She dreams of the Wraith.

It is not one of the dreams, true, where the line with reality is blurred practically into non-existence, yet as it is with all nightmares, it is real enough. A winding hallway that never ends; bodies around every turn, gray, hollow corpses, nothing but skin and bones; screams which echo in her ears, the ragged voices of people that she knows—Dr. Weir, Halling. Jinto. And Rodney.

Rodney. Screaming. Calling her name. His voice tinged with an agony that bites at her very being, down to the very bone.

She hears, and she thinks that if she can just get there fast enough, she can save him. If she can just find him, she can save him, but every turn she makes seems to take her farther away, not closer, but she keeps going and going, faster and faster, never getting any nearer, and then, suddenly, she is not alone. There is a white face in front of her, twisted in a gruesome facade, a hand that morphs into a misshapen claw that reaches for her, reaches even as she backs away, back, back, unable to escape. The hand keeps coming towards her, though, presses cold to her breast, reaches into her, curls around her heart, and there is pain, oh, god, there is pain, and now it is her scream mingled with Rodney’s that is filling her ears—

—and she sits up in bed, her harsh, panted breaths the only sound audible in the otherwise silent room. It is dark and still, empty, and she makes herself take a deep breath, then a second in an attempt to calm her fluttering heart. Another breath and she is left feeling the steady (if too heavy) thump of her pulse in her neck, at her wrists, but when she closes her eyes now, she sees Rodney’s face, twisted in pain, skin paper thin and pulled tight across his skull, eyes unnaturally wide and unseeing. His cries still echo in her ears, though, making her wince and turn away from the unseen, and suddenly she cannot stay still any longer.

She stands up from the bed and begins pacing the floor, and it is only when she shivers that she realizes her top is soaked with her sweat, that it is sticking to her torso, uncomfortable now. She pulls it off, walks to the closet, and lets it drop to the floor there before taking a clean shirt off of a hanger. She pulls it on and it feels good against her skin, soothing, but as she looks back at the bed, as she blinks and sees a flash of the mockery of old age that the Rodney in her dream had become, she knows that she cannot go back there, not yet.

She will not be able to sleep.

On Athos, on nights such as this, when sleep was no longer and option, she would go outside, breathe in the cool, tree-scented night air, and look at the stars and the moon and let them do what they could to steady her nerves. Here she cannot do that, though; the closest she can come is to walk the halls of Atlantis, treading the same twisted pathways of her dream.

At the moment, though, anything is better than staying in her room, she thinks, so she walks to her door and steps out into the hall.

Like her room, the hallway is quiet. Empty, still, peaceful, but when she breathes in deeply, the air is not fresh in her lungs. She can still taste the dreamed fear, the sour, gaping panic of being unable to find Rodney, of being unable to help him, save him.

It is an unsettled, uncomfortable feeling, and she shivers with it as she walks, feels it like an itch beneath her skin, one that she cannot scratch. She quickens her pace, then slows down again, then stops all together, and that is when she realizes that she has walked directly to his rooms, that she is staring at them, and has been for several moments.

Long enough, too long, because as she stands there, the door opens, and Rodney looks out at her, stares down at her, a surprised look on his face.

"Teyla?" he asks, and she cannot help but relax just slightly in the face of his confusion, so different from the remembered screams that are still fading in her ears. It surprises her how relieved she feels, seeing him standing here like this, even though she feels just a bit silly, too—because it was a dream, obviously, and she does not even know why she ended up here. Why she came here. Apparently needing this.

Because, obviously, it was a dream. A normal dream. That was never in any doubt.

"I’m sorry," she says, turning away from him and running her hand through her hair. "I did not mean to disturb you. I just… had an unsettling dream, so I was taking a walk and—"

And maybe she is more upset—transparent?—than she realizes, because he is reaching out to her now, wrapping her hand in his, and guiding her into the room. It is only when she feels him squeeze her hand in return that she realizes just how tightly she is holding on, but when she tries to pull away, he is the one that refuses to let go.

He says, "Hey, hey, it’s okay."

But suddenly it’s not, not really, and she doesn’t know how to say it. Because while it is natural that she dreams of the Wraith and the damage that they do, that she has a helpless sort of fear for the survival of her people, she is not used to feeling such worry for one person.

She is not used to caring this much.

And quite frankly, in this moment, she is not sure that she likes that she does, yet still, she is turning towards Rodney, even if she is not looking at him. She is saying, hesitantly, "It was the Wraith. You were screaming—" And just like that, she can hear him again, the pain, the anguish—

It makes her shudder and he pulls her all the way into his arms then, and even though she is not sure that she wants him to, she goes. She lets him wrap his arms around her, lets him hold her to his chest, and she lets herself relax against him. Listen to his heartbeat. Feel the soft movement of one of his hands up and down her back.

This should not be what she wants, she thinks, even as she lets herself accept. Savor.

He holds her until she is calm again, and then he asks, "And in this dream, was I begging for my life? Or was I playing the brave hero? Telling them that they wouldn’t get any information out of me even if they were using me as a breakfast buffet? Letting them know that they were destroying the greatest mind to grace two galaxies?"

She can’t not look at him when he says things like that, so she pulls away so that she can. There is a sparkle in his eyes and now, suddenly, for the first time since the dream began, since she began walking that never-ending hallway, it all begins to feel distant. Less real.

She feels even more unsettled, though, because she is supposed to be the one who offers comfort, rather than receives it. She is supposed to be the one who does not show her fear. But strangely, it also feels right for him to be able to do this for her, comfort her in this way, and that is, perhaps, what feels the most wrong of all.

"You were very brave," she says, smiling up at him, and that is when he grins, which in turn makes her relax even more. Makes her look around the room, where she sees the open laptop on the bed, the papers scattered across the floor. Makes her truly realize that Rodney was not just up late, as he is prone to be, but that he was actually working.

"I am sorry," she says again. "You were working. I should go. I did not mean to disturb—"

"You didn’t." He says it quickly, simply, a statement of fact, even though she knows it’s a lie. Then, "I, ah— I’m glad you came." And now he is looking unsure, ducking his head away from her, but as he glances back at her, she can see from the look in his eyes, though, that that is the truth.

"I am, too," she says softly, haltingly, because as much as she may not want it to be true, it is the truth, too. "I did not intend to come here, but I guess I needed—" He glances sharply at her as she trails off, still unsure, still unsettled, feeling that crawling, restless itch beneath her skin flare again.

"I’ve, uh. I’ve had the nightmares, too, you know. I’ve, uh—" he says suddenly, after a moment, and now it is her turn to look sharply at him, but he does not angle away from her gaze. He meets it, holds it.  "That time, two weeks ago? When I stopped by your room to see if you wanted to go get breakfast with me? And you commented that you were surprised I wasn’t still in bed?" He swallows. "It was the Genii that time. There was Koyla with his knife, and it wasn’t Elizabeth with me out at the grounding station, it was you, and I couldn’t work fast enough. My hands, they just wouldn’t go—"

He is twisting his hands together now, frowning and looking upset, and suddenly, the feelings of unsettled-ness begin to drain away, because she remembers that morning. She remembers the way that Rodney hovered around her, sat closely enough to her at breakfast that their knees were pressed together underneath the table for the entire meal.

Because she realizes, suddenly, that she is not alone in the caring as much as she does, that this thing between them, unexpected and new, has gone beyond casual companionship on both sides. They are, she realizes, needing together, and suddenly it does not feel as wrong anymore.

She says, as he did, "It’s okay, Rodney." And it is. Now it is, and a wide smile is forming on her face, even though Rodney is looking at her oddly, yet indulgently, too.

"We are okay," she says.

It is then that he seems to understand that there is more depth to her words than there appears to be on the surface. That she is, in fact, no longer referring to dreams, because while she sees the flicker of confusion on his face, there is also a quickly dawning understanding.

"Of course we are," he says, and his words are like a deep breath of nighttime air in her lungs. With them, the clawing itch beneath her skin begins to fade.