vignette: Sam in Atlantis [3/5]
Title: Sam in Atlantis [3/5]
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: General Season Four spoilers and speculation.
Summary: In which Rodney apologizes and Sam goes through the gate.
Note: Expect another one of these by the end of the day. I love Sam. :) Also, anyone have any title suggestions? I seem to be suffering from title block.
6. One day McKay comes back through the gate alone and desperate. The rest of his team disappeared, he says, and he doesn’t know who took them or why he was left behind or even if the rest were still alive. There had been lots of blood at the campsite, signs of a struggle, and McKay had searched and run tests and done everything conceivably possible and he couldn’t find them.
Sam sends Major Lorne’s team with an extra squadron of Marines to search the planet and sentences McKay to infirmary. He puts up a fight, insisting to go back to the planet or at least be allowed to go to the labs and go through his research one more time, and she puts her foot down.
A week and a half after they went missing, Sam calls off the daily searches of the planet and scales it back to a weekly search. Atlantis just can’t afford to have two dozen soldiers away from their regular duties that often. She doesn't earn many more friends with this decision and there's talk about her moral character for a little while. McKay doesn't help matters when he puts up a fierce fight, full of shouting and name calling, and her foot comes down again, harder this time., because he can't undermine her authority again.
She finds him on a solitary balcony later that night when she can't sleep and they swap war stories for a little while, before McKay says something really startling:
“I understand now, ‘bout you - us and that whole pattern storage debacle. He’s your family like they’re my family. My distant and dysfunctional family that I really don’t like at all, but family nonetheless. Even Sheppard, that bastard.” Rodney glances at her, bleary eyed and exhausted. “So sorry I yelled. I just…I just want to get them back, you know?”
Sam mumbles, “I know,” and pats him on the shoulder, even though she knows it really never helps.
6b. By chance, Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla are found days later in dank prison cells on a remote trading planet. Sam is told the first question Sheppard asked was, “Where’s McKay?”
6c. Sam understands why everyone puts up with Rodney now.
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7. There wasn’t much fanfare leading up to Sam’s first off-world trip in the Pegasus Galaxy.
Sam had been told that when Elizabeth Weir had wanted to go off-world, the gateroom went completely nuts, especially when she went with Sheppard’s team, and the situation caused tension headaches, panic attacks, and longer hours for everyone involved until Weir returned safely. She knew their panicky attitude was probably a result of Weir’s anti-weapons stance. Admirable, but probably one of the most irresponsible policies Sam had seen, especially in such a dangerous off-world environment as Pegasus. All the other civilians were trained before they went off-world and carried weapons while they were away, and Sam didn’t see why Weir had been the lone exception just because she had been trying to prove a point to the Pentagon.
The one thing anyone in Atlantis really liked about Sam was that didn’t have to worry about her when she went off-world. She could fire a P-90, blow stuff up, make first contact without offending the natives, and hack her way out of (or into) any sort of alien technology. She was a well-rounded veteran of gate travel and could take care of herself.
7b. Sam has no delusions about where she ranks on the Atlantis popularity scale. If the miserable Dr. Kavanaugh was still around, she’d probably just be ranked a few points higher than him and that was not exactly the confidence booster she needed in her first command position.
All of her actions are compared to those of her predecessor and if she makes the slightest change in the goings on of the city, there is grumbling for days on end. She can’t go a staff meeting without hearing, “Well, Elizabeth would let me do this,” and “Dr. Weir didn’t allow this,” and the civilians always throw a fit when she “favors” the military (how was it her fault, exactly, that Staff Sgt. Myer’s team got the last of the banana nut muffins at breakfast? How?). They aren’t making the transition any easier for her or themselves.
The Atlantis expedition wants Dr. Weir, not Colonel Carter, and are clinging to the past as best as they can. Sam doesn’t quite know how to break it to them that she’s here to stay and they better get damn used to it.
7c. As a true sign of a lack of concern for her well-being, the gate technicians didn’t even look up from their computers and coffees when she and Major Lorne’s team stepped up to the gate.
They probably should have.
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Part Four.
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