The second time she wakes, Elizabeth feels strange and afraid. Her body doesn't respond the way it should. Her balance is off, her muscles feel weak, her joints move stiffly and noisily. Her eyesight has begun to fade, her hair is almost completely white. It takes a few minutes before she feels steady enough to move out of the cabinet where she had now slept for over six thousand years. The cabinet seems more like a coffin now, but she ruthlessly thrusts that thought out of her mind when she feels herself start to shake.

It's fortunate that switching the ZPM's is easy, practically fool-proof, because she has trouble keeping her attention focused. But whether that's a symptom of her extreme age, the extended amount of time she's spent in suspended animation, or perhaps a side effect of the process itself, which was designed for Ancients, not humans, she has no way of knowing.

As soon as the switch is made, she creaks her way down dim hallways to the large window she looked out of before. It must be night, because no light illuminates the water or the city. She can barely make out the nearest tower, which seems to have a new feature: a large round object juts incongruously from the smooth sides of the structure. She peers at it for a while, briefly distracted by a school of tiny shrimp-like creatures swimming by. Finally, an amorphous shape protrudes from the round object where it's attached to the tower, and she realizes that it's a giant snail. It moves smoothly up the side of the tower, so slowly it doesn't seem to be moving at all. There isn't enough perspective to tell how big it is, but she thinks it might be larger than her.

Faintly nauseated, she totters away from the window and finds herself in the darkened Gate Room without being quite sure how she got there. At the sight of the Stargate, tears begin to stream down her face. She sinks down on the main staircase and tries to stifle the sobs that echo unpleasantly in the empty space.

She misses everything she left behind with an ache that's almost physical. She longs for Marshall Sumner's gruff forthrightness, the slightly condescending attitude that had made her almost wish for trouble just so she could show him that she could lead as effectively as he. She thinks of Peter Grodin, always professional, competent, efficient, and always the first person to lose patience with Rodney's arrogance.

She thinks about Rodney McKay himself, brilliant, insecure, witty; and to those who took the time to look past the surface, a sad and lonely man who'd never really gotten to be a child, who had developed the habit of pushing everyone away so they couldn't get close enough to hurt him.

She'd been surprised that everyone couldn't see this, but as a diplomat she'd spent a great deal of time learning to look past the surface of a person to the true feelings and motivations beneath. Figuring out Rodney hadn't even been a challenge. Gaining his trust and respect, and eventually his friendship and loyalty, had been harder, but the rewards were more than worth the effort.

She remembers meeting Sergeant Bates for the first time and how uneasy the coldness in his eyes made her feel. She understood Sumner's reasons for wanting him on the Expedition, even agreed with them, but that hadn't dispelled the impression that the man would bear watching. There was a brittleness in his suspicious gaze that had made her wonder how quickly he would crack under pressure.

Young Aiden Ford couldn't have been more different. Enthusiastic and cheerful, one day he would make an excellent leader. He'd been at that point where he knew enough to make him very good at his job, but not enough to realize just how much he didn't know. All he was lacking was experience.

John Sheppard…the man was a walking contradiction, and far too smart for his own good. Under different circumstances he'd have been one of Rodney's colleagues. A naturally athletic body, and almost obsessive passion for flying, and a military father had thrust him into a career that wasn't suited for a man with such a strong sense of humanity. He could have been the male version of Samantha Carter, but somewhere along the line he'd had to learn to hide his mind and heart. Elizabeth had been convinced that, apart from the usefulness of his gene, he would make a perfect leader for a first contact team.

They are all gone, and she misses them horribly. The thought that, if she is successful, they will live again, doesn't comfort her now.

She leaves the Gate Room, unable to stand looking at the Stargate and it's empty promise of escape. Without the gene she can't turn on the controls. Even if she could, if she gates to Earth it would use up far too much power and she would arrive a thousand years before the birth of Christ. She's too old now to survive on her own, and the information of planets here in the Pegasus Galaxy is now over six thousand years obsolete. Atlantis can provide her with shelter, but not sustenance. Her only recourse is to go back into suspended animation, back to sleep for another thirty-three hundred years, if she can last that long.

She wanders down the corridors, past dry, twisted sticks in pots full of dirt that has turned to dust, past closed doors and dim staircases shrouded in perpetual twilight. She passes another window, and even the nearest tower is nothing but a vaguely darker shadow in the Stygian gloom.

Her mind wanders with her feet, the oppressive silence of the city prompting her to speak her thoughts out loud. They come back to Simon, as always, and she knows exactly what he'd say if he were here. She can almost hear his voice…

'The City is of Night; perchance of Death,' he would recite, and she would be amazed all over again at his ability to remember perfectly every word of a poem, but forget the PIN number of his own ATM card.

'The City is of Night; perchance of Death,

But certainly of Night; for never there

Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath

After the dewy dawning's cold gray air;

The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity;

The sun has never visited that city,

For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.'

(James Thomson, 'The City of Dreadful Night', 1874)

With Simon's voice in her mind and the poem on her lips, she returns to the coffin-like little chamber and climbs into it with mingled reluctance and relief. She makes sure the little scrap of paper is firmly clutched in her hand before she wipes the last tears from her eyes and pleads with any deity that might exist, that might be listening, to make sure everything turns out right this time. She hopes that when she wakes – if she wakes – the city will rise to the surface of the ocean and return to the daylight.

TBC