CHAPTER 16

While Sedge was usually a fairly good listener, Elizabeth just didn't feel up to going through the events of the past ten months twice in one day, and, while she would much rather talk to Sedge than Simon at that moment, she knew that Simon was the one she owed the explanation to. Sedge… well, Sedge was mostly just happy to see her again; happy in the kind of way that only dogs could truly be, it seemed, the kind of happy that her beloved puppy—who hadn't been a puppy by definition for a few years but would always be the tiny bundle of white baby fluff that she had fallen in love with at the SPCA that she would walk past on her way to get coffee from the little family coffee shop not far from her office in the UN building in New York—seemed to have cornered the market on. Sedge was an eternal comfort to Elizabeth and the single photograph that she had squirreled away in between the pages of one of her books when departing for Atlantis hadn't been an adequate substitute for the physical presence of her canine companion.

A cool breeze filtered through the trees and fences to tickle her bare arms and Elizabeth immediately breathed in deep, hoping for the familiar scent of the Lantian ocean and maybe a hint of the military-grade soap, sandalwood-ish aftershave of Athosian origin, a hint of clean sweat, and soft cotton that always came together to make her knees go a little bit liquid whenever John Sheppard was near enough that she could catch his unique scent on the ocean's breeze. Instead of the gentle salt air and eau du John that she had been hoping for Elizabeth's nose was greeted with the once-familiar smells that came from living in a smaller city—some trees but not many, whatever the next door neighbours were barbequing, fresh cut grass, the hot tar from where the people in the green house five doors down were repaving their driveway—which was very much not what she had been hoping for.

Even if the scent of where she was wasn't right what cut at her the most was the fact that the cement step was cold, the kind of cold that chilled her right to the core, the kind of cold that she now associated with the Genii raid on Atlantis and how freezing she had been from the moment Kolya dragged her and Rodney out to the power station until two days later when they were able to shut down the shield and leave the control room. Atlantis itself, though, never felt cold to the touch. Even when it was still raining but the worst of the storm was over and they were able to shut down the shield again the balcony, the special one outside the Control Room that she and John liked to call their own despite it being as good as public property, hadn't been cold. A little flooded, but nothing a few minutes sweeping water under the railing and off the deck with a broom hadn't fixed. The metal of the railing hadn't been chilled by the rain. It didn't seem that anything could make the metal city cold. Ten thousand years under the ocean hadn't even put a chill in the air. Dust, for sure, but no chill.

Lantia didn't have cold seasons, as far as they could tell. Aside from the insane storms that happened with freakish regularity—one massive storm every twenty years, on the dot, with no explanation in the database, at least not that they could find, for why the storm materialized with such regularity—the planet had a comfortably mild weather pattern. The ocean, while not exactly tropical, wasn't cold, and in the ten months that they had inhabited Atlantis it had only rained a handful of times, not counting the storm, and only once during the day. Atlantis itself regulated the city's average temperature and even though the city was largely structured out of metal it never felt cool to the touch, which was incredibly strange, but completely normal at the same time.

Atlantis was paradoxical like that.

The sun was setting to the west, and Elizabeth wasn't dressed for the chilly spring evening, so, rather reluctantly, she got up to go back inside. The garden, what was left of it, at least, was peaceful. The cold cement step wasn't the balcony outside the Control Room, and Sedge wasn't John, and the garden certainly wasn't the ocean, but it was still peaceful, though the sounds of traffic and life going on around the property was definitely different than what she was used to.

It seemed like it only took a moment to get used to life on Atlantis, yet Elizabeth doubted she could ever possibly adjust to life on Earth again. A cliché about not being able to un-ring a bell flitted through her head, but she shook it away. She had never liked clichés much, anyway.

Simon was sitting right where she had left him, the non-disclosure agreement neatly closed back up, the pen lying on top, the cap carefully snapped back on to avoid any potential ink leakage. Simon had always been annoying obsessive about office supplies.

"You sign?" Elizabeth asked, easing back onto the chair she had vacated earlier. Simon shoved the file over to her and Elizabeth flipped to the back, noting Simon's near-illegible doctor's signature, along with what she was fairly sure was the date. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, it was just that if she started talking about Atlantis and he hadn't signed then he could tell whoever he wanted and she could go to prison for treason. "Good," Elizabeth said, tucking the agreement back into her laptop case before flipping the bug killer back on. "I guess I should start at the beginning, huh?"

"That'd be a good place to start, yeah," Simon said coolly.

And so Elizabeth started.

She told him about her meeting with then-Vice President Kinsey in the limo, and about the files she had read on the Stargate, and about how President Hayes had basically said that she had the position and that he expected her to be in Colorado Springs ASAP and how she had gone because the President had ordered her to and, even if she never exactly worked for the United States—the UN headquarters were in New York, but the UN itself wasn't an American entity, despite what some countries believed—she had immediately understood that President Hayes' order wasn't one that limited her job to protecting the interests of only America; the situation was one of galactic proportions, something she didn't fully understand until she had been at the SGC for over twenty-four hours. She told him about the battle with Anubis and the ensuing negotiations over the Antarctic base. She told him about how she had been selected to run the Antarctic base and how the prospect of being the one to unravel the mystery of the Ancients was too good to pass up. She told him about how, after months in the cold of Antarctica, they had found the Lost City; Atlantis. She told him how, after finding Atlantis, they had been given less than a week to ready themselves to leave, and how most of that week had been spent dealing with personnel and equipment issues.

She told him about how it felt to step through the Stargate to another galaxy. She told him about how the lights came on by themselves and how the City was under the ocean until the failsafe kicked in. She told him about the people they'd met and she glossed over the enemies they'd made.

She explained about the siege and how terrifying it had been. She confessed how frustrating it had been when the SGC finally sent reinforcements through and how she had basically been stuffed into a corner until Everett was unable to be in charge any longer. She told him how it broke her heart how many people they had lost, and how Lieutenant Ford's disappearance had hit her hard, and how Peter Grodin's death had hit her even harder.

She told him how she and Carson and Rodney and John had returned to Earth. She told him how intensive the debriefing process had been, and how she had been immediately pulled to Washington to go through the same process all over again. She told him how she couldn't wait to get back to Atlantis.

And, finally, she told him how she hoped he would come back with her.

When she finished, Elizabeth realized that she had been talking for over three hours and she knew it was a hell of a lot to take in all at once—she had lived through it and she still found it all difficult to handle sometimes—so she stayed still and waited for Simon to speak. The man had an opinion on everything, after all; give enough time and he could formulate a response to the story of her life for the past year or so, as fantastic as it all sounded when she summarized it to one fairly intense speech.

He would have questions, she knew. Good, carefully thought out questions, because he was methodical like that. She would answer his questions as best she could, as honestly as she could, because, even though she was allowed to tell him a lot of the details of the Atlantis expedition and the SGC and everything, his clearance was still fairly limited in scope compared to hers. Even if he did come to Atlantis with her he would still have a lower clearance level than she did. Though General O'Neill and the IOA were in the loop on everything now, while the expedition had been cut off from Earth there had been a lot of things that only Elizabeth, Rodney, Carson, and John knew, and even more things that only Elizabeth and John knew. The day after the party celebrating the alliance between the Athosians and the Tau'ri inhabitants of Atlantis Elizabeth had gone over everything that John didn't have the clearance to know when he was just a member of the military, even though, because of rank, he was Sumner's second in command by default—something that Elizabeth recalled pissing Sumner off from the moment she told him she'd brought John in. If Simon came to Atlantis he would only have the clearance level of one of the doctors, like Doctor Biro, on Carson's staff, which, while it did give him an upper hand in that he had access to everyone's medical files, he still wouldn't have carte blanche and she had to make sure that Simon understood that. It wouldn't be an easy pill for him to swallow, Elizabeth knew, but on the matter of global security—on two globes in two different galaxies no less—she couldn't afford to cater to the fragile egos of those who didn't have the clearance or the need to know that which they weren't privy to.

Even though Elizabeth expected that Simon would need some time to absorb what she had just dumped on him she was growing increasingly tired from her hectic schedule that had been running her steadily ragged since arriving back on Earth and she still hadn't caught up on the sleep she had forgone during the weeks leading up to the siege on Atlantis. She knew that she had a full schedule of back-to-back meetings ahead of her and she still had to make a trip back up to the SGC so she could crash in her quarters there, and Simon's usually endearing careful consideration was more irritating than anything.

"Simon?" Elizabeth prodded gently, wanting to at least get an initial reaction before she left.

"I had a patient, about four years ago, I think," Simon said after a minute. "He was convinced that the military was employing aliens for use in a battle against other races. I sent him to the psyc ward."

Reaching over and putting her hand on his forearm, Elizabeth tried to sound as reassuring as she could. "Nearly half the people on this planet believe that the US military is doing something with aliens. That doesn't make the mentally ill any less so. Neither does the fact that one person's delusions happen to have some vague basis in a truth that is not exactly widely known."

Simon nodded, knowing that Elizabeth was right. He pulled his arm away from her and rubbed his hands over his face. "Everything you've just told me is… it's a lot to take in. I think I need some time… to process all this," he said, waving one hand around vaguely as if to demonstrate all that he had to deal with.

Nodding, Elizabeth turned off the bug killer and replaced it in her bag as she hooked the long leather strap over her shoulder. "I should get going anyway. I've got meetings all day tomorrow, but maybe we could have dinner? Talk some more?" she suggested.

"Uh… tomorrow's no good for me. Overnight shift at the hospital," Simon said, the lie coming easily to him. He knew he couldn't very well cancel on Ava with no notice and no excuse—telling her that he was cancelling their plans to have dinner with the woman he'd never technically broken up with was less of an option than telling Elizabeth that there was an Ava—and he had used the 'overnight shift' excuse with Elizabeth before with one hundred percent success so he wasn't worried about her finding anything odd in his statement. The fact that he no longer even worked at a hospital wasn't necessary to mention, either. "The day after tomorrow?" he countered.

"Sounds good. I'll call sometime during the afternoon to set up a time," Elizabeth said as she gathered up her coat and stuffed her feet back into her shoes, not bothering to tie the laces. As much as she had been looking forward to seeing Simon again the fact of the matter was that being in her house when nothing in the house was hers anymore except for Sedge and Simon was cool and aloof and she didn't know how to act around him anymore was thoroughly uncomfortable and she wanted more than anything to escape as fast as possible. Giving Sedge a lingering scratch behind her ears and wishing she could bring the dog with her back to the SGC—if her outfit had caused raised eyebrows earlier she could just imagine what the reaction would be if she walked in with Sedge beside her—Elizabeth said a quick goodbye to Simon before slipping out through the front door and making a beeline for the SGC car.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to the SGC that she started to relax again.

Even if Simon hadn't given her any indication of how he felt about what she was doing or whether or not he intended to seek a position on Atlantis, the simple fact that she had gotten everything out in the open was more liberating than Elizabeth had expected it to be. On Atlantis she rarely had to worry about what was classified and what wasn't, rarely had to watch what she said lest she betray one of the billion state and global secrets she knew. On earth, however, there were limited places where she could actually let her guard down and talk about her experiences, and even then she never relaxed completely, knowing that some things needed to be played down or given the right amount of spin so that events were seen the way she needed them to be seen.

As she was leaving Colorado Springs proper she realized that she hadn't told Simon not to mention her return to her mother, should he speak to her before they saw each other again.

Telling Simon as much of the whole truth as possible was one thing.

Seeing her mother and telling her a complete lie was something else entirely.

"Crap," she said aloud, knowing there was little, if anything, she could do to avoid incurring the wrath of Mama Weir. Being the one to share the news of her return—from where Elizabeth still hadn't worked out—with her mother was one of the only things that she could think of that would help lessen the impact of the fact that she had been completely incommunicado since the day before her meeting with President Hayes.

Pressing her foot down on the accelerator Elizabeth pushed past the speed limit, not particularly caring whether or not she got a ticket. The only way she would stop torturing herself with thoughts of what Simon was going to do or what her mother would say when she finally found the courage to contact her or any number of other things that were spinning around in her mind on a never ending roller coaster loop would be to take the sleeping pills Carson had prescribed to her, crawl into her SGC-issue 'VIP' room bed, and sleep for as many hours as possible before her first meeting the next morning.

I re-wrote this chapter so many times I almost lost my mind, and it's still not what I wanted it to be, but for the sake of my sanity I stopped going over it again and again and just posted it.

Apologies to anyone named Ava. I have nothing against the name, but I was watching Grey's Anatomy while I wrote that part and Alex's obsession/patient kinda bugs me so I used one of her many names--Rebeckah, Ava, Jane Doe... I think that's all of them...--forthe someone that Simon 'met'.

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Manic Penguin