Ghosts tag - The Space Between
Title: The Space Between
Author: Padawan_aneiki
Rating/Pairing: PG/None
Characters: Rodney, John, Teyla, Ronon, Woolsey, Weir
Summary: Afterwards...
The Space Between
Rodney left the control room, something between cold rage and hot sickness flooding through him. The thought that they’d just let Elizabeth...go...again...
He didn’t remember getting to his lab. He stood there and looked at the various laptops and experiments and whiteboards, and somehow he wished that one of the screens would display the name Elizabeth Weir once again. Moisture gathered, welled up in his eyes and he blinked it away angrily. Hadn’t they mourned her already, once?
“Wasn’t once enough?” he said aloud to an empty room with no one and nothing to hear it. “Wasn’t once...enough?!” McKay screamed it now and snatched up the nearest laptop. He wanted to smash it, throw it to the floor but in the end he couldn’t even do that.
He simply sagged down to the floor, pulled his knees in and sobbed.
John stood before the Gate, staring long after the puddle had shut down, his throat working in convulsive swallows. Elizabeth had just sacrificed herself for them...again.
And he’d betrayed her with his disbelief.
An ache he thought he’d buried deep down with the others...Sumner, Ford...surfaced with a vengeance and made his chest hurt. God, how many more...
He wanted to run. Wanted to leave the Gate, get in a jumper...shoot the moon. Just to get out of his own skin for awhile and ignore the fact that he’d failed her a second time...bury the fact that there were so many things he wanted to tell her, even as part of him still...still...distrusted her.
The ache stole his breath and made him swallow and finally he turned away, woodenly and walked down one of the side hallways away from the Gate room.
He didn’t remember getting to his room. John stood there for a long moment and finally threw the P-90 aside in a clumsy dash for the washroom, falling to his knees and throwing up until his stomach hurt as much as the rest of him.
Teyla held Torren, rocking him absently as she stared out at the moonlit sky, silent tears running down her face. From where she sat, she could still see Elizabeth’s watch, the one thing she’d finally kept as a memorial, hanging on the wall of her room.
It had been hard to lose Elizabeth, one of the hardest things Teyla had ever faced.
It was no easier now than it had been then.
And she hadn’t even let her friend see her son.
Ronon shook his head. That wasn’t Elizabeth Weir, wasn’t the woman who’d allowed him a chance here in the city of the Ancestors. That was a Replicator that had walked through that Gate into space and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.
So why did he feel so lost?
The Satedan carefully cradled his side; it wasn’t the first time he’d had cracked ribs and he’d survive that. It wasn’t the first time he’d contemplated people he’d lost along the way, either...there’d been a lot of them.
Somewhere, deep beneath the layers of distrust and outright hatred of the Replicators...there had been a tiny seed of wanting to believe, like McKay, that this really could be Weir, somehow. They’d certainly seen their share of weird crap, as Sheppard would put it, in their time together.
It wasn’t until this moment that Ronon allowed himself to recognize that tiny hope...
... Then he buried it so deep he would rarely ever think of it again.
Richard Woolsey paced back and forth in his office...hell, it was still her office, Colonel Carter’s year in Atlantis notwithstanding. There was still...something of Elizabeth Weir in this place, in the city itself, it seemed. He’d read her reports, known the kinds of decisions she’d made and somehow...he’d found himself making the same sorts of decisions that he’d told himself he’d steadfastly avoid as the leader of his expedition.
He’d still been willing to offer them the chance.
Her. He’d been willing to offer her the chance, in the end. Perhaps things were better ended this way, safer this way, and wasn’t that what was important? The safety of Atlantis, this expedition...Earth?
In this moment he felt much less certain than she had been about Atlantis being in capable hands, although he had to admit it had been...heartening to hear from her....in a manner of speaking.
“God...I need a drink,” he mumbled to himself. Somebody here had to have a bottle of Scotch.
Space was cold, and cruel. Like life itself, man and machine alike. She’d seen the flicker of betrayal in the others’ eyes. And as her nanites began to shut down, still a million computations flew past. Atlantis was safe. John and Rodney and the others were safe.
Elizabeth Weir let go with the hope that the space between them was enough to keep them safe.
Author: Padawan_aneiki
Rating/Pairing: PG/None
Characters: Rodney, John, Teyla, Ronon, Woolsey, Weir
Summary: Afterwards...
The Space Between
Rodney left the control room, something between cold rage and hot sickness flooding through him. The thought that they’d just let Elizabeth...go...again...
He didn’t remember getting to his lab. He stood there and looked at the various laptops and experiments and whiteboards, and somehow he wished that one of the screens would display the name Elizabeth Weir once again. Moisture gathered, welled up in his eyes and he blinked it away angrily. Hadn’t they mourned her already, once?
“Wasn’t once enough?” he said aloud to an empty room with no one and nothing to hear it. “Wasn’t once...enough?!” McKay screamed it now and snatched up the nearest laptop. He wanted to smash it, throw it to the floor but in the end he couldn’t even do that.
He simply sagged down to the floor, pulled his knees in and sobbed.
John stood before the Gate, staring long after the puddle had shut down, his throat working in convulsive swallows. Elizabeth had just sacrificed herself for them...again.
And he’d betrayed her with his disbelief.
An ache he thought he’d buried deep down with the others...Sumner, Ford...surfaced with a vengeance and made his chest hurt. God, how many more...
He wanted to run. Wanted to leave the Gate, get in a jumper...shoot the moon. Just to get out of his own skin for awhile and ignore the fact that he’d failed her a second time...bury the fact that there were so many things he wanted to tell her, even as part of him still...still...distrusted her.
The ache stole his breath and made him swallow and finally he turned away, woodenly and walked down one of the side hallways away from the Gate room.
He didn’t remember getting to his room. John stood there for a long moment and finally threw the P-90 aside in a clumsy dash for the washroom, falling to his knees and throwing up until his stomach hurt as much as the rest of him.
Teyla held Torren, rocking him absently as she stared out at the moonlit sky, silent tears running down her face. From where she sat, she could still see Elizabeth’s watch, the one thing she’d finally kept as a memorial, hanging on the wall of her room.
It had been hard to lose Elizabeth, one of the hardest things Teyla had ever faced.
It was no easier now than it had been then.
And she hadn’t even let her friend see her son.
Ronon shook his head. That wasn’t Elizabeth Weir, wasn’t the woman who’d allowed him a chance here in the city of the Ancestors. That was a Replicator that had walked through that Gate into space and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.
So why did he feel so lost?
The Satedan carefully cradled his side; it wasn’t the first time he’d had cracked ribs and he’d survive that. It wasn’t the first time he’d contemplated people he’d lost along the way, either...there’d been a lot of them.
Somewhere, deep beneath the layers of distrust and outright hatred of the Replicators...there had been a tiny seed of wanting to believe, like McKay, that this really could be Weir, somehow. They’d certainly seen their share of weird crap, as Sheppard would put it, in their time together.
It wasn’t until this moment that Ronon allowed himself to recognize that tiny hope...
... Then he buried it so deep he would rarely ever think of it again.
Richard Woolsey paced back and forth in his office...hell, it was still her office, Colonel Carter’s year in Atlantis notwithstanding. There was still...something of Elizabeth Weir in this place, in the city itself, it seemed. He’d read her reports, known the kinds of decisions she’d made and somehow...he’d found himself making the same sorts of decisions that he’d told himself he’d steadfastly avoid as the leader of his expedition.
He’d still been willing to offer them the chance.
Her. He’d been willing to offer her the chance, in the end. Perhaps things were better ended this way, safer this way, and wasn’t that what was important? The safety of Atlantis, this expedition...Earth?
In this moment he felt much less certain than she had been about Atlantis being in capable hands, although he had to admit it had been...heartening to hear from her....in a manner of speaking.
“God...I need a drink,” he mumbled to himself. Somebody here had to have a bottle of Scotch.
Space was cold, and cruel. Like life itself, man and machine alike. She’d seen the flicker of betrayal in the others’ eyes. And as her nanites began to shut down, still a million computations flew past. Atlantis was safe. John and Rodney and the others were safe.
Elizabeth Weir let go with the hope that the space between them was enough to keep them safe.