A.N & Disclaimer: Archiving to ffnet. Not shippy, unless you squint and turn your head slightly to the right. Then you might find something. I'm offended you might even think I own SGA. If I'd written those last two seasons, I'd have hung myself by now.
The mess hall was deserted at this time of night (morning, Peter silently corrected himself since it was around 0100 Atlantis time) but with the number of people who kept odd hours in the city there was always fresh Athosian tea brewed. He poured two cups and, as he stirred a ridiculous amount of sugar into one, took a moment to work the kinks out of his neck. He was tired. His shift had ended hours ago and he could have, and probably should have, gone to bed then.
Lifting the cups and exiting the hall he mused to himself as he headed back to the control tower that sometimes he actually preferred the times when they were in a dire situation. At least then he had adrenaline to keep him going. When it was quiet like this, the tedium of the day to day work got to him; to everyone, really.
Walking through the control room, he headed straight for the reason he was still awake, the reason he was always still awake at awful hours. Elizabeth Weir didn't notice him entering her office and only looked up when he placed one of the cups (the sweetened one; from a very young age, when his mother had forced afternoon tea on him, he'd become accustomed to the most bitter of tea's and at this point in his life simply couldn't stand the idea of adding sugar) on her desk in front of her.
She smiled, grateful and relieved and that alone, since it was so rare for her to smile anymore, was enough to beat back the yearning his exhausted body had for his bed. Not a word was exchanged between them; he merely gave her a small smile in return and left the office, taking his place at the work station he commandeered most nights.
The young Sergeant on duty gave him a weary smile and told him, "All systems seem fine, Doctor Grodin, and it doesn't look like anything unexpected will happen tonight. Why don't you head on to bed?"
After taking a sip of his tea, Peter responded, "It never looks like anything unexpected will happen, Sergeant, that's why it's not expected." Then he glanced through the glass walls of Weir's office, watching her stretch out a cramp in her back before her full attention returned to the computer screen in front of her. "Besides," he told the night's comm.'s officer, "there's still work to be done."
The younger man nodded and turned back to his definitively unexciting work station and Peter picked up the report he'd been reading before he'd noticed Elizabeth rubbing at her eyes and decided a quick trip to the mess was in order.
Somehow, and he really wasn't quite sure how he'd fallen into the position, Peter had become somewhat of an assistant to the leader of the expedition, though he knew she'd never demean his skills by actually calling him such. He was an electrical engineer, PhD included, and though some of his colleagues would probably prefer the slightly more challenging jobs in the Science Department of Atlantis, he was quite comfortable doing what he was doing.
Peter honestly believed that by helping Weir in every possible way he could, he was fulfilling a far more important role in the city than what he would have under the tyrannical rule of Rodney McKay down in the labs. Besides, he was qualified for the position; control systems, signal processing, communications and all things electronic were what he dealt with best. If ensuring that their capable leader wasn't found asleep at her desk happened to come along with all of that, he didn't mind.
Pausing in his reading, Peter took another glance into the glass office. She was wearing out fast, the signs of her exhaustion were beginning to show; the way she stretched aching muscles, tried to clear her vision by rubbing at her eyes, and had to continuously refocus on what was in front of her were all symptoms that Peter knew well.
He also knew well that she would continue to push herself. If it had been anyone else that watched her drain herself each and every night, the city's Chief Medical Officer would have been woken hours ago and a rather loud argument would've followed, one which would have ended abruptly with the threat of sedation.
But Peter had come to understand his boss in a way that nobody else did, since he was the only one who was at her side every waking moment, and since he knew her reasons, he really couldn't fault her for doing what she did (though he was secretly of the opinion that her reasons were slightly skewed). She pushed herself this hard with the administrative duties because she felt so utterly useless when it came to everything else.
She was neither a soldier nor a scientist and the times they needed a trained negotiator were few and far between, minus the minor scuffles between the civilians and the military personnel, or McKay and Zelenka. Peter could see how helpless she felt; whether it be the way she held herself rigid when their city was under direct threat, or the way she paced the catwalk when a team was in trouble off world.
So she threw herself into the little things, like signing off on reports that would do nothing more than sit in a computer storage bank waiting for when, if, they re-established contact with Earth. This she could control. To her, it was the very least that she be up all night most nights (it was surprising how much paperwork could build up in a day) ensuring that they were administratively covered.
Sometimes he wanted to put a hand on her tense shoulder and tell her what everyone else in the city knew. "You are the most important person on this expedition. You're the one that keeps us going. We look to you for strength when it seems like we're breaking. We look to you for hope when we're facing the worst of odds. And you never fail to give it to us."
He wanted to show her the way that the teams coming back through the gate, every blasted one of them, looked up at the catwalk between her office and the control room, searching for her so that they could make certain they were home and all would be well. He wanted to point out how, when they were certain they couldn't do something, they did it anyway, because her faith in them has always been unwavering.
Sometimes he barely held himself in check from telling her that even when it seemed like all that was good and right in the universe was gone, even when it looked like there was no way in hell they would get out of the next crisis, the people of the expedition would look at her, her grace and her calm, and they wouldn't stop, wouldn't give up, because they knew she would never stop believing in them, knew she would strive and fight and continue until the last possible moment for them.
Perhaps all it would take would be explaining to her that she was so important to them because of who she was; their leader, the woman they respected, the woman they trusted with their lives and their futures, the woman for whom they would rather die than disappoint.
But he kept quiet. He wouldn't call himself her friend, despite the amount of time together, nor the jokes they shared, and therefore he didn't feel he had the right to say any of it to her. Still, he wished that she could see herself, just for a moment, how everyone else saw her. She felt useless, but she certainly wasn't. She kept them grounded and steady. She made marines straighten their backs and stifle the urge to salute when she entered a room. She kept obnoxious scientists' egos in check, but pushed them to the very best they could be, all in the same sentence.
She was their unbreakable rock. Though Peter was perhaps one of the few people in the city who'd seen her vulnerabilities, he'd also seen the way she could pull herself from breaking point and lift her head high when they needed her to.
Peter started and very nearly spilled his tea when the Sergeant at the operations panel cleared his throat. The young man was glancing at him unsurely out of the corner of his eye and Peter realized that for a while now, he'd been staring through the glass panels at his boss.
That could most definitely be misconstrued. While it would more than likely lead to several raging stories in the gossip mill by the time he got to breakfast in the morning, Peter didn't really care to correct whatever scandalous thoughts were going through the Sergeants mind. He always got a kick out of the rumours that went around the city, anyway.
He checked the time. 0143. He'd finish reading the report in his hand and then see what he could do to shuffle Weir off to bed. If she refused, he'd give her to 0230 until he threatened to call the CMO. He wouldn't ever actually do it, but the bluff alone was usually enough to have her grumpily complying.
With heavy eyes, he continued skimming the report, quickly, but carefully and pushed off a surge of exhausted relief when he'd made his way through the whole thing in just a few more minutes. Standing and stretching the kinks out of his frame, he shuffled up the pile he'd managed to get read and headed for Weir's office.
Despite how much sleep he'd been deprived of since becoming her right hand man, late night/early morning was his favourite time to talk to her. She was less guarded when she was exhausted and early on he'd discovered that she had a dry, snarky wit that she usually kept in check. It played well off his own.
When he placed the reports on her desk, she looked up at him, then looked down at them and winced. "Please tell me this is a sick joke," she said, the look she gave him positively pleading.
He couldn't help smirking. "It's not. Good news though, you don't have to read them. I swiped them off your desk earlier and have gone through them. All you need to do is sign them, I assure you that they're all in order."
"I trust you," she mumbled as she pulled them towards her, her entire body relieved.
Atlantis was using paper reports while a few of the more technical savvy scientists (himself included) built a report system that would work on the community's computer net. For now though, some poor underling of the military's had the job of transferring them over. Peter was well aware that Elizabeth practically despised the hand-written reports, so he'd taken it upon himself to relieve her of some of the burden.
Slowly, he moved around her desk and propped himself up on the corner of it next to her. "Sign them in the morning," he told her. "You really need to get some sleep."
She looked to be holding her head up in her hands and the dark rings under her eyes concerned him. "If you threaten to wake Carson again, I will have you fed to that giant whale thing that swims by every now and then."
"Actually, I think one of these reports mentions that the Biology Department confirmed it was cold-blooded, making it a fish, not a whale."
Elizabeth blinked at him. "That's the part you focus on?"
Playfully rolling his eyes, Peter snorted. "As if I'm not absolutely certain that when you do finally snap and go all sadistic dictator on us, McKay will be the first one you feed to the giant fish. He's far more annoying than I am."
"I might need him. Besides, whenever he gets on my nerves I can just send Sheppard's team on a mission. Maybe I should start sending you off-world."
It was light, but there was a quick surge of pride through his system. Only at this time, when she's this tired and it's just the two of them alone would she ever admit to anyone actually annoying her; unless she was willing to let you in or just too damn run-down to care, that diplomat's mask of hers was very nearly unshakeable.
He leaned down closer to her, smiling. "If you executed me, who would bring you disgustingly sweet tea in the middle of the night?"
As she responded, he stood and started neatening the papers on her desk, urging her to stand and get ready to leave. "I'm sure I can find some other sap to take pity on me. Though, if this is post-meltdown, when I'm that sadistic dictator you speak so fondly of, I can easily just threaten someone into doing it."
They were heading towards the door and he was patting himself on the back for the progress he was making. "I only speak fondly of her because when I picture evil-Weir, I see leather uniforms."
He had no doubt that a quick-witted, snarky reply was on the tip of her tongue when the warning alarms started going off. Immediately, both of them shrugged off their exhaustion and headed for the Sergeant on duty. Peter resisted the urge to drop his heavy head into his hands and weep. He had been so close to his nice, warm bed.
"Unscheduled off-world activation," the Sergeant reported.
The city began to come alive, ready for whatever was to come; hurriedly woken and dressed technicians and senior staffers beginning to pour into the control room, the military contingent on duty flooding in around the gate with guns in their hands, the lights brightening from the dim they lowered to when the night shift took over. Even as he mourned the loss of his rest for at least the next few hours, at worst the next few days, Peter stepped up and took his place behind and slightly to the right of Elizabeth.
Like always, he'd sleep when she did and in the meantime, he'd be whatever she needed him to be through the latest crisis.