Title: The Reflecting Silver
Author: Lady Valmar
Genre: General
Rating: T
Archive: FF, SGAHC
Spoilers: Season 2 Critical Mass
Date: Oreo.
Summary: Works along with 'the ladder of life' one shot. A drabble/tag on what kept Elizabeth from losing control during/after the trust operative was found and the problem neutralized.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or any of the characters, So stuff not owned by Stargate Atlantis is mine and therefore please ask and do not infringe nor steal my original themes, concepts, ideas or characters please.
... .LV. ...
The Reflecting Silver
By Lady Valmar
At first Elizabeth, hadn't worried extensively, she knew she had good people on who was responsible for the trust having access to Atlantis. Then as the events unrolled she had felt the tension build.
It was then suiting that she should find her pocket watch. It had sat amongst the many things she had planned on taking to Atlantis. It wasn't exceptional or even worked as it use to but it's sentimental value always reminded her of her Grandfather.
"Grandfather's pocket watch."
Well in all honesty she hadn't known her grandfather well enough to have 'sentimental need' for keeping something of his close at hand and to add she was even told, the watch hadn't even really belonged to him but that it's design resembled a watch he use to own.
She kept it in spite of that information, somehow it didn't seem right for such a simple yet decently pretty thing to be tossed just because it hadn't really any meaning. To her it did though. It had something to do with its reflecting silver and they way it clinked and clanked every time she picked it up or sat it down, that had her drawn to it.
It wasn't just a watch, it was a piece of Earth's past, a piece of her past too. Whenever she had screwed up in college or during her beginning years before the word 'Stargate' had ever been in her vocabulary, she had kept the watch in her pocket. That watch had the ability to help her naw through regrets, contemplate relationships, handle stress and relive old memories. It wasn't really a good luck charm…that would not suffice, but it was like having something meditative to help you think. It wasn't a muse…no that wouldn't do either…and it wasn't even really like those prayer beads one of her distant relatives used…it was her comfort zone.
A place she could go, no matter where she was, no matter how much she had screwed up, no matter what had happened, good or bad. She could hold that watch and almost feel herself in another place, a Utopia of the mind sort of thing. Though she wasn't for all that nonsense of Zen and Feng Shui stuff some of her college hussy friends tried to get her into.
It was her center, her quiet time. Just like being in the shower and letting hot water soothe the sore muscles out. It was like drinking a hot totee, and reading a good book, while resting on a barker lounge chair outside on a cool spring day.
Of course at the moment, it was not her spring daydream or her soothing center, if anything it was the sore reminder of past failures of past mistakes and now another mistake to add to the watch's fading mirror surface.
She had made a mistake. It didn't matter that Ronon hadn't hurt him. The damage was already done. She had crossed a line and now she would have to live with that decision for years to come maybe even for the rest of her life. The only good thing was that he hadn't been hurt. As much as the man was a sore cut in her side, she didn't know what she would do if he had been hurt.
And Cadwell, who could have thought? His attitude betrayed nothing of him being a Goau'ld host. She had noticed on occasion that he sometimes acted slightly different around her, but she figured it was because he was learning to understand her more and was willing to make compromises.
When they say leaders have to make great and difficult choices, it was true in every portion of it.
She had to remind herself it wasn't her fault had she known, of course she wouldn't have allowed her breach in her integrity to take place, but since she hadn't, she went through with it. That didn't mean she was happy living with the knowledge that the man could have been seriously hurt and for what because she despised him.
No she had went through knowing that lives were at stake and no matter how much it went against her integrity and morals values as a diplomat and as a leader she knew there had been no other option open at the time.
And now sitting at her usual chair in her office, playing with the watch, still the turmoil of the events that had unfolded just a few hours previously would not let her rest. She tried to let slightly bumpy but reflecting silver of the pocket watch soothe her weary conscious.
No matter what she knew it had been the right thing at the time to save lives still she couldn't help think that maybe humans and Wraith are more alike than she thought.
That was when he had walked in, her trusty Lt. Colonel, always willing to sometimes do things that even she would hesitate to do. His posture and stance told her he was not sorry but at the same time relieved that the nightmare that would have occurred didn't.
His jokes and concern or pity, if that what it was, didn't reconcile the hatred she felt inside at the whole situation and the decision she had made. If there was one thing she knew she could take away from this was future decisions must not be made lightly and if some other incident required her to do what she had done, she would do it again.
Of course it would go against her own morals and integrity but…Earth needs answers and protection she wouldn't let her moral conscious step in the way of doing what needed to be done. On that note, she knew than that indeed perhaps humans and Wraith are not so unlike one another after all…
A/N: I have another one of these coming up where Teyla and Elizabeth talk.