Big Bang Fic #5: Bone China
Author: Regency
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Title: Bone China
Rating: G
Spoilers: First Strike, Lifeline, Adrift, Be All My Sins Remember’d, Ghost in the Machine
Word count: 1,522
Summary: Not everything is as fragile as it appears. The new Elizabeth in three times after.
Author’s Notes: Written for the stargateland Big Bang challenge. Under revision.
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
One Year After Falling
Building perfect machines means they never die when they’re supposed to. Elizabeth was sure of it, or as sure as she was anything on this world from hell. Here, she was hunted by brothers and her sisters, a victim of the scent defined her inhumanity and made her easy prey.
They hated her.
She’d doomed them to an interminable existence in the vacuum of space; she could understand their anger more than a little.
The bark of the tall tree she called her temporary home bit into her indestructible skin. Her skin bit back, nanites transforming this gift of nature into a material of subservience for her comfort. Soft. The programming had never taken; she could replicate, she could heal. It wasn’t something she had to think about now. The parasites that composed her continued to rule her world. She’d long since conceded defeat against them.
At that, she could have laughed. Conceding defeat was all she did anymore; had been since they’d floated into this planet’s orbit and come crashing down to ground. The re-awakening had been far from joyous.
Elizabeth was certain she’d left more of herself at the crash site than she’d escaped with. Her body may have been self-repairing, but something within her yearned for the bits of herself she kept leaving behind, the same something that yearned for her old face and hair and bones. Had she still believed herself capable of possessing one, she might have called it her soul. But she didn’t believe she had one, not anymore.
The formerly organic material of the tree that curled around her had taken on the signature appearance of replicator blocks. What had been unyielding bark had melted into an alcove, one that would safeguard her for the night. She didn’t to have to rest or sleep, but sometimes she liked to dream. It was the only human habit she had left, the only thing that reminded her that Elizabeth Weir had been real once and had lived an incredible life.
And if she had her way, someday she’d have it all again.
~!~
Five Years
Elizabeth, or Elizavet as she was better known here, stepped out of the Parthenon and into the sun. She was exhilarated, vindicated; she didn’t feel so much the weight of the world on her shoulders, not the way she usually did. Her speech had been well-received by the members of the Senate, even those who often declared their antipathy toward her. There would be a school for girls soon and, she hoped, for servants.
“We are only as commendable as our least common denominator. How dare we conquer others when we have yet to conquer our own ignorance,” she’d told a room filled with powerful aristocrats.
She’d nearly stumbled on her soapbox. This planet, this venue was a dream come true. It was Ancient Greece, alive and thriving in a galaxy so distant from the one where she’d been born, it was almost impossible to believe.
Daniel Jackson would be gob smacked, she could see it as certainly as she could recall his face; and she could recall it perfectly. She wondered how well the years had treated him, how many more times he’d died since she’d gone the first time. He kept finding his way back to the land of the living while she stood drowning in immortal stuff, exiled from that very place. However hard she tried, it never felt less than absolutely unfair.
Some of us are lucky, she consoled herself, and some of us are not. The optimist she was born as had perished with her blood. She was embarrassed to admit she’d learned that, somehow, Replicators could cry. Perhaps it was another of those ‘mind over matter’ achievements she’d excelled at in the last five years. She truly couldn’t say. These pests that had become her closest companions were as much a mystery to her today as they had been when they invaded. At times, they kowtowed to her will and adhered to her every whim. On other days, they conceded nothing and cost her everything.
She hadn’t stopped running for existence since she woke up. First, she’d been forced to outrun her enraged brethren in a race that would have led to her obliteration. How they would have managed it, she didn’t know; yet, she didn’t doubt the tenacity of four furious Replicators with an eternity to make themselves felt. Elizabeth had been tortured to death countless times while in Oberoth’s possession; if all that remained was her dignity, she would not go through that again.
Thus, she’d run. She ran up the coast of the first continent and, when they found her, she ran back. With a mechanical heart of desperation, she fled through the soul of that wild place and made a home among the trees. In her former life, she’d never been an outdoorsman, more familiar with the intricacies of room service than survival tactics, but she’d been forced to improvise. Quiet had become the watchword of her days and the necessity of nights.
More than once, she’d almost given in. The loneliness was almost as bad as any hunger. The birds and insects and predators were enough to fill the silence, but they didn’t speak. What they did was keep secrets and Elizabeth had enough to write a few dozen fables, so she told. They sensed she was no hreat and seemed to listen and that was enough to make her stronger until she could leave. And leave she did on the day when the ships came.
She left her brethren behind on that world with nothing for a future with everything. But she’d wondered as she flew away, with her new friends and their grand new toys, if the woman she used to be would have done this - and she knew. She left her human heart on that planet, too.
It was these people she’d found. These aberrations of time and, most surprisingly, space. They spoke as the Greek did and dealt as the Greeks dealt, but they roamed the stars when not buried in the matters of the day. They were not perfect and not always just, but so long as the foreign woman, Elizavet of the outland, was here, she would try to do something to change that. How else to spend an eternity alive?
~!~
Fifteen Years
In thirteen years, Elizabeth Weir had overcome the useless limitations of Fran’s form and made it her own. In thirteen years and two months, its face was her face; its eyes her own, its cheeks her cheeks, and its smile her smile. Somewhere around the fourteen-year mark, she caught sight of her eyebrow quirking in the reflection of a nearby stream. She hadn’t even felt it twitch.
Slowly, the nanites that had taken everything began to give it back; they began to revert her to her natural form, if it could be called that still. It was in year fifteen, spent on a new planet far from the demons of the first one that she noted the way the humidity made her hair curl madly around her face. Fran’s hair had never done that. Being a vague facsimile of what Rodney would have considered a less than ideal woman, her hair had been nearly straw straight and utterly manageable, utterly boring. It hadn’t been Elizabeth at all. Never before had she been so happy to battle bed head for dominance.
Standing in her quarters, facing herself in the shining surface of a polished shield, Elizabeth felt a subtle peace steal over her. This wasn’t where she belonged; not among this people of rough-hewn swords and tree-dwellings, these huntresses and gatherers, but it was nice to know that she could be here a while and be safe. It was nice to know that when one of them had offered her their hand in friendship, they’d done it having seen her true face.
With a smile she couldn’t stifle, she twined her braided hair around the bone of a conquered bird and secured it at the nape of her neck. This woman she had become was a character, a scholar in warrior’s armor. Her dagger was bone, too; her shield was what remained of some unlucky ship on a stormy night.
They might have been a relatively primitive people, but they were skilled. The ship had been aground a day before it was targeted for acquisition; it lasted a sum of four days after that. She was reluctantly impressed to realize what damage and good rocks could do in determined hands. She was reluctantly proud to admit she’d helped. If Elizabeth’s guess was right, the passengers had died on impact. More than ever in the past, she wanted to be right.
Nevertheless, their sacrifice had lived on in her adopted people. They integrated the alien material into their clothes and their homes. They’d discovered mirrors and metallic cookware and reinforced siding. They stood stronger than they ever had, because a group of strangers had died.
Despite her attempts to ignore the symbolism, she couldn’t smother the hope that losing her had made Atlantis stronger, too. But she tried not to think of it too much.
After all, she’d never know.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Title: Bone China
Rating: G
Spoilers: First Strike, Lifeline, Adrift, Be All My Sins Remember’d, Ghost in the Machine
Word count: 1,522
Summary: Not everything is as fragile as it appears. The new Elizabeth in three times after.
Author’s Notes: Written for the stargateland Big Bang challenge. Under revision.
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
~!~
One Year After Falling
Building perfect machines means they never die when they’re supposed to. Elizabeth was sure of it, or as sure as she was anything on this world from hell. Here, she was hunted by brothers and her sisters, a victim of the scent defined her inhumanity and made her easy prey.
They hated her.
She’d doomed them to an interminable existence in the vacuum of space; she could understand their anger more than a little.
The bark of the tall tree she called her temporary home bit into her indestructible skin. Her skin bit back, nanites transforming this gift of nature into a material of subservience for her comfort. Soft. The programming had never taken; she could replicate, she could heal. It wasn’t something she had to think about now. The parasites that composed her continued to rule her world. She’d long since conceded defeat against them.
At that, she could have laughed. Conceding defeat was all she did anymore; had been since they’d floated into this planet’s orbit and come crashing down to ground. The re-awakening had been far from joyous.
Elizabeth was certain she’d left more of herself at the crash site than she’d escaped with. Her body may have been self-repairing, but something within her yearned for the bits of herself she kept leaving behind, the same something that yearned for her old face and hair and bones. Had she still believed herself capable of possessing one, she might have called it her soul. But she didn’t believe she had one, not anymore.
The formerly organic material of the tree that curled around her had taken on the signature appearance of replicator blocks. What had been unyielding bark had melted into an alcove, one that would safeguard her for the night. She didn’t to have to rest or sleep, but sometimes she liked to dream. It was the only human habit she had left, the only thing that reminded her that Elizabeth Weir had been real once and had lived an incredible life.
And if she had her way, someday she’d have it all again.
~!~
Five Years
Elizabeth, or Elizavet as she was better known here, stepped out of the Parthenon and into the sun. She was exhilarated, vindicated; she didn’t feel so much the weight of the world on her shoulders, not the way she usually did. Her speech had been well-received by the members of the Senate, even those who often declared their antipathy toward her. There would be a school for girls soon and, she hoped, for servants.
“We are only as commendable as our least common denominator. How dare we conquer others when we have yet to conquer our own ignorance,” she’d told a room filled with powerful aristocrats.
She’d nearly stumbled on her soapbox. This planet, this venue was a dream come true. It was Ancient Greece, alive and thriving in a galaxy so distant from the one where she’d been born, it was almost impossible to believe.
Daniel Jackson would be gob smacked, she could see it as certainly as she could recall his face; and she could recall it perfectly. She wondered how well the years had treated him, how many more times he’d died since she’d gone the first time. He kept finding his way back to the land of the living while she stood drowning in immortal stuff, exiled from that very place. However hard she tried, it never felt less than absolutely unfair.
Some of us are lucky, she consoled herself, and some of us are not. The optimist she was born as had perished with her blood. She was embarrassed to admit she’d learned that, somehow, Replicators could cry. Perhaps it was another of those ‘mind over matter’ achievements she’d excelled at in the last five years. She truly couldn’t say. These pests that had become her closest companions were as much a mystery to her today as they had been when they invaded. At times, they kowtowed to her will and adhered to her every whim. On other days, they conceded nothing and cost her everything.
She hadn’t stopped running for existence since she woke up. First, she’d been forced to outrun her enraged brethren in a race that would have led to her obliteration. How they would have managed it, she didn’t know; yet, she didn’t doubt the tenacity of four furious Replicators with an eternity to make themselves felt. Elizabeth had been tortured to death countless times while in Oberoth’s possession; if all that remained was her dignity, she would not go through that again.
Thus, she’d run. She ran up the coast of the first continent and, when they found her, she ran back. With a mechanical heart of desperation, she fled through the soul of that wild place and made a home among the trees. In her former life, she’d never been an outdoorsman, more familiar with the intricacies of room service than survival tactics, but she’d been forced to improvise. Quiet had become the watchword of her days and the necessity of nights.
More than once, she’d almost given in. The loneliness was almost as bad as any hunger. The birds and insects and predators were enough to fill the silence, but they didn’t speak. What they did was keep secrets and Elizabeth had enough to write a few dozen fables, so she told. They sensed she was no hreat and seemed to listen and that was enough to make her stronger until she could leave. And leave she did on the day when the ships came.
She left her brethren behind on that world with nothing for a future with everything. But she’d wondered as she flew away, with her new friends and their grand new toys, if the woman she used to be would have done this - and she knew. She left her human heart on that planet, too.
It was these people she’d found. These aberrations of time and, most surprisingly, space. They spoke as the Greek did and dealt as the Greeks dealt, but they roamed the stars when not buried in the matters of the day. They were not perfect and not always just, but so long as the foreign woman, Elizavet of the outland, was here, she would try to do something to change that. How else to spend an eternity alive?
~!~
Fifteen Years
In thirteen years, Elizabeth Weir had overcome the useless limitations of Fran’s form and made it her own. In thirteen years and two months, its face was her face; its eyes her own, its cheeks her cheeks, and its smile her smile. Somewhere around the fourteen-year mark, she caught sight of her eyebrow quirking in the reflection of a nearby stream. She hadn’t even felt it twitch.
Slowly, the nanites that had taken everything began to give it back; they began to revert her to her natural form, if it could be called that still. It was in year fifteen, spent on a new planet far from the demons of the first one that she noted the way the humidity made her hair curl madly around her face. Fran’s hair had never done that. Being a vague facsimile of what Rodney would have considered a less than ideal woman, her hair had been nearly straw straight and utterly manageable, utterly boring. It hadn’t been Elizabeth at all. Never before had she been so happy to battle bed head for dominance.
Standing in her quarters, facing herself in the shining surface of a polished shield, Elizabeth felt a subtle peace steal over her. This wasn’t where she belonged; not among this people of rough-hewn swords and tree-dwellings, these huntresses and gatherers, but it was nice to know that she could be here a while and be safe. It was nice to know that when one of them had offered her their hand in friendship, they’d done it having seen her true face.
With a smile she couldn’t stifle, she twined her braided hair around the bone of a conquered bird and secured it at the nape of her neck. This woman she had become was a character, a scholar in warrior’s armor. Her dagger was bone, too; her shield was what remained of some unlucky ship on a stormy night.
They might have been a relatively primitive people, but they were skilled. The ship had been aground a day before it was targeted for acquisition; it lasted a sum of four days after that. She was reluctantly impressed to realize what damage and good rocks could do in determined hands. She was reluctantly proud to admit she’d helped. If Elizabeth’s guess was right, the passengers had died on impact. More than ever in the past, she wanted to be right.
Nevertheless, their sacrifice had lived on in her adopted people. They integrated the alien material into their clothes and their homes. They’d discovered mirrors and metallic cookware and reinforced siding. They stood stronger than they ever had, because a group of strangers had died.
Despite her attempts to ignore the symbolism, she couldn’t smother the hope that losing her had made Atlantis stronger, too. But she tried not to think of it too much.
After all, she’d never know.