Disclaimer: I don't own anything or anyone affiliated with Stargate: Atlantis. Unfortunately.
Author's Note: Right, well, seeing as I wrote part 3 without meaning it to be a part of anything, I suppose I am obligated to present part 1 and 2. Which weren't actually planned, but what the heck. I'm still trying not to write a term paper. Part 2 shall follow as soon as Rodney starts talking to me.
One Year In
It had been the opportunity of a lifetime. Or, at least, that was what she had told Simon. But at night, with the sound of the waves crashing against the pier below her window, it was not enough to scare away the demons of the last six months.
They had been through hell. And somehow, in some inconceivable way, they had survived. Or at least most of them had. Sumner's death on the first day was a blow she hadn't been sure they would recover from. But John seemed to deal with it the way he dealt with everything else, and she realized that life had to go on. They were on their own now, and Sumner wasn't likely to be the only fatality. So she put it aside.
She was getting really good at that.
And now, in the aftermath of the disaster of both the hurricane and Koyla's takeover of the city, she was trying hard to come to terms with everything. Elizabeth had expected many things when she dreamed of coming to Atlantis, and hardly any of them had turned out to be true. But she hadn't envisioned life or death situations on a weekly basis, or the threat of loosing the city they had just gained time and time again. And on some nights it was becoming a bit too much for one person to bear. Because she hadn't signed on for this, and she was so far out of her league she couldn't even imagine it. She was thankful daily for John, because she knew she would have given up a long time ago if it hadn't been for him.
She realized she hadn't said thank you to him for saving her life. She also knew it wasn't likely to be the only time it ever happened. And that thought scared her to death. No diplomatic negotiation on Earth had ever prepared her for facing her own mortality with a gun pointed at her head.
But what worried her even more was that she was coming to see those around her as family. Family she was willing to do anything for. And she wondered that if it ever came to it, if she'd be willing to place herself in front of a gun, as Rodney had done for her. She hoped she never had to find out. But it confused things in a way she didn't quite understand. It made her vulnerable, and Elizabeth Weir did not like feeling vulnerable.
The day after the hurricane blew through, she woke to an outstanding sunrise, and she couldn't help the feeling that welled up inside her that Atlantis had become home. And she felt needed not just because she was good at something, but because she was a good friend too. And she knew she was doing something so amazing that at the end of all things she would looked back on it all and know she had made the right choice in coming.
After all, she knew she'd have been insane to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.