CHAPTER 19

Once again on the phone, this time in the tiny office space she'd been handed when it became apparent her working out of the Briefing Room was going to make her and a lot of SG teams crazy. As if that wasn't a leap of logic that could have been taken the moment the President ordered that she return to Earth to do the debriefing thing personally instead of sending a proxy. She attributed the unusual burst of unpreparedness at the SGC to the fact that it was going through one heck of a regime change. Jack O'Neill had, literally, been with the program since the first mission, and the thought of him leaving, for good, was jarring to everyone who had known him since he had run SG-1. It jarred her, and she'd only really been his boss for a few days, not counting the time he spent in stasis, which she didn't, not really. To people like Walter Harriman, who had the SGC so wired he had, quite honestly, freaked Elizabeth out a bit when she'd been in charge, the change from Jack O'Neill, the SGC's favourite son, to Hank Landry, who had found out about the program one day on his front deck, had to be pretty intense. Especially since Elizabeth got the impression that, while Jack had known for a while he was going to be leaving, he hadn't advertised it until the last possible moment. That seemed like something Jack would do.

"He's going to hate that, General," Elizabeth said into the receiver.

"Tough noogies," Jack said. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. He'd just had his promotion ceremony, been given his second star, and he still said things like 'tough noogies'. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard that; probably back when she was in pigtails that hung down to her knees and went by 'Lizzie' and spent most of recess and lunch waiting in line for a turn on the tire swing in the playground of her school. "You asked for a favour, I came through, and now I'm looking for reciprocity," Jack continued, sounding more impatient than Elizabeth was used to him being with her.

Sure, he hadn't liked her that first day, when she came in, all disapproving of the leaps being taken by the military and so incredibly not George Hammond, but he'd been pretty focused on the fact that the Asgard weren't picking up their phones and that meant he was on a fairly short timetable for living the rest of his life while the knowledge of the Ancients filled his brain so far beyond capacity it would literally kill him, and he'd been short with pretty much everyone, frustrated by the fact that he couldn't find what they needed in the mess inside his head, frustrated that he was losing the ability to communicate, frustrated that his sacrifice was looking like it was going to be in vain, so Elizabeth hadn't exactly taken it personally. That moment, when she had been put in charge, hadn't been the optimum moment for a new boss to be sprung on everyone, though she doubted Kinsey had cared when he started the process that had led to Hammond being replaced with her, a civilian anti-military politician who, he thought, he could control to further his own agenda. Still, Jack had never snapped at her, had gotten angry around her, but never at her, and, while she knew she had asked a lot of him the last time they had spoken, Elizabeth got the distinct impression that there was more going on. The problem was, if Jack wasn't willing to offer it up on his own, she doubted she would find out what the something more was, especially not when all her connections in Washington were on the stale side after disappearing, literally, from the face of the Earth.

"Sheppard has the whole gene thing wired. Do you know how long the migraines lasted when I had to control that thing? The Jumper? Yet you say he does it like it's nothing. The geeks at Area 51 have been begging for someone with that kind of control over the Ancient doodads and whatchmacallits and various rocks and crap they have there," Jack continued.

"The headache was probably caused by the time travel component. John's never had to deal with something like that," Elizabeth tried. Not that John and Rodney hadn't tried to find the time machine after Elizabeth's older alternate timeline self had mentioned that the thing existed. Even though they knew it had been destroyed in the crash that killed the alternate Radek and John, both John and Rodney had been like kids trick-or-treating, going from lab to lab, searching for anything with Janus' name on it, anything that would indicate that Janus had left some of his research behind. He had, after all, apparently brought his research to the Milky Way with him, since a Jumper with a time machine component had been what had brought SG-1 to the past to get the ZPM that had gotten the 'Gate open to Atlantis to mount a rescue operation during the siege.

"He's doing it, doc. Your simple favour? Not so simple. You're lucky I didn't hang myself with all the strings I had to pull."

Elizabeth sighed softly. She'd known before she even asked that it was going to be nearly impossible for Jack to do what she wanted him to. Even if he had been in his position for months, years, it would have been nearly impossible for him to get her request pushed through, let alone in the twelve hours he'd managed in. The very thought of the kinds of deals Jack had to make was scary and mind-boggling and, honestly, Elizabeth hadn't thought he'd had it in him. Jack O'Neill was no politician, not by any stretch of the imagination. The thought of him surviving in Washington for long was, unfortunately, a little bit on the laughable side. Unfortunately, because, really, she didn't know anyone else who would be a better ally in Homeworld Security for the SGC and Atlantis than Jack. General Hammond had had his hands tied with the fact that the position was so new no one knew how far he could go, how much power to let him have, but over a year of the position being a reality, even a super top secret reality, had given a fairly decent definition to the parameters of the job, and, having read them over herself, she knew that Jack was perfect for the job. He understood all the facets, or, at least, almost all of the facets. He knew the field realities of Stargate travel. He knew the administrative realities of running the SGC. And, sure, he didn't exactly know the science parts, but, just from listening to him in meetings while she had been in DC, she knew that he understood a lot more than he liked to let on. Eight years with Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson doing the science thing, from both ends of the spectrum, in his vicinity, under his command, had to have given him something of a basic understanding of some things, after all, and it wasn't like Jack was a dumb man. Still, Elizabeth wasn't sure how long Jack would last. Not just because he couldn't really do the politicking thing that was so necessary in Washington, but because he'd been ready for retirement for so many years, had actually retired for a time at least once that Elizabeth could recall, and what amounted to a desk job wasn't going to keep him around for long. Which was unfortunate, but it was still a reality.

"I know. I asked for something pretty much impossible and you came through for me, beyond what I had even dared hope for. But, in my defence, I never said it was a simple favour. I just said it was a favour."

"Not much of a defence," Jack muttered. "But that's not the point. The point is, Sheppard is already at Area 51, he's scheduled to be there for another two weeks at least, he's already finished qualifying on the 302's, and locking him in a mountain with Caldwell and Landry right now is like begging for a Court Marshal. Get him to spend a few days, a week, maybe, doing the lab rat thing, and when he gets back to the Mountain some other thing has happened to take the focus off him and his shiny new starbursts."

Elizabeth sat back in her chair, cringing as the metal launched a pained protest to the angle she was attempting to reach. "How far back did I set you with all this, Jack? Really?"

"Well, my political capital is less than deep in the black. But I've never liked doing things the easy way,"/i Jack said. He let out a rather pained sigh. i"More accurately I've never been given the chance to do things the easy way. But why start now, right?"

"Jack—" Elizabeth started only to be cut off by the General.

"I'm not hunting for pity, Elizabeth. That's not who I am. It'll be rough, for a while, but it's not like I haven't scraped by on charm and wit before," Jack said, infusing his voice with a jocular tone that Elizabeth knew he just wasn't feeling up for at that moment. "Tell Sheppard he's pulled guinea pig duty. Someone'll call you when his promotion becomes official." he said before uttering a quick goodbye and hanging up.

As Elizabeth hung up the phone her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. She was supposed to be in on a conference call with the President in Landry's office in five minutes. Telling herself that she hadn't chosen the time for the call, and that five minutes was not enough time to deal with how upset John was going to get over finding out he was going to be a guinea pig for the scientists at Area 51 instead of coming back to Colorado like he thought, Elizabeth left the office she'd been stuck in for the past few hours. She wasn't avoiding the call, she told herself. She wasn't avoiding it; she was waiting until she had the time to deal with whatever fallout there might be.

She knew she was lying to herself, though. If it was anyone else, anyone other than John Sheppard, she would have made the call, given the order, and gone to the conference call and be done with it.

With John it was different.

With John everything was different.

And Elizabeth was just starting to understand just how different everything was when it came to John.

After the initial flight, John got two more flights in before he was officially qualified on the 302's. Normally training would be much more rigorous, both because it was a very new ride for John, and because it had been so long since he had actually flown a jet, but there was, really, nothing normal about the circumstances, so John figured it wasn't so strange that everything was so accelerated.

General O'Neill, apparently, had done more than make a call to get John in a cockpit sooner rather than later. He'd also passed along the story of the helo and the drone, even going so far as to omit the fact that John hadn't gone left when O'Neill said left, that he had gone right, pulled a fake-out on the drone, and then gone left. Apparently anyone who got flight recommendations from Jack O'Neill didn't have to jump through as many hoops as were generally required to pass their quals. It was strange, a man John didn't know, a man John got the distinct impression didn't like him beyond the fact that he'd saved both their lives that one time, a man whose name always seemed to be uttered either with the kind of quiet reverence given to the truest of true heroes or with the kind of contempt that John wasn't entirely unfamiliar with; it was strange that Jack O'Neill was doing so much to get John pushed through a process that was created to be un-push-through-able. And, while John wasn't about to question it aloud, that didn't mean he wasn't questioning it silently, repeatedly, with increasing frequency.

John couldn't help but wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.

All his life he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Mom's sick; other shoe drops and she's dead and John's out of the house because his sisters are long gone and his father is an ass.

Married to Nancy; other shoe drops and she disappears when he needs her during his Article 32 hearing; and then the other-other shoe drops—because their marriage was so messed up it had three metaphorical feet that dropped footwear—he's cleared, given only a black mark on his record that he can, conceivably, work off, and he comes home to celebrate with his wife and the furniture is gone, all but the wooden kitchen table, the wooden kitchen table that had a light shining down on it, illuminating the divorce papers, a sticky-note on top giving John her lawyer's number, and asking him to find a lawyer himself, read everything over, and sign as soon as possible.

Fly to the middle of nowhere in Antarctica; other shoe drops and aliens exist, the test flight crash from a few months earlier was a massive battle with a thing that was half Ascended and half Goa'uld and completely intent upon destroying Earth since he knew he couldn't take over without wiping everyone out and, oh yeah, someone is trying to kill him with an Ancient Drone they know nothing about and somehow activated.

Listen to some Scottish doctor ramble nervously about Stargates and Ancients and special genes that activate technology; other shoe drops, the 'really quite slim' chance of him having the gene is a lot less than slim—he's got the most capability of controlling Ancient technology anyone has ever seen.

John was waiting for a lot of shoes to drop at that particular moment.

Being the military commander of Atlantis; it was only a matter of time before he got that job ripped away from him.

Living on Atlantis itself; with so much progress being made on the ATA gene therapy, and the fact that more and more people had been discovered to have the gene, even within the SGC itself, it could be decided that someone with his record wasn't wanted on such an important mission any longer.

Someone going out of their way to get him pushed through training and qualifications when other forces were trying to keep him in Nevada, for whatever reason, for weeks before his training was due to begin; he didn't know what potential other shoe could drop there, but he knew that one was going to, and he really hoped he was prepared for when it did.

John found himself approaching everything tactically, something he rarely did unless he was off-world or in the middle of something like the Genii incursion during the storm. It was driving him completely insane.

For once he just wanted the other shoe to drop already.

Landry was late, dealing with another SG team down in the science labs according to Walter, so Elizabeth had settled herself in one of the briefing room chairs to wait. The SGC had never been her home base, not really; even when she'd been in charge she had never felt all that comfortable within the depths of the mountain. There was far too much cement and steel and re-circulated air and not enough daylight and freedom for her liking. Before she arrived on Atlantis, though, Elizabeth had never really had a true home base, not her childhood home, not the boarding school campus, not her townhouse in DC or the two-storey fixer-upper with the great garden she'd purchased when she moved to Colorado. Part of that, Elizabeth knew, was due to the fact that, until Atlantis, she had never really spent a lot of time in one place, other than the boarding school, but that hadn't been what anyone would consider a home; she spent so much of her life travelling, staying in hotels or on military bases or tents or whatever was necessary for that particular job, sleeping on planes and carrying her life with her in a laptop case and a carry-on rolling suitcase, she had never stayed in one place long enough to really feel like she could call it home. And, like everywhere else before Atlantis, the SGC felt just as strange, as unwelcoming, as any hotel, motel, military base, tent, freezing alcove in the middle of Antarctica, ever did. Except it didn't, because the SGC was familiar in a way that, excluding Atlantis, nowhere else had ever been.

The SGC was familiar, at least in the way that she understood how everything worked. She knew the protocols for teams leaving, for teams arriving. She knew the sound of the Iris closing and Walter's voice announcing whose IDC was coming through, or which chevron was engaged or locked. She knew the hum of the fluorescents and the steady clomp-clomp-clomp of military issue boots on painted cement. She knew the way the files in storage were sorted and how to pull up more recent reports on the computer. She knew the combo to the safe in Landry's office, since it hadn't been replaced since General West had sat there, so she knew that at least six people knew the combo as well—General West, General Hammond, both retired, General Bauer, dishonerably discharged after the reckless order he'd given that had nearly destroyed the SGC and would have eventually destroyed the entire planet, Elizabeth herself, Jack, and now Landry—and she knew the way her wrist and fingers would twist and turn, three to the right to 46, two to the left to 92, then straight to 3, before the safe clicked and her hand moved to the handle. She knew that Walter was alarmingly efficient, and that everyone loved the short bespeckled airman, enough so that he was constantly finding himself being promoted to a higher rank. She knew that each SG team was a family in and of itself, and that all the SG teams, together, were a big extended family. She knew that the main elevator's number '26' button no longer actually had the numerals on it, as it was the level with the Stargate on it, and it was the button that was most often pressed with more pressure than was strictly required. She knew that the briefing room table was a few heavy file boxes and a bad day away from disintegrating completely, and that the carpet carried blood and coffee and mud and god-knew-what-else stains from over eight years of off-world missions and briefings and debriefings. She knew that the third bed from the main doors of the Infirmary had a light over it that drove every patient crazy and therefore was rarely utilized. She knew that the microphone in the observation room overlooking Isolation 6 was constantly getting stuck on VOX, and that down on the bottom-most level of the SGC there was a room with eighty bunk beds, sans mattresses, that had been moved down there when all the bunker rooms (that had been outfitted with the metal bunk beds for visitors and exhausted SGC personnel in the early days) had been transformed into VIP suites and office spaces once the Program survived its first few shut-down attempts. She knew that in what had once been Jack's office, when he was still leader of SG-1, there was a "Goa'uld family tree", with a line through the names of all the System Lords they had killed, and she knew that the name 'Apohpis' was written and crossed out multiple times, each with increasing frustration evident in the re-writing, and that, the final copy of the name had a big smiley face and a bunch of stars beside it, along with the words 'for sure this time' in Jack's chickenscratch—and she knew, since she had stopped in there since getting back to Earth, to see Jack's old office and to, she had to admit, see the mural, that it was still there, though there were new names on the 'family tree' that she didn't recognize, and new ones crossed out, as well (apparently Lord Yu was no more, as well as Amatarasu, both of whom Elizabeth had dealt with in her tenure at the SGC) and other enemies had been chronicled on the other walls, in other people's handwriting, some crossed out, some not, like a thought web from a high school writing course, with ideas discounted along the way while new ones were added as they came up. She knew that the red phone in what was now Landry's office had been part of General Hammond's sense of humour, and that its colour had no special powers like the mythical red phone during the Cold War, though the number that showed up on the caller ID did.

Elizabeth knew details about the SGC that she could never hope to learn about a house on Witches Way in Colorado Springs or a townhouse in Georgetown, DC, because her life was her work, and, while she had lived in Colorado Springs, she had lived more at the SGC than at the house, and while she had lived in DC she had spent more time out of the country doing jobs for the UN, then, later, she had spent eighteen hours a day, minimum, on the Georgetown campus, keeping longer office hours than any other staff member that she was aware of, enjoying the atmosphere of the university campus, the mixture of irreverence and dedication most students entered her lectures with, the completely valid and sweetly naïve questions they would ask her, the potential future leaders of the country that sat in uncomfortable seats to hear her expound on politics and the science behind it; taking the creation of laws to a place beyond Schoolhouse Rock but not getting into the real sausage-making, picking apart international treaties to delve into the minutia that she had always found so intriguing. She knew the SGC the way she knew the halls of Georgetown's poly-sci building, the way she knew the different floors and people who worked in the UN building in New York, the way she knew so much and yet so little about her true home, Atlantis.

The Briefing Room was a familiar home-base for Elizabeth. She had had so many files to read and things to take care of while she had been in charge of the SGC that she had usually left the office and gone to the Briefing Room to spread out and set things up in a particular order, only moving into the office on a more permanent basis in the weeks just before she was given command of the project in Antarctica.

Once upon a time the Briefing Room was a sort of sanctuary for Elizabeth, which was strange considering it was a fairly high-traffic area that was open to anyone cleared to enter the SGC proper, and it was certainly wasn't a place that there was an unspoken 'do not disturb' sign hanging on the door like there was when she was on the balcony outside the Control Room of Atlantis, but, like Daniel had said when they first met, the Briefing Room did offer the best view in the house. She couldn't quite get past the fact that the Stargate's chevrons were red instead of turquoise, or that there was an inner ring that turned while dialling instead of a series of lights turning on and off in a simulation of a turning inner ring, but it was still a pretty amazing view, and it reminded her of home. And the Briefing Room's oppressive quality from earlier, when she was so sick of the room from the endless debriefings, though her little office was getting that 'shrinking room' feel to it, so, while she knew she could have gone back to the hole in the wall that was her temporary office and call John and make him aware of the fact that he had been conscripted to lab duty, Elizabeth had opted to wait for Landry to wrap up with the SG team down in the labs to avoid delaying the conference call with the President any longer.

"So you got John promoted," Sam said as she perched herself on the edge of the Briefing Room table facing Elizabeth. Elizabeth jumped, not having heard or seen the blonde Colonel enter the room.

"He earned it. I just… made sure I wouldn't have to deal with Steven Caldwell as my Second In Command," Elizabeth shrugged, though she didn't know why she was defending John's promotion to Sam, of all people, who was probably the only other person in the Mountain who would fight tooth and nail for John Sheppard. Well, Rodney and Carson would, but Carson was still in Scotland, and Elizabeth hadn't seen Rodney (though she hadn't actually tried seeking him out; she just hadn't run into him) for a few days. "Besides, you and I both know that, with his record, John was never going to make Lieutenant Colonel without someone giving the Powers That Be a…"

"Swift kick in the ass?" Sam teased.

"So to speak," Elizabeth smiled. "How did you find out? I just got confirmation tw minutes ago." Though she had talked to Jack, he hadn't been able to say for sure that he had been successful in getting John his promotion. Though he had hinted, heavily, toward it being an all-but done deal, he had admitted that he didn't know for sure, just that he was going by his gut. Which had been more than enough for Elizabeth. But on her way up to the Briefing Room her phone had gone off, and Major Davis, who she had worked with a few times, even before becoming embroiled with the SGC, had called and confirmed that John's promotion would go through by the end of the week. Which was just as well, since that was about how long Jack wanted John to stay and play guinea pig in Nevada.

"I ran into Walter in the elevator. He let me know," Sam said. Neither woman questioned how the 'Gate technician had found out that John's promotion was official. It was just accepted that Walter Harriman knew everything there was to know in the SGC, and he usually knew it at least half an hour before anyone else. "How are you gonna tell him? John, I mean."

That was the problem. In all the hoping that her plan—Hail Mary play, to use one of John's football idioms—would work, she hadn't once considered how to break the news to John. And, as his CO, it was, technically, her job. She could pass it off to Landry or Jack, but it felt like it was something she had to tell him herself, not let a total stranger, or a man who might as well have been a stranger for all the time they'd spent together, give him what was some of the biggest news he'd ever hear. She only had one idea, and it sounded incredibly stupid, even in her own head, though the words 'then promote him' had sounded incredibly stupid in her head, and coming out of her mouth, and they'd worked out incredibly well, so she wasn't sure if her brain's judge of incredibly stupid was skewed or if she just wasn't thinking straight anymore. "I don't know. I was considering sort of… not."

"Not? What, just wait for him to ask why his pay cheque suddenly got bigger?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "More like a surprise."

"A… surprise promotion ceremony?" Sam asked sceptically.

"With less emphasis on the ceremony part, because, well, it's John and he hates that kind of thing," Elizabeth nodded.

Sam thought about that for a minute, rolled the idea over in her head, before shrugging. "General Hammond sprung my promotion to Major on me. And General O'Neill threw me for a loop with the whole 'Lieutenant Colonel' thing. It's not like surprise promotions are unheard of. Technically we're not supposed to know if our names are being seriously considered for promotion, let alone accelerated promotion," Sam said thoughtfully. She shrugged again. "You could do it. Surprise John. And I agree on the downplaying of the ceremony stuff. John's never been good at dealing with attention like that. Though he might hate you for surprising him anyway; he's never really liked surprises."

"Well, the more pressing issue is that General O'Neill had to pull a lot of strings to get all this happening, and one of the things he promised in return is that someone from Atlantis would hang out at Area 51 for a few days and play ATA guinea pig. And I made a vow to Carson that I wouldn't make him go through that—he hates that he has the gene, is terrified of what happens when he goes near most of the things we've found in the City; especially the Chair. And… well, I doubt Rodney would be able to withstand taking control of everything, so… that leaves John," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah, he's gonna hate that even more than the surprise party thing," Sam said.

Elizabeth nodded. "That I already knew."

Okay, so this chapter was supposed to be out earlier, this past weekend, but I wanted to be able to post on my birthday and the next chapter didn't want to come out properly in time, so I left this one banked on my harddrive to wait, in case Chapter 20 didn't find completion. Which it hasn't, which sucks, because this chapter really wasn't the one I wanted to share with my readers for my birthday. The next chapter sets up a lot of things, though, so I want to make sure it's done right before I post it anywhere.

Anyway, let's recap.

Jack got John's promotion pushed through for Elizabeth, but now John has to do the ATA guinea pig thing at Area 51, which is something I've always sort of had a picture in my head of him doing while they were back on Earth, though the actual episode didn't give any indication that it happened. Well, this is my world, or my version of their world, so John is doing the guinea pig thing.

Elizabeth and Sam are going to surprise him with the promotion, because I kinda loved that Sam never saw her promotions coming and, with his record, John wouldn't be on the usual promotion track so it wouldn't be an expected thing after X years of service and whatever. Plus, in the episode, it was two months that they were away from Atlantis, and a month back from the first scene to when John was promoted, and he was a Colonel when he talked to Ford's cousin but not when they were trying to replace him with Caldwell, so I'm trying to keep things even and on track according to the episode's timeline, which isn't the easiest thing since the episode was all flashbacky and whatever.

If Jack seemed not himself... well, just chalk that up to him regretting taking a desk job in DC or whatever. I've never been able to really captire RDA's tone and everything properly, and having him talking on the phone is even harder than writing him in, say, a mission sequence. Also, forgive the 'tough noogies' thing. That just always struck me as something Jack would say, though I can't remember if he ever actually did. I doubt it. But whatever... my world, and all that.

The "Goa'uld Family Tree" thing was something Mel offered up, something she did on the back of a spiral notebook one day, back before she had even convinced me to tune in to SG-1. She had this elaborate thing all laid out, names of the System Lords, their meaning in Earth cultures, episodes they were encountered in, episodes they were just mentioned or referred to in, and the episode that they finally died in. There was a lot of instances of 'Apophis' being written, then scratched out, and each time it had to be rewritten it was done with a little more force and a clear frustration, given how hard she pressed the ballpoint to the cardboardy back page thing. Since we never saw Jack's office (with the desk that he denied knowing he had when he got his promtion) I decided that Mel's slightly obsessive famly tree thing was something I could work in here.

Just a final note. I love Gary Jones AKA Walter Harriman. I think he's hilarious as Walter, and doing his stand-up, and I can't resist the compulsion to include him in my stories, even if I just mention him. He was in the pilot of SG-1, has appeared in over half the episodes of the ten seasons, and has been in a bunch of Atlantis episodes, too, and probably will continue to be, since he's probably easier to book, not to mention cheaper, than Beau Bridges, and, well, there's not much about Gary Jones that Stargate viewers don't associate with the SGC. Which is great, because, as I've said, I love Gary Jones. Anyway, all this blathering has been my way of saying that, no, you're not insane thinking that there's a lot of Harriman references in my chapters, and, yes, a lot of the main characters think about him from time to time. But I figure, he was around when Elizabeth ran the SGC, so she knows about "the disconnected voice of the little Sergeant with psychic powers", to quote Landry in 901, and being back at the SGC is bringing up memories, most of which I've made up, but what the hell. My world.

Anyway, that's my babbling end-note. Thank you to everyone still reading this, and massively huge hugs and kisses to anyone who takes the time to shoot me a review because they totally make this big goofy smile thing happen to my face and sometimes there aren't enough things in life to smile about. Which is a rather maudlin thought, so I'll stop writing now because, wow, this is going to a depressing place.

Happy belated Canada Day!

Manic Penguin