Dr. Elizabeth Weir was working.
That was what she had nailed to the message board almost every day, and this day was no exception.
Most people did not even bother looking for it anymore, as it was almost always there. Some days, it wasn’t even bothered to be replaced, and the crew joked about painting it on to the board itself because “it’s not like it would change anything.” Quote unquote.
Nobody even went to check in with her on any regular basis, as she was beyond any doubt doing boring, monotonous work.
‘Though, if they saw what I was doing for “work” today, they might think twice about avoiding it.’ Though Elizabeth as she held in one hand a remote and in her lap a rather large bowl of popcorn.
‘OK than, there is no question that this project has changed you, Dr. Weir. And not only the whole “enhanced leadership, access to knowledge nobody else has” thing.’
Because, never, ever, in a hundred-trillion years, would she have thought about using office time to laze around watching Desperate Housewives while having an all-you-can-eat festival in popcorn before coming to Atlantis. In her previous life, or .B.A., as she called it. Back then, Elizabeth Weir was the one of the most out she was wholly dedicated to her job. Whatever it might have been at the time, from diplomat to lobbyer to anything else under the sun. She usually dedicated the lion’s share of her time to her cause, and the remainder to dropping limply into bed.
Ok, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. Sometimes she actually slept, ate, and drank once in a while.
Just not frequently enough to deserve mentioning.
Nope, her job was her life, and her life was her job, working pretty much nonstop all the time.
Than she transferred HERE. And her priorities changed.
She gained a decent respect for the armed forces (it was nice to have them around when people were shooting/stabbing/slicing in your direction, and they were not bad people on the whole, like stop and kill that line of thought RIGHT NOW), learned things that most of humanity was blissfully ignorant of, and lived a life that, though difficult as hell, one could never say was boring (baring, of course, McKay’s ranting. She was only human, after all.)
But it had also changed her from the Elizabeth Weir she had been in another way: she had become relaxed, and gotten a little bit more laid back. Yes, being shot at and threatened with death should probably have the exact reverse effect on people, but it had taught her a valuable lesson: life is just too damn short.
Having to haul Carson’s ass back from the other side of the River Styx had driven that point home. Hard. And say what you will, but if you can get killed from an exploding tumor, you should be keeping your will up to date on a daily basis. Poor Carson now had to suffer through being seen as a bit of demigod by the new recruits now, and it drove him absolutely crazy.
Hence, for that reason among many, she had stopped to work 24/7. Another reason was that, while she had gotten into the habit of working every spare second, she had rapidly discovered that her line of work now included; in order of danger from least to greatest: keeping the city from falling apart around her, exploring the city, conducting off-world exploration/negotiation, finding a way to fight the Wraith and Genii (amongst others), and refereeing fights between Laura and Rodney. And needless to say, if she had to do THAT 24/7, well, she would save the Wraith and Genii some time and do herself in.
That, and she had no actual work to do, anyway. Preparations for the uber-important negotiations that the higher-ups SGC had their nuts in a bind over needed most of the energies of the city’s staff, and since it was her job to do the negotiating, the trade deals, the general staff management, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera; she suddenly found herself temporarily out of action. And she had no intention of wasting that time.
And she MEANT it when she said nothing. There was only one administrative problem of any real significance, and that was something that, while certainly unpleasant, could be dealt with by the engineers.
‘An entire wing of piping collapsed all in one night. Unbelievable.’ The maintenance she interviewed on her visit there had sworn up and down that they had done the nothing different from the efforts to restore, update, and bring up to code the piping there than they had done (an indeed continued to do) elsewhere.
Eventually, after all this, they began working on repairs. Personally, she thought that it could prove an ideal reason to double check the other parts of the myriad pumps, plumbing, and pipes that composed the veins and arteries of the city. It would NOT be good to have something go wrong in the piping when the vast majority of Atlantis had no direct route to the surface and fresh air.
Somehow, the SGC’s ‘Celebrity commander’ General O’Neill slept through it all. How someone could sleep through a few thousand falling pipes was anyone’s guess, but it was unimportant in the end.
And, with pretty much nothing to do, she decided to catch up on one of her long-neglected pastimes.
So, she managed to “arrange” for a few “extras” to have passage on the Daedalus, amongst the supplies in preparation for the expedition. And than, barricading herself in her room under the pretext of paperwork, she began to unwind.
Life was good. No Wraith attempts to go to the ‘promised land’ of abundant ‘food’ via the Atlantis Stargate, no Genii raids for around two months, and no recent (well, too recent) continuations of the infamous Cadman-McKay ‘incidents’ (for definition, Read: Nuclear Meltdown.)
However, just then, the dull thumping of boots on the floor alerted her to the fact that her joy might have been a ‘little’ premature. ‘Good god, what have they done this time?’ Elizabeth thought as she groaned while rapidly attempting to conceal the incriminating “evidence.”
Normally, dull thumping boots would not have really bothered her, for dozens of soldiers, engineers, marines, and others passed by with the same regulation-issue boots. However, it was how the boots were hitting the surface; namely hard, with longer pauses between steps than normal, and the fact that what sounded like a fist was traveling along with said boots, periodically hitting the wall.
Had this been any other situation, she might have thought to herself about how she had definitively spent too much time with John, Ronon, and Teyla if she were using their method of ID’ing someone though the sound they made traveling through the hallways of Atlantis.
However, this situation was not one of those, and Elizabeth had no choice but to turn of the TV, hide the remote and popcorn, pick up a pencil, begin to look as busy as possible, and stiffen her resolve.
For Hurricane Laura was upon her.
And, to what Elizabeth seemed like not more a second after she had safely concealed everything, Laura burst into the room with all the subtleness of a tornado in the Midwest, and angry as hell.
“Elizabeth, put away the remote and listen up!”
At this point, Elizabeth was questioning the wisdom of her hiding spots, and if she should come clean or try to hide it. She finally settled on the later.
“Remote? What are you talking about, Laura?” ‘Damn, did that sound as unconvincing as I thought it did?’
“Elizabeth, cut the crap. You might be able to fool any of the rest them. However, the rest of them did not exactly get paid in two bars of soap and one Snickers by the docking manager to write down all four seasons of Desperate Housewives as “mine detectors,” a few boxes of popcorn as “Nitroglycerin,” AND a DVD remote as a “C-4 detonator” so please don’t even start to try.”
Elizabeth groaned. She knew that more than two people had to be involved in the racket to sneak it past the ever-watchful eye of the Dock MPs; she had, after all, given the Dock Manager 4 packs of Wrigley’s and 2 Oreos to make it happen. She just never had thought that they would bring in the City’s demolition expert to smuggle them in.
Slowly, she took the popcorn bowl out from under her desk and the remote from behind her chair, and put them on her desk, and then but her hands up in a sign of surrender. Knowing Laura, she would find it funny. And if Laura was slightly amused by something, she would bite down softer. Which would leave Elizabeth with more of her head remaining.
And, sure enough, she saw Laura hold back a slight snicker, and then continued “Elizabeth, as much as I do not mind having the governess of Atlantis-” calling her by the sarcastic honorific the Atlantis staff had given her “surrendering to me, I don’t want you to surrender, I want you to LISTEN!” Raising her voice at the end.
“Let me guess, you got into a fight with Rodney over those things…”
“YES, that brown-nosed bastard stole my stash of Lays!”
“That would be strange, because Rodney was in here quite recently telling me in between long periods of cussing that YOU had raided his stash of Butterfingers.”
“That was AN ACCIDENT! I did not mean to do any harm, unlike that piggish, no-good slime!”
“I do believe that we already went over how you two were not supposed to get into each other’s secret stashes, or am I mistaken?”
For a few seconds, Laura merely stood there, enraged. However, after a few seconds, she got her temper in check enough to respond: “Yes, but I forgot, and did it on ACCIDENT! Without Malicious intent! As opposed to Rodney’s deliberate theft when he KNEW it was not allowed! That arrogant, egotistical son of a b-“
“You won’t get an argument from me on the description, but like it or not, you can not to kill him yet. We need him to do, well, whatever Rodney does.”
“Then can I kill him after?”
At this, Elizabeth tried valiantly to prevent a snicker from escaping. She also failed miserably.
“Ok, but NOT until then.” She finished, stressing the NOT. “So…”
“…We have a deal;” concluded Laura. “So, I’ll just be oiling my gun…” she finished, letting it drop off, with a distinctly sinister and mischievous glint in her eye as she walked out.
‘Situation resolved, crisis defused, all in the day’s work.’ Finished Elizabeth as she took another handful of popcorn and resumed watching the various misadventures of the residents of Wisteria Lane.
----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“ I am tellin’ you John, do you have ANY BLOODY IDEA WHATSOEVER what it is like to be seen as some DAMNED CIRCUS FREAK?”
The words cut through the otherwise empty infirmary with the sound of an extremely ticked-off Scotsman.
“Look, Carson, lighten up for christsakes! You have been acting so damned since we got you back!”
“That is because every bloody one of the newbies looks at me like I can turn H20 into fine Chardonnay and that I can part minor bodies of water by waving my hands at them! And that is the portion of them who do not think I made a pact with Satan! Let me tell you about those, John, they come in looking as though I am suddenly going to use my scalpel to crack their skulls or steal their eternal souls or…”
John knew that he had to cut him off. If he didn’t, it would end up shaking the planet from one of the CMO’s Infamous “10.9-on-the-ricter-scale rants.” Carson was usually funny, good-natured, and of even temperament, Far moreso then most people he had met. But when he got angry…. Well, you did not like Carson Beckett when he was angry. And the situation with the new recruits was driving him in that direction quite often recently.
“Listen, I KNOW you are ticked off about them, Doc. However, that does NOT mean you have to take it out on us…”
“And normally I wouldn’t but it’s not like you help the situation any, John. I am tired of being gawked at like the Elephant Man. How do you expect me to perform complicated surgery when a quarter of my patients expect me to stab them in the brain and sell their souls to the devil for bloody Cracker Jacks?”
John could only shake his head. The Scotsman was definitively exaggerating now. But that did not mean he didn’t have a point. He had seen the way that many of the newer contingent had reacted when they had found out on their own initiative that Carson had died previously. And Carson’s reaction, well, it was the first time he heard Carson say ‘aye’ without it meaning ‘yes.’
It was not a situation he would envy. That much he knew.
But that also did not mean it was a valid excuse to allow his work to collapse.
“Look, Doc, I know it bothers you, but you have to keep working. I will do what I can.”
“John, what you are doing is NOT enough.”
He did not yell it, like he did previously, but John noticed a distinct , unpleasant steel that entered to Scotch CMO’s voice as he said it.
“Then what do you want me to do? Threaten them with time in the brig if they so much as think of you strange?”
A distinct sarcastic exhaustion played into John’s voice. However much he liked Carson, he DID NOT need this.
“No, but I want you to tell them the exact circumstances of the events.”
“You know very well I can’t do that,” came the counter. “Most of them lack that sort of clearance. Just because you work here does not mean you get a free pass to read every detail in the classifieds! I cannot do it and have no reason to do it, Carson.”
“Oh, I can think of one good reason, John,: was the thickly-accented comeback, in a distinctly different, lighter tone. John knew what this meant: the ever-wily Scotsman had changed tactics. And John had been friends with Carson long enough to know that was usually not a good thing. “Oh yes, I can think of a very good reason to do so.”
“Well, the suspense is killing me, so out with it.” After all, was it not better to know what Beckett was going to try to blackmail him with then to not?
“Just a little matter, you know, if you inform them about the true nature of my condition, I will see fit not to, shall we say, inform Elizabeth about my sudden discovery of several secret admirer letters that have your handwriting on them?”
John’s face did an indescribable change that could best be summed up as halfway between a blanch and an evil eye. “You know perfectly well that I respect Elizabeth, but only as a friend and superior.”
“Aye, you know that, and I know that, but does she?”
“I don’t believe it. Even you would not go that far, Carson.”
“Would I?” The medic’s face was one of angelic innocence honed perfected.
Obviously, somebody had been taking lessons from McKay.
Nevertheless, the laughably false innocent face did tell him one thing: he certainly would go that far. And that left him with one of two choices: Cave in and spill everything to the greenhorns as per Carson’s demands, or kill Carson and dump his body over the side of the city.
And even from there he realized he only had one true choice. Thinking back on the many months and hardships they had suffered together, and how many times they had saved each others’ lives, did he really think he could kill Carson over this? The answer came immediately and clearly:
‘Yes. However, I do not like the idea of facing down a few million Wraith stunners without the city’s CMO alive and waiting with a well stocked emergency room. Even if he does drive me half to death when he isn’t saving my life.’
John groaned, mostly from his obvious imminent defeat, but also from the fact that he had spent enough time around Rodney that his thoughts were being sarcastic. He could see the glint of triumph in the Scotsman’s eyes, and he knew that he had to say what came next, no matter how painful it would be.
“OK, fine, I surrender. You win. I’ll gather them up next morning and tell them.”
“Everything?”
“No, I am merely going to tell them how you sold your soul to the….” Then, noticing Carson’s eyes giving him a death stare, “Yes, I will tell them EVERYTHING. Happy now?”
“No, but I will be if you keep your word, as it would save you a highly embarrassing report to Elizabeth’s office.”
“Ok, but just know, that this means war.” That was his parting shot as he exited the infirmary, and the best one he could muster.
“Do your worst, John.” Came the reply, with a distinctly playful look in Carson’s eyes. “I’ll be ready.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------
“So, Hank, how much of this equipment is really necessary.”
“Pretty much all of it, sir.”
“Hank, drop the sir. I’m retired, remember?”
“If you say so, sir.”
“You always were a smart aleck. Has anyone told you that recently?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, George. You, two or three dozen times.” After that, George could not hold it, and he broke into laughter. And it was not too long before the younger man joined in.
Eventually, both the General and the ex-General regained their composure long enough to resume heading to the destination they were going to.
“So, again, you are sure we need everything?”
“Yes, George. The Furlings demanded that we positively identify ourselves as the “Tau’ri,” and that plus the extra supplies to run the city, as well as the fact that this is a larger expedition then normal, and, well, you get the idea.”
“And how long is the Daedalus’ ETA?” He said as Hank opened the storage room door.
“About three days, counting today, by Caldwell’s estimate.”
Looking around the packed storage room, he noticed the nearly wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling stocks, and came upon one large swath of the room, about 1/6th of the total, that was completely clean.
“So, this is where they are going to stow the equipment once it arrives?”
“Yes.”
At this, Hammond took some time to rest against the wall. The gods must be crazy, for the SGC was actually running smoothly. He half expected some system lord to pop his head out of a cargo container as he thought that, but for once everything was going to plan.
“So, two more days. It looks like all we can do is kick back and wait.”
He tried his best to be calm. After all, there was nothing to worry about. But yet, nagging in his gut, was an old adage he had picked up from his old days in (and over) “The Swamp” with “Charlie.”
And that was only fourteen words long, but summed his feelings up better then forty.
When everything goes according to plan is when one should be most on guard.
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‘A wise adage, General Hammond. And one you would do well to keep up.’ Came the silent addition to the General’s thoughts.
‘ So, two days until the Tau’ri cruiser arrives with the supplies. I wonder how he would react if he knew that by then it will be far too late.’
‘But even so, General Hammond, there is one thing you are incorrect on.’ Continued the internal monologue of the waiting predator, his eyes basking the empty corridor he was in with an unholy red glow.
‘If you think the snake liars are your worst threat, then you should think again.’
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