A/N: My first venture into the Stargate arena. A short piece that resulted from wondering what T.J. must be feeling.


T.J. normally wouldn't be in the command center of Destiny. Her place was in the compartment she'd fixed up as a makeshift sickbay, counting and recounting what little stock of supplies and medicines she had. Everyone expected her to perform miracles with what amounted to bandages and aspirin. It was disheartening, to say the least, but she did her best.

Colonel Everett Young, standing not two paces away from her, would also do his best to make sure they all survived, although his best might not be enough. He was a military man, and tended to have a narrow view of things. Discipline and adherence to orders -- his orders -- was paramount. She was duty-bound to obey him.

It didn't help that their past personal relationship complicated things. He would have been happy to leave things as they had been, but she needed to move on with her life. She had tried to distance herself from him before they'd come on board. Now, here they were, unable to get away from each other, following the dictates of military hierarchy. Oftentimes, he called upon her to be a soldier, not a medic who wanted to be a doctor.

Off to her other side, Doctor Nicholas Rush was hunched over the main control console. He was brilliant, something of a rogue even before they'd become stuck on Destiny. If they did get home, some unexpected leap of his brilliance would probably be responsible. If he didn't get them all killed in the meantime.

Or if he and Young didn't kill each other. Lord knows they'd tried.

Rush was a scientific genius. His manner was brittle and abrasive, and he always believed he was right. But there was a vulnerability about him. Maybe it was her desire to help those who were hurting, or the glimpses she caught of the little boy lost. She ached to make him feel better, to let him know that not everyone in the military despised him, even as she had to admit that it was best not to let him go unsupervised. His pursuit of the scientific unknown sometimes bordered on the insane.

At the moment, he was totally unaware of her presence. Those times when he did see her -- actually see her, not just look at her -- it was as a member of the military who happened to know something about medicine, a person on the other side in the fight for control of the ship, something to be disposed of or locked away so that he could do with the ship as he pleased.

Maybe if they weren't on this ship, things would be different. The ship had saved their lives, taking them away from the attack on Icarus base. But it had tried to kill them, too. Its systems were so ancient it was amazing that anything still worked.

If they weren't here, maybe she wouldn't be stuck between a man who didn't want her to change and a man who didn't acknowledge her existence.