Fic: Woman's Voice: Private Consultation (1/?)
Title: Private Consultation
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, friendship
Summary: Major Anne Teldy doesn't want a substitute for Captain Alicia Vega... but it seems that she doesn't have a choice.
A/N: This is the first of to date two pieces on the team from Whispers as an answer to regular challenges on a German Stargate forum. I'll try not to comment on the way challenges are run there (but I will say that it sucks... and I also would say so on the forum but I guess they'd ban me for lèse-majesté if I did) but I'll give you the results (and no, up to now I haven't won a single one... but I'm working on it) and let you judge them. This challenge's theme was fog, BTW. Hope you like it :) Oh, and I also have decided to try and make all my future challenge pieces about the Whispers team one way or the other so yeah... it's a series. I think. Maybe.
And I totally forgot to say something about mackenziesmomma when I posted this on ff.net. So... erm... as always, she was a fabulous beta but she did ask me what a troika was ;)
PS.: I shamelessly stole the title for the series from scherryzade's wonderful answer to the stargate_ocs All You Women Independent challenge, Shall Woman's Voice be Hushed? I hope she can forgive me...
Private Consultation
“Lower the curtain down in Memphis,
Lower the curtain down all right,
I got no time for private consultation,
Under the Milky Way tonight.”
The Church, “Under the Milky Way”
She hates paper work. Or maybe she just hates this paper work. Staring at the folder in front of her, she contemplates what Woolsey and her COs would say if she just gave it back unopened and told them she doesn’t mind leading a team that has only three members in total.
Thorough as she is, she knows that there’s no actual written rule that says that a Gate team needs to have four members. There is, for example, SG1 that had five members ever since she came to the SGC and she’d be quick to point out to everyone that it wouldn’t throw a very good light on the SGC if anyone got the feeling they were giving out favors to anyone, deserved or not, if she were really to butt heads over the whole replacement member thing.
And she really is tempted to do so. She’d tried to be professional about losing Alicia on that stupid misty planet but she never quite managed it. Of course she knows that people like to call her Major Indifferent, knowing only the side she shows them outside of the protective walls of her quarters but inside those quarters… she keeps tossing and turning, wondering what she could have done differently to prevent Alicia from dying.
She’s not quite sure what’s worse about losing Alicia; that she was the first soldier she lost on her first Gate team command or that she lost a friend. Or maybe it’s everything together… everything together that makes it so hard for her to open the folder Lorne gave her this morning after the routine briefing, telling her he’d like her to have a look at it and see if that person might be a good replacement for Alicia.
Polite as Lorne always is, he’d phrased it as a recommendation but she knows him well enough to know that it was meant as an order, seeing as in the three months since Alicia’s death she hasn’t made at least one formal - or even informal - request for a new team member. Instead, Mehra, Allison and she had taken in everyone they’d temporarily assigned to the team, always fitting the requirements of the respective mission. But by some unspoken agreement, they’d never actually made a move to maybe invite one of the temporary replacements to become a permanent team member.
She’d known, of course, that the top troika wouldn’t watch this into all eternity and that they’d whack her over the head sooner or later but… that doesn’t make it any easier to simply open the folder and see who they want to foist on the team. For some reason she has a feeling that whoever that is will not fit with the team.
It’s not that she thinks there aren’t any people able to keep up with them… it’s that she thinks that she doesn’t want outsiders to get a glimpse into her team. Of course it’s stupid but the thing is… she might have told Sheppard that she chose her members on the grounds of being the best in their respective fields but the truth is: most of all they are - or in Alicia’s case, were - all misfits.
People might think, for example, that she’s a by the book battleaxe kind of career soldiers that wants to make her way up top as fast as she can but they don’t know about the battles she had to fight at home to be allowed to get into Air Force ROTC… or to study Mechanical Engineering… or to study at all. She never told anyone - apart from Allison, that is - that she had had to sever her ties to her family to be free to do what she had wanted to do for her entire life.
All through college and her first years of service, she’d stayed at the dormitory or on the base when everyone else was going home for the holidays or breaks between terms or even just the weekend because the dormitory and the bases had been her home. Only recently her parents tried to reach out to her again but she’ll probably always feel like an outsider because she had chosen her life over her family.
And Alicia… There had always been rumors going around about Alicia. She’d never given anything on them… because she knew they were true. She knew it was true that Alicia preferred women over men but she never cared about that. Alicia had told her about it but she’d just shrugged and told her that if anyone asked, Alicia should tell them to settle it with her CO. And she absolutely would have. Right from the beginning, she had felt fiercely protective of her team and she still does, maybe even more than before Alicia’s death.
She feels protective whenever McKay thinks it’s a good idea to wreck his misgivings, frustrations and his stupid misogyny - and sometimes she also thinks it’s just plain jealousy for being together with Carson Beckett - on Allison and when Allison feels like she doesn’t belong in the scientific community for actually liking to go off-world and getting into a good scrape now and then.
And she feels protective of Mehra whenever she hears people bitching about her behind her back… even though her Sergeant would probably snort and call her some of those not so nice names Marines have for Airmen if she ever knew that her Zoomie CO would like to punch all the people in the face who think that Mehra’s just a stupid chick with a big gun in her hand who joined the Marines because she was eager to get laid.
She also feels protective when Allison takes a few days off to accompany Beckett on his Doctors Without Borders in Space missions because she doesn’t want her team members to get into risky situations without her being there - she’s very good at suppressing the thought that it was of no use to Alicia that she was there on the mist planet - and she feels protective of Mehra when they go on leave to Earth and she just throws them a casual salute and jumps into a taxi to catch the next plane to Burkburnett, Oklahoma because she knows Mehra will spend too much time with her ex-husband again and that never ends well.
So no, she doesn’t want another member on her team; another person that might hurt or insult Allison or Mehra… who might cause them pain again when they lose him - because she’s pretty sure they gave a her a male new member, seeing as all their temporary replacements had been men, and she feels anger about that coming up again. As if an all-female team was something that should never have happened.
Taking a deep breath, she stares at the folder again… and in one of those outbursts she only reserves for when she’s alone, she shoves it off her desk with an inarticulate sound of frustration and anger - at what in particular, she isn't even sure… maybe Michael’s experiments for killing Alicia or Sheppard and Lorne for forcing someone on her or maybe just life and the universe in general - and sends sheets of paper flying through the air. She doesn’t want to look, just wants to punch someone or maybe just the wall, wants to… but inevitably, her gaze falls on the sheet of paper that landed in her lap and…
And there’s a picture on it and a name, and it’s female… an Air Force Lieutenant, with her blond hair pinned up and looking so excruciatingly young… There’s a knock on the door to the broom closet that serves as her office and before she’s known it - later she will blame the slight haze in her head at discovering that apparently, the troika did think an all-female team was something worth keeping, after all - she answered it.
Nothing happens for a second or two but then the door opens and… reveals the blond Lieutenant from the folder she sent flying off her desk just a few moments ago. For a moment, they just stare at each other but then the young woman seems to have remembered what’s expected of a junior officer entering the office of a Major and she raises her hand to her head in a salute and says crisply, “Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, reporting as ordered, ma’am.”
Her first impulse is to be annoyed at how properly this one behaves and she thinks she’ll never fit in a team of misfits but then… she notices a flicker in Johansen’s eyes, a slight shaking of the hand that’s still poised for salute… and she realizes… that she should have read those records after all because something tells her the Lieutenant has her own misfit story to tell.
She nods, deciding to ignore that the Lieutenant seems to have decided to ignore the scattered pages on the floor, and gestures to the chair opposite her desk. “Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Johansen does as she’s told and she picks up the page in her lap to put it on the desk before her. Taking another minute to compose herself, she has another look at the Lieutenant and finds her assessment confirmed, seeing how Johansen crosses her legs and seems to have to force herself to appear alert and unfazed.
Well, she thinks, no one will ever replace Alicia on their team… but maybe no one needs to replace Alicia, either. She wills herself to try a little encouraging smile, both for her and Johansen’s sake and to finally behave like the commanding officer of a Gate team again. “So,” she begins and thinks that maybe she doesn’t have to have that confrontation about the necessary number of people on a Gate team with Sheppard and Lorne after all, “it says here you’ve been serving on… oh, Icarus Base. Well, that definitely sounds interesting…”
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, friendship
Summary: Major Anne Teldy doesn't want a substitute for Captain Alicia Vega... but it seems that she doesn't have a choice.
A/N: This is the first of to date two pieces on the team from Whispers as an answer to regular challenges on a German Stargate forum. I'll try not to comment on the way challenges are run there (but I will say that it sucks... and I also would say so on the forum but I guess they'd ban me for lèse-majesté if I did) but I'll give you the results (and no, up to now I haven't won a single one... but I'm working on it) and let you judge them. This challenge's theme was fog, BTW. Hope you like it :) Oh, and I also have decided to try and make all my future challenge pieces about the Whispers team one way or the other so yeah... it's a series. I think. Maybe.
And I totally forgot to say something about mackenziesmomma when I posted this on ff.net. So... erm... as always, she was a fabulous beta but she did ask me what a troika was ;)
PS.: I shamelessly stole the title for the series from scherryzade's wonderful answer to the stargate_ocs All You Women Independent challenge, Shall Woman's Voice be Hushed? I hope she can forgive me...
Private Consultation
“Lower the curtain down in Memphis,
Lower the curtain down all right,
I got no time for private consultation,
Under the Milky Way tonight.”
The Church, “Under the Milky Way”
She hates paper work. Or maybe she just hates this paper work. Staring at the folder in front of her, she contemplates what Woolsey and her COs would say if she just gave it back unopened and told them she doesn’t mind leading a team that has only three members in total.
Thorough as she is, she knows that there’s no actual written rule that says that a Gate team needs to have four members. There is, for example, SG1 that had five members ever since she came to the SGC and she’d be quick to point out to everyone that it wouldn’t throw a very good light on the SGC if anyone got the feeling they were giving out favors to anyone, deserved or not, if she were really to butt heads over the whole replacement member thing.
And she really is tempted to do so. She’d tried to be professional about losing Alicia on that stupid misty planet but she never quite managed it. Of course she knows that people like to call her Major Indifferent, knowing only the side she shows them outside of the protective walls of her quarters but inside those quarters… she keeps tossing and turning, wondering what she could have done differently to prevent Alicia from dying.
She’s not quite sure what’s worse about losing Alicia; that she was the first soldier she lost on her first Gate team command or that she lost a friend. Or maybe it’s everything together… everything together that makes it so hard for her to open the folder Lorne gave her this morning after the routine briefing, telling her he’d like her to have a look at it and see if that person might be a good replacement for Alicia.
Polite as Lorne always is, he’d phrased it as a recommendation but she knows him well enough to know that it was meant as an order, seeing as in the three months since Alicia’s death she hasn’t made at least one formal - or even informal - request for a new team member. Instead, Mehra, Allison and she had taken in everyone they’d temporarily assigned to the team, always fitting the requirements of the respective mission. But by some unspoken agreement, they’d never actually made a move to maybe invite one of the temporary replacements to become a permanent team member.
She’d known, of course, that the top troika wouldn’t watch this into all eternity and that they’d whack her over the head sooner or later but… that doesn’t make it any easier to simply open the folder and see who they want to foist on the team. For some reason she has a feeling that whoever that is will not fit with the team.
It’s not that she thinks there aren’t any people able to keep up with them… it’s that she thinks that she doesn’t want outsiders to get a glimpse into her team. Of course it’s stupid but the thing is… she might have told Sheppard that she chose her members on the grounds of being the best in their respective fields but the truth is: most of all they are - or in Alicia’s case, were - all misfits.
People might think, for example, that she’s a by the book battleaxe kind of career soldiers that wants to make her way up top as fast as she can but they don’t know about the battles she had to fight at home to be allowed to get into Air Force ROTC… or to study Mechanical Engineering… or to study at all. She never told anyone - apart from Allison, that is - that she had had to sever her ties to her family to be free to do what she had wanted to do for her entire life.
All through college and her first years of service, she’d stayed at the dormitory or on the base when everyone else was going home for the holidays or breaks between terms or even just the weekend because the dormitory and the bases had been her home. Only recently her parents tried to reach out to her again but she’ll probably always feel like an outsider because she had chosen her life over her family.
And Alicia… There had always been rumors going around about Alicia. She’d never given anything on them… because she knew they were true. She knew it was true that Alicia preferred women over men but she never cared about that. Alicia had told her about it but she’d just shrugged and told her that if anyone asked, Alicia should tell them to settle it with her CO. And she absolutely would have. Right from the beginning, she had felt fiercely protective of her team and she still does, maybe even more than before Alicia’s death.
She feels protective whenever McKay thinks it’s a good idea to wreck his misgivings, frustrations and his stupid misogyny - and sometimes she also thinks it’s just plain jealousy for being together with Carson Beckett - on Allison and when Allison feels like she doesn’t belong in the scientific community for actually liking to go off-world and getting into a good scrape now and then.
And she feels protective of Mehra whenever she hears people bitching about her behind her back… even though her Sergeant would probably snort and call her some of those not so nice names Marines have for Airmen if she ever knew that her Zoomie CO would like to punch all the people in the face who think that Mehra’s just a stupid chick with a big gun in her hand who joined the Marines because she was eager to get laid.
She also feels protective when Allison takes a few days off to accompany Beckett on his Doctors Without Borders in Space missions because she doesn’t want her team members to get into risky situations without her being there - she’s very good at suppressing the thought that it was of no use to Alicia that she was there on the mist planet - and she feels protective of Mehra when they go on leave to Earth and she just throws them a casual salute and jumps into a taxi to catch the next plane to Burkburnett, Oklahoma because she knows Mehra will spend too much time with her ex-husband again and that never ends well.
So no, she doesn’t want another member on her team; another person that might hurt or insult Allison or Mehra… who might cause them pain again when they lose him - because she’s pretty sure they gave a her a male new member, seeing as all their temporary replacements had been men, and she feels anger about that coming up again. As if an all-female team was something that should never have happened.
Taking a deep breath, she stares at the folder again… and in one of those outbursts she only reserves for when she’s alone, she shoves it off her desk with an inarticulate sound of frustration and anger - at what in particular, she isn't even sure… maybe Michael’s experiments for killing Alicia or Sheppard and Lorne for forcing someone on her or maybe just life and the universe in general - and sends sheets of paper flying through the air. She doesn’t want to look, just wants to punch someone or maybe just the wall, wants to… but inevitably, her gaze falls on the sheet of paper that landed in her lap and…
And there’s a picture on it and a name, and it’s female… an Air Force Lieutenant, with her blond hair pinned up and looking so excruciatingly young… There’s a knock on the door to the broom closet that serves as her office and before she’s known it - later she will blame the slight haze in her head at discovering that apparently, the troika did think an all-female team was something worth keeping, after all - she answered it.
Nothing happens for a second or two but then the door opens and… reveals the blond Lieutenant from the folder she sent flying off her desk just a few moments ago. For a moment, they just stare at each other but then the young woman seems to have remembered what’s expected of a junior officer entering the office of a Major and she raises her hand to her head in a salute and says crisply, “Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, reporting as ordered, ma’am.”
Her first impulse is to be annoyed at how properly this one behaves and she thinks she’ll never fit in a team of misfits but then… she notices a flicker in Johansen’s eyes, a slight shaking of the hand that’s still poised for salute… and she realizes… that she should have read those records after all because something tells her the Lieutenant has her own misfit story to tell.
She nods, deciding to ignore that the Lieutenant seems to have decided to ignore the scattered pages on the floor, and gestures to the chair opposite her desk. “Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Johansen does as she’s told and she picks up the page in her lap to put it on the desk before her. Taking another minute to compose herself, she has another look at the Lieutenant and finds her assessment confirmed, seeing how Johansen crosses her legs and seems to have to force herself to appear alert and unfazed.
Well, she thinks, no one will ever replace Alicia on their team… but maybe no one needs to replace Alicia, either. She wills herself to try a little encouraging smile, both for her and Johansen’s sake and to finally behave like the commanding officer of a Gate team again. “So,” she begins and thinks that maybe she doesn’t have to have that confrontation about the necessary number of people on a Gate team with Sheppard and Lorne after all, “it says here you’ve been serving on… oh, Icarus Base. Well, that definitely sounds interesting…”