that the nanites had taken his supportive presence and twisted it into horror, it had been horror. She couldn't turn off the memory of that fear, the way her heart would contract painfully, the way the adrenaline would surge through her, the way the panic would fill her body and take over her mind.

And now turning to see a human shadow on the floor only brought back that horror, lifting the hair on the back of her neck, sending cold fear running across her skin and along her bones as she bit back the scream that wanted to break free. If only it were as easy to stop fearing as it was to start.

She had been so small and alone and the Replicators had made her so afraid, so unable to trust even her own memories. To not be able to trust her own mind had almost destroyed her. Taking her faith in her very reality from her had shifted her off balance, so that even now, even now she was home, she eyed the people around her suspiciously, waiting for reality to once again prove itself false. She had been so lost. So alone.

Until John came. Not to rescue her, he hadn't rescued her. He'd done something far more powerful: he'd given her the ability to rescue herself.

He'd been there for her. Even when the nanites had used that against her, some small part of her had heard him in truth and that had kept her from going under completely, from giving in to the lies and the fantasies. It had been close, oh so close. But she hadn't surrendered. Because of him.

And in the end he'd risked his life to bring her back, to give her the chance to break herself free of the lies. The truth, they say, will set you free.

He'd set her free.

She stands on the balcony and wraps her hands around the railing as if fearing that it will be taken away from her. And she blinks back tears when it doesn't ripple and fade, when it stays solidly real. "John—You shouldn't have done it. If you'd been infected too..."

He just shrugs. "I wasn't."

She breathes sea air, believes this is real. This is real. "But why would you take such a risk?"

He blinks at her. And then, as if it is the simplest thing in the world, he says, "Because you needed me."

Fin.