No one really remembered who'd put up the corkboard and they didn't remember what it was first used for though the SGC had a photo in their records of it having a dining schedule on it. It had simply been there since they'd arrived in Atlantis, a piece of their past they still held on to.
It was stuck up in a corridor outside the control room, notes and pictures commonplace on it. Sometimes Rodney would stick up a formula; sometimes John would sneak out in the middle of the night to secretly put up a drawn Gallifreyian symbol. (Rodney got agitated when he saw it most times – he was still waiting to meet another Doctor Who fan worthy of his attention.)
When Elizabeth was still in control, she often tacked up memos to people for birthdays and anniversaries. She'd take paper and draw on it, little remembrances of the holiday season and put them up as well, trying to make Atlantis feel less alien.
No one knows that John squirreled away the card she'd made for him, that he sits with it on the days when he misses her the most. Rodney would never admit that he was the one to take down the candid picture someone had taken of her, eyes glittering with laughter on high-gloss paper. For Teyla, the joke about pansy flowers and gorillas that Aiden Ford had written out in a messy scrawl on a scrap of lined paper had been carefully lifted from the board just a few days after Ronon came to Atlantis. It would be her last link to the man he had once been, sweet and innocent and a friend she'd come to miss dearly.
Bits and pieces of the people they lost would appear and disappear. Pictures, jokes, notes, letters... The little things that kept the memories alive, tacked up on a ninety-nine cent corkboard.
But the newer people saw it as a nuisance; it took up valuable wall space and served no official purpose. But those who had been there from the beginning – despite their dwindling numbers – defended it any time someone tried to remove it.
"Gentlemen!" Sam's voice rose above the din. She waited until everyone had seated themselves before saying, "I don't know why this board has become a point of contention, but I'm ending it. It stays where and how it is."
With a glance around the meeting room table, Carter waited a moment to let her decision sink in then said, "Dismissed," and prepared to return to her office.
"Ma'am." John stopped her, the room emptying out around them. It was only after they were alone that he told her, "Thanks. It's... Thanks."
She only nodded.