Christmas, Present, G
Title: Christmas Present
Author: zats_clear
Rating: G
Summary: Sam's first Christmas on Atlantis
Words: 807
Disclaimer: No rights, no ownership, no money made, nothin'
Archive rights: Absolutely none.
Originally posted here, in holdouttrout's Holiday "not a fic-a-thon." Normally, I do not like schmoop. Or holiday fics. But I seem to have committed both. The prompt was "Sam's first Christmas on Atlantis" and I tossed in "snow in Atlantis" as a secondary prompt.
Christmas. In Atlantis. It's not that Samantha Carter had been home for Christmas in years. Whatever that meant. Not since she joined the Air Force and headed off into the Wild Blue Yonder. No, Samantha Carter, Wanderer of Galaxies, had most assuredly avoided "home" in the holidays of the last two decades. Even as a cadet, she preferred to make her place with her host family in Colorado Springs over visiting a house (not a home) that was cold and empty after the death of her mother. After she and her father had made their peace, there still remained little in the way of family celebrations. Selmak was nice, but ...omnipresent. She enjoyed Mark and his family, especially her nieces. But. Fish and houseguests...
So how was it that she felt so at odds with her surroundings now? The multi-national force she commanded in the Pegasus Galaxy had creatively decked the halls with enough shiny and bright to make her feel as though she'd become lost in a flock of magpies. The commissary whipped up cultural holiday delicacies with every meal. And, dear God, if Radek did not stop playing Elvis' Christmas Album, if she heard Blue Christmas one more time, she was going to lose her mind. But the holiday spirit was just not in her. "Yes, Samantha Carter, you are Ebenezer Scrooge," she thought. And so, she dredged up the ghosts of Christmas Past.
She and Mark, trying so desperately to stay awake to catch Santa Claus in the act. Her parents, watching indulgently as they ripped open their gifts in the morning. Her beloved host family's twin daughters, racing into "her" room on Christmas morning to wake her up, covering her with sticky stocking candy hands. That Christmas in the Middle East, where the First Shirt played Santa Claus and gave everyone gifts out of an overstuffed A-3 bag. An event made all the more surreal by the fact that the Shirt was a she. And Asian. And about the same size as the A-3 bag. Watching the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, knowing she would be headed back to her office in the Pentagon to work more on the calculations that would eventually help crack the Stargate. Her first Christmas after joining the SGC. The one where she and the recently-divorced Janet knocked back most of bottle of Limoncello with their Christmas cookies and spent Christmas day regretting that lemons were ever cultivated. The SGC Holiday parties. The third year, around the campfire on a distant planet, discussing the "meaning of Christmas" with Teal'c and Daniel as Colonel O'Neill sat quietly to one side and smirked as the conversation led to an detailed analysis of "evolution vs creationism." The first year Daniel wasn't there. The Christmas following Janet's... Samantha swallowed hard.
She'd been off-world with SG-1 for more than half the Christmas' of the last 10 years. What was so different now? Sam shook her head to clear her mind and her lips tightened in a firm line that Daniel would have recognized. And teased her about. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You don't need to be perfect. Just be yourself." And suddenly, it all became crystal clear. The problem. She looked down at the photographs on her desk and saw her "family." Here, where they weren't, she was the outsider. "Weir would have never doubted me," Ronan had said, coldly. "You're no Elizabeth Weir," being the obvious subtext.
"Colonel Carter, I think you should see this." Ronan stood in her office doorway, as though summoned by her thoughts. She blinked her beginning-to-tear eyes rapidly. No weakness here. Move along. "What have we got?" she asked, following him down the hall and out onto the Atlantean balcony overlooking the city. She looked in wonder at the light coating of snow on the railings. Snow. Coming from the sky in enormous, soft, white flakes. She held her hands out to catch them as they drifted down, a smile spreading slowly over her face. In the perfect muffled silence of snowfall, Ronan's answering smile spoke volumes.
Doors opened and suddenly, there were Terran expats flocking out onto the overlook. "Bring the tree out here!" "Do we have an extension so we can light it?" "Oh, that will be sooo pretty!" "It's snowing!" "No kidding, Rodney. Thought of taking up meteorology?" A cup of hot cocoa was pressed into her outstretched hand as Jennifer Keller fluttered past her and twirled in the snow, head back, face to the sky. Sam looked around slowly and then back to Ronan, who was still watching her with a quiet intensity that was somehow familiar to her. Flashing him a grin, she realized she was now in the midst of the noisy crowd. Perhaps she was home for the holidays after all.