AN Erm… yes, sorry I've been away for so long but I've had exams and then everything's just happened at once.

Rating – PG?

Disclaimer – Well knock me down with a feather, guess I don't own Stargate Atlantis, pity that, I was making plans too

Summary – Elizabeth realises that victory comes at a cost. Always.

The Price of Victory

More die everyday, you knew it was going to happen, that's what happens in wars, everybody knows this.

Nothing though could have prepared you for this.

More reports come in via email, someone has just printed them off and, despite the fact that you know everyone in Atlantis the name escapes you. There are about a hundred of them, name, rank and serial number, that's all they are, that's all you see.

Some of them you should know, some of them you should be screaming and cursing about, not because they've been lost in a meaningless battle but because you cared about them, they were companions, friends, brothers in arms, all willing to fight the good fight and to give everything they had fighting where their government told them.

About a hundred people whose only remembrance will be a picture in the paper and a lasting record as a government statistic, a name on a war memorial somewhere where children in the future will gawk at and try to find a soldier with the same last name as themselves, not understanding and never dreaming that they actually might.

The world won't even know what they died for, in a world so cold and so far away.

You'll scream eventually, go and beat the hell out of something, a punching bag more than likely.

A hundred shrinks, COs, friends and family members will tell you, have told you that it's not your fault and that it's ok to grieve. That the day you stop is the day you become one of Them. You can hear the capitalisation.

You can't find it in your heart though to explain that it isn't through grief that you're screaming, it's because you can't remember what it feels like to feel. To feel anger, resentment but most of all that they died for something worthwhile.

A hundred names all blur together relentlessly until you can't separate your closest friend from someone you've never met. The survivors from the dead. The enemy from your own people.

You weren't trained for this, should never have had to deal with this and you're cracking under the strain.

How will you explain that you've become a Them? How do you explain you can't care anymore, not for all of them, there's too many and if you did you'd end up screaming and trying to claw your eyes out in a padded room somewhere?

How will you explain that in order to care you need to be alive, and that it's too late, you're already dead inside?

And that's just it in the end, for fear of dragging them down with you, because they won't understand or just because you can't bring yourself to face it.

You won't.

You won't tell anyone.

You can't tell anyone.

Ever.

You'll bite your lip, close your mind, harden your heart and continue.

After all, you have a war to fight.

End

AN Well, not too sure about the end but on the whole I quite like the result, what do you think?