Disclaimer: The characters and the universe aren't mine, the fic is. I'm not making any money off this.
A.N. Some of you may have read this fic last year when it was posted on one of the Yahoo groups. For those who haven't, I should probably warn you about the style, it's a bit weird, somewhat stylized, and I did something like that to canon too. Don't expect realism here. Consider yourself forewarned. bites nails in worry of people hating the fic Giant thanks to Purpleyin and fififolle for betaing.
The Art in a Standing Wave
by
Iona
Elizabeth stood on the balcony overlooking the gateroom, which was completely changed by the Christmas atmosphere. It wasn't that there were any decorations in it; the chevrons on the open stargate were lit and that was everything that would even remotely resemble the decorations. But the people in it were in the holiday mood. She couldn't understand how she never thought of it, especially with her interest in how people thought, but she decided not to dwell on it. Not these days. Not as it completely instinctually became obvious to her that the Christmas atmosphere came entirely from people. Her philosophising would only ruin the moment.
She was one of the people who approached Christmas from purely unreligious view, but Atlantis had a number of religious people to whom this time meant more. The Athosians, especially the children, embraced the biblical stories told citywide as the advent started. Several people of other religions volunteered to present their faiths to the Athosians when they saw their openness as well. What surprised Elizabeth, not having seen it often on Earth, was that none of those wanted to do anything else with their faith other than present it. Maybe being a diplomat had hardened her. The Atlantis people really were some of the best of humanity, she thought to herself. Most of them, anyway.
Her thoughts had strayed as she watched Sgt. Stackhouse's team drag a few big firs through the stargate below, with immense surprise.
She thought about the holiday atmosphere again. It was one of the strongest she'd felt in her life, and yet Atlantis didn't have much snow, just lots of cold rain and winds, and not much ornamentation. The Daedalus crew wasn't too enthusiastic about playing Santa, so the Atlanteans cut down on their requests for decorations. And despite the lack of ornaments the feeling of Christmastime and the anticipation of Christmas Eve were very present in Elizabeth.
The firs that Sgt. Stackhouse's team brought were already gone from the gateroom.
Elizabeth quickly warmed her hands over the flame of the candle, lit almost a week earlier, that had been set in a corner of the control room. The warmth wasn't unpleasant.
She then went down a corridor and made a turn for the newly discovered dining hall, where her lunch was waiting for her.
ooo
As she entered and went for the refrigerators, where the day's meals were stored, a group of military people rushed in with one of the trees.
"Coming through!" one of them yelled.
Elizabeth pivoted to face the rushing boys. "What is that, Sergeant?" she asked another one of them.
"Oh, ma'am."
They all tried to stand at attention, which wasn't easy while holding the big tree.
Elizabeth was so amused by them that she almost commented: 'don't get your panties in a twist', and she chuckled inwardly. "It's okay, Sergeant. All I want to know is what you're doing here with this tree?" She had to control herself to sound serious.
"Well, ma'am… We thought the dining hall would be a good place to set up one of the Christmas trees. So we brought it here. Ma'am." He seemed almost a little embarrassed.
"And you didn't ask me?" The serious expression was hard to maintain, but it was necessary.
"Sorry, ma'am. Won't happen again." The boys all looked sheepish.
"It better not," Elizabeth said.
"Ma'am," the Sergeant still sounded embarrassed. "Can we place the tree in here?"
"I think it's a very good idea," Elizabeth smiled, eliciting smiles from the group of the military boys, and a fair number of personnel who were in the dining hall at the time.
They still smiled while Elizabeth adopted an unbelieving expression. "Well, aren't you going to set it up?" she asked them. "And let me through to the stove, so I can heat my lunch." She looked at them sideways.
"Yes, ma'am," the whole group said simultaneously, and ran forward with the big tree in their hands. As she moved to the stove, she heard someone yell: "Hey, don't put that tree in front of the window!" and one of the tree boys yell back: "Oh, okay."
ooo
With the meal heated, she went to sit at one of the giant but beautiful tables in the room, away from everybody. She chose a seat from where she could watch the tree being set up and Carson watching it as well, looking slightly terrified. Perhaps he was afraid he'd be very busy by the time the tree was finished; or that he'd need to work on himself before they were done, but Elizabeth trusted the boys not to crash the tree, or do anything to themselves. The only thing she thought Carson might have to do afterwards was to try to remove alien sap from several people's fingers. Which, if Earth sap was anything to go by, would be hard enough.
She looked down to see where her tomato soup was and strayed into thoughts. Like a lot of other Atlanteans, she'd also ordered a number of small presents for her people, which she gladly spent wrapping the past three evenings. She hoped the people would like her presents, but they were just small tokens of appreciation, so she didn't worry too much about them. There was only one present, the only one she hadn't wrapped in the past few nights, that worried her. It worried her how it would be received.
She realized that she was staring at the table and the intricate geometric designs of the Ancients that lay in the intarsias. The plastic, or what looked like plastic, lining of each of the pieces of the intarsias made them shine in the light of the overhead lamps. These intarsias did remind her of her worries a bit, if they hadn't been what guided her thoughts right then in the first place. It was very simple – either the gift would be very well received, or very badly. There was no in-between. Her long-time experience with people told her that alright. A yellow-orange piece that looked like a combination of a parallelogram and a trapezium or a triangle made her feel distinctly uneasy. She was sure her gift was a mistake. And it couldn't be changed or returned now. And her getting the present she'd like to have also seemed more and more unlikely at that point.
A drop of her red tomato soup fell onto the yellow-orange triangle-like parallelogram intarsia.
Out of the corner of her vision she saw someone walk towards her middle of the table and sit down next to her. She didn't need to look up to know who it was – there was only one person who'd dare to sit next to her without asking first, but then he was also the only person she expected to do nothing other than to sit next to her without asking first.
Before she managed to look at him to greet him she saw his hand stop next to her plate briefly and then slowly retract. At the spot a couple of cookies lay. She had to smile a little. Rodney never shared his food with anyone.
She then looked up at him sitting on her left, and smiled warmly at him in greeting. He smiled back, though it never really reached his eyes. Elizabeth knew it wasn't that she disappointed him in any way, that it wasn't about her; she knew the family holidays were always hard on him. Anything as small as a greeting by a friendly person could bring the ache back with a vengeance, and with all the friends he'd made recently, the ache got worse every time it appeared. She wanted to stroke his back, but she was still reluctant to do anything in public, especially without an obvious reason for it.
She turned back to her plate and took one of the little gifts, lifted it in front of her face, facing forward, not away and not really towards him and broke the cookie in half. She then turned towards Rodney and placed one half into his now outstretched hand while taking a bit of hers with a tiny bite she'd noticed he loved to see. Nothing could get past the master diplomat who knew how to read people. If she didn't, she wouldn't know Rodney as well as she did, and their specific communication would be impossible. He quickly broke the spell of the tiny bite that made it only to the depths of his eyes and lifted his eyebrows at Elizabeth, looking at her soup and then back at her mouth and her munching the cookie. Elizabeth laughed inwardly. Eating cookies before the soup was really strange, but the amusement in other people's expressions was always worth it. She looked at him with a mischievous expression in her eyes, giving him a slight pout that barely made it through her moving jaws. Ha! I wanted to make you wonder!
With pretend exasperation and disgust he turned back to his MRE, stuck a spoonful into his mouth, then turned to Elizabeth with exaggerated motions of his jaws only to find her leaning over her plate. Of course she saw him do that from the edge of her vision and chuckled quietly. Leave it to Rodney to come up with a childish way of hiding his feelings.
She turned back to him with a smile on her face, but soon took a more serious expression, though not completely. Without daring to touch him in such a public setting she hoped he'd understand her. She somehow didn't trust the softness in her expression, not with Rodney. She just wanted to know how he was faring.
He understood. He acquired a slightly saddened look, one that made his beautiful lashes fall a little over his eyes and his cheeks a little less pronounced. But his lips were set in a line that told Elizabeth that no matter how hard it was, he'd hold on. He then quickly put another spoonful into his mouth, which Elizabeth followed less than a half a second later with her eating the last spoon of the soup. It left a tiny drop of warm red on her lower lip that charmed Rodney, along with how the warmth of the drop made the surrounding area even more vibrant and more red than her lips usually were. If only he could get a share of that warmth.
After starting on her turkey Elizabeth turned back to Rodney, who, as if he'd expected that another conversation would start, was already looking at her. She glanced around the hall, then to his hands, then back to his eyes. Asking about his presents for the others. He gave her an exasperated look while taking another bite, before giving her a slight shrug. What would he do? Elizabeth didn't leave any specific expression on her face, though knowing Rodney did get something for everybody, with great self-consciousness. She knew that like everybody
else's, his presents were small. Unlike hers…
Rodney noticed the sudden change of expression on Elizabeth's face when he returned the question. She looked almost shocked and, it could have been called staring, at his cheek below his left eye. He couldn't hide his expression of worry at this. Why would Christmas presents make Elizabeth so anxious? He narrowed his eyes at her, the look still soft, while cleaning up his plate. He expected her to give him an indication about what made her so upset, but she completely quieted down and concentrated on her plate.
Unlike Elizabeth, Rodney wasn't too reluctant to give her a brief touch in public. Maybe he accepted the fact that they couldn't hide themselves from their people; the Atlanteans were not that stupid. He gently rubbed the back of his hand against her forearm. She turned to him a bit only to see him very worried about her, but saw that he wouldn't push the issue. She knew him well, opened herself to be surprised by the gesture nonetheless. She gave him a bitter grateful smile, then turned back to her food, seeing from periphery that Rodney now carefully took his half of the cookie and ate it with an unusual care for him. Almost as if it wasn't food.
A very good food a cookie was, granted, and a delicious, tasty, divine, heavenly, ecstasy-inducing food that transcended the idea of food, but in Elizabeth's experience men didn't grasp that fact, or were simply without taste. They usually ate cookies and other sweets as if they were eating stones. Whatever happened that Rodney, the man who was far messier in eating than any other man she knew, and more dedicated to the endeavour, ate that cookie with such care was beyond her. …Not really. The cookie was hers, after all. She had to smile inwardly at that. She took her other cookie and that was as long as she could keep from smiling in reality. She looked at him with the smile, an amused expression and a raised eyebrow, pointing her eyes at the cookie. He looked a bit hurt at her scrutiny, but she knew him well enough to see just how mock that hurt was. His eyes were smiling.
They were interrupted by a shout from the part of the hall where tree now stood. Elizabeth and Rodney perfectly mimicked each other's posture as they watched in amusement as a member of Stackhouse's team called to Major Lorne to get the garlands, and one of the scientists at a nearby table scolded him, carefully pointing out that the lights are the first item to go onto the tree. The soldier ignored the guy and nodded as Lorne motioned to the door; all the boxes with decorations were still outside. With even more amusement Elizabeth noticed that Carson had already run off.
She stood up and walked menacingly towards the fray and stood right behind Lorne's back. The soldier felt her presence and turned around, grinning sheepishly. Without knowing what was supposedly wrong. Elizabeth was amused by her boys enough to completely forget her earlier worries. She raised her eyebrow for good measure. Lorne looked almost shocked, and the other soldier would probably even salute her if he hadn't been hanging on the high ladder.
"You're going to decorate the entire tree?"
"Yes, ma'am. I mean, we had the idea that we would."
"That's good." She paused, and then let her amusement show. "Will you let the rest of the kids play too?"
Lorne smiled broadly. "We'd be glad to, ma'am. It's a big tree."
"Then let me join you."
Lorne nodded and turned to give her one of the boxes that weren't there yet.
"Anybody want to join in?" Elizabeth called to the hall.
As if on cue, Stackhouse and the rest of his men showed up, dragging the big boxes into the hall. While the two soldiers returned to the corridor for more boxes, Stackhouse bounded up to the first one, tearing it open and started laying out the decorations on a table. Without asking anybody. The other kids are a bad influence on him, Elizabeth thought affectionately.
Several people now ran to the corner, ready to, let's say, help; some had finished eating, some even left their meals at the prospect of the activity.
Before Elizabeth walked up to Stackhouse's outlay, she turned around to see if Rodney'd join them. He wasn't there anymore. Nor were her dishes, which she spotted on a shelf they'd assigned for those. She hoped dearly that Rodney didn't hurt too much. She'd check on him later, which would be fine, hopefully, and for now have fun with her little kindergarten of male scientists and soldiers.
ooo
Come late evening, Elizabeth left her quarters, carrying two large baskets full of small presents for her people. They'd agreed that each person would take their presents to the big tree in the dining hall sometime during the night. Elizabeth realized it would probably look strange with the whole of Atlantis walking around in the semi-darkness in the middle of the night, but it worked best. It was only her corridor that was pretty deserted that gave her a strange feeling. There were some plants with ribbons on them, but they themselves could not allay the not-so-festive feeling she had. She didn't think of the fact that very likely it was her worries about the one present she wasn't carrying right now that caused that.
She was in the control room pretty soon, and stopped on the stairs leading down into the gateroom. She sat down on the steps, putting the baskets next to her, taking a few moments to view her domain. The stargate and the tall window behind it almost embodied it. Atlantis felt like home, more than any other, and she was now spending Christmas Eve at home.
Almost. At home there weren't people almost running into her back. She turned, slightly angrily, to see who wasn't watching where they were going. But she wasn't angry for long. The person who ran into her was none other than Rodney McKay.
"Elizabeth!" he squeaked. "I almost tripped on you! What are you doing standing in other people's way?"
Elizabeth smiled at him. She couldn't not think of how sweet he was when he was afraid that other people were hurt. "Sorry," she told him sheepishly.
"Well, don't do it anymore. Other people might trip over you."
She looked around. There was nobody anywhere that she could see. She and Rodney were the only people in the gateroom. Control room and Conference were empty too.
He apparently knew what she was thinking. "I know, I know, there's nobody else here right now, and I wouldn't trip over you again, not intentionally, but you know what I mean…"
"I know." She touched his leg. His mouth shut immediately, and he just kept staring at her. "You here to take the presents to the dining hall?"
He snapped out of it and nodded. "And go to the party afterwards."
She stood up, took the baskets and walked down the stairs. "Let's go together."
Only as he watched her heading down the stairs in front of him and a little to the side he saw how beautiful she looked.
On this evening Elizabeth wore a dress he'd never seen before, and he was sure he knew her entire wardrobe. Rodney was sure it was made of velvet. It looked too beautiful to be of any other material. The dress was dark red, the same red she had on her uniform. It had a deep, V-shaped cleavage and long sleeves that went down to the middle of her palms. It was of the simple shape of a female figure. The tighter top half and very loose bottom half made an ankle-length dress. She wore the same shoes that she had at the party upon opening Atlantis. At least those were familiar to him.
When his mind returned to reality, they were at the dining hall, which was now nearly deserted. It was not really far from the gateroom.
They set out to do what they came to the dining hall for.
Leaving the presents under the tree was relatively uneventful, but not easy. There had been so many already there that the two had problems finding a spot for theirs, short of putting them among the lower branches of the tree, which in turn made not climbing over each other a problem. But eventually, they left all their stuff under the tree. Except for the one Elizabeth didn't bring there, and perhaps the one she was hoping to get.
Just as Rodney turned to head for the Christmas party he heard Elizabeth's voice from behind him. "I have to tell you something, Rodney."
He turned around. "What?"
She looked a little embarrassed. "I was a little presumptuous. I assumed I'd get a certain gift for sure, but I know it's not that likely. I'd still like to tell you about it."
"Sure."
"Not here. Come with me." She held out her hand to him.
"Where are we going?" Rodney asked her, confused. She didn't say anything, just led him to the doors of the dining hall.
ooo
Elizabeth led Rodney down a corridor into one of the less researched areas of the city. The Atlanteans had made use of a few rooms there, but only a few people frequented them and so the power was used there only sparsely.
She took a hold of his hand and led him. Behind her he barely followed her as she went into a slight run. Once again he began marvelling at her dress, the red velvet mimicking nightgowns of times more romantic, over a century earlier, something he'd never admit to liking. Elizabeth looked so beautiful in it; the way the occasional dim light outlined her form and created unusually colored patches on her dress only reinforced that feeling of wonder. With her fleet motion the only thing she'd have to have was longer hair, of the same color, and have the big dove-like wings to look like the eponym of an angel.
They were almost out of a religious painting, him being Mary and her being the archangel Gabriel perhaps. In a renaissance sense, her hairstyle fit perfectly and the dove-wings were the only thing missing to really make her look like Gabriel. And renaissance was where they were. They left the corridor to enter the half-covered colonnade that comprised half the innards of the building where they were headed. For the Ancients, it must've been a cultural center, as far as the Atlanteans could tell, and unlike for many rooms, they were almost absolutely sure of what the ones inside this building were for. The most imposing room in the building was the library. They'd found some Ancient books there, and lots of crystals that had put Peter into ecstasy, and they'd began building their own library there; the enormous bookshelves now housed their own books, CDs and DVDs, as well as magazines and journals and a few works that the Atlanteans who had arts as hobbies left there for others to enjoy.
The colonnade outside was an incredibly intricate network of columns and round arches over them that made mock walls, not anything like the roman peristyla, resembling renaissance architecture; somewhat in design, and a lot in size and structure. The design was still simple and geometric, though inclined more towards the whites and blues in color. With upraised and depressed sections down the columns, it gave a good impression of the classical buildings nonetheless. Surprisingly, the capitals weren't that simple and geometric. Their shapes were geometric, but they were covered with bas-reliefs of stylized nature – leaves, birds, somethings that looked like horses and bees, branches, the sun and the ocean waves.
Moonlight shone through the openings between the tops of the columned walls casting mesmerizing shadows onto the blue-lit floors ahead of the two humans, dwarfed, almost lost indeed, among the enormity of whatever material the Ancients used for their columns and their
depictions of other living beings.
As soon as they entered the open part of the colonnade, they both stopped on their own accord, not even having to communicate the desire to each other. The starry sky was amazing. For a change it didn't rain; there was not one cloud and the light breeze was warm. They both leaned their backs on a column, close together, touching by the arms and shoulders, and lifted their heads towards the sky. With no light pollution, the Atlantean night sky was amazingly filled. That surprised Elizabeth whenever she went to the balcony adjacent to the gateroom to watch it. The sight of Milky Way was similar to Earth's, but at the same time more mesmerizing. Not far from it she could observe the rest of Pegasus, which here bridged the column wall where she and Rodney were reposing and the one next to it with lots of little red and yellow twinkles that almost made her hear the sounds of bells in her head; or wind chimes for that matter. The tininess of the stars there and the frequency of their twinkle couldn't completely give her the deep chime of bells.
The other stars had a special shine too, something she hadn't noticed before. Maybe it was because she never saw them from here, where really the only interfering light came from the single moon, somewhat bigger than Earth's, which now partly shone above the roof of the
building. It was rising. There would soon be more than just half of its disc visible. Several stars were bigger than the ones seen from Earth, reaching the brightness and perhaps size of Saturn. Elizabeth thought she could recognize some of the groups that inspired the chevrons on their stargate and suddenly realized what a disservice the Ancients made to these stars by simplifying them into the little piles of dots and dashes of the chevrons. She was so enamored by them, and perhaps by the warmth of Rodney's arm against hers too, that all the tension and uncertainty of her gift went away. With the breeze playing with her hair, caressing her cleavage and slightly reshaping her dress, and the giant columns all around her that gave her a feeling of enormous safety and also gave a bit of an impression of reaching for the starry night sky above them, though she wasn't sure what would be that was reaching, she relaxed completely. It was the most complete feeling of calm she'd ever felt.
She turned her head to look at her companion. He looked almost as overwhelmed as she was, in a manly way anyway. He was completely still. His pupils became as large as the moon, showing all the depth that was swallowing the sight with hunger, pretty much like her pupils must've been doing not a minute ago. The thin ring of blue of his iris made his eyes look even more impressive than they usually were. His mouth was slightly open. His not-very-strong-to-begin-with grip on her hand loosened into what was more of an embrace than a hold. In his fingers, she could still feel his quickened pulse.
If he only knew what was waiting for him not that far away. She felt the unpleasant feeling of uncertainty return. More or less unconsciously she let his hand go. She tried to regain the sense of enormous calm from the stars. She looked up again, but it wasn't to be. She knew that Rodney wouldn't ignore her letting go of him. She could feel him looking at her. To avoid an unpleasant question about her feelings she pretended it was out of awe.
"Which one do you think is the guiding star?" she asked him, craning her neck a bit farther to see another part of the sky and more Pegasus.
"'The guiding star'? What are we, kings? The two wise men!" Rodney quipped.
Kings? Elizabeth smiled despite herself. Maybe that wasn't as far from the truth as he thought.
"The King and Queen of Atlantis…"
Rodney gave her an exasperated snort. She looked back at him and smiled widely at his reaction. He couldn't not react to it and smiled back. Maybe the assessment wasn't so incorrect, even in his eyes.
Elizabeth changed her train of thought once again and turned to face Rodney, looking him straight into the eyes. "Come, your present awaits."
Suddenly, Rodney was reluctant to move, and looked up into the sky once again. "Go where? To Bethlehem? It's in another galaxy!" she heard him mutter.
She gently took his hand and tugged it in the direction of the entrance, where she headed next. She felt him follow, though he let go of her hand.
They wandered through the labyrinth of columns for a few minutes before they reached the big glass double doors. Like all of Atlantis, as far as they could tell, the glass was stained with geometric patterns. This building, however, was unique in that the main entrance doors were glass.
Rodney touched the panel slightly reluctantly, and without as much as a sound, the doors opened, letting the two enter.
"Where are we going?" he asked Elizabeth.
"Library," she told him.
"Why to the library? You left the presents for everybody else under the tree and I get it hidden in some dark corner of the library, the place where a lot of people never go anyway?"
Elizabeth smiled a bit. She felt lucky that she was walking in front of him, facing forward. If he'd seen her smile he'd certainly misunderstand it. But she understood how he would have misunderstood the fact that his present was waiting for him in a library. His little rant made perfect sense if you didn't know what the present was, but Elizabeth did. "Wait, you'll see," she told him with a slightly sorrowful tone in her voice. Usually Rodney'd immediately pick up on it, but now, fortunately for Elizabeth, with his being upset, he didn't notice it. She didn't want him to be disappointed until absolutely necessary, and if it bought him a few seconds, it was okay.
ooo
They came to the library in a few minutes. As soon as the quadruple doors opened Rodney stopped in his tracks. His eyes immediately caught the right spot, which wasn't a corner of the library, but the very center, where the many columns that supported the gigantic hall thinned out a bit.
His mouth hung open in awe. Elizabeth wasn't sure whether that reaction meant good or bad. Just in case she laid her hand on his back and hoped he wouldn't reject it.
Maybe he didn't even feel her hand. About half a minute later he recovered slightly and turned to look at Elizabeth, still in awe. He vaguely pointed his finger at the thing and said very quietly: "It's a grand piano."
"Yes, it is," Elizabeth smiled at his expression.
"Do you realize this is a grand piano?"
Elizabeth nodded. Rodney bounded up to the thing.
"I'm sorry I didn't wrap it, " she apologized. "As you can see, it would take too…" she trailed off when she saw he wasn't paying attention to her. She didn't say anything else, just watched Rodney delight in her gift.
He held it as if it was going to run away any minute. "This is amazing."
She was so glad that he seemed satisfied with it. "How did you…"
"It's a secret!" she told him mischievously, but he wasn't really listening to her.
He uncovered the keyboard. They keys were shining like nothing on Atlantis, except for some of its inhabitants' eyes. He was just about to strike a key, but he quickly retracted his hand. The object was too holy to touch.
Elizabeth saw where his eyes wondered next – the music stand – and she said, perhaps more for her own benefit than his, there was a good chance he wasn't hearing anything but the silence of the piano: "We got some music too; it's on that shelf." She pointed at it.
He now ran to the side of the instrument, and opened it. He turned to her and happily warbled: "Do you see this? It's amazing!"
Elizabeth came a bit closer and peered at the insides. The piano's innards looked completely ordinary, but she knew that what Rodney saw wasn't just that.
From inspecting one of the legs the ecstatic man returned his attention to the insides. He slid his hand up the prop stick. On impulse he leaned over the instrument, almost leaped into it, in fact. Elizabeth could very clearly see the sole of his shoe while he held his leg in the air. Rodney almost giggled and gently plucked a string. He turned to Elizabeth with the biggest smile she ever saw on him. "Can you hear it?" Of course she did. "It sounds beautiful."
He jumped back to the floor and walked around it, tapping the rim as he went. Elizabeth knew he was admiring the wood from which the piano was made.
He stopped a couple more times and plucked more strings. Elizabeth very guiltily enjoyed the sounds, knowing they were just the sounds a piano was supposed to make, but with Rodney being the one coaxing them out of the instrument made it somehow different, better.
He went back to stand in front of it. She'd never seen him admire something so much. He first checked with Elizabeth, and calmed, sat on the stool. It also was covered with velvet.
She waited for him to try it out, but when he didn't move she went to stand next to him. She gave him a look that told him she was expecting him to start playing, but he turned to her with a somewhat depressed expression.
"I…" he started, but didn't say anything else.
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked.
"I don't think I can play."
"Why?"
"I'm just not good at this… and that wound on my arm was pretty deep, and…"
Excuses!
"Rodney," Elizabeth said with a calming voice, "I did speak to Carson about it. He said the wound wasn't that bad and that they made sure you didn't have any permanent damage." She kept looking at his pained expression. It was what she was afraid of, that her gift hurt him more than cheered him up. She sat next to him. "What is it, really?"
"Elizabeth, don't get me wrong, I love it. It's probably the most beautiful gift I ever received, but I can't play it. I'm just not good at it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I've been told repeatedly that I didn't have any feeling for the music. I just can't play it."
"Is that the thing with your teacher you told me about?"
He didn't have to say anything; his eyes answered that for him well enough.
"And you never said anybody else told you that, just your teacher, and your parents; because they heard it from your teacher?"
He nodded.
"Is that the teacher who was pissed off because he never managed to get on your town's jazz band and spent his entire career doing nothing but teaching before teaching you?"
He nodded very slightly.
"Need I say more?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know. I've never heard you play; but I'm sure you're really good," she touched his fingers that he held on the keyboard. "That's one of the reasons why I wished I could get a concert now. Just for me. That's what I hoped to get as a present this year."
His gaze went from her hand on his to her face. There was nothing pretentious there.
"Give me my present, please," she whispered. "Play."
He looked at her again and ran his hands over the keyboard. Elizabeth took the felt keyboard cover and went to get another chair. She sat off the side, to see Rodney well, and waited.
After a few moments he began playing tentatively. The first tones were weak, quiet, unsure, up to the point where Elizabeth couldn't hear them, and couldn't recognize the music, but soon the sounds gained more confidence and volume to what she came to recognize as the sounds of a piano. With surprise she realized that what was being played was not a piano piece at all. She'd heard it in concerts often enough, though not enough for her. She loved that music, more than any other. She missed it in her family's music evenings, but she knew there was no way to really present it there, even with all the string instruments. The piece was absolutely nothing without the organ, but Rodney somehow managed to play it the way it sounded almost intact. It didn't sound exactly like the original version of Albinoni's Adagio she'd come to love when she was a little girl, but it was the same in a way. This was even better than she'd imagined.
For months she wished she could revisit the many concerts and musical evenings her parents introduced her to, but there was no way. The only way to get music on Atlantis was through CDs and the Athosian folk instruments the people had brought with it. None of that was a symphony orchestra or any other combination of the classical instruments she longed for. And more and more she longed to revisit her most beautiful Christmas before she came to Atlantis, when the entire holiday season her parents' house was full of musicians, all their friends, all making the very young Elizabeth know music, and teaching her how nice musicians were. All the music then opened up her house, for her to see it in a completely new light with the sounds coupled with sights, and probably teaching her how to take in the many layers of the world around her, though what she probably missed most was the wonder of the child she then felt as she listened to all those instruments and saw them being played. She must've been about four years old, and it had never slipped from her memory.
On Christmas Eve she got to stay up a little later and her teenage cousin, whom she loved dearly, had a special concert for her to keep her occupied while the adults wrapped and set the presents. She felt like a princess then; she'd've stayed in that room watching and listening to her cousin play his oboe until she fell asleep even if it hadn't been needed as a distraction.
She knew that nobody on Atlantis played oboe, so she couldn't really have that again, but would it matter? It would not be that personal if just somebody she knew briefly from work played some oboe music, and an amateur at that, not a person she knew well and adored more than anything. Knowing Rodney once played piano she hoped she'd ever hear it for herself, though piano and oboe could in no way be confused, but here, she'd settle for second best. Deep down, though, she knew that she just wanted to hear Rodney play, to see him stop hiding his attachment to music; she just wanted this intimate moment. The moment she really got was more beautiful and more intimate than she'd expected, but then she'd never adored more and felt more attached to anybody than Rodney McKay, and hearing him playing her favorite piece, so well, on a piano, was beyond her most fantastic dreams. Now she really didn't care if she got any other presents or not anymore. She almost got her childhood moments back, and with that something more as well, something to look for in the future, not only in the past.
Rodney ended the piece. She just opened her mouth to tell him it was beautiful when he turned to her and said: "Sorry. I know it's not the best, but I've always loved this, so…"
"It's okay, Rodney," she waved her hand at him. "I know it. You played it wonderfully." She wondered if she could really hide the wonder in her voice. With every minute since the end of the piece she found herself adoring Rodney's playing even more.
"I did?" he asked with that same wonder she felt.
"Yes." She laughed a bit. "If I didn't know it, I'd never figure out it wasn't written for the piano."
He just stared at her open-mouthed.
"I have no idea how you could think you're not good at this," her face softened even further. "Don't listen to other people, Rodney. Just play to your heart's content."
He smiled an even bigger smile and turned back to the keyboard, while Elizabeth smoothed the felt cover again, preparing for the next beautiful sound. She only then remembered that he didn't have any music and that the Adagio was played from his memory. She wondered how that was possible as she walked over to one of the shelves.
Just before she reached the shelf, she heard more music, this one very simple, basically nothing but a repetition of a single short motive over different octaves.
"That's beautiful," she called to him. " I never heard it before. What is it?"
"Nothing," he told her, still playing the motive with his eyes firmly on the keyboard. "I'm just making it up."
Elizabeth had nothing to say. She hoped she might be able to remember it to write it down later, but the fact alone that Rodney thought of it amazed her. Not only did she now learn that he was an excellent pianist, even when rusty, he might very well have been a talented composer too. As she came back to the piano and put the music into his hands, she wondered if he'd ever tried writing music when he was younger, before he gave up on it.
"Thanks," Rodney told her.
"So, you decided to play anyway," she said.
"Yeah. After all, you're the only one who'll hear it."
She felt sorry for the lack of confidence in his voice and in what he told her, but she'd leave it for another time, now she just wanted to listen and so she sat down on her chair while Rodney started playing the next piece.
And thus Rodney McKay continued to play his piano and Elizabeth Weir continued to listen to the music and enjoy the concert that was just for her. They had both planned to go to the party, and would later. Maybe. Neither wanted this to end. They could easily do it all night.