A/N: 3 in the morning, horrible, shoddy work I know. But I'm tired and I just really wanted to write something for SGA today.
***
For Elizabeth Weir, being strong was an instinct.
There wasn't anything much to add to that; it simply was. It was fact, and she liked facts, solid truths. It never mattered where she was, what she was leading. From day one, Elizabeth Weir was strong, stolid; the immovable stone in the way of the unstoppable force. By now it was a well learned lesson to the people who'd experienced Elizabeth Weir that being a pacifist didn't mean being weak, despite the jibes and looks she used to get (and still did sometimes) from some of the military personnel. A not unnoticed fact that had quickly made her prove to everyone who would listen that Elizabeth depended on no one but herself. She could give them her trust, but any falls, any mistakes, she cleaned them up herself. Help was never required, only an option.
She was a diplomat. If she had to be protected, then it was only because she hadn't yet succeeded in what she'd planned to do from the first step she took into politics. And she took care of herself. Her actions, her responsibilities, and the results from both. She liked it that way. It was why she was chosen. It was why she could lead. It was why this job fit. It was how she couldn't break (most of the time).
It was why she had this view.
You couldn't get peace like this on Earth; that was for sure.
She ran her fingernails inside the grooves of the silver pocket watch, as had been her habit since long before she could call it her own.
It still didn't feel like hers. And even if she didn't really believe in that kind of thing, it almost felt as if… in bringing the watch here, he was sharing this moment with her. Somehow.
"'Lizbeth?"
Elizabeth started with a jolt, heart pounding for that ephemeral second as she spun around in alarm before realising who it was and relaxing a little.
"Rodney," she said with a relieved sigh, hand still gripping at her chest. "Don't sneak up on me like that."
He raised an eyebrow with what could only be described as casual irritation. Only Rodney McKay could make being annoyed seem casual. "Does it count as sneaking up if you walk through some pretty noisy doors and call your name about three times?"
Elizabeth blinked and shot a look over his shoulder at the door, which stood only a few feet away. She laughed apologetically. "Sorry. I guess I was lost in the view." She turned around again, gripping her hands on the balcony railings with the clasps of silver between her thumb and index finger, the slim chain dangling toward the ground as if it was trying to be let go.
"It… It is pretty amazing," Rodney acquiesced, stepping beside her. His eyes fell to the hand holding the watch. "What's that?"
"It's my father's." She smiled, standing up straight to finger the engraving with her other hand. "Or was my father's, actually."
Without looking, she already knew the scientist was looking taken aback and abruptly awkward. "Oh. Uh… I… I'm sorry."
"I used to play with it all the time when I was little. He used to say it was already as good as mine and that he probably wouldn't notice the difference when he decided to give it to me."
She heard the shuffling of standard issue sneakers against the floor.
Sighing, she slipped the heirloom into her pocket and turned around. "What did you need?"
Being strong was an instinct. That instinct involved having your priorities in the right order.
***
Staring down the barrel of a gun, she wasn't afraid. Bargaining chips didn't work this way, and she was enough the diplomat to know that.
But when she was blocked from one… then she was. And the diplomat didn't know what to say about chips or bargaining.
It didn't know what to say about anything.
***
If strength was an instinct, then what was all that fear beneath? If strength was an instinct, then what happened when the strength broke?
She didn't have the answers, but she was willing to bet the paperwork did. But by the time they ran out, she'd realised that they hadn't had any answers either, only the means of making her forget the questions for a while.
The back of the pen she was using ticked quietly as she tapped it against the desk, her office now the only illuminated room in the Gate Room. Chuck and the night watch were here, but that was it. Another day at Atlantis had ended, and it was night time, the night time they'd all adapted to, a few hours longer to compensate for the longer mornings they had. It was difficult to get adapted to the day night cycle of the planet when first coming here, but the adaptation came quickly.
She knew enough about humans to know that they did that easily.
Too easily.
The engraved Weir watch was sitting on her desk with the chain pooled around it. Reaching over with the pen, she slid the chain around the desk absently, making noise just for the sake of making noise.
She wasn't sure what scared her about the nanite-induced world in her head the most. The fact that it had happened, or the fact that she had started to believe it was true. It didn't help that she still didn't completely believe it hadn't been. She'd still wake up at night thinking she was drowning in white sheets, feel the pinch and surge of sedatives being forced into her skin.
The metal of the chain suddenly screeched for a moment as she dug it into the wood.
It was obvious enough that she should probably go to Heightmeyer about this, but she simply wasn't ready to talk about it with a therapist yet.
There was a soft knock on the door which was now already open.
"'Lizbeth?"
She looked up, a little dazed at someone being there at all.
Rodney stared concernedly back at her, brow furrowing in worry. "It's four in the morning."
Her eyes dropped back down. "I'm all right. I don't want to sleep."
Silence permeated the office as the astrophysicist floundered as usual with the prospect of human interaction. "… Do you want some coffee?"
"I'm fine," she answered in the small monotone she'd been speaking for the past few days. She looked up long enough to see the scepticism on his face. "You go to bed. I'll be okay."
He drew up a chair and sat down in front of her. "Okay. You're all right, then you're fine then you're okay. Elizabeth, whatever you are? You're not any of those things."
"I'm-"
"I know I'm not… the most ideal person to talk to. But you never told any of us what it was like in there. And you and I have… known each other for a while. So if you want to… talk… about it…" he trailed off, his hand-motion dying in midair as she continued sliding the chain across her workspace with her pen.
"… That's your dad's, right?"
Her lips quirked, if a little hollowly. "You remembered."
"Of course," he shrugged. "I always do."
She stared at him for a long while after he said that, although it seemed more and more like admittance the longer the silence dragged on. When she returned her eyes back to the simple chain, he worried for a moment if he'd lost the small leeway he'd gained.
"My mother found it just before I came here."
It started slowly after that, the story. She told him about waking up in the small room with bars in the windows, sharp contrast to the wide space and open balconies she was used to. Then about the first claims, the introduction of the fact that none of it had been real, that the faces she'd met, the people she'd saved, the wonderful things she remembered doing… the fact that none of it had ever happened at all. Then the disbelief and the denial. Then the proof that she couldn't stop, that seemed irrefutable and she couldn't change no matter what she did, and the fact that it had all seemed so true, that she still saw the signs… the fact that she'd wanted proof, she'd wanted whatever straws she could claw at and get a hold of.
Then the breaking point. Where she started to accept. The confusion and the tired nodding and acceptance that hurt so much more than the outright denial. Seeing her father's watch again, safe and sound in the hands of her mother, who'd found it months ago, not years.
She was crumbling right then and there, her strength withering away from leader to nothing but a terrified and frightened woman sitting at a desk with her face in her palms and her shoulders shaking.
She felt him pat her reassuringly on the back; idly realised he must have moved beside her to do so.
She meant to tell him that again, it was all right, but instead what came out was "You were dead."
"I have a habit of doing that in other universes." He tugged her shoulder, urging her to stand up. "Here. I'll take you to bed." As he led her to the door, a click plunged the area into darkness. Just about the nicest thing Rodney McKay would do for anyone. Turn the lights off before leaving. The nicest thing Rodney McKay did do for anyone: escort a crying, decrepit remnant of an expedition leader to her quarters.
He was there when she followed her tears into sleep.
When she woke up the next morning, she realised the answer she'd been looking for, staring at the sprawled form of Rodney McKay on the floor, snoring like a pig into her favourite rug.
It hadn't been another universe, like he'd said. That world had been her dreams. Her nightmares.
And she knew that now, because nightmares hadn't included snoring. But this was the real world, and he was soft and solid to the touch. The world she'd been in had been full of regularities and normality, pills and going to work every day, coming to home every night. The life she lived-… was a lot more than that. And the proof of irregularities was drooling onto the weaving at that very moment.
When she opened her closet, she grinned at seeing the clothes. It didn't have any event horizons, but that didn't mean that the room several floors down wouldn't anymore.
The sunlight glinted off the silver lying on her bedside table.
Strength wasn't faith, she'd always believed that. She'd hated that faith without proof meant devotion and power. But now she'd realised strength wasn't instinct either. Fear, on the other hand, was.
Maybe strength was dependency.
And maybe, she thought, nudging the scientist on her floor awake with her foot, she was finally all right with that.