It was a stark room - a wooden floor, a simple stone hearth, and a cushioned pile of blankets before it that would serve her for a bed, if this was indeed to be her prison, yet the air sang with every unspoken moment that had ever passed between them. She refused to turn, refused to look at him, knowing that if she did, everything would change. Everything would be different.

"No words, Teyla?" he asked, coming to a stop behind her. She could feel the heat of his body, so close to hers, and she took a breath, forcing herself not to close her eyes. "After all this time, even after everything we've been through—"

"We've been through?" she interrupted, mocking; angry.

Suddenly his hand was in her hair, twisting its long strands into a cord around his hand and pulling until she had no choice but to acquiesce to the strength that brought her head to his shoulder, even as she struggled against his hold, and against the rope that still bound her hands behind her back.

"Do you think I did not feel the pain of your assault; the marks you left on his body?" He snarled the words against her ear. His breath was hot against her cheek, the same cinnamon spice that she remembered. It bit deep and low in her belly as she breathed him in, and afraid of her own emotions, she redoubled her struggles. He held her fast, his anger relentless. "Do you think I didn't not share the rush of dread as you threw him down to his death!"

"Him," she insisted, "not you."

She knew it was a fine line, heard the desperation in her own voice – but for whom to believe? Had she known? Could she trust herself, even now that it was some construct, and not Michael that had called to her – begged her for salvation and she, in her angry arrogance had played judge, and jury… executioner.

"Not you," she repeated, barely a whisper as she ceased the futile struggle against his hold. "Michael…"

"Oh, all the signs were there," he continued, calmer, softer now, as if he was reading her thoughts and speaking her doubt and pain into her heart, "but you were never sure. How many times, Teyla, have you woken alone, shivering with the guilt of what you might have done? How many tears have wet your pillow in the dead of night?"

"You—" she said, then, "how?"

"Ten thousand light years… twenty… a galaxy," he answered softly, moving closer still, so that her bound hands were trapped between them, her chaffed wrists pressing against the heated leather he wore.

Her breath caught as though his nearness was a blow to her belly, a blow that sent a cloud of butterflies to flight inside of her, releasing a shower of sweet nectar to pool between her legs. She felt swollen and aching. …he knows…

"Yes, Teyla," he confirmed, "Did you think your exile on Earth could keep the truth from me?"

"Michael, I—"

"Distance is as nothing, when you share one mind," -mind- -mind- -mind- -mind. His voice and the mental echo of his presence within her set every cell vibrating with already heightened tension. Her blood vibrated inside her veins, and her dissipated anger mewled, kitten-like in the back of her throat. She heard amusement in his voice as he continued. "What penance would you have me give to you? Atlantis is gone… the Wraith are on their knees… and the people of the Pegasus Galaxy—"

"Michael, listen," she began cutting him off. "I understand you are angry, I do, but—"

"You disappoint me, Teyla," he said and the pressure of his hold on her lessened. He released her hair – released her hands, the cut rope dropping to the ground between them as he began to move away, explaining, "I did not bring you here to give you ultimatums. I brought you here to address that which has lain between us long enough." -enough- -enough- -enough- -enough-

"Michael, wait," she turned quickly; moved to catch his arm with hands prickling and tingling from the returning flow of blood to her fingers, but he turned back at her call, and deflected the touch, only to slip his arm around her waist; pull her close, and she, obeying the reflex of her long denied desire clutched at his shoulders.

Restraint fell away in that moment of reaching, that single moment in which they had allowed themselves to see past the anger; past the hurt to the emotions lying beneath, deep and still, and yet alive with the potential of the ebb and flow of their unseen tide. His mouth was on hers, his tongue plundering her depths and she leaned into the kiss, spearing her fingers into his hair even as he lifted her against him, to pass their no-mans-land and bring them to their knees upon the blankets and she drew him over her; pressed up against him and wrapped the back of his thighs in one lithe leg to pull him closer still.

"I want to feel you," she moaned, and moved against the growing hardness that pressed against her thigh. Her fingers worked the fastenings on his leathers to release him. He mirrored her touch, knowing hands skimming heated skin, questing… climbing… to finally sink between soft folds into her swollen softness. He growled against the skin of her neck. Wordless… needful…

"I was there," he murmured, lifting his head – golden gaze capturing her passion-dark coffee cream – as she freed him at last, her fingers moved over muscled thighs that sent a new flood of desire over his fingers. "When he took you and put life in your belly… in his mind…"

"Michael…" the pain she saw in his confession passed any trace of indignation that she, and the father of her son, had been manipulated. She saw only Michael's need; his longing to experience that closeness for himself, and felt only her own darkly passionate desire to fulfill that urgency.

She lifted her thighs, framing him and felt the soft dome of his risen length glide against her – within – and she gasped at the girth of him, arching against him to draw him deeper still, to move against him; rise and fall, in and out… thrust and thrust, and trust… and she did…

As he caught her hands, pinned them above her head, her wrists held in the grasp of one long fingered hand, she surrendered to him, her parted thighs inviting the touch of his fingers that found her wet and swollen clit and pinched and kneaded the tender flesh into a hot, tight nub, sending thrills of prickling heat to clench her around his plunging shaft.

He moaned and she opened her eyes to watch his own hooded gaze take in their joining as he shifted over her, within her… and following his eyes she shivered as she watched the tight glide of their bodies' joining, the tightening spiral in her belly maddening… brightening, bursting through her as she came, the force of it dismissing all else than Michael as a part of her… she the sun, and he the dark of her moon.

-yours, my Teyla …my queen-

…Michael...

They were both too breathless to speak. She reached up to draw his head down onto her breast; wrapped him in her arms, spent and trembling as she was. Teyla Emmagen wept.