Characters: Elizabeth Weir
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: She didn't get it before...she does now.

"Monday Morning Quarterbacking"
by M.
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In the moment she first saw John Sheppard's body lying on the floor of the puddle jumper, Dr. Beckett determinedly trying to revive him, she got it. She really got it. She finally understood what she'd only played at since Vice President Kinsey had dumped her in that room with all the SGC's files.

A bitter laugh threatened to bubble to the surface and she lowered her head, forcing it down deep within her. She'd been so sanctimonious. So sure, though she'd have never admitted it, that she would have done a better job of running the SGC than General West or Hammond ever did in the early days. Things would have been different under her leadership, better, she'd been so sure. She'd carried that belief with her to Antarctica, she'd carried it with her to Atlantis, the surety driving her forward. Only too recently she'd stood in her office, looked Sheppard in the eye, and pronounced she wasn't about to make the mistakes 'they' had made.

Sheppard hadn't said it. But she could guess what he would've called it. Could guess what O'Neill or Hammond or even West himself would call it. She didn't know about Hammond or West's interests but knowing Sheppard and O'Neill both had a love of football, she knew full well the words "Monday morning quarter backing," would be uttered sooner or later.

They wouldn't be wrong. That was precisely what she'd done...well, she wasn't doing it anymore. She was in the game now, wasn't she? Things, things looked a whole lot different down on the field than in the stands. Lives hung on her every decision...the lives of her people, the Ethosians, every single innocent person in the Pegasus Galaxy...Their survival depended on what choices she made and she didn't have the luxury of considering how it would look in ten years....

Just like the men she'd been so convinced she knew better than...

Watching Beckett working on Sheppard, she silently resolved...when she got back to Earth.

She was going to buy Hammond a drink...

And talk football.

Finis