I. Claire
She remembers a mannequin with a dusty pink wig, swinging by a rope secured around its neck in front of a clock face.
She doesn't remember being afraid, only angry.
Incensed.
-x-
Claire is born in California as the eldest daughter of an heiress and an Air Force General.
When she's fourteen, her parents die in an accident, and Claire and her sister are separated.
Claire doesn't see Sera for six years.
-x-
Sera is two years younger than Claire and hopelessly beautiful, and Claire wishes she'd been able to see her grow.
Instead, Claire is in her second year in the Air Force, and Sera is turning eighteen in a week and their paternal grandfather is dead, which is the only reason Claire is seeing her now.
"The world is wrong," Sera whispers into Claire's chest after a nightmare that night, her whole body twitching with silent sobs.
Claire doesn't respond.
She just... kind of feels it too.
-x-
Sera leaves Claire three days later on a scholarship to Stanford, and Claire doesn't even realize until Sera is gone again that she doesn't even know what for.
-x-
Claire loves to fly, but even more than that, something in her finally settles when her call sign becomes Lightning.
-x-
No one calls her Claire anymore, except for Sera.
-x-
Jack O'Neill says, "Welcome to the Stargate Program."
-x-
Dr. Estheim is three years older than Lightning, and it makes her a little itchy. It's almost as if she can picture the scientist as a fifteen year old.
She doesn't say this though. Instead she says, "Pleasure to meet you, Doctor."
-x-
Sometimes Lightning dreams of dragons and screaming and a sword that folds down into a pistol.
Those nights she creeps out of the barracks and slips into Dr. Estheim's lab to watch him work.
-x-
"Captain Farron," O'Neill says three days before the Atlantis Expedition is set to leave.
"General," she replies.
"Colonel Sumner would like you to join the expedition."
"Oh," she says, and then, "If Dr. Estheim is going...?"
"I'll check into it."
-x-
Dr. Estheim locks the door behind her when she visits that night and says nothing for nearly half an hour.
"Light," he finally says, and she feels light-headed at the intonation.
"Hope," she replies, and she remembers handing him a pocket knife that he ends up twirling around his knuckles at the metal ring of the fold.
"I didn't think you remembered... before," he says, and he's a little glassy eyed when she looks up.
"I remember some," she says, "but not everything."
And it's true.
She trusts this scientist enough to risk her career, and she's not entirely sure why.
-x-
She dreams of long days with nothing but Hope's voice in her ear.
-x-
Atlantis is humming when she steps through the gate, but Major Sheppard a beat behind her makes Atlantis sing.
-x-
Sumner is dead, Major Sheppard is in charge of the military, and Hope hasn't slept in just as long as Dr. McKay.
(The city tells her this, whispers it to her while she showers the Wraith off her skin.)
He's in the middle of an argument with McKay when Lightning steps inside the new labs.
"Hope, you're allowed to rest," she says, which makes McKay give them both a strange look.
"Light, I don't-"
"It's not like before," she says, and Hope's shoulders just fall at that.
"But it is," he says, and Lightning wants to scream.
(This is new. She doesn't remember wanting this.)
"They are not Cie'th," she says, and she doesn't know why but she knows it is the truth, "there are no more Cie'th."
"What are Cie'th? Were you two part of a gate team on Earth?"
"Lightning," Hope says, and McKay blinks.
"What does lightning have to do with-"
"It's her name, Dr. McKay," Hope says, and McKay stares at the patch with her name, C. Farron.
"... why would anyone nickname you Lightning?"