CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Arriving at the house—she was having a hard time thinking of it as hers since she could was having a hard time thinking of Earth as her home—Elizabeth debated the to-knock-or-not-to-knock question as she parked her car. It was, technically, her house, but she had never really called it home, and for the past year her home had been the halls of Atlantis, so the house, though it belonged to her, was more Simon's than anyone else's. The answer to the internal knocking debate was handed to her when she realized that she had got too many bags of food to carry and open the door at the same time.

After awkwardly pushing the doorbell button with her elbow Elizabeth waited, her arms full of heavy brown paper bags filled with Greek, Cantonese, and Italian food. Simon hadn't answered when she called on her way back from the SGC so she had gone to three of their old stand-bys. Of course, they had never had all three types of food in one night, but Elizabeth was tired of military rations and a few of the not so delicious Athosian dishes that she was certain were made from sewer rat—though she had yet to encounter either sewers or rats anywhere in the vicinity of any Athosian—and so she had given in to gluttony and selected all of her past favourite dishes, as well as a few that she knew Simon favoured. Sam had recommended several places when Elizabeth has asked what restaurants were good, since she hadn't eaten out much when she did live in Colorado Springs, spending most of her time at the SGC and eating in the Commissary and making food for herself if she happened to be home and hungry.

Besides, Elizabeth rationalized, the more they ate the less they could say things that they would regret.

Simon answered the door and his eyes visibly widened at all the bags Elizabeth was carrying. "You planning on throwing an 'end of lockout' party?" he asked.

"What?" Elizabeth frowned.

"The NHL lockout. Which… you don't know about because you haven't been around for the past ten months," Simon said, slowly coming to the realization that Elizabeth had no idea what he was talking about.

"Simon, do you think that, even if I was in this galaxy, I would know about a… whatever it is you're talking about?" Elizabeth asked as she carried the bags, without any help from Simon, to the kitchen. "Or, for that matter, that I would care enough to throw a party when it ended?" Sports, after all, had never been Elizabeth's thing. She had played volleyball when she was in high school, and she usually watched a few random events during the Olympics if she had the time—and access to a television set—but she was definitely not what anyone would call a sports fan.

Simon nodded. "Fair point," he said as he went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water.

Elizabeth took all the containers out of the bags and laid them out on the kitchen table before going to a cupboard to grab some plates. The cupboard she opened, though, was filled with coffee mugs, which she had kept above the coffee maker on the other side of the room. Three cupboards later—and with no help from Simon who was picking at a flaky phyllo pastry—Elizabeth found the plates, though they weren't the ones she had had since she got her first place after college. Those plates had been heavy, white, with pale green vines of ivy decorating them. The plates that Simon had were large lightweight glass things with bunches of grapes bumping up all over the bottom. She decided not to even attempt to locate the cutlery drawer—it didn't seem like anything was the way it had been before she left—and, even though she wasn't wild about the idea, she just grabbed a plastic knife and fork that had been thrown into one of the bags and began filling her own plate, leaving Simon's on the counter for when he stopped simply picking at the dishes in their containers, a habit of his that she had always hated.

Once her plate was full of the dishes she decided she wanted, Elizabeth took at seat at the counter, the table too full of food for anyone to sit there. Simon took the hint and filled his own plate, sticking to a few standard dishes—chicken souvlaki, the rest of his filo pastry, some spaghetti, and a large helping of plain white rice that he quickly drowned in four packages of soy sauce—and took a seat two stools down from where Elizabeth sat.

The fact that he kept some distance between them was not lost on Elizabeth, but she didn't say anything about it. The situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.

Elizabeth fumbled around in her purse for the object that Sam had handed to her after the wormhole from Atlantis shut down. It was no bigger than a lipstick tube, but Elizabeth located it easily in her empty purse—she hadn't been back on Earth long enough to accumulate the kind of crap she used to carry around with her everywhere.

Still coming off of the high from mere glimpses of her beloved city Elizabeth sank into a chair, ostensibly to wait for Walter to finish uploading the messages—those sent by Radek and Teyla—off of the SGC's mainframe onto Elizabeth's laptop. In actuality she felt shaken, partially by the realization that she wouldn't even get the chance to speak to anyone on Atlantis again until the Daedalus deposited them all back in the city, and partially by the reaffirmation of her responsibility as leader of the City of the Ancients. Usually when everything became simply too heavy for her to deal with Elizabeth would seek out John who had a knack for lifting burdens from her shoulders. But she couldn't turn to John, both because he was in Nevada, hopefully actually training, and because she was beginning to grow concerned about just how often she found herself turning to someone else—to John, specifically—when she could very well handle the situation on her own. At the very least, she decided, she needed someone she could turn to who wasn't in mortal peril on a daily basis.

That was something she hadn't thought about, hadn't allowed herself to think about, until that moment when John stopped on the stairs up to the Jumper Bay, telling her that he had to, that she knew that he had to, while his eyes plead with her to not make his last act one of insubordination. Until that moment, or, rather, until the moment the Jumper blew up high above the City, Elizabeth had never actually thought that John Sheppard would die. He, she had long since decided, was like Jack O'Neill or Daniel Jackson that way. Too stubborn to die, and too smart to stay dead for long if sheer stubbornness wasn't enough. But when that Jumper blew up Elizabeth had thought, however briefly, that John Sheppard was dead.

To lose her tether to hope and reality and sanity like that was the scariest thing Elizabeth could think of, and the fact that she would be losing her best friend in the same moment shook her to the darkest depths of her soul.

"Doctor Weir, the files have been transferred," Walter said, holding out her laptop. Judging by the look on his face Elizabeth realized that he had tried to get her attention more than once.

Blushing slightly, Elizabeth took the laptop from the technician and uttered a soft and slightly apologetic 'thank you' as she tucked the computer into the leather case that worked so well with her suits but looked a little odd when paired with her current attire.

"Colonel Carter asked me to get you to stop by her lab before you leave," Walter continued, allowing her appreciation and apology roll off him. He was just doing his job, after all, and more often than not his actions, especially those above and beyond the call of duty—his ability to know what the General needed before he was asked for it, among other things, being a prime example—being ignored or simply accepted as the norm. He had been with the Stargate Program since just before General West left and General Hammond came in, and Walter knew that he was damned lucky to have the job he did for as long as he had. More than ten years, three promotions, five CO's, and more than twenty System Lords later he was still doing what he loved, where he wanted to be, doing his part in keeping the galaxy safe and free. Hell, for a while he had been doing his part not only for the Milky Way but for other galaxies as well. The two Asgard galaxies—because the Replicator plague had all-but destroyed their original home galaxy of Ida, the Asgard had moved to their current home galaxy which none of the Asgard had yet to mention the name of—and Pegasus were also, in a way, under his care. Earth was, after all, the only Stargate that they knew of in the Milky Way with the extra control crystal that allowed eight symbols to be dialled into the DHD, or, in their case, the computer that substituted for the DHD.

"Thank you, Walter," Elizabeth said, shouldering her bag and offering the technician a soft smile before heading out of the Control Room and quickly crossing through the hallway to the elevators, not feeling up to climbing the stairs from Level 28 where the Stargate resided to Level 19 where Sam's lab was located.

She found Sam's lab easily, despite having avoided the lab for the most part whenever she was at the SGC. Tapping on the doorframe with her knuckles Elizabeth lingered in the doorway until Sam waved her in, barely looking up from the cupboard she was emptying out onto the floor.

"Packing?" Elizabeth observed.

"Nine years of accumulated crap that's been stuffed into cupboards and drawers and forgotten about," Sam said, frowning at a thin binder that she had pulled from the back of the cupboard. "I stopped looking for this almost five years ago," she said, letting out a frustrated huff before struggling to her feet. "How are things in Atlantis?" she asked as she threw the binder onto the main table.

Elizabeth shrugged. "I've got some reports to read but everything seems to be… as good as can be expected after the kind of battle we had."

"That's good to hear," Sam said.

"Yeah," Elizabeth said, nodding. "Walter said you wanted to see me?"

"Right," Sam nodded. "Uh… here," she said, grabbing a small device off the centre table. "I… uh… I know it's not really my place, but I know you plan on going to see Doctor Wallace while you're on Earth. You two were in a relationship before you left, correct?"

"Yes," Elizabeth said, not wanting to delve into further details. "What's that for?" she asked, looking at the device Sam was holding out to her.

"We've had some problems with people bugging the homes of those with clearance lately," Sam explained.

Elizabeth took the device and frowned at it. "Bug killer?" she asked, eyebrow arched.

"Frequency jammer. Same idea, but this will cover more variables," Sam said. "Just flip the switch to turn it on. It only has forty hours battery life but if you flip it on and off when you talk about anything sensitive you should be fine."

"Just flip the switch?" Elizabeth confirmed.

"Just flip the switch," Sam nodded.

Nodding in understanding, Elizabeth looked from the device to Sam and back to the device in her hand. "Thank you."

Sam shrugged. "Just trying to protect our shared interests," she said honestly. "I may have been at this longer, but what we do is no less your life's work than it is mine." She offered up an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry if I haven't acted like I understand that."

They shared a look of understanding and then Elizabeth nodded and left the lab, the frequency jammer in hand.

"What's that?" Simon asked, frowning, a forkful of soy sauce drenched rice halfway between his plate and his mouth.

Elizabeth flipped the switch. "Frequency jammer," she said as she set the device down between them. The Atlantis expedition meant everything to Elizabeth and she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that the expedition remained as covert as it was. "It's… a long story. This is just… a precautionary measure," Elizabeth said, waving off Simon's questioning stare.

"What exactly have you gotten yourself into this time, Elizabeth?" Simon questioned, more in frustration than disbelief, much to Elizabeth's surprise. Simon had always been incredibly supportive of the lengths she sometimes had to go to for her career.

"It's just… very secret. And I would like to keep it that way," Elizabeth said, feeling more than a little defensive of her beloved expedition. It felt like that was all she had done since she arrived back on Earth—against politicians, against military types, against scientists who didn't think the things her people wanted were rational—and she really didn't want to have to defend the expedition to Simon. She was sure that there were a plethora of other things she would have to defend to Simon, but she refused to allow the expedition be one of those things.

Simon nodded slightly, hearing the momma-bear note in Elizabeth's voice, the one that meant she was ready and willing to fight to the death over what she was talking about. He was angry, and hurt, and guilty, and several other things, but he wasn't insane; going up against Elizabeth when she had her momma-bear voice going was not something he had made the mistake of doing since the first year of their relationship.

"What happened, Elizabeth? One day you say you have a meeting with the President and you'll be home late, then you call from Colorado Springs and say that you need to move there for a little while, possibly permanently. It takes me months to move the two of us here, and by the time we have the house set up you say you're being given a better position, but you can't tell me where, then you take your sub-zero-weather bag and the next time I hear from you is in a video tape after seven Air Force guys—armed ones, I'd like to point out—make me fill out seven hundred pages of non-disclosure agreements before handing it to me and instructing me to destroy the tape once I was finished watching it. And now, ten months later, we're eating a buffet of food from three different cultures—none of which would require the sub-zero bag—like it's a regular evening, which we haven't had since you got that call to meet the President. What's going on?"

Elizabeth pulled a thick book out of her bag and put it down between them. "Before I can say anything else I need you to read and sign this. What you know so far is… just the tip of the iceberg, Simon, and you can't know about it until you sign this non-disclosure package saying that you understand the penalties for uttering even a syllable about what I'm about to tell you to anyone else." She pushed the book toward Simon, dropping a pen on top. "I'm going to turn this thing off while you read—as long as you promise to just read and sign where indicated by the flags and not comment aloud about any of this."

"Okay, I promise," Simon pledged, shovelling a nearly grotesque forkful of food into his mouth before pushing his plate aside and beginning to read the non-disclosure agreement. Elizabeth turned off the jammer, because she knew that once she started telling Simon about the new path her life had taken—from annoying politicians and poly-sci majors to life-sucking aliens and… well the annoying politicians were still there, but, fortunately, also a galaxy away—the conversation would be a long one. Lots of details.

Simon liked details. He was never satisfied with an overview, always needed to know the whole story. He attributed it to being a doctor, needing a patient's full history before doing anything. She attributed it to Simon being an anal-retentive man who knew that information equalled power and who never felt like he had enough power of his own… though that was an opinion she had kept to herself, except for at the one girl's poker night she had attended where the Athosian ale had been flowing more freely than usual and the topic of conversation had drifted to men, as it often did at the bi-weekly gatherings where rank was left at the door.

Elizabeth went back to her meal, though she wasn't as hungry as she had been in the car, while Simon read through the non-disclosure agreement. Sedge approached her, begging for scraps—another bad habit she had learned from Simon, Elizabeth noted. No wonder her dog had gained weight, if she was getting fed from the table. Simon had always been bad about that, though. Dropping food while cooking and whistling for Sedge to come clean it up instead of bending down and cleaning up the mess himself, giving Sedge the bottom inch of milk in his cereal in the morning despite the sugar content in the cereals he ate, chopping leftovers up to mix with Sedge's dry food. Elizabeth shuddered to think how close to stroking out her beloved Sedgewick was after a year living solo with Simon Wallace.

After fifteen minutes Elizabeth gave up on the pretence of eating, getting up and clearing her plate into the garbage—at least that was still where it had been when she left—and then she started putting the containers away in the fridge, most of them not having even been touched. She made a mental note to grab them before heading back to the Mountain later; Jack had managed to get them all VIP quarters, meaning mini-fridges, two per 'suite', and she had missed leftover take-out while on Atlantis. Simon was still reading, but he was nearly finished, and he had started fiddling with a pen, uncapping it and recapping it again with one hand while the other fingered the corner of the page he was reading. The clicking of the pen was driving Elizabeth a little bit crazy, especially after a year of largely non-paper-based paperwork, so she mumbled something about taking Sedge outside and exited with her dog to the backyard where absolutely nothing looked like it had when she left.

Where rose bushes once bloomed—not by her hand, they were remnants of the previous owners, but she had managed to not kill them the entire time she lived in the house, which was something she was proud of—a hideous brick barbeque stood. Where rhododendrons once blossomed a wooden picnic table, the bright green paint chipping away at it—how was that even possible, after so few months away, anyway?—sat on a cement platform. Where her glass and wrought-iron patio table and chairs once resided, overlooking the lower tier of the large garden, a coi pond gurgled… which wasn't a terrible addition, she had to admit, though she wouldn't have put the pond in the middle of the yard like that. The grass was looking kind of scraggly, long in places, brown in others; it was obvious that Simon didn't have the Sawyer kid coming over to mow the lawn every Saturday like Elizabeth had—Jaden Sawyer had made a small fortune doing odd jobs for Elizabeth around the house shortly after she moved in, and he had proved to be particularly adept at taming the two-tiered lawn that surrounded the flower beds.

Sinking down to sit on the cement steps that separated the upper and lower tiers of the lawn, Elizabeth sighed. Sedge came over and sat on the step beside Elizabeth, nudging her owner's hand until she got Elizabeth to scratch behind her ears. "I guess you really can't go home again," Elizabeth said softly.

Okay, I know I promised "The Talk" but... well, picking at Simon and the changes in the house and everything... it kinda got away from me. I know, I know, I just really don't like Simon. But I swear, on the head of Joe Flanigan, "The Talk" will be in the next chapter.

The 'end of lockout' thing was... well, my beta added it. We're both insanely devoted hockey fans (GO CANUCKS GO!) and, since the timeline for when the gang got back to Earth could be skewed to be right around the time the NHL lockout ended... yeah, I know, not a great joke. Kinda fell flat. But I kept it in, because even if it was a lame gag it came from Simon and I never really saw him as the great sense of humour guy. Anyway... GO CANUCKS GO!

Read. Respond. Read more. Respond more. It's the circle of life, my friends. You don't wanna know what happens when you mess with the circle of life.

Manic Penguin