i made writing again, wow. (?!)
!!!!!! FRAKKIN FINALLY
TITLE: Calm Go the Wild Seas
AUTHOR: daygloparker
FANDOM: Stargate: Atlantis
PAIRING: Sheppard/Weir
TIMELINE: AU that deviates somewhere around "The Return" (S3)*
SUMMARY: "He finds her in a tent in the desert, pretending to be an archaeologist."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For aj, as an entry in swficathon. Ms. A.j. requested a happy ending at the finale of the Atlantis project, but without the necessity of Season 4. This is what happened: aj, you know me. This is my happy ending. Trust me. There are metaphorical kittens at the end of this in my own special way. To taylorkate, my tireless beta; to anr, for the ficathon; and to the state of Egypt, whom I horribly abused in the writing of this fic - I pass you all each a glass of lowbgeh in Zahi Hawass' honor.
* Unintentional sequel pended to explain that? Possibly.
- - -
He finds her in a tent in the desert, pretending to be an archaeologist.
Elizabeth is seated and hunched over a low table with a stone tablet and a flatscreen computer side by side in front of her. Her hair is pulled back but greasy, some falling over her face and obscuring her eyes; her shirtsleeves are rolled up, dusty and dirty. There’s an inflatable mattress in the corner of the tent, and he recognizes some familiar personal items of hers.
He almost doesn’t believe it.
She's talking quietly to herself, scrolling through something on the flatscreen, and she hasn't noticed him standing there. He waits for just the right moment:
"Unless you're negotiating a peace treaty with that sand dune over there, I'm beginning to suspect that you lied to me."
Her head snaps up at the sound of his voice, eyes wide with surprise, and then her face is an instant smile. The past year nearly melts away from between them.
"John." Even her voice is smiling.
"Elizabeth."
She stands to greet him and they hug. Her face is tanned, brushed by the desert winds. He knows that she's been here for over almost five months, and he can see it on her face - but she doesn't look exhausted. Elizabeth smiles at him again, not at all as awkward as he expected this to be, and he realizes that she looks alive.
"Here, sit," she offers, except her only other chair is covered in parchments and a few books, so she swears and piles them up on the floor. Outside the tent, there's a gust of wind pushing against its canvas cover and John hears someone nearby shouting in what sounds like Arabic.
"How are you?" she asks idly, but he responds by sliding the tablet he saw her working over toward him. There's the expected Egyptian figure in one corner, and-- it's been almost two years, but the familiar-looking symbols will always scream out at him even if he'll never understand them: Wraith.
“So you’re moonlighting as a linguist now?”
She looks at the tablet and back up at John, a wry smile on her face. "I think Lowden's just humoring me on this one."
Lowden. He recognizes the name: Lowden MacArthur, archaeologist in charge. Dr. Jackson had mentioned something about how he was the brother-in-law of some advisor's sister's daughter - something. "I thought you told me you were here in some sort of… official… I.O.A. capacity."
Elizabeth stands. "I am." She goes to a small table on the far side of the tent and uncorks a large canteen. "Officially speaking, I am the I.O.A.'s representative in any negotiations between the Egyptian government, locals, and this expedition." She holds up a cup. "Want a drink?"
"Sure," he replies. He laughs to himself. "'The expedition.' That sounds vaguely familiar."
She shrugs knowingly and hands him his cup: "Daniel was here a few months back and taught a few local kids how to make this. He called it lowbgeh."
John takes a sip, and, although sweet on his tongue initially, the liquid burns and burns and burns as he swallows it. "Jesus," he chokes. "Shit. Zalenka's copper Athosian still was top shelf compared to this stuff."
Elizabeth laughs, because he's right.
"So," he says, as he watches her pour herself a glass and return to her seat, "when you're not officially negotiating with the nomads…?"
She gives him a look that he remembers well. "Unofficially, I seem to be the only one around here who has any sort of luck translating the Wraith dialect on these artifacts. My tenth-grade French teacher would be so proud." She takes a sip, winces. "At least that's what Lowden tells me."
John glances at the flatscreen for the first time. He recognizes the same symbols on its screen as the ones on the tablet. A few have been highlighted and there are lists of notes on either side corresponding to the highlighted text. A digital age notebook, he realizes.
He realizes something. "Wait a second. Wraith dialect?"
"Yeah," she replies, I know. She turns the flatscreen around to face him, pointing to one of the highlighted symbols. "It looks like it's some sort of hybrid of Ancient, Wraith, and Egyptian hieroglyphs, actually."
John shrugs, not really that interested in the how's and why's at the present moment. He didn't come to Egypt for its revelations. "Beats writing your classified memoirs, I suppose."
Elizabeth sighs. "Precisely." Maybe she didn't, either.
They sit in silence for a minute or two. It's been a year since they've seen each other in person, almost six months since they've spoken, and they're both content to just sit with one another. John takes another sip of lowbgeh and it doesn't burn quite as much as the first time; it still burns like a son of a bitch.
"What about you?" Elizabeth asks, sounding charitable.
He's still dressed in his BDUs, which is indication enough. "Oh, you know. Same old, same old."
"Life-sucking aliens still trumping the faith-sucking ones?"
"Always."
They toast to the sentiment.
John remembers the last time he saw her: in General O'Neill's backyard, swigging from a bottle of beer by the table of cold cuts and assorted cheeses, watching a pair of ducks swimming in the lake and pretending to listen to a conversation between the General and Colonel Carter. She was wearing a skirt, which he couldn't recall ever having seen her in. She looked different in the light of Earth - he wasn't sure how, not lighter or heavier, not more mysterious or more comfortable in her surroundings; no, just… merely different. He remembers remembering her again - in a tailored suit and heels, offering him a coffee mug of champagne.
"Are you hungry?" he asks suddenly. "Let's go someplace."
She looks at him for a long minute, half-amused and half-confused; laughs once, then shakes her head. "John, the nearest civilized anything is… not close."
It doesn't matter. "I know a shortcut."
He swallows the whole of his lowbgeh, regretting it immediately. He slams his cup down on the table with an accomplished grin, and for the first time, she realizes that he's dead-on serious. The humor leaves her face.
"John."
"And Mom gave me gas money, all right? Just come." He picks up her cup for her and offers its remaining contents to her.
The last time he saw her, it was in General O'Neill's backyard and he called her a sellout for not telling the I.O.A. to take their buy-out offer and shove it.
Her fingers idly rub the edges of the Wraith tablet.
*
The last they spoke, he was two hours home (home-home, an apartment fifteen minutes from Cheyenne Mountain, full of his belongings; a place that he supposedly called "home") from a two-week off-world mission with SG-4, and he almost let her call go to voice mail.
They'd still been speaking off and on since O'Neill's get-together in May, but the phone calls never lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes. They started as penance for things said in the past, but always inevitably dissolved into the standard script: How was your mission? I can't talk about it; how are the memoirs coming? I haven't started them. Do you remember the time _____? I spoke to Ronon last week. I miss Teyla. Remember the time _____?
They had no real Earth memories together; none, that is, except for the I.O.A. selling them out, Sheppard giving Woolsey hell about it all, and Elizabeth still taking a paycheck from them.
And then, one day, the script changed:
"They need me in Egypt."
He bit his lip. "They, being the I.O.A."
He heard her choosing her words carefully. "Yes. Hawass hasn't exactly been…welcoming of the I.O.A.'s excavations in recent years."
John didn't bother to feign restraint. "And they need you to cover their asses."
"I'm not covering for anyone, John. I'm just doing my damn job."
"Of course you are," he replied, and then instantly regretted it. He didn't say it, though.
("Well, I'm so god damn sorry," she told him in the General's driveway, away from the other guests. "Not all of us can be so gainfully employed by Stargate Command these days, Colonel.")
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Silence, and then: "I have to go now. Goodbye, John."
He hung up first.
*
They drive for more than an hour in his humvee, but John doesn't say anything. Elizabeth seems lost in the sandy landscape, a hand on her head to keep her hair from blowing in her face. The nearing village isn't Cairo, but it's a far cry from the camp of tents and archaeologists.
When they arrive it's already mid-day and the heat is impossible when you're not moving at forty miles-an-hour. Elizabeth points to a storefront with no windows and some tables underneath a red awning.
"Teyla has a son," he suddenly blurts out.
Elizabeth pauses mid-step, dumb-founded. "What?"
"I didn't mention that already?"
"No. You didn't."
"My mistake."
"I didn't know she was-"
"Neither did I."
When they sit down, he takes out the photo that he carries in his pocket and hands it to her. He likes the way the picture softens her face instantly. "How old?" she asks adoringly.
"Three weeks. She sent that through with the last databurst from Pegasus. His name is John."
She looks up, surprised. "Seriously?"
He lets her hang for a moment longer. "I suggested it, but she didn't seem to be taking me too seriously… some nonsense about naming him after her father. Ridiculous."
"Truly," she replies with a glaring smile.
She hands the photo back to him, but he refuses it: "No, keep it."
Elizabeth smiles, looking back down at the baby’s smiling face. "He's beautiful."
"And it wouldn't surprise me if he'll be able to kick my ass by the time he's ten."
"That old?" He makes a face at her.
The restaurant is owned by an older gentleman named Jabril and Elizabeth greets him by name when he comes to their table. Jabril shakes John's hand. He gestures to a young man in the back, who brings them a carafe of dark wine and some bread. John asks what's good, and Jabril only smiles and tells them to wait. "No menu," Elizabeth says to him, after Jabril is gone. "Just Jabril."
Later, she sighs cathartically. "This feels good."
"That's the wine," he remarks. It has washed away the burn of her lowbgeh.
She doesn't remark back. "No, I mean-" she replies, then stops herself from saying it.
*
The last time he saw her, standing in the backyard, she told him that she was thinking of buying a place with a view of the water - had some place specific in mind and everything. They toasted their beer bottles together in its honor.
"Colonel," O'Neill interrupted, "there are few more thirty-packs in Cam's flatbed. Would you mind?"
"Just how raucous are you expecting this party to get, General?"
"Gotta teach you kids how to drink properly again, after what Carter tells me has been one too many Athosian harvest ceremonies." Colonel Carter was shaking her head at him, muttering, Oh, would you stop it already?
"Yes, sir."
"Let me help," Elizabeth offered, and the General's eyebrows went up, as did his. He agreed.
Around the side of the house, the sound of party was muffled and the shaded air was cooler. "I think that's the one," he said, pointing to the black pick-up parked between two sedans, and when he turned to Elizabeth she was glancing over her shoulder, suspicious. "What?"
She smiled mischievously at him in reply. He smiled back automatically, "What?" and then Elizabeth kissed him. She was kissing him here, out in the open, maybe a dozen feet from people who worked for them and used to work them and who were their bosses and colleagues and-fuck, he had missed her. His last off-world mission had lasted one week too long.
"Yeah, I didn't think you were into the heavy lifting."
She smiled and kissed him again, her grin pressed into his lips with a gentle hum. She had her arms wrapped around his neck, and he really liked this Elizabeth.
"So," she breathed.
He arched an eyebrow at her, putting his hands on her waist. "So?"
"I," she kissed him again, "have a little time," and again, "before my first assignment, and I thought we could-"
"Assignment?"
He felt the muscles in her back suddenly beginning to tense. "Yes."
"Assignment… where?"
Her arms uncoiled from his neck, resting at her side. She paused, and then replied, "China."
"You're going to China?"
"It's only for a couple of weeks." She shrugged. "A month? Chinese support for the Antarctic base has been waning in the last few months, and Woolsey-"
He let go of her. "Wait a second-"
"-John-"
"-this is the I.O.A. we're talking about now?"
She breathed in, and he knew this discussion would be over before it even began. "Yes."
"The same people who kicked us out of Atlantis-no, I'm sorry, the same people that kicked you out of Atlantis. And now they're sending you to China?"
"If I remember correctly, you were on another planet several hours ago."
"That's my job!"
"And this is mine!"
"You lied to me!"
"Well, I'm so god damn sorry," she replied with anger, "I guess not all of us can be so gainfully employed by Stargate Command these days, Colonel."
He realized a moment too late that they were shouting. He stepped toward her, deliberately lowering his voice. "You told me-"
"I never made a promise, John." She shook her head. "What am I supposed to do? Sit in my apartment all day, writing my classified memoirs and hoping that the Ancients suddenly have the need for a skilled Earth negotiator?"
"You could teach," he replied, sounding disappointed. "I could come up with excuses for why I needed your consultation on missions."
She bowed her head. "No, you couldn't."
"I could try."
Elizabeth looked up at him, straight in the eye. She put a hand on his face, and he knew, in that moment, that it was all over.
*
When lunch is over, the sun is already beginning to sink toward the horizon line; if they don't leave soon, the drive back to the Air Force base landing strip will be in complete darkness. At the door of the humvee, Elizabeth stops, considers something, and then turns to him.
"You came all this way just to take me to lunch and…?" she asks him directly, her meaning obscured only slightly.
John takes off his sunglasses, polishing the lenses with his shirt hem, and then puts them back on. He remembers the coldness of his words as she had tried to extend an olive branch - Of course you are.
"Possibly," he says, because it's true.
He smiles at her. She gives him a look, and he gives her one back.
"Get in," he tells her.
Inside the humvee, John twists in his seat, reaching into its rear seats to grab the manila SGC folder that's been there the whole time. When he hands it to her, he can't read her face; he does, however, notice the tentative reach of her fingers.
"The Pegasus databurst," she realizes, without ever opening the file.
He nods and she opens the file. She reads, and watches the reactions flickering momentarily in her eyes as they skim the pages. "I don't understand."
"The Replicators repaired their own base code," he sums up.
It's a word that he still uses from time to time, The Replicators, but he sees the tiny flinch she makes when she hears him say it. She closes the file and places in neatly in her lap. "John, this is military."
He turns his key in the humvee's ignition and the vehicles rumbles to life. "Not according to General Landry."
He glances at her and she looks skeptical. "How did you manage that?" she asks.
"I didn't." Beat. "Gospel truth," he adds, realizing a second later that Colonel Mitchell has rubbed off on him far too much for his own liking.
He puts the humvee into the proper gear and they kick up sand as he begins to head back for her expedition's campsite. "We don't exactly have a lot of time to pack," he says, and he doesn't really mind that she doesn't say anything in return. Life-sucking aliens and killer robots trump plain vanilla faith-sucking aliens any day; John smiles to himself.
When the tents are in sight on the horizon line, framed by the bright orange sky, he looks over to Elizabeth and she is grinning, satisfied. John reaches over and squeezes her hand.
*
The last time he saw Elizabeth, she was standing on the stairs of Atlantis with her expedition pack on her back and a mournful expression on her face. The sun was just rising over the city and it was catching the stained glass windows just perfectly to cast a colored glow over her.
Now, she was here, beside him - under the stars of the Milky Way, atop Cheyenne Mountain. It had been almost three weeks since the expedition had been ousted and he still wasn't used to once familiar hum of Planet Earth.
"Think we'll ever go back?" she confessed in a whisper.
She had leaned her head on his shoulder and he pressed his nose to her hair. "I don't know."
The stars in Colorado weren't like the ones in Afghanistan, but low on the horizon, he spotted a shooting star streaking across the sky and then quickly dying. He heard Elizabeth gasp. "Did you see that?" He felt her joy at the brief delight.
They were silent for a while, and she returned her head to his shoulder and he thought that maybe they might both fall asleep out here on top of Cheyenne Mountain if they weren't careful.
"Hey," Elizabeth began, "remember the meteor shower?"
He did. Teyla had called the tribe fair and honest traders, but it had taken a team of marines and Elizabeth Weir to secure a decent agreement.
"Yeah," he replied. "I remember."
- - -
[fin.]
!!!!! YOU GUYS I WROTE SOMETHING !!!!!!
TITLE: Calm Go the Wild Seas
AUTHOR: daygloparker
FANDOM: Stargate: Atlantis
PAIRING: Sheppard/Weir
TIMELINE: AU that deviates somewhere around "The Return" (S3)*
SUMMARY: "He finds her in a tent in the desert, pretending to be an archaeologist."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For aj, as an entry in swficathon. Ms. A.j. requested a happy ending at the finale of the Atlantis project, but without the necessity of Season 4. This is what happened: aj, you know me. This is my happy ending. Trust me. There are metaphorical kittens at the end of this in my own special way. To taylorkate, my tireless beta; to anr, for the ficathon; and to the state of Egypt, whom I horribly abused in the writing of this fic - I pass you all each a glass of lowbgeh in Zahi Hawass' honor.
* Unintentional sequel pended to explain that? Possibly.
- - -
He finds her in a tent in the desert, pretending to be an archaeologist.
Elizabeth is seated and hunched over a low table with a stone tablet and a flatscreen computer side by side in front of her. Her hair is pulled back but greasy, some falling over her face and obscuring her eyes; her shirtsleeves are rolled up, dusty and dirty. There’s an inflatable mattress in the corner of the tent, and he recognizes some familiar personal items of hers.
He almost doesn’t believe it.
She's talking quietly to herself, scrolling through something on the flatscreen, and she hasn't noticed him standing there. He waits for just the right moment:
"Unless you're negotiating a peace treaty with that sand dune over there, I'm beginning to suspect that you lied to me."
Her head snaps up at the sound of his voice, eyes wide with surprise, and then her face is an instant smile. The past year nearly melts away from between them.
"John." Even her voice is smiling.
"Elizabeth."
She stands to greet him and they hug. Her face is tanned, brushed by the desert winds. He knows that she's been here for over almost five months, and he can see it on her face - but she doesn't look exhausted. Elizabeth smiles at him again, not at all as awkward as he expected this to be, and he realizes that she looks alive.
"Here, sit," she offers, except her only other chair is covered in parchments and a few books, so she swears and piles them up on the floor. Outside the tent, there's a gust of wind pushing against its canvas cover and John hears someone nearby shouting in what sounds like Arabic.
"How are you?" she asks idly, but he responds by sliding the tablet he saw her working over toward him. There's the expected Egyptian figure in one corner, and-- it's been almost two years, but the familiar-looking symbols will always scream out at him even if he'll never understand them: Wraith.
“So you’re moonlighting as a linguist now?”
She looks at the tablet and back up at John, a wry smile on her face. "I think Lowden's just humoring me on this one."
Lowden. He recognizes the name: Lowden MacArthur, archaeologist in charge. Dr. Jackson had mentioned something about how he was the brother-in-law of some advisor's sister's daughter - something. "I thought you told me you were here in some sort of… official… I.O.A. capacity."
Elizabeth stands. "I am." She goes to a small table on the far side of the tent and uncorks a large canteen. "Officially speaking, I am the I.O.A.'s representative in any negotiations between the Egyptian government, locals, and this expedition." She holds up a cup. "Want a drink?"
"Sure," he replies. He laughs to himself. "'The expedition.' That sounds vaguely familiar."
She shrugs knowingly and hands him his cup: "Daniel was here a few months back and taught a few local kids how to make this. He called it lowbgeh."
John takes a sip, and, although sweet on his tongue initially, the liquid burns and burns and burns as he swallows it. "Jesus," he chokes. "Shit. Zalenka's copper Athosian still was top shelf compared to this stuff."
Elizabeth laughs, because he's right.
"So," he says, as he watches her pour herself a glass and return to her seat, "when you're not officially negotiating with the nomads…?"
She gives him a look that he remembers well. "Unofficially, I seem to be the only one around here who has any sort of luck translating the Wraith dialect on these artifacts. My tenth-grade French teacher would be so proud." She takes a sip, winces. "At least that's what Lowden tells me."
John glances at the flatscreen for the first time. He recognizes the same symbols on its screen as the ones on the tablet. A few have been highlighted and there are lists of notes on either side corresponding to the highlighted text. A digital age notebook, he realizes.
He realizes something. "Wait a second. Wraith dialect?"
"Yeah," she replies, I know. She turns the flatscreen around to face him, pointing to one of the highlighted symbols. "It looks like it's some sort of hybrid of Ancient, Wraith, and Egyptian hieroglyphs, actually."
John shrugs, not really that interested in the how's and why's at the present moment. He didn't come to Egypt for its revelations. "Beats writing your classified memoirs, I suppose."
Elizabeth sighs. "Precisely." Maybe she didn't, either.
They sit in silence for a minute or two. It's been a year since they've seen each other in person, almost six months since they've spoken, and they're both content to just sit with one another. John takes another sip of lowbgeh and it doesn't burn quite as much as the first time; it still burns like a son of a bitch.
"What about you?" Elizabeth asks, sounding charitable.
He's still dressed in his BDUs, which is indication enough. "Oh, you know. Same old, same old."
"Life-sucking aliens still trumping the faith-sucking ones?"
"Always."
They toast to the sentiment.
John remembers the last time he saw her: in General O'Neill's backyard, swigging from a bottle of beer by the table of cold cuts and assorted cheeses, watching a pair of ducks swimming in the lake and pretending to listen to a conversation between the General and Colonel Carter. She was wearing a skirt, which he couldn't recall ever having seen her in. She looked different in the light of Earth - he wasn't sure how, not lighter or heavier, not more mysterious or more comfortable in her surroundings; no, just… merely different. He remembers remembering her again - in a tailored suit and heels, offering him a coffee mug of champagne.
"Are you hungry?" he asks suddenly. "Let's go someplace."
She looks at him for a long minute, half-amused and half-confused; laughs once, then shakes her head. "John, the nearest civilized anything is… not close."
It doesn't matter. "I know a shortcut."
He swallows the whole of his lowbgeh, regretting it immediately. He slams his cup down on the table with an accomplished grin, and for the first time, she realizes that he's dead-on serious. The humor leaves her face.
"John."
"And Mom gave me gas money, all right? Just come." He picks up her cup for her and offers its remaining contents to her.
The last time he saw her, it was in General O'Neill's backyard and he called her a sellout for not telling the I.O.A. to take their buy-out offer and shove it.
Her fingers idly rub the edges of the Wraith tablet.
*
The last they spoke, he was two hours home (home-home, an apartment fifteen minutes from Cheyenne Mountain, full of his belongings; a place that he supposedly called "home") from a two-week off-world mission with SG-4, and he almost let her call go to voice mail.
They'd still been speaking off and on since O'Neill's get-together in May, but the phone calls never lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes. They started as penance for things said in the past, but always inevitably dissolved into the standard script: How was your mission? I can't talk about it; how are the memoirs coming? I haven't started them. Do you remember the time _____? I spoke to Ronon last week. I miss Teyla. Remember the time _____?
They had no real Earth memories together; none, that is, except for the I.O.A. selling them out, Sheppard giving Woolsey hell about it all, and Elizabeth still taking a paycheck from them.
And then, one day, the script changed:
"They need me in Egypt."
He bit his lip. "They, being the I.O.A."
He heard her choosing her words carefully. "Yes. Hawass hasn't exactly been…welcoming of the I.O.A.'s excavations in recent years."
John didn't bother to feign restraint. "And they need you to cover their asses."
"I'm not covering for anyone, John. I'm just doing my damn job."
"Of course you are," he replied, and then instantly regretted it. He didn't say it, though.
("Well, I'm so god damn sorry," she told him in the General's driveway, away from the other guests. "Not all of us can be so gainfully employed by Stargate Command these days, Colonel.")
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Silence, and then: "I have to go now. Goodbye, John."
He hung up first.
*
They drive for more than an hour in his humvee, but John doesn't say anything. Elizabeth seems lost in the sandy landscape, a hand on her head to keep her hair from blowing in her face. The nearing village isn't Cairo, but it's a far cry from the camp of tents and archaeologists.
When they arrive it's already mid-day and the heat is impossible when you're not moving at forty miles-an-hour. Elizabeth points to a storefront with no windows and some tables underneath a red awning.
"Teyla has a son," he suddenly blurts out.
Elizabeth pauses mid-step, dumb-founded. "What?"
"I didn't mention that already?"
"No. You didn't."
"My mistake."
"I didn't know she was-"
"Neither did I."
When they sit down, he takes out the photo that he carries in his pocket and hands it to her. He likes the way the picture softens her face instantly. "How old?" she asks adoringly.
"Three weeks. She sent that through with the last databurst from Pegasus. His name is John."
She looks up, surprised. "Seriously?"
He lets her hang for a moment longer. "I suggested it, but she didn't seem to be taking me too seriously… some nonsense about naming him after her father. Ridiculous."
"Truly," she replies with a glaring smile.
She hands the photo back to him, but he refuses it: "No, keep it."
Elizabeth smiles, looking back down at the baby’s smiling face. "He's beautiful."
"And it wouldn't surprise me if he'll be able to kick my ass by the time he's ten."
"That old?" He makes a face at her.
The restaurant is owned by an older gentleman named Jabril and Elizabeth greets him by name when he comes to their table. Jabril shakes John's hand. He gestures to a young man in the back, who brings them a carafe of dark wine and some bread. John asks what's good, and Jabril only smiles and tells them to wait. "No menu," Elizabeth says to him, after Jabril is gone. "Just Jabril."
Later, she sighs cathartically. "This feels good."
"That's the wine," he remarks. It has washed away the burn of her lowbgeh.
She doesn't remark back. "No, I mean-" she replies, then stops herself from saying it.
*
The last time he saw her, standing in the backyard, she told him that she was thinking of buying a place with a view of the water - had some place specific in mind and everything. They toasted their beer bottles together in its honor.
"Colonel," O'Neill interrupted, "there are few more thirty-packs in Cam's flatbed. Would you mind?"
"Just how raucous are you expecting this party to get, General?"
"Gotta teach you kids how to drink properly again, after what Carter tells me has been one too many Athosian harvest ceremonies." Colonel Carter was shaking her head at him, muttering, Oh, would you stop it already?
"Yes, sir."
"Let me help," Elizabeth offered, and the General's eyebrows went up, as did his. He agreed.
Around the side of the house, the sound of party was muffled and the shaded air was cooler. "I think that's the one," he said, pointing to the black pick-up parked between two sedans, and when he turned to Elizabeth she was glancing over her shoulder, suspicious. "What?"
She smiled mischievously at him in reply. He smiled back automatically, "What?" and then Elizabeth kissed him. She was kissing him here, out in the open, maybe a dozen feet from people who worked for them and used to work them and who were their bosses and colleagues and-fuck, he had missed her. His last off-world mission had lasted one week too long.
"Yeah, I didn't think you were into the heavy lifting."
She smiled and kissed him again, her grin pressed into his lips with a gentle hum. She had her arms wrapped around his neck, and he really liked this Elizabeth.
"So," she breathed.
He arched an eyebrow at her, putting his hands on her waist. "So?"
"I," she kissed him again, "have a little time," and again, "before my first assignment, and I thought we could-"
"Assignment?"
He felt the muscles in her back suddenly beginning to tense. "Yes."
"Assignment… where?"
Her arms uncoiled from his neck, resting at her side. She paused, and then replied, "China."
"You're going to China?"
"It's only for a couple of weeks." She shrugged. "A month? Chinese support for the Antarctic base has been waning in the last few months, and Woolsey-"
He let go of her. "Wait a second-"
"-John-"
"-this is the I.O.A. we're talking about now?"
She breathed in, and he knew this discussion would be over before it even began. "Yes."
"The same people who kicked us out of Atlantis-no, I'm sorry, the same people that kicked you out of Atlantis. And now they're sending you to China?"
"If I remember correctly, you were on another planet several hours ago."
"That's my job!"
"And this is mine!"
"You lied to me!"
"Well, I'm so god damn sorry," she replied with anger, "I guess not all of us can be so gainfully employed by Stargate Command these days, Colonel."
He realized a moment too late that they were shouting. He stepped toward her, deliberately lowering his voice. "You told me-"
"I never made a promise, John." She shook her head. "What am I supposed to do? Sit in my apartment all day, writing my classified memoirs and hoping that the Ancients suddenly have the need for a skilled Earth negotiator?"
"You could teach," he replied, sounding disappointed. "I could come up with excuses for why I needed your consultation on missions."
She bowed her head. "No, you couldn't."
"I could try."
Elizabeth looked up at him, straight in the eye. She put a hand on his face, and he knew, in that moment, that it was all over.
*
When lunch is over, the sun is already beginning to sink toward the horizon line; if they don't leave soon, the drive back to the Air Force base landing strip will be in complete darkness. At the door of the humvee, Elizabeth stops, considers something, and then turns to him.
"You came all this way just to take me to lunch and…?" she asks him directly, her meaning obscured only slightly.
John takes off his sunglasses, polishing the lenses with his shirt hem, and then puts them back on. He remembers the coldness of his words as she had tried to extend an olive branch - Of course you are.
"Possibly," he says, because it's true.
He smiles at her. She gives him a look, and he gives her one back.
"Get in," he tells her.
Inside the humvee, John twists in his seat, reaching into its rear seats to grab the manila SGC folder that's been there the whole time. When he hands it to her, he can't read her face; he does, however, notice the tentative reach of her fingers.
"The Pegasus databurst," she realizes, without ever opening the file.
He nods and she opens the file. She reads, and watches the reactions flickering momentarily in her eyes as they skim the pages. "I don't understand."
"The Replicators repaired their own base code," he sums up.
It's a word that he still uses from time to time, The Replicators, but he sees the tiny flinch she makes when she hears him say it. She closes the file and places in neatly in her lap. "John, this is military."
He turns his key in the humvee's ignition and the vehicles rumbles to life. "Not according to General Landry."
He glances at her and she looks skeptical. "How did you manage that?" she asks.
"I didn't." Beat. "Gospel truth," he adds, realizing a second later that Colonel Mitchell has rubbed off on him far too much for his own liking.
He puts the humvee into the proper gear and they kick up sand as he begins to head back for her expedition's campsite. "We don't exactly have a lot of time to pack," he says, and he doesn't really mind that she doesn't say anything in return. Life-sucking aliens and killer robots trump plain vanilla faith-sucking aliens any day; John smiles to himself.
When the tents are in sight on the horizon line, framed by the bright orange sky, he looks over to Elizabeth and she is grinning, satisfied. John reaches over and squeezes her hand.
*
The last time he saw Elizabeth, she was standing on the stairs of Atlantis with her expedition pack on her back and a mournful expression on her face. The sun was just rising over the city and it was catching the stained glass windows just perfectly to cast a colored glow over her.
Now, she was here, beside him - under the stars of the Milky Way, atop Cheyenne Mountain. It had been almost three weeks since the expedition had been ousted and he still wasn't used to once familiar hum of Planet Earth.
"Think we'll ever go back?" she confessed in a whisper.
She had leaned her head on his shoulder and he pressed his nose to her hair. "I don't know."
The stars in Colorado weren't like the ones in Afghanistan, but low on the horizon, he spotted a shooting star streaking across the sky and then quickly dying. He heard Elizabeth gasp. "Did you see that?" He felt her joy at the brief delight.
They were silent for a while, and she returned her head to his shoulder and he thought that maybe they might both fall asleep out here on top of Cheyenne Mountain if they weren't careful.
"Hey," Elizabeth began, "remember the meteor shower?"
He did. Teyla had called the tribe fair and honest traders, but it had taken a team of marines and Elizabeth Weir to secure a decent agreement.
"Yeah," he replied. "I remember."
- - -
[fin.]
!!!!! YOU GUYS I WROTE SOMETHING !!!!!!