Disclaimer: they're not mine!
Set after 'Lifeline' and before 'This Mortal Coil'
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Not Fade Away...
It's night in the city of the Ancestors. The towers and spires glimmer in the light of two moons, ethereal and untouchable in the dark. Inside her inhabitants slumber for the most part. A few move around the walkways, patrolling or simply drifting until fatigue claims them. Others still remain at their work, awake and watchful into the long hours.
One, a man, tired and unkempt, sits at a desk facing a blank sheet of paper. All night he has sat like this, sitting quietly then writing in a sudden frantic rush of activity and throwing away page after page filled with ant-like scrawl. So much has happened since he came to Atlantis three years ago. Much of it good, some of it bad. Some glorious achievements, some losses devastating in their utter finality.
Through it all Radek has remained. A quiet man who sees much, and understands more. He loves this life that has come to him. Yet sometimes, like in the months that have just passed he wonders how much joy and sorrow a human heart can take. The bitter loss of Carson, the excitement of a new home tempered by the cost of reaching it safely. He feels some pity for Colonel Carter. It must be hard for her, he muses; dealing with her new responsibilities…he just thanks God that it was not Rodney who took charge. His wry chuckle fades as he is again swamped by the anger which surfaces every time he remembers his partner's reaction to the rumor. Funny, yes; for a moment. But what creates this anger in Radek is that there should be no need for a new commander. They should have gone back for Elizabeth.
Irrational? Yes. Irresponsible? For sure. But time and again he has seen that team, of Sheppard and Rodney, Teyla and Ronon come back from incredible odds having brought back one of their own. Time and again he has heard the mantra that no man gets left behind. He has known them to go to incredible lengths to keep that creed. Yet not for Elizabeth. Not for the one they should have tried to save above all others. Radek knows that she would not have thought that way…that Colonel Sheppard was right to go, and right not to return for her until they had a real chance.
So Radek understands. He justifies their actions and knows them to be right. But what he still finds hard, what he cannot forgive…it's as if they have forgotten her. No memorial…no acknowledgement of the loss. Nothing. With others who are gone it is different. He had been able to say goodbye, at least, and still their names are spoken with love. Stories are told, pictures remain pride of place. But not with her. They don't know for sure if she's dead, or taken over or tortured. So because they cannot let her go they refuse to see that she is gone. No one ever speaks her name, not in public anyway. No one ever mentions her, or talks about the circumstances which have brought Colonel Carter here.
It seems wrong to him. Disrespectful somehow. So tonight he will do for her what he does for the others he misses and is far from. He will write her a letter. Ever since his days studying in Prague, when money spent on precious internet minutes could not be spared for anything other than his work and when a phone was an expensive luxury, Radek has loved this ritual. He writes as the poets of old, great men he would have liked to emulate had science not called to him so strongly. Beside him on the desk lies a pile of finished missives, for his sister and mother, ready to be shipped out with his friend on the Daedalus. Like Radek, this friend understands the joy in writing and receiving something tactile, something more than an email. Others, in a separate pile will join similar ones filed away in his desk. They are addressed to those special few whom Radek has loved and lost and whom he will not let go...those he will not let fade away.
He has sat here for hours now…trying to find words for what he feels. Many prior attempts are scattered on the floor around his feet. Sighing, Radek tries again. This time he writes not to his leader, but to the woman he would have liked to call his friend.
Dear Elizabeth,
Forgive their forgetting. Perhaps theirs is a grief too great to touch. It's easier to throw out the memory. To use a selfish barricade and block you out, rather than acknowledge the sacrifice you made, and grapple with the guilt that comes of not having been the one to sacrifice. They love you, see – no past tense. Love does not end with absence. That's why it hurts so much. I won't let myself forget. I'll let the pain cut into my heart, again and again. I will remember, and continue to hope the light in me will guide you home.
Until we meet again, Radek.