Discover Top Posts Tagged with #ep. suspicion

Sateda, Pt. 10

In hyperspace, on the Daedalus and on their way toward Sateda, Teyla joins Sheppard in the commissary where he seems to be finishing what is likely his breakfast, alone -- and as noted before, it seems like breakfast is the one meal of the day that Sheppard and McKay rarely get to enjoy with each other. The two of them have a conversation that teaches us a lot about Sheppard and which I have quoted multiple times because it is so central to his character. But in order to understand again the undercurrents of their exchange, we are shown a long stretch of backstory for Ronon that informs how Sheppard is feeling here, why he is as vulnerable and raw as he seems. In his memories, we see Ronon walk through a tunnel littered with the corpses of his dead friends and fallen comrades, the ghosts of his past, while in the present we see him fighting off his demons that are threatening to overpower him. As Sheppard is joined by Teyla, he is doing both of these things figuratively, even though he appears easy as you please to begin with.

Sheppard: Hey. Teyla: Am I disturbing you? Sheppard: No.

Teyla seems to have sought Sheppard out with the intention of exchanging a few words with him about the situation, and if one was uncharitable, we might call it ambushing Sheppard while he is finishing his meal. The commissary seems otherwise empty, two of the other occupants leaving just as Teyla enters, which suggests that Sheppard was either eating at an unorthodox hour or that he had lingered there after others had finished their meals. What we need to note at the off-set is that this scene seems to coincide with the following scene where McKay and Beckett have a conversation of their own, both Sheppard and McKay having heart-to-heart talks with their respective best friends. While we see the entire interaction between Sheppard and Teyla here, we catch only the tail-end of the time that McKay spends with Beckett. Also, it seems like Sheppard's tray has a few slices of tangerine on it that he has chosen not to eat, and it looks like he has left the compartment for dessert untouched. Make of that what you will.

Sheppard is doing something on a Personal Digital Assistant as Teyla joins him, a palm device of some kind that was probably hi-tech at the time, and we can be fairly certain that the reason Sheppard even has one, let alone that he would have known which one to get, is McKay. We had seen Sheppard reading (and writing) something off of a palm device at the end of The Long Goodbye (S02E16), where he seemed to be communicating with someone on it while laid down on a hospital bed, smiling to himself at what ever this person had written to him. Here, he also seems to be either reading or looking at something on the screen, and he pushes a few buttons before putting the device away, which means that he either closed a programme or typed "brb" before shutting it off, knowing that it would be rude for him to continue fiddling with the device when one of his team members clearly wanted to engage him in conversation. Sheppard tells Teyla that she is not disturbing him but that does not mean that he had not been in the middle of something when she walked in, or even that he is telling her the truth. Also, even if Sheppard was being truthful about Teyla not bothering him at the moment, by the end of the scene he is more than a little disturbed.

In Ronon's flashback, we see a fight between him and his "close enough" Malena,* which suggests that Sheppard and Holland also had a fight before his fatal mission. This would have made Sheppard feel even more guilty afterward because, whether or not he had asked him not to go, Sheppard thinks that he would have been able to stop Holland if he had truly wanted it. He could have ordered him not to go but he hadn't, he had decided to honour Holland's autonomy instead and this decision not to tell someone he loved what to do had cost them their lives. In Sheppard's world this was tantamount to having caused their death. He might as well have pulled the trigger himself. But loving someone meant letting them go when they needed to go, and this has everything to do with what happens later with him pushing McKay toward Keller after the lesson Sheppard learns in Miller's Crossing (S04E09).

In his flashback, Ronon is dressed in civilian clothes and has the following exchange with his loves after returning from a combat mission:

Dex: No one that stays here is going to survive. Malena: Then why are you staying? Dex: I have no choice. Malena: Yes, you do. You believe in this fight! You know that they'll eventually find us, no matter where we go. Our only hope is to show them that we're not worth the effort, to go feed on some other planet that won't fight back as hard as we will. Ronon! You can't run forever.

We do not know the particulars of the events that had led to Holland taking on the mission that claimed his life. In Rising (S01E01), Weir says that Sheppard had received his black mark in Afghanistan trying to save the lives of three servicemen and disobeying direct orders in doing it. In the parallel world of Vegas (S05E19), his record stated that he had been a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan that was dishonourably discharged for disobeying orders trying to rescue a field medic trapped behind enemy lines, and that his attempted rescue had further killed four American soldiers along with eight civilians. Now, there is an obvious discrepancy between these reports, but note that the description in Vegas of him trying to rescue a field medic trapped behind enemy lines corresponds with what we actually see in Phantoms (S03E09), regardless of the gender of the field medic, much better than what his record stated in our world. This suggests that his record in our world had been altered. His impending dishonourable discharge, which he clearly believed he would get as he asked Holland to visit him in the Leavenworth prison afterward, had been turned into a black mark. His record, in our world, does not show what had actually happened in Afghanistan. And what is more, he may not even know this himself. He may have no idea that his father had intervened here.

But the thing about falling in love on the battle field, as Sheppard had done, is that the person he had grown to care about was in ever-present danger. As glad as Sheppard had been to find someone that unlocked something deep within him, had healed some parts of him that he had not even known needed healing, who had changed the course of the rest of his life -- the circumstances of their relationship were doomed from the start. The odds were stacked up against them on an active warzone and so Sheppard would have wanted to send the man that he had fallen in love with away from there, even if he believed that he could never leave himself. Knowing that Holland would be safe was enough, it would have to be enough. Only, being that he was a medic Holland could not abandon all the people that needed his help either, and this must have become a point of contention between them.

The other point of contention may have been that they were forced to hide their relationship. If Holland had been Canadian, as I have speculated, then he would have been able to serve openly as a gay man, Canadian Armed Forces having repealed the order banning gay people from serving in 1992. What Malena tells Ronon is something that a gay man in the service could easily have said to his closeted lover: "You believe in this fight [for gay rights]! You know that they'll eventually find us, no matter where we go. Our only hope is to show them that we're not worth the effort, to go pick on some other people that won't fight back as hard as we will." Because Sheppard was in a more precarious position because of the US DADT policy, he would have been much more reluctant to go public, to be open about their relationship, to jeopardize his career just to make a statement, and Sheppard may have thought and even said many things that would not have mattered a damn thing after the man that he loved had died. Malena telling Ronon that he can't run forever is ironic given that he had subsequently been made into a Runner, but Holland may easily have told Sheppard the same thing. Like Ronon, Sheppard has spent most of his life running, and most of it he has been trying to run from himself. What he is doing right here, staying in this table to try to have this conversation with Teyla, this is him trying not to run.

Sheppard: What's up? Teyla: I just wanted to thank you. Sheppard: For what? Teyla: For going after Ronon this way. Sheppard: Did you think we wouldn't?

Sheppard's "Did you think we wouldn't?" and McKay's subsequent "What makes you think I wouldn't?" to Beckett clearly connect these two scenes, we are meant to see them as a matching set. In this instance Sheppard's "we" seems to refer to himself and Teyla, to his entire team, to the people of Atlantis, and the people of Earth in general -- but like always, it is first and foremost himself and McKay. Teyla may be thanking Sheppard in particular with her "you," but Sheppard chooses to understand it as meaning himself and McKay, and he speaks for the both of them as he responds, which would feel even more natural for him to do if he had just been chatting with McKay who had not been having breakfast with him on account of currently undergoing a check-up with his primary care Physician and best friend elsewhere -- knowing that he could not sit down to eat with him even if he had wanted to anyway. But giving Sheppard a device that he can use to communicate with him even when he is not physically present seems "like a McKay sort of thing" to do.

Sheppard is genuine in trying to communicate to Teyla that no thanks are necessary for them doing the right thing. What is more, he would rather have avoided this conversation, even though he recognizes that this is something that Teyla needs to get off her chest. He knows that it is his responsibility as team leader to be there for the members of his team but he is not good at this and he had been hoping that they might avoid this. But theirs is not an unspoken bond that goes deeper than words, my friend, deeper than words, and so he submits to his fate and to having this conversation having actual words, even though it is anything but easy for him. That is one of the reasons to show Sheppard struggling through having this conversation. He and Teyla need to talk things out where he and McKay do not. Sheppard and McKay have a mutual understanding, the uncanny and unsettling ability to read the other's thoughts by looking at their face.

Sheppard and Teyla are friends and they have had intimate conversations before, particularly in Hot Zone (S01E13) and Letters from Pegasus (S02E17). The latter of which is especially pertinent to their conversation here because they had discussed the topic of home and family and friends who are like family, which is precisely what this conversation and this entire episode are about. Quoting from what I had written then:

Sheppard also considers the people he has found on Atlantis as his family. I've discussed previously why he places McKay ("even Rodney") in the final position before (he attempts to mitigate the emotional impact by saying the most important thing last). But here, there is also an actual categorical difference between McKay and the others he mentions. Yes, he considers all of them family but out of them, McKay is the only one of them who belongs to that second family one forms when one leaves one's birth family or family of origin to make a new family with a partner. The others he mentions are his "found family," a concept with which many non-heterosexual people are familiar with. A found family or family of choice is "a group of people without any blood relation that supports and cares for someone the same way family members would." They are that to him. McKay is his conjugal family, and there is a whole other set of responsibilities (and also privileges) that comes with that. And Sheppard also emphasized the fact his family are not his friends, they are different from that.

Sheppard does not feel like he has a family back on Earth. As far as he is concerned, he has been disowned by his father and abandoned by his brother. He is clearly uncomfortable discussing the topic with Teyla. He does, however, consider Atlantis his home. Months ago, in The Storm (S01E09) he told Teyla: "Well, maybe in time this place will start to begin to feel like home." And later on, he confesses to the same person that he thinks of these people as his family. Sheppard and McKay feel exactly the same way about their situation. Atlantis is home and the people therein are family. They are family to each other. And it's also interesting that the difference between a family and a dear friend is emphasized in this episode. Many people find it strange that McKay calls Beckett his best friend later on [in Sunday (S03E17)]. But the thing is, McKay and Sheppard were never friends. They have never been friends. They are family but, in spite of just having an entire episode about brotherhood, they are not brothers, they are not cousins, they are not uncles or parents or nephews to one another. They are family but in a very different way than they are family to the others.

This was true of the two of them already toward the end of the first season, and Sheppard and McKay have only grown more close since then. Comparing this scene, this intimate exchange between Sheppard and Teyla that some people undoubtedly interpret in a romantic context, with the exchange between Sheppard and Mckay at the end of the episode, it is easy to see with whom Sheppard is at home. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, his home is with McKay.

Teyla: He is an outsider. Sheppard: Not to me. Teyla: I have often felt like an outsider among your people. Sheppard: Well, maybe at first, but... Well, you know I've always trusted you. Teyla: Yes. You, and Doctor Weir have been very accepting, but this has shown me how far you would go, even for someone who is not from your world.

Sheppard seems to be putting extra effort to appear casual about this because he wants Teyla to feel like it is obvious to him that they would do this, that he thinks of both Ronon and her as one of them. He wants her to get the impression that he feels "Well, duh!" about it, and the fact that he seems to be putting so much effort into this performance, into making Teyla feel like she belongs, is telling. Sheppard knows the importance of good old team spirit. But you can tell that he is feeling defensive by how he places his hands around his tray just as soon as he puts his cup down, as though subconsciously protecting it from Teyla. He seems to need an emotional barrier between them.

Sheppard himself has felt like an outsider probably for most of his life -- he has been an outsider within his own family, thinking himself as the black sheep, a literal outcast. He has been an outsider in the military because he comes from a social class that does not usually rise through the ranks but goes directly into officer training, that goes to West Point instead of bleeding on the battle field with the guys. He is a man who loves and desires other men in a society that ostracizes acting on these impulses, which is why he has tried to create an environment for the people under his command where they might feel free to love whom ever they please. It is important to him that the people he cares about feel like they belong because, for such a large part of his own life, he felt like he did not belong anywhere. That is why coming to Atlantis, the city of his ancestors that had welcomed him with open arms had been so transformative to him. That is why McKay accepting him even when he had actively tried to push him away following The Eye (S01E11), when he had been at his thorniest, had given him the strength to try again, to let himself fall in love.

Teyla acknowledges that Sheppard has always been accepting of her but she then also mentions Weir, and it is actually possible that she does not know that some of the worst fights between Sheppard and Weir had been over her choosing Stg. Bates as her head of security and listening to his suspicions of Teyla. We had seen Sgt. Bates air his suspicions of Teyla in Suspicion (S01E04), The Gift (S01E18) and The Siege (S01E19), and especially before Sheppard had forced Bates to side with his call in Hot Zone (S01E13) Weir seemed to trust the judgement of the man that she had put in charge of security personally. It could be that she thinks that Weir had trusted her from the beginning because when Weir had interviewed the Athosians, she had not asked to interview Teyla and had implied to her that it was because she trusted her when in their internal discussions Sheppard had to basically bully her into treating her as a member of his team. In Suspicion, hey had the following exchange:

Weir: Teyla… I wasn't expecting you. Teyla: I was surprised to be left off your list. Weir: I didn't feel it was necessary in your case. Teyla: On the contrary. You should have spoken to me first. Weir: You're right. I should have.

It is easy to see why Teyla would come under the impression that Weir had trusted her implicitly when what she had actually been doing was to maintain a fraught peace with Sheppard who seemed to make trusting Teyla the linchpin of his continued cooperation with her. What is more curious is why she does not name McKay here because he never seemed suspicious of her and was offended on her behalf when Bates had forced him to search through her belongings. Perhaps it is, as McKay himself suggests momentarily, that people have real trouble seeing him for who he is sometimes.

Sheppard: Look, Teyla. I'm not really good at... Actually, I'm... I'm terrible at expressing... I don't know what you'd call it...

Teyla expresses her gratitude and appreciation for what Sheppard had done openly and honestly, and Sheppard clearly does not know what to say to that. But because Teyla keeps looking at her expectantly with an encouraging expression, a friendly and welcoming smile on her face, Sheppard recognizes that she needs something from him, he needs to say something in return. Do not miss the fact that Sheppard begins the difficult task of muddling through baring some of himself to a member of his team who seems to be in need of reassurance with the word "Look," perhaps trying once more to use the "What would McKay do?" question to help him out of a sticky situation. And while many people do not recognize it, McKay is actually emotionally much more open than Sheppard, he is brave enough to bare his soul to others without fear of judgement. McKay's presence actually makes it easier for Sheppard to express emotion, as seen at the end of Letters from Pegasus where he seemed to be looking out to the side of the camera for that one other person who had no family back on Earth for strength as he recorded his video message to Col. Sumner's family.

But it does not seem to help Sheppard find the words any easier here. One thing we have to acknowledge about this scene is that as Sheppard struggles to find the words and Teyla keeps suggesting expressions to him, they do not seem to be precisely what he was looking for. We had seen in the previous episode that Sheppard is persnickety about words and their connotations, and so far McKay has been the only one who has managed to feed him words that he accepts. There is a comedic beat to Teyla suggesting "feelings" here, but likely Sheppard was looking for something more nuanced than that. He is not really good at the emotional intelligence side of military leadership. He is not good at managing the emotional needs of people under his command. He is not good at offering comfort or verbalizing his feelings. He is terrible at expressing compassion and comfort. He is not a very sensitive man. To interpret him meaning that he is merely bad at talking about his feelings is to miss his point. He is bad at expressing feelings and he would very much like the avoid having this conversation but it is much more that he has spent so much of his life hiding who he is that he finds it painful to have to bare himself to others, to show something of the real person underneath the façades. He had never even really set out to show McKay who he is -- McKay had just been able to see through him in a way that was almost preternatural.

Teyla: Feelings? Sheppard: Yeah, sure, OK. The point is, I don't really have good... Teyla: Social skills. Sheppard: Well, that is why I enjoyed flying choppers in the most remote part of my world before all this craziness happened.

This exchange is important because Sheppard verbalizes something about himself that we have known for a long time and that is one of his core characteristics. But we should also note that he does not precisely agree with the descriptions that Teyla is offering to him as he tries to come out with what he wants to say and to find words for what he means, actually seeming borderline offended that she would think this way about him. He is willing to go along with her assessment of his character just to get through what he wanted to communicate to her but it is obvious that they do not have the kind of accord that Sheppard and McKay have, they do not have the kind of unspoken bond that goes deeper than words that he mentions in the next scene. Also, let us just note for the record that what Sheppard does here, sharing a piece of personal information in an attempt to bond with someone, is like a McKay sort of thing to do.

One might think that the fact that they are having this heart-to-heart and that Sheppard is having difficulty finding words that it would imply their connection goes deeper than words but it is actually the opposite -- they both require words but Sheppard is having a hard time finding the right ones, and Teyla keeps offering the wrong ones. It is rather obvious that Sheppard had not meant to say "feelings," and he just decides to roll with "social skills" even though he was going for something different. It was clearly intended to be plural, so it might have been something to the effect of "good ways of expressing myself," "good words to express what I feel," "good experiences in bearing myself like this." Even though Sheppard may have some wants in the social skills department and in fact his entire team are somewhat stunted in this regard, that is still clearly not what he had intended to say and he seems a little hurt that that is the first conclusion she would jump to.

Even flying choppers in the most remote part of his world does actually require some social skills. He might actually think that he does have good social skills because it has always been easy for him to charm people and to convince them to see things his way, to navigate social situations using different masks and personas without having to bare himself to anyone. Good social skills obviously require much more than just surviving social environments and there are things about being intimate with other people that Sheppard and McKay have only recently started learning with each other. But that was not his point. His point is that he may not be good at this but he still wants to let Teyla know that he appreciates her and that he is trying very hard to be the leader she needs him to be.

Sheppard: But you should know, I don't have... Teyla: Friends? Sheppard: No, I have friends! You, Elizabeth, Ronon... Carson -- even Rodney -- are the closest thing I have to a... Teyla: A family?

The important thing to note here is that Sheppard had intended to say that he does not have a lot in the way of family initially. He is uncertain and searching for words here because it is complicated and he does not want to lie to Teyla. Technically he does have family on Earth but practically he feels like he has none because he is under the impression that his father had disowned him and his brother had abandoned him and he had divorced his ex-wife. He had a birth family and he had a conjugal family once but he had walked away from both of them. But to put all of this into words that would not reveal too much, would give Teyla the essence of what he meant to say and that would not involve lying to her seemed to be more than a little difficult and so he does not quite know what to say, or how to say that he has come to think of her and the others as his family instead of his blood relatives back Earth. But we know he was not intending to say "I don't have friends," because he takes immediate offence at Teyla saying it, for even thinking that he has no friends. Sheppard has friends.

And then he starts listing his friends. Sheppard starts listing the friends he has made in Atlantis because most of his friends back on Earth are dead. Back in Home (S01E09), Teyla had seen a whole house full of people from Sheppard's past including some of his close friends, so Sheppard seems nettled that she would even think that. But he starts listing his friends, and we may note that he begins with Teyla herself, considering her his best friend here. Teyla, Elizabeth, Ronon, Carson -- they are all whom Sheppard considers his friends now. But because he had actually been thinking of family to begin with, he switches gears in the middle of listing these people and starts naming friends he considers family instead. All of the people, they are his friends whom he has grown close enough to consider them his family, his found family on Atlantis. They are like a sister (Teyla), a mother or aunt (Weir), a brother (Ronon) and a father or uncle (Beckett) to him. And the reason Sheppard says "even Rodney" is not because he is not close with McKay like he is with the others. It is not because he does not consider McKay his family. It is not because he somehow thinks of McKay as the runt of the litter or that he cannot for some reason admit that he does like McKay because he is too cool for school like that. It is not that he considers McKay the red-headed step-child of his family. It is because he does not consider McKay his friend. That is the rub.

I have noted before that Sheppard has this tendency to slip important things under the radar as though he could protect them from cruel fate if he does not admit how important they are to him. Sheppard thinks that his love is literally lethal and so the more he loves something, the more he has to try to convince the world that he does not care about them at all. If he can trick people into thinking that he does not care about the things that he cares about, maybe fate will leave them alone. That is why he tacks McKay on at the end, and we can see how he speeds up what he is saying here, he is trying to say McKay's name so fast that he gives Teyla precious little time to stop to think about what he is saying here, he soldiers on as though he had not even mentioned McKay, and many people take this to mean that he cares about McKay the least when the truth is the complete opposite.

It is speaking McKay's name that makes Sheppard think of family and to switch gears from listing friends to listing people he considers family, and it is mentioning McKay that makes him tear up, that overwhelms him and makes him choke up with emotion here. McKay is the most important person in his life bar none. But McKay is not his friend. McKay is not his birth family. McKay is not like a brother to him. But McKay is also someone that he is not allowed to marry and start a conjugal family with like he would very much like to. McKay is his "close enough," but because they are not allowed to be to each other what they are in their hearts, he does not know what category to place him in. McKay is the only person he mentions that he could and would make his actual literal family -- if the laws allowed it. It is further Sheppard's career that keeps them from being able to marry, as the McKay in Vegas is married, being that gay marriage was legal in Canada, and he sure as heck was not married to Keller. It is also entirely possible that in spite of the two of them co-habiting at this time that they have never had the "What are we?" conversation. He knows that they are not friends like he is with the others, and he knows that McKay is not family to him in the same way as the others. Note that he does not look at Teyla as he says this but looks to the side, more than likely toward the direction that he knows McKay currently is. McKay is more than family to him. McKay has become so close to him as to make up a part of him, and if he were to lose McKay it would be like losing a limb, only worse. He would lose half of his soul.

Sheppard: I'd do anything, for any one of you. If I had to give up my life the way Ronon was going to, I would. Teyla: Thank you. For everything you meant to say.

Sheppard is finally able to make himself say what he had intended to say, and it is anything but easy for him. He needs Teyla to know this but he would much rather have hoped that it goes without saying. And we have to appreciate the fact that even though many people think that Sheppard has some kind of a death wish or a saviour complex -- Caldwell included in this -- it is not just for anyone that Sheppard actually would lay down his life. He is not like Col. Sumner who was able to lay down his life for an ideal, for an abstraction. Sheppard would do anything for the people he cares about, for the people he loves, but he does not want to die. Especially now that he has found love, he very much wants to keep living. But while he says that he would do anything for any one of them, and he probably would give up his life for them, we are shown again and again that he would go above and beyond for McKay. With McKay, he actually means anything. He would literally let every single human being including future generations and the entire human race die just so McKay could be happy for a moment, and that's a thing that happens on the show. He would not do that for the others. While he might easily be able to give up his own life he would not let McKay die to save any of the others but he would sacrifice all of them to save McKay. That is the difference.

The question of the original sequence of the episodes comes in here, as well. As it is, Sheppard and Teyla have this conversation before Sheppard has to make the choice to give up his life for the others in Progeny (S03E05), and the fact that it is just a scenario constructed by the replicators does not change the fact that he makes the choice to do that. As it is, he makes the choice now after having experienced Ronon doing the same for them, which makes it come across as reciprocity. But originally, his sacrifice in the mental scenario that no one else even knows about and him risking his own life to save Weir at the end of The Real World (S03E06) had come before this conversation. Sheppard knew that he would do what Ronon had done because he had already done it, he had experienced it recently. Giving up his life for the people he loves had been the easiest choice in the world.

Sheppard pats Teyla's hand awkwardly and walks way from her after getting this off his chest, and we may note that he does not turn to look behind him at her as he leaves because he has no need to get that "one last look" at her, because he is not interested in her romantically and never has been. In Search and Rescue (S05E01), as Sheppard is dying from internal bleeding and is under the belief that his actions had killed McKay, he has a hallucination about two members of his original team: Teyla and Ford. McKay is conspicuously absent from this hallucination. In this hallucination, that I have discussed many times is based on an actual memory, Sheppard is having dinner alone together with Teyla. They are having wine in candle light, the whole romantic nine yards of it, and Teyla tells Sheppard that she has always cherished "these times when it is just you and me," which is something that McKay had told him in Harmony (S04E14) while the two of them had been having wine. We are shown that this is not true in the episode itself, where Sheppard and Teyla are both awkward as they are forced to spend time alone together in the hospital at the end of the episode, even though both of them even have a distraction they can hide behind. It is actually connected to this scene in that Sheppard seems to be playing a game on his handheld device just as he does here -- or doing some work, or communicating with someone else. We never do find out what he does with them but we can be fairly sure that the reason he has such devices is McKay.

It was established already in Conversion (S02E08) that Sheppard and Teyla have no romantic interest in each other, they are "friends, nothing more." Here we are further shown why they never could be in an intimate relationship with each other. Teyla needs things that Sheppard is unable to give without destroying himself. The effects of this conversation are devastating to him. The scene is framed by Ronon attempting to outrun an explosion that destroys an entire building and picking himself up injured from the rubble afterwards. This reflects the effect that this heartfelt conversation with Teyla has on Sheppard internally. Having to bear himself open like this is not just difficult for Sheppard, is tears at the very fabric of his defensive mechanisms. McKay is patient with him. McKay does not make demands on Sheppard to express let alone verbalize his feelings, and he will wait 40,000 years for Sheppard to be ready if that is what it takes. While it took McKay almost dying in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) for Sheppard to almost confess his love to him, McKay had never pushed him to do it and he was grateful to get confirmation even in as convoluted a way as he does.

As mentioned, the scene just before this one featured Ronon combating a bunch of wraith, and just as soon as he thought he had gotten on top of the situation, one of them had triggered a self-destruct sequence that blew up the entire building and Ronon was running for his life to get away from the devastating explosion. Following this scene, we find Ronon digging himself up from the rubble clearly badly injured by the falling debris. And these events are framing this exchange between Sheppard and Teyla because the effects are similar to him emotionally as the building exploding and falling on top of Ronon had been to him physically. That is how difficult baring himself emotionally is for Sheppard. This was not a healing experience for Sheppard, even if for Teyla it had been something that she sorely needed from him, and that is why he had soldiered through the conversation. He could see that she needed to hear it.

But for Sheppard, it meant remembering many painful things about his past, the abandonment by his family, his failed marriage, his fallen friends, all the people he had failed to save on Earth, failing to save someone he had loved, his first love, and most of all McKay getting shot right in front of him. For Ronon, Sateda is a graveyard full of the ghosts of his past. For Sheppard, that is what Earth is. And in order to comfort Teyla in this situation, Sheppard had to dig up a lot of painful memories for himself. He stops for a moment as Teyla thanks her and acknowledges that he had not been able to quite be as open as she had hoped. But he then walks away without saying anything. He may not be able to run forever but regardless of whether he gets caught now and again, Sheppard does not know how to stop running.

Continued in Pt. 11

-* I have opted not to spell her name Melena, which is how many sources have rendered it, due to the unfortunate connotations but it is interesting that the name seems to be composite of Meredith, Lenore and Nancy, all important figures in Sheppard's life -- taking the great big leap here that his mother had been named Lenore. It could be coincidence, of course, but given her use as an obvious narrative mirror and a placeholder for people important to Sheppard, it is at the very least… curious. This also begs the question of what Holland's given name had been. He is frequently called Lyle based on one of novellizations and Charlie likely because his name-tag says C. Holland (possibly for Captain), but we do not actually know his name. Charlie as a unisex name would be fitting given that later on we have a character who is the photo-negative of McKay called Larrin, which is also a unisex name, used of both men and women -- just like Meredith. But of course he could have been something like Melvin, Thorne or Theodor, to go with the scheme... or something else entirely. It remains a mystery.

#ep. suspicion

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#ep. suspicion