Authors Note: So here it is, at long last, the third instalment of Magical Lantis. I know it took me forever to get this done but better late than never right? Sorry to everyone who was waiting for it and thanks for sticking with me, I hope it was worth the wait. Special thanks to Steph7085 for coming up with the title.

Fight or Flight

Chapter 1

The summer had seemed to last forever and she was more than glad that it was over. Elizabeth stepped down from the carriage which had been forced to stop a little way from the front gates due to all the other busses and coaches that were currently unloading students. She could pick out the first years easily; they were the bewildered, lost looking ones. She accepted her suitcase and duffel bag from the coachman, thanking him and stepping back.

"Can't we get any closer?" a voice said and Elizabeth turned to look at her sister who was just getting off the carriage.

"There are a lot of students arriving at the same time Carlie, this is as close as we're going to get," Elizabeth told the blonde who looked incredibly put out at the one minute walk she would have to make to the front gate. The coachman took two suit cases out of the carriage and put them beside her sister. Carlie looked at the man as though he'd grown another head and then turned back to Elizabeth.

"How am I supposed to get both of those and my bags to my room by myself?" Carlie asked her.

"I did tell you not to pack too much," Elizabeth replied. This was the only part of returning to Pegasus she hadn't been looking forward, last year this place had been an escape from her family, this year Carlie would be here too. "There are people that can help you."

"Oh good," Carlie said and took one of the bags, putting it over her shoulder and then wheeling one of the suitcases toward the gate.

"I suppose I'll get these for you," Elizabeth said to the air and then smiled at the coachman, thanking him again before following after her sister. It was a lot more difficult than she would have guessed; wheeling two suitcases and carrying two duffel bags at the same time and she could only imagine what she looked like. She left Carlie with her things near to the gate and went to get her arrival file for her. It didn't take long, having done this for herself last year she at least knew what she was doing. "Here we are," she said as she returned to her sister's side. "This says you're in Entrix Towers."

"Which we already knew," Carlie replied both impatiently and smugly.

"Room 56," Elizabeth continued and then handed her the file. "If I remember correctly there'll be a map of the school in the file so you shouldn't have a problem finding your way around."

"Wait a minute, aren't you coming with me?" Carlie asked. "Father said you have to help me."

"I have helped you, you have your file, everything you need to know is in there and those guys over there are student volunteers, if you ask one of them they'll help you take your things to your room," Elizabeth explained. "I have to get my own stuff sorted out too Carlie, I'll come and check on you later."

She could tell her sister had further protests but Elizabeth promised her she'd be fine and grabbed her suit case. She headed straight to Raildon Halls, she would be in the same room she'd been in last year, the school didn't like to uproot students by changing their dorms every year, there was no point. She would only change dorms when she moved into the girls senior dorms in her fourth year. There were already a lot of students around, most of them she could tell were not first years because they all seemed to know where they were going.

She dragged her suitcase up the stairs of her dorm building to the third floor and made her way to room 327. It felt strange to be back here but it also felt more like coming home than it had when she'd returned to Tralos. She opened the door and dragged her things into the room.

"Elizabeth," a familiar voice exclaimed excitedly as she walked in and dropped her stuff near to her bed. She'd barely let go of when she was grabbed from the side in a very enthusiastic hug.

"Hello Teyla," Elizabeth shifted slightly to hug her roommate back. Teyla finally let go and stepped back, a huge grin on her face.

"I've really missed you over the summer, seven weeks was way too long," Teyla told her and then went back to unpacking her things.

"I missed you too," Elizabeth replied as she picked up her suit case and put it on her bed, opening it up and beginning to unpack her clothes. She noticed Teyla was stood eyeing her warily, a judging look on her face.

"You haven't reverted back to the old, quiet, withdrawn Elizabeth over the summer have you?" she asked, "I swear if I have to start all over again with you I might lose it."

"Pretty sure I haven't," Elizabeth replied with a smile. "Although I'll admit it's been a difficult summer."

Teyla didn't look like she was entirely convinced yet. "Okay."

"Have you seen any of the others yet?" Elizabeth asked her.

"No, I only got back twenty minutes ago, I figure once people are here and they get unpacked they'll head to the cafeteria to find everyone else," Teyla told her and Elizabeth nodded her head, it was logical, the cafeteria had always been their meeting place. "I can't believe we're in our second year, it doesn't seem like that long since I came in here for the first time and introduced myself to you, and in another way it feels like it's been forever."

"I know what you mean," Elizabeth said as she continued to unpack her things. Once she was finished with her own unpacking she helped Teyla with the last of hers before the two of them went to the cafeteria to see if anyone else had arrived yet. There were a lot more first years wondering around now and they were stopped twice by people asking for directions.

"Teyla, Elizabeth," they heard an excited shout when they walked into the cafeteria. Vala was waving to them from the table they had always preferred, Sam and Daniel sitting with her.

"Hey guys," Teyla greeted as she sat down next to Vala, the two women hugging excitedly and from the direction their conversation was heading in Elizabeth got the feeling there was going to be a shopping trip in her near future.

"How was your summer?" Sam asked them.

"It was okay," Elizabeth replied and Sam gave her an understanding look. "How about yours?"

"It was good, dad was pretty busy with council stuff and Mark was mostly absent but it was nice to have the break from school stuff and be at home, I hung out with Daniel most of the time," Sam told her and Daniel nodded.

"Yeah, gave me a reason to get away from my parents, I love them but their constant fussing was starting to drive me crazy," Daniel replied. "I have to say, it's really good to be back, I've missed this place more than I thought I would."

"Do we know when everyone else is due back?" Vala questioned.

"I know Jack won't be back until this afternoon some time and I think Janet and Cameron are coming with him, I don't know about any of the others. We should go for dinner tonight once everyone is back, celebrate being back together again," Teyla suggested and got several nods from around the table.

"And look who's here," Vala said with a grin and Elizabeth followed the woman's gaze to where Ronon was walking over to them. She looked at Teyla who smiled and jumped up from her chair as he neared the table. She practically jumped on the poor man, wrapping her arms around him as though she hadn't seen him in years.

"Missed you too Teyla," Ronon said with a smirk as Teyla stepped back and pushed herself up to kiss him. She stepped back as they parted and punched him in the arm.

"Ever heard of writing to a person?" she questioned as Ronon rubbed his arm.

"I wrote to you every week," he replied defensively.

"Not nearly enough," she told him as the two of them sat down at the table.

"Teyla, I only wrote to you once a week and you didn't punch me," Elizabeth stated.

"I'm not dating you," Teyla said and Vala started laughing.

"It's so good to be back."

He'd gotten back to school later than he'd planned but with one of major roads between his home and the school cut off due to bandit activity in the area there was little choice but to go a longer way around. Unpacking had been quick and easy though, everything was now back where it had been last year and in a way it felt like he had never left. Seven weeks was a long time though and he was happy to be back. The summer had been strange, things that had once been familiar to him had changed and he had found himself reading through his school work more than he would have expected, just to maintain that link back to his life here. It was amazing really, how less than a year could change so much.

It had been good to see his friends although many of them felt like strangers to him now, none of them had been accepted at Pegasus though a few of them had gone to the other two magic schools. Some of them had changed into people he no longer felt like he knew, others hadn't changed at all and that only made him realise how much he had changed. His parents had been glad to have him home, if only to drag him to one Governors function after another and ensure that his grooming to become the future Governor continued.

He made his way to the cafeteria knowing that his friends would gather there as they arrived. He felt oddly nervous, Elizabeth's last letter to him had said she would be arriving in the morning, he hadn't seen her since the end of the last school year and he knew there was a lot they needed to talk about, a lot they needed to figure out. He'd missed her over the summer, he'd known he would but he hadn't expected her to be in his thoughts quite as much as she had been. They had written to each other almost once a week, there had been a week where he had been too busy to sit down and write and another week where she had.

It was easy enough to find the rest of the group in the busy cafeteria; they were sitting at their usual table. He walked over to join them, noticing immediately that Elizabeth wasn't there. Jack, Cameron, Janet and Teal'c also hadn't arrived yet but everyone else was present and accounted for.

"John," Teyla jumped up from her chair and hugged him when he neared the table.

"She's been doing that to everybody," Ronon smirked and John smiled and hugged her back.

"Elizabeth is here," she said as though she'd read his earlier thoughts. "She just went to check on Carlie."

He'd actually forgotten Elizabeth's sister was attending the school this year. He hoped it wouldn't cause problems for Elizabeth, he remembered all too well how quickly she had backed into her shell again when her father and sister had been visiting the school for parents week last year, he hoped the summer hadn't made her go back to that. John sat down at the table next to Teyla, quickly insinuating himself in a conversation over which country had the better football team.

"Clearly it is Chulak," Teal'c stated as he seemed to appear out of nowhere behind Kate who jumped at the sound of his voice.

"Teal'c, don't sneak up on people like that," Kate scolded him to which Teal'c just raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"When did you get back?" Radek asked him as the big guy took a seat the table.

"Twenty minutes ago," he replied.

"Hey Elizabeth," Teyla's voice caught John's attention and he turned to see Elizabeth walking over to them, taking a seat opposite him.

"Hey," he said as he caught her eyes, not knowing what to say but feeling he needed to speak.

"Hi," she replied quietly.

"How is Carlie?" Teyla questioned after several moments of awkward silence.

"She's fine, complaining about not having enough room in her closet for all of things and the fact that she has to climb up several flights of stairs to get to her room," Elizabeth replied. "She wasn't happy about having to carry some of her own things up there either. I had to remind her she's not at home and she doesn't have a staff here to do everything for her."

"She'll get used to it," Teyla stated and Elizabeth gave her a disbelieving look to which Teyla laughed. "Are you coming for dinner later John, we're all going to celebrate being back?"

"Sounds good," John replied and Teyla nodded turning to Ronon.

"We should go and book a table, otherwise we'll probably never get one," she told him.

"Why do I have to go?" Ronon questioned as Teyla stood up.

"You don't," she said, picking up her bag. "I'll just go alone, it's fine."

John smiled as Ronon sighed and stood up, there was no way he was letting her walk through the forest to town on her own and she knew it. He watched the two of them leave and then looked at Elizabeth as she gave Teyla a quick wave. She seemed okay, like spending the summer with her family hadn't had any negative effect on her. The letters she had sent him were usually pretty brief and lacking in detail so he'd never been able to tell from them.

"How was your summer?" he asked.

"It was fine, one Governors event after another and full of Carlie drama, it's good to be back here though," she told him and he decided he'd get more details later. She smiled though as if she could tell where his thoughts were leading. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hide in one of my books and disengage myself from the group. Teyla already forbid me."

He smiled, "That's good to know."

"I guess we need to talk at some point," she said as though she would rather do anything else.

"Yeah."

Jack shoved his suitcase under his bed and finally sat down. Everything was unpacked and he was ready to face another year. He had a little bit of time left before John would come knocking on his door so he allowed himself to fall back into the bed. He'd missed this room, the summer had been long and not nearly as interesting as he'd expected. Last year had been an interesting year to say the least, full of ups and downs but on the whole, this place had already given him a lot of good memories.

He looked at the drawer where he had hidden his vial of Allinyas last year, admittedly not among the good memories. His addiction had only been for a short time but it had been long enough that, had his friends not intervened, he could have done some irreparable damage to his life. He'd barely thought about the drug all summer, the only times it had really entered his mind was when he was thinking about Alex. At home everything was a reminder of his brother and that in turn would remind him of the coping mechanism he had turned to, a drug induced obliviousness. He was confident now that he didn't need the drug, that he could have it put in front of him and he wouldn't want to take it. It had been an emotional dependency and he had learned to deal with the emotions in a better way. Still, he would rather not test that theory.

The knocking on the door had to be John and he called for his friend to come in while he sat up and tried to figure out what he'd done with his jacket. John entered, ready for their meal in town and waited by the door for him.

"All unpacked?" John questioned and Jack nodded as he spotted his jacket over the back of his desk chair. He grabbed it and left, locking the door behind him and the two of them made their way down the stairs of the tower.

"So have you seen Elizabeth yet?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," John replied looking down. "It was kind of awkward."

"Well, you haven't seen each other for seven weeks and even before that, you never had the time to figure out what was going on between the two of you," Jack replied and John looked at him with a smirk.

"Spoken by a man who sounds like he knows exactly how that feels," he said as the two of them stepped out of the tower and headed toward the cafeteria. "Have you had a chance to see Sam yet?"

"No, she wasn't in the cafeteria when I got here," Jack replied as the cafeteria came into a view and he suddenly felt nervous.

John laughed, "That's exactly what I looked like when I walked in here earlier."

"At least there's somebody in this boat with me," Jack stated. Sam wasn't in the cafeteria yet but given that she would be coming in with Vala he wasn't all that surprised. Teyla and Elizabeth weren't there yet either, which again was no surprise.

"Hey Daniel," Jack greeted as he dropped into the chair next to him.

"Sam's nervous too," Daniel told him with an amused smile. Jack glared at him but was silently glad to know that he wasn't the only one. Teyla and Elizabeth arrived and Jack watched as Elizabeth sat herself next to John, the two of them sharing an awkward smile before Teyla started up a conversation.

"Jack."

He'd been so busy watching John and Elizabeth that he hadn't noticed Sam and Vala walk in. He jumped out of his chair and was sure he heard Daniel laughing behind him. Sam smiled but before either of them could say anything Rodney cut in.

"Alright, everyone's here, let's go, I'm starving," he announced to the group and everyone got up, grabbing their things and heading for the door. Jack fell in step beside Sam as they followed, allowing themselves to fall a little behind.

"Did you have a good summer?" Sam asked him and he nodded.

"Yeah, it was fine, missed it here though," he replied. "Everyone thought I'd gone crazy, missing school, but I guess this place has that effect."

"I think it's more about the people," Sam said and Jack followed her gaze to where Rodney and Laura were bickering up ahead and although they couldn't hear what was being said the word 'lemon' was carried back to them. "We haven't even been here a whole day yet and already he's annoyed her enough to make her threaten him with lemons."

"In all fairness to him though, he doesn't have to do much in order to make her threaten him, he just seems to get under her skin, the same way he does with you," Jack replied and Sam looked prepared to protest the point but then sighed.

"He does know how to push certain people's buttons," Sam conceded.

"So," Jack began in a moment of courage. "When we're all settled back in here, how about I take you out for that dinner I promised you before we left, if you're still interested?"

Sam smiled, "I'm still interested, and dinner sounds good."

"Good," Jack said. "I guess we'll talk about... this then."

They caught up with the rest of the group and Jack felt better for knowing that, at the very least, he'd addressed whatever was going on with him and Sam. John and Elizabeth seemed to be avoiding talking about it, in fact they were almost avoiding each other. Elizabeth was walking with Laura and Janet and John was talking to Cameron and Radek.

They'd eaten at the restaurant Ronon and Teyla had booked before but Jack noticed one of their other favourite restaurants had shut down over the summer, the building was boarded up and the sign that had been above the door was gone. Seven weeks really could change a lot. It didn't take them long to order their food and the starters were brought out pretty quickly, the usual battle for sausage rolls started almost immediately.

"Rodney, you can't have that many to yourself," Laura stated.

"Why not?" Rodney questioned, putting an arm around his plate protectively to ensure no one could take any. "There's still some left and there are other things people can have."

"I told you we should have ordered more sausage rolls," Marcus said with a shake of his head. "It's like we never learn."

"So, who has funny summer stories?" Cameron asked and Jack immediately turned a glare on Janet when the brunette opened her mouth.

"Me, Jack and Cameron went hiking," she said despite the glare. "Jack fell down a hole, it was a hunter's trap, he was there one second and gone the next."

Cameron started laughing. "He was covered in dirt and dead leaves, yelling at us to get him out but we were both laughing too much to do anything about it. We have a picture but I didn't bring it with me."

"And then he started freaking out because there was a huge spider down there," Janet added, barely getting the words passed her laughter. "I've never seen anything like it, he screamed like a girl."

"I did not," Jack protested. "It was a very manly sound of surprise."

"It's really hard to pull someone out of a hole while you're laughing that much," Cameron finished, the whole group laughing now.

"Alright, moving on to someone else before they pull out anymore stories about me," Jack announced quickly.

"I don't know Jack, we could probably fill up this entire meal with embarrassing stories of you," Janet replied.

"Yes but I wouldn't want to hog the spotlight, onto someone else," he said and Kate and Marcus launched into a story about Laura trying to bake for a party her mother was having just as their main course arrived.

"We'd said we'd come by early and help," Marcus said. "Her mom pointed us to the kitchen and then we heard the little explosion. We went running in and Laura was sat in the middle of the floor, covered in flour and slightly charred from whatever had blown up in her face."

"I told mom I didn't want to do any of the cooking but she insisted she was busy with everything else and it would be a big help, blah, blah, blah," Laura sulked. "I can't cook."

"That was apparent," Kate stated.

"I'm sad I missed that, I didn't get there until after the party had started," John said shaking his head and laughing.

"Well, we had to help her clean up so be glad you weren't there early," Marcus told him. "Unfortunately we don't have any pictures."

Dinner had been filled with embarrassing stories and it was coming up on curfew by the time they left the restaurant. They probably had just enough time to get back on campus without getting into trouble or having to sneak passed the guard patrol. The group was pretty rowdy as they headed into the forest and Carson told everyone to quieten down before every wolf in the forest was alerted to their presence. It did little to lessen the volume of the group but it did make them all look around them for a moment, they'd met the local forest wolves once before and no one was eager to do it again.

Elizabeth smiled to John as he came to walk beside her. Aside from the admission that they needed to talk neither of them had said anything about what was going on between them, they'd said very little to each other at all. She could tell it was making him feel edgy and she wasn't enjoying the awkwardness of it either but surrounded by their friends was hardly the right time to talk about it so it would have to wait.

"Rodney, was that your sister I saw you with earlier?" Kate asked and Rodney grumbled something under his breath before replying.

"Probably, why?" he questioned.

"Just curious, she was pretty, seemed nice," Kate told him and Rodney narrowed his eyes at her.

"Why does that seem to surprise you and how would you know she was nice, at the most you saw her with me from a distance?" he asked her and she shrugged.

"It doesn't really surprise me," Kate replied and at that she got several raised eyebrows and disbelieving looks from the other members of the group. "Okay, maybe it is a little bit surprising and I'm good at reading body language and from what little I saw, she seemed nice. Don't be so defensive."

"I'm not defensive," Rodney huffed and Kate rolled her eyes.

"Yes you are."

They made it back to the school only a few minutes after curfew which would only get them a warning and sent to their rooms if the guards saw them.

"Talk to you tomorrow?" John questioned and Elizabeth nodded.

"I'll see you then," she replied and then ran to catch up with the rest of the girls that were heading to Raildon Halls.

"I am so glad to be back," Laura announced just as they were spotted by a couple of guards and told it was passed curfew and they should go back to their dorm.

"Let's try for a less eventful semester," Janet said with a sigh. "All that drama last year was exhausting."

"No kidding," Laura replied.

"Well it's not exactly going to be drama free, Cal's court date is coming up and I got letter a couple of weeks ago that Mathos is appealing his case," Teyla told them all.

"Right," Laura said, "I could almost have forgotten we have to testify at Cal's trial, almost but not quite."

"At least then he'll be in jail and we won't have to worry about him anymore," Elizabeth said. "At least not unless he appeals as well."

"Then let's hope he doesn't," Janet said, "and I did say less eventful, not completely uneventful."

The four of them reached the dorm building and went their separate ways. Teyla collapsed on her bed as soon as she got back into the room. Elizabeth grabbed her pyjamas and went into the bathroom to change, coming out to find Teyla writing at her desk. She dropped the pen as soon as she saw the bathroom was free and went to get changed herself. Elizabeth got into her bed, settling back against her pillows and picking up her book from the nightstand, it really was good to be back.

TBC