Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

Last time: Radek's sick (since around chapter 30). Anna's not. Time to explore.


Chapter 33. To Home.

"If you're looking for Doctor Weir, she's offworld."

Anna stood at the entrance to the control room, unsure what to do with the rest of her day now. She looked down at the tablet in her hands and the paper she'd finished. She had high hopes the English was readable. Preferably above the level of a second-grader.

We'll work on that, Elizabeth had said.

"Do you know when she'll be back?" she asked. She walked over to Chuck's console.

Chuck shrugged. "Check in is in two hours, but you never can tell with these trade negotiations."

Anna nodded knowingly, even though she didn't really know what it was like with trade negotiations. Maybe trading took a bit longer? "So… you mean in a few days?"

"Depends." Chuck smiled, seizing his nearby cup of coffee and taking a gulp. "Could be back in thirty minutes with arrows flying in on their heels."

Anna frowned.

"Joking, Anna. Joking." He looked at her tablet and then at her. "It's not something I could help you with, is it?"

Anna shook her head. On the other hand, he did speak English. "It's a paper that was due today. It's alright."

It wasn't that unusual that offworld missions put back her assignments a few days. For being in charge of Atlantis, Elizabeth was sometimes not on Atlantis, even in the last three weeks. She was a foreign dignitary to other worlds, and the few peoples they'd made friends with liked to know exactly who they were dealing with. Many times they came to Atlantis, but Elizabeth visited them as often as she could.

"Oh. Well, I probably wouldn't be able to help with that," Chuck said.

Anna shook her head. Not that she meant to agree so readily. But this also meant she had nothing to do. Chuck, apparently, didn't either. It was getting later and Atlantis was running on its overnight skeleton crew. Anna didn't know if Chuck was here because he was supposed to be or because he wanted to see Doctor Weir safely back.

"What do you do when you're waiting for the teams to come back in the middle of the night?" Anna asked.

Chuck smiled sheepishly and reached under his console. He pulled out a notebook and flipped it open to the first page. It was a pencil drawing of the 'gate, and what looked like Sheppard's team. It was just shadows in the shape of humans, but Anna was pretty certain. Not amazing, but not by any means awful, either.

He probably had lots of time to practice.

"Nice," Anna said. "Is that Colonel Sheppard?" She pointed to the distinct silhouette.

Chuck smiled at her. "Yeah." He looked back at the picture. "You could tell?"

Anna shrugged. "It just looks like him." She looked around at the only other person in the control room. Anna didn't know what she was working on.

"You have any hobbies?" Chuck asked.

"I play violin…" Anna said. "I haven't played recently." Time certainly got away on Atlantis.

"Do you play chess?"

Anna wondered where that came from. "I used to. Why? Do you?" She joined the chess club at school, but only because a few classmates begged her. It would have been too small without her.

"Not usually," Chuck answered. "I was just wondering because your dad plays. Pretty well from what I understand."

"Yes, he does." He played in chess tournaments a long time ago, anyway. Taught her how to play when she was too small to understand how to think more than one step ahead. She didn't suppose he gave up playing chess just because he'd given up teaching her chess.

"Katie said the acoustics in the 'gate room down there are fantastic. She plays the flute, so I guess she might know a thing or two about it." Chuck grinned, like maybe this was just the sort of distraction he was looking for. "You should give it a shot."

Anna looked down toward the 'gate room. She smiled at Chuck. "May I?"

"Yeah, go get it."

Anna put the tablet down on Chuck's console and ran to the nearest transporter. In a flash of light, she found herself in the south-east pier, dashing toward her door. A light was on when she opened it.

"You're up." Anna scolded herself for her statement of the obvious. But he looked a little better than he did this morning. It wasn't much of an improvement, but still.

"Sort of." His voice was quiet and hoarse. He glanced toward her from his seat on the sofa. A heavy quilt wrapped around him like a cocoon, with two holes for his hands to hold his tablet. Probably working. Did he do anything else? "What are you in such a hurry for?"

"Nothing." Anna walked in, trying to catch her breath. "I was coming to get my violin. I wanted to try the acoustics in the 'gate room."

"Oh." He watched her while she crossed the room and stood in front of her door.

Anna paused and glanced around. "Um… can I get you anything?" He shook his head. "Jennifer said you needed to drink a lot. Do you want tea? Or I can get you crackers or something from the mess hall when I come back."

He looked around. "I suppose." He nodded.

She went into her room. Her violin sat on its stand near the window, just where she'd left it since she played for the Athosians.

Radek was still watching her when she came back out into the main room, but this time he was smiling.

"Have fun," he said.

She nodded, put on a smile for him. "I will, thank you."

Chuck was drawing when she got back to the control room. She stood behind him for a few moments, watching. The Stargate, again. He was going to get very good at drawing it if that was all he did. He also had Colonel Sheppard's shadow pretty well down.

"Are you sure it's okay?" She tapped her bow on her thigh anxiously.

"Yeah, yeah." Chuck waved that away. "I don't think anything dangerous will be happening. And you'll have warning before the 'gate opens, just… don't stand in the circle." He smiled a little.

Anna nodded and cantered down the stairs to the Stargate and halted. It seemed so much larger down here than it did from up there. The room felt hollow, her footsteps echoing in the expanse and off the blank windows. The Stargate loomed above her like a creature of infinite past, just waiting. Waiting for what, she had no idea. It had seen so much… what could it see now that would be new?

She'd only been down here once, the time she'd been through the Stargate… she'd been too excited to look at it. Really look at it.

She took in a deep breath and walked to the edge of the circle on the floor. The sound of her footsteps echoed in the expansive 'gateroom. She felt so small in the shadow of the monolithic ring. It wasn't just her size. She felt trivial and insignificant, casting her tiny shadow inside its own on the red floor. A beautiful, shimmering silvery blue, with shining specks like stars in the ring.

Anna raised her violin, unsure why she was playing for the Stargate. She didn't know why, but it almost seemed wrong to play facing anything but the 'gate.

"This is from a song written about my home," she whispered. Now she wasn't sure why she was addressing the Stargate. But, for the moment, it seemed to be the only thing listening to her, her only audience. "It is my favorite melody." She pressed her lips together and set her bow to the violin. She closed her eyes.

Má vlast. My Homeland.

She swayed to the tune. Sometimes she thought it sounded victorious, other times nostalgic, or haunting. She tried to imagine the river the composer saw when he wrote the piece, with ruined castles and moonlight on the wild waters. It was never what she saw when she had opportunity to see the river that ran through Prague.

Anna stopped. Froze really. Carefully, she lifted her bow, lowered her violin. She wasn't even on the same planet as that river anymore, was she?

She looked up at the Stargate. "Maybe something else. Something more appropriate."

She enjoyed a few melody lines from Dvořák's "New World Symphony," so she started playing one and segued right into another with no regards to the order or transitions of the piece itself. She doubted that Chuck and the other technician could tell the difference.

She often wondered what Dvořák heard when he listened to his symphony. This was written in the USA, about the USA. To her ears, it sounded sad. Maybe he was sad. After all, didn't he want Americans to find their own music? He made music for his own country the same way, from old folk dances. He looked into history and found the future of music. But this was generally considered his greatest piece… and it was for a new place. About a place that wasn't home. A place he ultimately left because nothing really compared to home.

Maybe that was why it seemed sad.

"That first one was nice," Chuck said from the balcony above. "What was it?"

"It's a theme from 'Die Moldau,'" she said.

When Chuck nodded, it was obvious he had no idea what she was talking about. "Bach?" he guessed, but he was clearly joking.

She laughed. "No. Bedřich Smetana. A Czech composer."

Chuck looked impressed at that. Anna wasn't sure why. "And the second one?"

"Antonín Dvořák. Another Czech composer."

"I guess I didn't know there were so many Czech composers."

Anna smiled, even though she'd only played music by two. "All the greatest ones are."

She didn't know if she believed that.

She went back to playing, going back and forth between the two pieces in the bits of melody she could remember. The music echoed and bounced off the walls, amplified by the ceiling's heavy vault. It sounded actually good in here. She was familiar with the sound of the violin, but it seemed to surround her in the 'gate room, flood the space from floor to ceiling. Her bow skipped a few times, and she nearly cringed at the timbre of a few notes sliding from the strings. The Stargate and Chuck didn't seem to mind. It wasn't a performance worthy of any recital at home… but she wasn't at home, was she?

She played until she ran out of notes.

She finally lowered her violin, took a deep breath, and looked up at the Stargate. This was her Homeland. This was her New World.


A/N: I was in a music appreciation class well over a year ago now while I was still just tinkering with this story... To help myself remember the ridiculously long list of composers, I wrote a couple of music pieces into stories I was writing at the time. Anna got to help me remember my Czech composers. Because, you know, super appropriate. Anyway, if you haven't listened to Má vlast, the symphonic poem by Bedřich Smetana, give it a listen. Especially "The Moldau" (the German name of the Vltava), the melody of which Anna plays for the Stargate. And then there's Dvořák... Aced that class, by the way. Thanks, Anna.
Anyway. Welcome to the New Year, and thanks for reading!


Next time: Remember me?