The Past And The Pending
First Strike speculative fic, Sparky! Spoilers throughout until the end of Season 3. For reference, it’s set entirely in backwards chronological order (except the italic prologue/epilogue bits).
I’ll repeat this again: SPOILER warning. If you don’t want to know about First Strike or Sunday, STOP now.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nothing, nothing and as usual, that includes the title. It’s a song by The Shins.
The Past And Pending
He should have kissed her. She’d been standing right in front of him in the doorway to her quarters. Elizabeth had leaned her head forward slightly, smiling and rolling her eyes indulgently at some joke he’d made. John knew he wasn’t as amusing as she found him, not really. But she still smiled.
X
“It’s tenuous,” Rodney said quietly. “I’ve mentioned that, right? Slim to marginal at best.”
“Just tell me,” John said wearily, sitting down. Rodney was a friend. He could be tired, aching and worn down in front of him.
“There was activity in the water while we were outside the gate room,” Rodney explained. “After the bulkhead doors shut and I was outside, the scanners detected someone being either beamed or transported out.”
“You’re saying Elizabeth might be alive?” John asked sharply.
“Might,” Rodney insisted, “Is the operative word. The scanners were - to put it mildly - completely fried. What I’m reading could be anything. But that’s what it’s closest to.”
“And if she is,” John comprehended slowly. “The Asurans have her.”
Rodney nodded.
X
John coldly and calmly sent Lorne and Rodney to the infirmary then bed. Caldwell offered to take over and let him rest, but John shook his head and remembered what Elizabeth had said before Carson’s memorial.
“When we lose people the city needs to see us standing so they feel like they can get up again.”
Two things had been curious about it later - she’d said city, not expedition. It was their home now, not a far-flung colony. And she’d laid a gentle hand on his arm when she said ‘us,’ confirming the general feeling that they ran Atlantis in tandem, whatever Earth thought.
He put his radio in his ear, asked a logistics officer for a census and any city sensor data, and stood back up.
X
He’d come back, beaming in from the Daedalus to find Atlantis in controlled and efficient post-Apocalyptic chaos, Rodney standing next to Lorne at the control desk shouting orders into the radio.
“I’m home,” He’d shouted, looking around at their city, eyes taking in the damage across both the control room and the city beyond.
“John,” Rodney had said, stopping mid-sentence on the radio.
“What the hell happened here, Rodney?” He’d said, taking the stairs two at a time, ready to jump into the next situation. “Where’s Elizabeth? What’re her orders?”
Rodney had taken a deep breath and then jumped, hissing, “Yes, yes, run along, just go away,” into the radio. He’d nodded to Lorne, who’d taken over the logistics nightmare Rodney seemed to be living in.
“Long story or short story?” Rodney asked him sharply.
“Short, and Elizabeth,” John answered, looking around the control room at drawn, pale faces and feeling a chill seep into his bones. The hushed activity was a sensation and the tension in the air had only been seen twice in the city - the siege and after the explosion, too recent, too sharply similar.
“I think that’s a story I’d also like to hear,” Caldwell said from behind him, catching up.
Rodney glanced at him and then again at John. “She’s gone, John,” He’d said quietly.
John stared at him, the chill sinking even deeper. “Define ‘gone.’”
“Doctor, what-” Caldwell began.
Rodney nodded to Lorne and grabbed John’s arm under the elbow, thoroughly ignoring Caldwell as he pulled him into the briefing room. “I’ll tell you the long version.”
“We submerged the city when we realised what was happening,” Rodney continued later, sitting tiredly and looking like he hadn’t slept in days again.
“How, doctor? I thought you said you couldn’t,” Caldwell asked.
“Not important,” Rodney answered, “It’ll be in my report when I get round to it after I sleep for a few decades.”
“Short version, Rodney,” John said quietly. “Elizabeth.”
“Wasn’t the only one,” Rodney added, looking at him. “They broke through the shield from orbit in more than one place. But one of them was just above the control tower. We lost integrity in the panels, the pressure-” He broke off, eyes haunted.
“Elizabeth and I used our activation codes to trigger the failsafe when the water started coming in from above - the bulkhead doors to protect everyone else and buy time to do something,” He blinked and looked away. “We’d lost a lot of systems, only had one working terminal. She made me enter mine first then run for it, saying I was the best chance the city had but you know how she is, I could’ve been-”
Rodney broke off again, swallowing and seeing something else. John knew what Rodney had been about to say. Elizabeth was like that.
I could’ve been anyone and she’d have made me go first.
X
It was a military decision and she’d been over-ruled. Despite her deep misgivings, Elizabeth had relented, knowing when a battle couldn’t be won. Caldwell had asked for John to accompany them, making it an implicit order. He’d agreed, but not without misgivings of his own.
After supervising the moving of supplies to the fleet, John found himself in the dark commissary with a cup of hot coffee and a headache.
He saw her sit down across from him and smiled. “Come to enforce my bedtime?”
“You wouldn’t listen if I did,” Elizabeth answered.
“Well, you don’t when I try to hint that it’s past yours,” John retorted.
“You call those ‘hints?’” She gently teased. “I think we differ in that definition.”
“Not so subtle?” He asked, looking at her.
“Not so much,” She replied with a smile.
After a minute, he looked at her. “Are you alright with me going on this mission? I could say ‘no,’ you know. I’m under your command and it wasn’t an explicit order.”
“Would you say no if I asked you to?” Elizabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Probably,” He admittedHe met her eyes. “Definitely.”
“I’m not asking,” She said softly. “And you know as well as I do that it was an order and it came from above Caldwell’s head. He wouldn’t have hesitated to phrase it so if you hadn’t agreed to the soft-sell.”
“I thought as much,” John answered, amused at the way they rarely found themselves off the same wavelength.
“Steven would have had his orders, too,” Elizabeth said gently, softening the blow.
John nodded, “I can’t see him asking for me to tag along.”
“We go to another galaxy and we can’t get away from the politics,” Elizabeth murmured with a sigh, taking a drink of her coffee. “But orders are orders.”
“I wouldn’t have agreed otherwise,” John confessed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not as if they really need one more pilot or advisor. And I wouldn’t leave you- Atlantis for anything less than a direct order.”
Elizabeth blinked at his slip and smiled as John glossed it over, thinking that Elizabeth and Atlantis were almost synonymous for him anyway.
After a few more minutes of idle talking, simply sitting across from one another and speaking, they headed for their quarters. John walked Elizabeth to hers, them being almost on his way and stood at her door for a minute. When he walked away, he was kicking himself repeatedly and calling himself seven kinds of idiot.
He should have kissed her. She’d been standing right in front of him in the doorway to her quarters. Elizabeth had leaned her head forward slightly, smiling and rolling her eyes indulgently at some joke he’d made. John knew he wasn’t as amusing as she found him, not really. But she still smiled.
Then he heard her voice, calling his name softly and her head poking out of her door. Breathless, he walked back and stood opposite her, idly noting she only had one sock on and had taken off her jacket.
“You’ll be careful?” She said slowly, eyes on his. “You’ll come back.” It wasn’t a question, it was an order. And it was from Elizabeth, not Dr. Weir.
“Don’t worry,” He said with a smile, leaning in and feeling weightless as he kissed her.
He pulled back and smiled, meeting her eyes. “But you always do, so try not to worry too much. I’ll come back. I always do.”
Elizabeth gave him a full smile this time and put her arms around his neck, pulling him into her quarters as he waved the door shut.
When he left the next morning before sunrise, he kissed her on the forehead and brushed a hair from her cheek. She’d stirred and opened her eyes, and he’d kissed her again, telling her to go back to sleep. For once, she did as she was told. He hoped she wouldn’t make a habit of it.
X
He should have kissed her.
She’d been standing right in front of him.
But they’d been in leader-mode, and he had been leaving for the attack on the Asuran home world. She’d watched with the usual mix of compassion, indulgence and distance. He realised suddenly that they were doing nothing other than what they always did - it had been there all along in plain sight.
Now aware, they were both making valiant attempts to pretend they hadn’t slept in the same unregulated darkness the night before. They passed close enough to touch but allowed the air to crackle between their unmoving hands and shoulders instead. He gave her a flyboy wave and a smile she returned as he was beamed to the Apollo.
“I’ll come back. I always do.”
It’d just never occurred to him she might not be there when he did. She was a vital constant like that.
He’d find her.
But he should have kissed her one more time.
X
Hope you enjoyed this even though it’s quite short. Please take a minute to review.
Kay x