CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Elizabeth sat down on the couch she couldn't help but silently go over everything that had changed in the room in the eleven months she had been gone.
The walls were a dull beige, not the pale 'Lovebird's Feather' blue that she had spent an entire Saturday carefully applying to the walls of the room, and the new colour made Elizabeth think of hospital waiting rooms. The couch wasn't her couch, wasn't the one that she had had shipped from DC, wasn't the one she had spent two weeks trying to decide on when she was setting up her place in DC nearly three years earlier. The television that she had simply had sitting on a small storage unit beside the phone was now sitting inside a truly hideous entertainment unit that took up nearly half of the room—which was why she had never even considered an entertainment centre for the rather small living room area. The phone wasn't the same one that she remembered, but she didn't think that was strange since the phone that she had had hadn't worked all that well and she had planned on replacing it herself before she was reassigned to Antarctica. The pictures that she had had around the room were no longer there, most replaced with pictures of Simon's family and paintings of dull geometric-shapes in primary colours that she had always found incredibly boring and, quite honestly, a waste of money and wall space. The bookcase, that covered the entire back wall of the room, was no longer holding her beloved books, her collection of first editions that her father had collected for her over the years, her favourite novels by Austen, Chekhov, Milton, Hardy, Kafka, Twain, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Gogels and Welty were missing from their places of honour, and the three different translations of the collected works of the mysterious Homer were also absent; instead the shelves were lined with thin paperbacks with virgin, unbroken spines and a few hardcovers that Elizabeth vaguely recognized from before she left, as well as the all-too-familiar medical texts and journals that Simon always seemed to be collecting but that she never, in all honesty, saw him actually read.
Elizabeth hoped that her belongings were simply boxed up and put away somewhere. That Simon had decided, after she left that first video to him, that he would try to make the house more his own, but that he would keep her belongings because she would come back to him.
Desperately trying to convince herself that she cared more for the man sitting across from her in a chair that wasn't hers than she did her belongings—though she couldn't help herself from wondering, and hoping, that he had thought to replace the crystal candlesticks her grandmother had left her in her will in their case before packing them away—Elizabeth forced herself to begin the conversation that she knew needed to happen no matter how badly she wanted to just avoid it. Sedge, who she had never encouraged to get up on the furniture, jumped up on the couch beside Elizabeth. Normally Elizabeth would have scooted the large white dog down off the couch, but at that moment the warm weight of Sedge's head resting on her thigh and her body pressed up against the side of her leg was a great comfort. And comfort, it seemed, was something in short supply at the moment, and she was willing to grab onto any shred of it whenever she could.
"So… how have you been?" Elizabeth asked, immediately cringing as the words came out of her mouth. "Wow, that was even more pathetic an opening line than it was in my head," she apologized.
"Its okay, Elizabeth. This is supposed to be awkward."
Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. "You have experience with this? Had a lot of women leave you for another galaxy?" she asked. Simon didn't respond. "Lame. Again. And glib. Again, sorry."
"I've been good," Simon said, brushing aside her apology. "Busy," he added after a few seconds of tense silence.
"Good. Busy is good. And good is… good. Too," Elizabeth replied, her tone strained.
"Yeah. Good," Simon agreed dully.
There were a million reasons that John was oh-so-thankful for Elizabeth and her tireless belief in him, and why he was relieved beyond words that General O'Neill hadn't even blinked when John had told him that whether he went on the mission or not was very much about him despite the fact that there was something bigger and so completely amorphous that it was hard to even begin to comprehend out there.
After Elizabeth had asked him to join the expedition and General O'Neill had badgered him the entire flight back to McMurdo (interspersing the slightly-fatherly nagging with stories that seemed so fantastical and insane to John at the time) and John had agreed—though reluctantly, and mostly because agreeing meant a free trip back to the States and away from the constant snow and ice of the last continent he had to set foot on—there had been a huge weight released from his shoulders.
Of course, that old weight was immediately replaced with an even heavier load, the fate of not only the expedition but also the Pegasus Galaxy and the Milky Way as well, was dropped on him by two acts: the mercy killing of Colonel Marshall Sumner and the skewering of the Wraith Queen who was in charge of keeping all the other Wraith tucked in bed or whatever for the next fifty years or so. Both deaths were at his hand, and, while rationally he knew that the Wraith were set to wake up fairly soon anyway and his speeding up the process might not have actually meant anything in the long run because he knew he couldn't be the only one stupid and crazy enough in the galaxy to try to get his people back, there was a part of him, a very small part that Elizabeth and Teyla and Kate Heightmeyer the base therapist all tried very hard to stamp down, that believed that if he hadn't killed Sumner and the Wraith Queen—or maybe just the Queen, since Sumner had been shooting John pleading 'kill me' looks that John had tried to ignore until he realized just how much pain the Colonel was in—all the people that had been culled since then would still be alive. Elizabeth said he was crazy whenever he brought it up. Teyla would serenely utter some Athosian maxim about guilt being the root of something or other. And Kate would tell him that they needed 'to work on the god complex he was beginning to develop and could he come in three times a week for hour-long sessions?' to which he would always reply with a resounding 'no'.
Going to Atlantis was something John couldn't imagine not doing now that he'd spent nearly a year in the mythic city. Being back on Earth had been something that everyone seemed to be striving for during that nearly-a-year; almost from the moment they arrived in Pegasus it seemed like half the time they were defending themselves and the other half they were trying to get back to Earth. But, like many things, once they actually got what they wanted the reality was a massive let-down.
Apart from the debriefings and the belittling by superior officers and not seeing Elizabeth whenever he wanted to there was one thing about Earth that was driving John completely nuts.
People kept calling him 'Shep'.
It was just another thing that John missed about Atlantis—the list was reaching epic proportions, the likes of which he didn't have anything to liken to except for possibly the Christmas list his sister Angela had had the year John was five and Angela had wanted everything from hair clip things to a pony. On Atlantis he never had to respond to names other than 'John', 'Major', 'Sheppard', or 'sir', or, occasionally, some combination of the four. On Earth, though, it seemed that he had a different moniker for every person he encountered. The ever-generic 'you there' was popular, as was 'airman' and 'hey you with the hair'. He had even met up with an old buddy stationed at Area 51 who enjoyed calling him 'moron' among other more colourful names whenever they saw each other.
All that he could deal with though. He knew that being a visitor on a base generally meant that you were unwanted in one way or another, and as for his old buddy… well, John had some names for him, too, and none of them were complimentary.
What John hated most, though, was being called 'Shep'.
Like all pilots he had a call sign. Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, whatever branch of service all pilots had call signs. It was something that happened when you get certified on your first bird, oftentimes even before that. Just like the shiny gold wings that he, thankfully, didn't have to wear every day (except that while he was at Nellis he had to wear them unless he was in a flight suit, and then there was a pair of wings sewn onto the fabric of the flight suit) having a call sign was a rite of passage for any flyer. John honestly couldn't remember what unimaginative soul had saddled him with 'Shep' but, to his extreme dismay, the call sign as stuck after flight training, through four war-zone deployments, a near Court Marshall, and, finally, to his exile at McMurdo.
No one on Atlantis called him 'Shep'.
John had arrived in Nevada twelve hours earlier, had been assigned quarters in the BOQ where he had dropped his small bag of clothes and his laptop, as well as the crate and a half of files on potential military personnel for the next wave of the Atlantis expedition, and then he had been given a thick package of information on the X-302's that he needed to read before he could actually see the inside of one. He'd read everything in the package twice, most of it just reiterating what Sam had told him before he left Colorado, then he had been introduced to a scientist who was basically a plane captain with a PhD who had given him a perfunctory tour of one of the 303's before being called away with some emergency in one of the labs.
Since he couldn't do any actual training until the next day—though he had tried, casually, to get started that night; the person he'd talked to had thought he was an eager Flyboy looking for a new fast ride while, really, as much as he was that eager Flyboy looking for a new fast ride, the reason he wanted to get started was that he wanted to get his training over with as soon as he could so that he could get back to Colorado Springs. If anyone were to ask him, though he couldn't think of anyone who would, he wanted to get back so that he could start interviewing people for positions in the military section of the City. The truth, however, was that he missed Elizabeth more than he should have considering how many times a day they talked on the phone. Still, he was used to seeing her at least a handful of times a day, talking to her whenever he wanted to, and hanging out with her when he got bored which happened a lot if he was in the City with nothing to do for too long. And being back on Earth was worse because all the places he'd been—Colorado Springs, Nellis Air Force Base—he had been before, so after he'd explored the SGC and made sure to purchase all the things he'd been asked by friends back in the City to bring from Earth, he'd been bored in Colorado Springs, and he had barely been at Area 51 for a day and already he was bored out of his skull. Of course, it didn't help matters that he wasn't allowed to go exploring beyond the hanger, the R-and-D lab for the 302's, and the general base area outside the actual structure of Area 51, and the fact that the only person stationed at Groom Lake that he knew was someone he didn't particularly like certainly didn't help.
All those things, plus the fact that he wasn't feeling very social , were why, after finding out that he couldn't start training until the morning, John had gone back to his quarters at the BOQ and started to go through personnel files. He was pretty certain that he wasn't going to be the military leader of the expedition for much longer, and, while any decision on personnel he made while he was could easily be overturned by the new commander, having nothing to show for all the time he'd been on Earth was no way to keep his place on AR-1 at the very least.
Flopping down in a chair at the desk John opened the first file.
Young Marine, Lieutenant Laura Cadman. High temperature and energetic materials expert. Expert marksman. Two years off-world experience with SG-19. He wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten into the Marines with her diminutive height—she measured out at five feet two inches—but there was no indication in her file that she had ever been unable to do something because she was of a smaller stature. Her proving day—the day that SG team trainees were put into a real-world situation where they had to prove that they could do what needed to be done while only trusting each other—had been run by SG-1 three years earlier and then-Colonel O'Neill had nothing but good things to say about her performance. John read more of the Lieutenant's background and didn't see anything that would indicate a reason for him not to pick her.
Closing her file he put it in a pile that he decided would be for those he wanted to interview once he returned to the SGC. Only so much about a person could be learned from their service record, after all.
With a sigh, John reached for the next file, hoping everyone who had applied for positions on the trip back to Atlantis were as qualified as Lieutenant Cadman... and doubting that that was the case.
Simon had gone to make coffee, something he was horrible at—in Elizabeth's opinion, anyway—and Elizabeth was taking a call from the SGC. Even though Simon had clearance it only extended so far, and what she was hearing at that moment was nowhere near the level Simon's clearance reached, so she was whispering and praying that the bug jammers that had been installed in the house when she moved in—standard issue precautionary measure, she had been assured, though the thought made her nervous in the beginning—were still active and working.
"I thought they weren't supposed to di—call until tomorrow afternoon," Elizabeth hissed barely catching herself before saying something that, while normal enough to pass basic scrutiny, would raise alarms if anyone was really trying to parse what she was saying.
The fact that she was suddenly extremely paranoid was not lost on Elizabeth, but she didn't know why she was suddenly feeling that way.
"I don't know what to say to you, Doctor Weir. They… called. I'll have Colonel Carter explain why when she gets a chance. Bottom line, though, is that they're going to call back in one hour. I suggest you get back here in the next… forty-two minutes," General Landry replied, "if you want to talk to anyone in back there before they check in again next week."
There were, as General Landry well knew, a hundred things that Elizabeth needed to talk to Teyla and Zelenka and a few others about, and she knew that if she waited until the next week things would get forgotten in the midst of everything else she had to deal with.
"I'll be there," Elizabeth said firmly, though she was already mentally calculating how far above the speed limit she could control the massive SUV the SGC had given her to drive if she felt the need to leave the base.
Simon reappeared in the den just as Elizabeth was thanking General Landry for his call and promising him that she'd see him soon.
"You have to leave," Simon said, no hint of a question in his tone. They'd been together for five years before she'd gone to Atlantis; he knew that when she got a phone call and it ended with her forehead scrunching up the way it did when she was calculating times and distances in her head it meant that she had to leave, right away. It was the reason why the front closet used to contain suitcases for every conceivable climate, as well as a few gowns in the event of a formalwear event, all coded and labelled. Oftentimes the only way Simon knew what part of the world Elizabeth was being called away to was by which set of luggage she had taken with her. Red tags for the Middle-East. Green tags for Asia. Yellow tags for Russia. White tags for anything that took her to Geneva. Black tags for anything that took her to the UN building in New York. And, of course, the purple tags that he didn't remember her ever using until after he had moved all the way to Colorado Springs and gotten settled only to have to say goodbye to Elizabeth once again, this time with her taking the purple tagged bags, the ones that were for icy climate negotiations.
"Just for a few hours. But… I'd really like to talk. Actually talk. Can we do that?" Elizabeth asked hopefully. "Maybe over dinner?"
"Pick something up on your way back here. I don't feel like cooking tonight," Simon said. "And I have a feeling that this isn't going to be a conversation that we can have in a crowded restaurant."
"No, it's not," Elizabeth admitted. "Okay, good. I'll call you when I'm on my way back, find out what kind of food you want. After eating military rations and alien cuisine for ten months… well, my taste buds need to readjust to food from this planet that wasn't packaged during the Cold War," she said as she clutched the fabric of her coat in one hand and fingered the keys to the monstrous SUV in the other. "Okay. Bye," she said before hurrying toward the door, half thankful for the escape General Landry had given her and half hating that what little momentum she may have gained in having the conversation she was dreading was lost.
Not the world's best chapter, but I think I'm dreading writing the Simon/Elizabeth convorsation as much as Elizabeth is dreading having it. READER POLL: Do you guys want me to go right into it, or would you rather I wrote some contact with Atlantis stuff before Elizabeth and the ass finally talk?
Since my beta asked me about these two military-isms I figured I'd put them down here just in case anyone else was wondering what they meant.
Plane Captain: the (enlisted) man/woman who acts as a mechanic for a plane. On carriers (Navy) each PC has his/her own plane that they are responsible for. On bases it's usually the same, though I took some artistic license with the PC being a civillian PhD since, on the show, the X-302's were built/developed by civillian scientists with military assistance.
BOQ: I may have explained this one before, but I'll do it again because my beta asked me what it meant when she was going over this chapter. BOQ is the short version of Bachelor Officer's Quarters. BEQ or BEOQ is Bachelor Enlisted (Officer's) Quarters. Since John is a commissioned officer he would stay in the BOQ.