SGA drabble request: (No title) Sheppard & Weir.
Susn: I'd like to see a fic where Caldwell has to admit that John is better for Atlantis than he would be - or if he can't be brought to admit that, other characters make that point. You touched on this when Lorne mused on how he is happier being Sheppard's XO that he would be Caldwell's but that may say more about Lorne than his seniors.
Not quite what I'd wanted to do, nor do I feel like I adequately met the request, but every reread just made me think about lipstick and pigs, so...
"Have fun swimming in the basement today?"
He looked over his shoulder behind him to see Elizabeth standing in the doorway to the balcony. She smiled and approached, joining him at the balcony's railing.
After Lorne had covered his escape, he'd gone back to his quarters, changed into dry clothes, and then spent the afternoon wandering around the city. Nowhere unexplored and no place where he'd risk running into anything (else) dangerous, but certainly off of the beaten track. He'd followed... he wasn't sure how how much of it had been his own whim and how much of it was the siren's pull of Atlantis, an unseen hand guiding him down hallways and making him choose the left fork over the right. He felt her always, Atlantis, sometimes as a whisper and occasionally as a scream, and his comfort level with that varied. He missed her when he was away, but sometimes her eagerness was a distraction -- or, like today, an embarrassment.
"It was good to get out," he admitted when he realized that Elizabeth was actually expecting an answer and not just announcing her presence. "Lorne's got a good team."
He'd known for a while that Lorne's team was competent, comfortable with each other, and more than a little nuts. He had had a blast. And yet...
"But it wasn't your team," Elizabeth finished his thought aloud.
"No." His team had a far looser interpretation of 'following orders' than did Lorne's, which definitely had its downsides. The marines did what they were told and even Safir, for all of the sarcasm that sometimes made him sound like Rodney with an accent and better aim, didn't treat orders as negotiating points. On the other hand, he couldn't imagine a situation where he'd trade his team -- even Rodney, even after Doranda -- for anyone else's. "Couple more days, though, right?"
"Right," she agreed.
He was sure that if he pressed hard enough, she'd let him return to active duty tomorrow. But she wouldn't let him go offworld for another week anyway so there wasn't much reason to try. This way, he could pick up some of the work Lorne had been doing for him, feel free to slack off on the rest until he had no alternative, and still make points with his boss.
"Have you taken a look at Colonel Caldwell's notes?" she asked tentatively, after a companionable silence spent looking down at the waves.
After he'd suddenly gone Kafkaesque, Caldwell had assumed control with a strong grip, seeking not to maintain the status quo, but instead to reshape it in his image.
"His rebooting of the duty rosters, you mean? Or just his treatise on reprioritizing offworld missions and reallocating battalion resources?"
It came out sharper than he'd intended. He really didn't begrudge Caldwell for making a move -- hell, everyone else had thought he was on death's door. He wasn't an idiot -- he knew Elizabeth had pulled the CO's chair out from under Caldwell and kept it for him. And that Caldwell still resented the loss. He also knew that the SGC had no faith in his own abilities and that they were all probably waiting for him to screw up so that they could reorder the Atlantis Battalion to a more pleasing aspect. Caldwell had probably been planning his assumption of command for months.
"Both? Either?" Elizabeth looked like she regretted bringing it up.
John wasn't angry at Caldwell -- he'd been in the Air Force for too damned long to be even vaguely surprised at the politics. Instead, he was annoyed at the disruption it had caused throughout the entire chain of command. Once his recovery had been assured, Lorne had quietly gone about putting things back into some semblance of a recognizable order, but it was still a month's worth of chaos that still hadn't been erased. The lieutenants were still getting tangled, the men were feeling yanked around, and Little Tripoli had an undercurrent of displeasure that had yet to simmer down completely.
He and Lorne weren't undoing the Caldwell Era out of spite, but instead because there had been a method to their original madness, born of experience in the galaxy and in the city. They weren't being maverick iconoclasts, they were being efficient pragmatists. Special Ops protocols for this most special of operations. He just doubted the SGC's ability to see it that way and wondered when the hell it had started mattering what his bosses thought of him -- after he'd lost everything in Kabul or after he'd finally found something too precious to lose here in Atlantis.
"I get what he was doing," he finally said, looking out into the darkness and finding the horizon line between the black sky and dark blue sea. "It's all extremely... logical. And effective. And it all would have worked because it has always worked, at home or abroad, wherever the US Armed Forces have had to put down roots."
But it wasn't meant for Atlantis.
"I've spent the last year and a half trying to find a good analogy to explain the Pegasus galaxy," Elizabeth said, resting her elbows on the railing. "Is our fight against the Wraith akin to the Cold War, Vietnam, the Intifada, something else? Are we the guerillas or the last of the old imperialists or the first of the new colonials? Twenty years studying political science and I've failed to find some situation in Earth's history that satisfies."
He's learned to wait with Elizabeth, to be patient when she gets reflective. To quell the urge to flee, too, because he's never been comfortable with anyone's confessions -- including his own.
"Colonel Caldwell's ideas, as traditional as they may be, have merit," she finally continued. "And I think you and Major Lorne know that. But I also think that he hasn't had any better luck finding an analogous situation than I have. 'You're always fighting the last war'... but we can't afford to do that here."
He appreciated what she was trying to do -- to tell him that she trusted his command despite everything, despite being presented with what was supposed to have been the better option. But it was still awkward.
"What some call 'haphazard', we call 'thinking outside the box'?" he asked. Caldwell had called their set-up 'irregular', actually, and had questioned the use of enlisted personnel in non-traditional roles as well as the lack of certain basic administrative units. John had never seen any Marine so relieved to get out of a task as Radner had been when he'd been told that no, he wasn't going to be permanently assigned to a newly formed Headquarters Company.
"I think 'haphazard' is a word used appropriately more often than not," she replied, eyebrow arched.
"You say tomato, I say tomahto." He tried for an innocent face. As usual, Elizabeth didn't buy it.
"Well, right now I'm saying that if you want to come see Rodney's preliminary report on the brand-new long-range sensors, then tomorrow at 0930, small conference room." She pushed herself off the railing and stood up.
"That's what we found?"
"That's what you found," she confirmed. "At least that's what Rodney says you found. Tomorrow we'll know for sure."
"I'll be there," he promised, making a mental note to tell Lorne because Rodney would never think to.
"I'll see you then," Elizabeth replied, touching his forearm lightly. "Goodnight, John."
Not quite what I'd wanted to do, nor do I feel like I adequately met the request, but every reread just made me think about lipstick and pigs, so...
"Have fun swimming in the basement today?"
He looked over his shoulder behind him to see Elizabeth standing in the doorway to the balcony. She smiled and approached, joining him at the balcony's railing.
After Lorne had covered his escape, he'd gone back to his quarters, changed into dry clothes, and then spent the afternoon wandering around the city. Nowhere unexplored and no place where he'd risk running into anything (else) dangerous, but certainly off of the beaten track. He'd followed... he wasn't sure how how much of it had been his own whim and how much of it was the siren's pull of Atlantis, an unseen hand guiding him down hallways and making him choose the left fork over the right. He felt her always, Atlantis, sometimes as a whisper and occasionally as a scream, and his comfort level with that varied. He missed her when he was away, but sometimes her eagerness was a distraction -- or, like today, an embarrassment.
"It was good to get out," he admitted when he realized that Elizabeth was actually expecting an answer and not just announcing her presence. "Lorne's got a good team."
He'd known for a while that Lorne's team was competent, comfortable with each other, and more than a little nuts. He had had a blast. And yet...
"But it wasn't your team," Elizabeth finished his thought aloud.
"No." His team had a far looser interpretation of 'following orders' than did Lorne's, which definitely had its downsides. The marines did what they were told and even Safir, for all of the sarcasm that sometimes made him sound like Rodney with an accent and better aim, didn't treat orders as negotiating points. On the other hand, he couldn't imagine a situation where he'd trade his team -- even Rodney, even after Doranda -- for anyone else's. "Couple more days, though, right?"
"Right," she agreed.
He was sure that if he pressed hard enough, she'd let him return to active duty tomorrow. But she wouldn't let him go offworld for another week anyway so there wasn't much reason to try. This way, he could pick up some of the work Lorne had been doing for him, feel free to slack off on the rest until he had no alternative, and still make points with his boss.
"Have you taken a look at Colonel Caldwell's notes?" she asked tentatively, after a companionable silence spent looking down at the waves.
After he'd suddenly gone Kafkaesque, Caldwell had assumed control with a strong grip, seeking not to maintain the status quo, but instead to reshape it in his image.
"His rebooting of the duty rosters, you mean? Or just his treatise on reprioritizing offworld missions and reallocating battalion resources?"
It came out sharper than he'd intended. He really didn't begrudge Caldwell for making a move -- hell, everyone else had thought he was on death's door. He wasn't an idiot -- he knew Elizabeth had pulled the CO's chair out from under Caldwell and kept it for him. And that Caldwell still resented the loss. He also knew that the SGC had no faith in his own abilities and that they were all probably waiting for him to screw up so that they could reorder the Atlantis Battalion to a more pleasing aspect. Caldwell had probably been planning his assumption of command for months.
"Both? Either?" Elizabeth looked like she regretted bringing it up.
John wasn't angry at Caldwell -- he'd been in the Air Force for too damned long to be even vaguely surprised at the politics. Instead, he was annoyed at the disruption it had caused throughout the entire chain of command. Once his recovery had been assured, Lorne had quietly gone about putting things back into some semblance of a recognizable order, but it was still a month's worth of chaos that still hadn't been erased. The lieutenants were still getting tangled, the men were feeling yanked around, and Little Tripoli had an undercurrent of displeasure that had yet to simmer down completely.
He and Lorne weren't undoing the Caldwell Era out of spite, but instead because there had been a method to their original madness, born of experience in the galaxy and in the city. They weren't being maverick iconoclasts, they were being efficient pragmatists. Special Ops protocols for this most special of operations. He just doubted the SGC's ability to see it that way and wondered when the hell it had started mattering what his bosses thought of him -- after he'd lost everything in Kabul or after he'd finally found something too precious to lose here in Atlantis.
"I get what he was doing," he finally said, looking out into the darkness and finding the horizon line between the black sky and dark blue sea. "It's all extremely... logical. And effective. And it all would have worked because it has always worked, at home or abroad, wherever the US Armed Forces have had to put down roots."
But it wasn't meant for Atlantis.
"I've spent the last year and a half trying to find a good analogy to explain the Pegasus galaxy," Elizabeth said, resting her elbows on the railing. "Is our fight against the Wraith akin to the Cold War, Vietnam, the Intifada, something else? Are we the guerillas or the last of the old imperialists or the first of the new colonials? Twenty years studying political science and I've failed to find some situation in Earth's history that satisfies."
He's learned to wait with Elizabeth, to be patient when she gets reflective. To quell the urge to flee, too, because he's never been comfortable with anyone's confessions -- including his own.
"Colonel Caldwell's ideas, as traditional as they may be, have merit," she finally continued. "And I think you and Major Lorne know that. But I also think that he hasn't had any better luck finding an analogous situation than I have. 'You're always fighting the last war'... but we can't afford to do that here."
He appreciated what she was trying to do -- to tell him that she trusted his command despite everything, despite being presented with what was supposed to have been the better option. But it was still awkward.
"What some call 'haphazard', we call 'thinking outside the box'?" he asked. Caldwell had called their set-up 'irregular', actually, and had questioned the use of enlisted personnel in non-traditional roles as well as the lack of certain basic administrative units. John had never seen any Marine so relieved to get out of a task as Radner had been when he'd been told that no, he wasn't going to be permanently assigned to a newly formed Headquarters Company.
"I think 'haphazard' is a word used appropriately more often than not," she replied, eyebrow arched.
"You say tomato, I say tomahto." He tried for an innocent face. As usual, Elizabeth didn't buy it.
"Well, right now I'm saying that if you want to come see Rodney's preliminary report on the brand-new long-range sensors, then tomorrow at 0930, small conference room." She pushed herself off the railing and stood up.
"That's what we found?"
"That's what you found," she confirmed. "At least that's what Rodney says you found. Tomorrow we'll know for sure."
"I'll be there," he promised, making a mental note to tell Lorne because Rodney would never think to.
"I'll see you then," Elizabeth replied, touching his forearm lightly. "Goodnight, John."