fic: Persephone Longs For Home - PG-13 [John, Teyla]

[tielan]

TITLE: Persephone Longs For Home
SUMMARY: Teyla learns about pomegranates and living between two worlds.
CATEGORY: gen, vignette
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: For the sg_rarepairings challenge - prompt: John/Teyla - 'Persephone in the underworld'. Also requested by saeva, although I suspect she was hoping for a different spin on it.

Persephone Longs For Home

In one of the first transits through the midway station, Earth sent a 'jumper stuffed to the brim with crates of fresh produce.

One week later, Teyla knew all about potatoes and strawberries, brussel sprouts and onions, passionfruit, asparagus, tomatoes, and apples. The expedition wallowed in an excess of Earth food, and with the food came the memories.

"We used to grow our own beets," Major Lorne explained cheerfully. "My mom would cook them in butter with a dob of sour cream on top. Plus, they were great for staining white shirts."

"This is not asparagus," said Laura, spearing a soggy-looking vegetable on the end of her fork and brandishing it. "It's a mockery of asparagus. They've boiled all the life out of it. Ugh. My dad had this recipe with lemon juice and pepper and a little bit of grated cheese on top - it was divine."

"I love strawberries," Kate said, long fingers selecting a ripe, red fruit from the bowl. "We didn't get them often - my folks couldn't afford them - but we had a neighbour with a strawberry patch, and my brother and I would sneak into their yard to pick them sometimes." She bit into the soft flesh. "Mmm."

"Pumpkin pie," said Elizabeth with a wry smile of recollection. "Not pumpkin custard pie but real pumpkin pie. There was a woman at my mother's church who did wonderful things with pastry and pumpkins. I'd badger my mother to buy them at the church fetes and then spend half an hour eating my slice very slowly."

"Fries," was all Rodney exclaimed as he settled down to a plate of the deep fried potato lengths.

She found John out on one of the balconies early one evening, a bunch of reports abandoned on the table as he propped his feet up on the railing and stared out over the city and the sea.

Overhead, the sky was violet and the sun had set, leaving a sky of cloudy-fire that gave the city a twilight glow.

"Hey." He flashed a brief smile up at her and picked something out of a cup in his hands, popping it in his mouth for a moment before spitting something small and hard up, over the railing. "Have a pomegranate seed?"

Teyla eyed the cup. Now that it was held out to her, she could see it was actually a round fruit, torn in half. Unlike the oranges and lemons of which Rodney was wary, this one had no fleshy segments in the middle. Instead, small, bright red domes gleamed out at her, like scarlet jewels in what looked like yellow pith. "They are edible?"

"Well, not the seed itself." John carefully picked out one of the seeds and showed it to her. "You actually suck on the stuff around the seed then spit out the seed. Can't eat the fruit flesh, can't eat the seed pod, just the seed flesh."

Carefully, Teyla dug out one of the small, jewelled seeds and popped it in her mouth. A tart sweetness blossomed, less distinctive than the raspberries, not as acidic as the citrus. She sat back and whistled the seed out over the rail and grinned at John.

His mouth quirked as he offered her another one. "There's a story about pomegranate seeds," he said lightly.

Teyla dug another five seeds from the fruit, watching the pierced seed jelly stain her fingers, knowing it was staining her lips as John related to her the story of Persephone and Hades.

--

While there was not so much criticism of her time among the Lanteans after the Ancestors had proven so discourteous, Teyla still felt the reproach of her people as she visited among them.

"Adren and Meara have been courting for over two seasons," said Jhiesa shortly when Teyla expressed surprise at the couple. "You have not been among us often enough to notice."

Halling sighed. "We negotiated with the Castey for the tava seeds, but they were culled before we could pay for them. It was nearly a season ago that we found out. I did not think to tell you - we thought it common knowledge in the camp."

"The Yim wish to meet with Halling," Kanaan said, his tones apologetic. "They consider him a more...appropriate representative of our people."

John found her out on the rope bridge in the indigo twilight, balancing on the swaying length, tossing pebbles into the water with satisfying 'plops.' "You okay?"

"Yes," she said after a moment and let the word stand between them as a bulwark.

The Lanteans had a saying, You can never go back.

At times like these, Teyla felt the truth of it.

He balanced easily on the bridge, his hands resting lightly on the rope railings as they swung in the evening breeze. Overhead, the cloudy sky was afire with the last rays of sun, and with the wind in her face and the reflected light of the sunset on her skin, Teyla remembered another conversation by the water.

Persephone - so John had said then - was returned to her mother and her mother's people from the Underworld. But she was never free of Hades either. Six months in the Underworld with the man who had taken her and claimed her as his own but without the pleasure of the sunlight and the world she called home; six months in the sunlight with the familiarity of her mother's people but missing the man who held her heart and shared his dreams with her.

Teyla turned to look at the pale profile beside hers, recalled the tang of the pomegranate on her lips, and wondered if Persephone ever felt truly at home anywhere again.

--