Uh... I'm sorry? *sweatdrop* Really, I am. It's been forever since I updated. I've just been so unbelievably busy!

Therefore... PLOT! A bunch of stuff is set up in this chapter, because I had a lot of ideas and not enough time. I hope it's exciting, if not jumbled.

Please, enjoy all of the angst! And thanks SO much to all of you lovlies who left a review! It means a lot. :)

Compromising Positions: Chapter 8
Regs

Elizabeth was dreaming. She knew that this was an undisputable fact, but the transcendental quality of her surroundings nevertheless held an inexplicable power over her, as if what she saw here was merely an extension of the world as she knew it. It was harsh, yet beautiful, to see.

The woman could see the sand that flowed infinitely beneath her bare toes and off into the indefinable horizon, and see the icy blast of the equally endless steel grey ocean not ten yards to her left, but she could not feel or hear either one, and she could not move a centimeter. Conversely, she could feel the breathy tickle of every strand of dark, curling hair brushing up against the skin of her bare shoulders. She heard a voice, as well. Distant and soft, the meaning of the words were lost to Elizabeth, but they filled her with a glowing sense of warmth and sleepy contentment, and they continued without significant pause, as if the invisible speaker would never tire of simply speaking to her, even if she couldn't understand him. It was a music that she knew her world wouldn't be the same without, even though she couldn't recall where she'd heard it previously.

Just ahead of her, in the immaculately smooth sand, someone had scratched out a spiraling, rounded pattern that captured her attention. The grainy medallion too, seemed eerily familiar, but in a different way. Elizabeth felt like she had only seen it once, but that the image held answers not even she knew she was seeking as of yet.

Listening to the loving, unintelligible voice and gazing at the mesmerizing design, Elizabeth decided that all in all, it was a pleasant, if not particularly odd, dream.

But, like all dreams, it was doomed to inevitably end. The stark, bleak scenery in front of Elizabeth's serene, sensory-charged form was suddenly swallowed up in the bright sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. She was disoriented for a few heartbeats, her mind struggling to catch up to her body as she momentarily didn't recognize her beige surroundings. However, she soon realized that John had probably just carried her into her room and put her into her bed before he left. As she looked groggily around the nondescript room however, the absence of the pleasant heat and safety of the dream conspicuously absent, Elizabeth suddenly felt cold and very, very alone. A creeping sense of sadness settled over her like a wet blanket.

Scrubbing at her eyes, Elizabeth suppressed a yawn and swung her feet out of bed. Her bedside clock told her that it already well past ten in the morning. She hadn't slept so long in ages, she realized at the same instant she resigned herself to the notion that she wouldn't be getting back to sleep, now that she was already awake. Besides, she only had a couple of hours until she was to meet John back at his hotel so they could fly back to Colorado to receive the verdict, and she still had to say goodbye to her mother.

Resigned, Elizabeth shambled into her bathroom. With a brief glance into the mirror and a pained wince at her disheveled appearance (she looked like she'd been dragged through Netu and back, with that bedhead) Elizabeth splashed some water on her face, grabbed her toothbrush, and squirted some toothpaste onto the bristles. Sticking the instrument into her mouth, the woman took careful inventory of her features as she brushed, noting the prominent cheekbones, increasingly wild and curly dark hair, the smattering of the freckles she so detested, and the lack of worry-lines around her pale green eyes: familiar, but out of place. It was haunting, really, to look at herself and see a woman she hadn't been for years. She could barely wrap her head around it, and she could hardly imagine how her mother must feel, especially as Elizabeth hadn't been able to answer any of her questions about the 'accident'. For the first time in the last few days, she felt uncomfortable again: as if her mind and body hadn't quite reconciled themselves. It was a subtle sensation, but she still noticed it in quiet moments such as these.

Skat. The foam from Elizabeth's toothpaste hit the bowl of the sink as she bent over and spat, pulling a sip of water from a Dixie cup and rinsing, relishing the sharp bite of the mint in her mouth. In a futile attempt to whisk the wispy whorls of her hair into a semblance of professionalism (it just seemed to be growing worse by the day) the woman ran a comb through it before tightening the drawstrings on her citrus-themed pajama pants and padding through the main room of the apartment and into the kitchen, still hampered with the vestiges of her dream-filled sleep but making a mental note to try and find a new brand of shampoo.

Much to her surprise, Elizabeth discovered a series of blue post-it notes spangling the area. She suspected that they were the very same ones that she kept on the end table in her living room. Warily, the diplomat edged over to the one nearest to her, which was perched on the door of her stainless steel freezer.

"Good morning, Sunshine," it read in large, blocky lettering. "Have those freckles disappeared yet? (I know you check every morning in the mirror: don't lie to me.)"

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed at the little pastel-blue square. If John was going to insult her, (and she had no doubt it was him) the least he could do would be to buy his own stickies! Warily, she moved to the next closest one, following the little arrow drawn on to the bottom of the first note. Still left in a questionable mood, she could only hope it was less annoying than the first.

"So, your mom says that you never used to snore. But man, do you sure snore now! She's good though. Kept a straight face all the way until we left. Didn't want to wake you and interrupt the symphony coming from your room."

The writing on this one started out big, and then tapered smaller and smaller as John labored to squeeze his words into the limited space. However, regardless of this rather amusingly juvenile detail, Elizabeth was still going to kill him. She did not snore! Especially not loud enough to be heard through a bedroom door! Did she? A moment of doubt seized her, and Elizabeth cursed both John Sheppard and the man who invented post-its.

"She wanted to bring you breakfast. It's in the fridge, because she didn't want to wake you. Can you believe she woke me up at 7, knocking on my door? Grabbed my cell phone by accident when she left last night. Not worth waking up to have it back," he griped. The fact that he'd had to be awake so much earlier did admittedly make Elizabeth feel a little better. Most of those good feelings evaporated, however, when she pulled the plate her mother had left her out of the fridge and realized that her blueberry scone had a bite taken out of one side. She scowled.

"Passed the test: not poisoned. You can eat in peace of mind now," the blue note proudly pronounced.

Groaning out loud, Elizabeth decided that she was hungry enough to still eat it and squeezed herself into the space at the little café table in the far corner of the room where she ate when she was alone, eyeing the note there with an expression bordering on leery and nibbling at her incomplete little scone. In the end, she just bucked up and read it.

"All right, that was a bastard move. Sorry," came the admission. "And also sorry for tagging along with your mom in your house while you're sleeping. I feel just as creepy as I am. But I thought you'd be up by now, and I wanted to thank you."

Unable to tamp down her curiosity, Elizabeth just took the scone with her as she followed to where another sloppy arrow directed her, which happened to be the coffee maker. The pot was already full of the stuff, which was thankfully still warm. Happily, she grabbed a mug and poured herself a glass, feeling considerably more goodwill towards her friend. "I was having a rough time yesterday, and you helped. A lot. So, thanks. I liked the movie too, although you could use a little more 'Make 'em Laugh' most days, Liz."

Another stickie had been perched jauntily on her mug. "Just think: you could lead the entire city in the most racially diverse and exotically set musical ever made. Ronon could be your co-star."

Knowing that John knew her, Elizabeth knew that he would know that she knew where the next note would be, because she knew there was one. As it turned out, she was right. It was stuck on the back of the creamer she kept in the door of her fridge. She only liked creamer with the more expensive imported ground coffee, which judging from the aroma wafting from her cup, was exactly what John had swiped from her cabinet and put into the coffee maker.

Grinning openly now, Elizabeth turned her eyes to the familiar handwriting. "Yeah, I used the good stuff. It's my reward to you. Great choice, by the way. Classy. It tastes magical. Katherine made me promise to buy more for you when she saw me drinking it, though. Check your top left cupboard."

Pouring a dash of the creamer into the coffee, Elizabeth did so. It was a cabinet that she didn't use, seeing as how she only kept the bare essentials stocked in her apartment. John had placed two post-its on the bottom. The first was simple. "IOU, 1 coffee + 1/8 of a blueberry scone. ~John" it said.

Well, so he did! She would hold him to that, Elizabeth decided, folding the blue note in half and carefully tucking it away into her wallet, which she had left out on the table. The other message wasn't much longer. "Thanks for everything, Elizabeth. I owe you."

Elizabeth knew he meant it. She also felt more touched that she probably should have. 'Touched' being the operative word in this situation, because she really couldn't find another word that could even approach quantifying the sensation of simultaneous giddiness, wariness, and peace, which as the thought occurred to her, made her snort with derision. What was she, sixteen? She only had an excuse for acting twenty three, and no excuse whatsoever for letting a juvenile post-it note attack make her feel so happy.

Just as swiftly as the surge of joy had come, it left, replaced by a flare of anger. This foolishness had gone on long enough. She had been idiotic to let it continue, and worse yet, encourage it. Just because she allowed herself to fall prey to John's—no, Colonel Sheppard's—puppy eyes and enjoyed his company… it was no excuse for allowing herself, the leader of the expedition, to develop such a close… friendship with him. All right, it was probably a bit more than that, if she were being honest with herself. But it was also the equivalent of throwing away everything she had worked so hard to build for some post-it-notes and a half-eaten blueberry scone. And that was unacceptable.

Frustrated, Elizabeth abruptly slammed the heel of her palm forcefully against the counter and leaned into it heavily, breakfast forgotten. Who was she kidding? She and John had always shared a close, not-quite-platonic relationship, as soon as they had learned to work with each other. She drove him to be better, and he helped her see life differently. It worked, and she had never questioned it. At least, not until M51-237. That one mission had changed everything; it had set them on this road to nowhere, and Elizabeth knew very well that not only could they never turn back to what they once were, but that they could never continue on to anything more. Words could not describe Elizabeth's loathing of being trapped where they were, and her chest felt like a giant had was squeezing her heart and lungs tightly enough to make her short of breath.

Pounding on the counter again sent a sharp splinter of pain lancing up her arm, and this cleared Elizabeth's head enough for her to belatedly realize that she was crying. This, thankfully, snapped her out of her unstable state, and she straightened up and smoothed out her hair, even though no one was watching. Her features immediately snapped back into the stony preset she maintained during almost every professional situation. Yes, she was, as John might put it, screwed. However, she had a job to do. And if her name wasn't Elizabeth Weir, she was going to do it, and do it well, inappropriate personal feelings for one Colonel Sheppard be damned.

Her episode had set the tone for a very, very bad day. Having to say goodbye to her mother didn't help in the slightest, and Elizabeth was noticeably snappish for the next hour or so of travel in the chauffeured SUV and even after boarding the military transport plane. After a few attempts at conversation were quickly shot down, John gave up trying to speak with her and retreated into silence, accepting the fact that she obviously wasn't in the mood for talking while Elizabeth simply leaned her head back and went to sleep for the remainder of the flight. He had tried to ask her why her hand was bruising, but she hadn't answered, and it was throbbing now. Thankfully, not enough to disturb her sleep.

She didn't wake up until, hours later, the plane jolted onto the runway in Colorado Springs, jostling her. A crash to her left and a little ahead of her, accompanied by some creative expletives, told her that John had gone to sleep as well, but hadn't been lucky enough to stay in his seat.

A giggle escaped her, despite her efforts to repress it, and Elizabeth felt some tension in her shoulders ease. It was all right, she decided, if she still stayed friends with the Colonel. She had been acting as if she were afraid of him all day, and that was no way for a grown woman to behave. Elizabeth might mourn the loss of the relationship that could never be, but that didn't mean that she didn't have something wonderful right here, she realized. John Sheppard was her best friend. That had to count for something.

"Hey John?" she called out to him, where he was still swearing under his breath. "I won't tell Rodney about this as long as you don't tell him about that horrid hat my mother tried to buy me."

"You've got a deal."

"I'm sorry, not only are you telling me I've still got a job, but you're telling me that Kate Heightmeyer convinced you to have do with the regs?" Elizabeth repeated incredulously, hands tightening over the edge of the conference table as she looked from the representatives of the IOA to the Generals Landry and O'Neill with eyes as wide as dinner plates.

Looking as if he had just sucked on something sour, one of the representatives, Mr. Kenneth, shook his head. "Not exactly, Dr. Weir," he drawled, as if to a child. "You see, Dr. Heightmeyer merely… brought it to our attention… that the working environment is far different on Atlantis that it is on any other of our existing military outposts. From a psychological viewpoint, she likened it more to a… to a colony, than a base, and expressed her concerns for how long the human psyche could handle such an environment without reprieve."

"Basically, you're a whole city full of Carters and have no lives," General O'Neill threw in from the back, causing the corner of Elizabeth's mouth to twitch upward with amusement.

Glaring at the man, Mr. Kenneth paused pointedly before continuing. "It is the professional opinion of Dr. Heightmeyer, as well as other experts she has shared her observations with, that the stress of such a working environment constantly overflowing into what little personal life is permitted is a great detriment to the expedition. She believes that the quality of life of all aboard could be greatly improved by—"

"—a Lantean colony, of a sort." Jack interrupted again. "Give residents of Atlantis rights as citizens of Atlantis. Loosen up on the military regs on personal relationships. Allow more families to be brought over from Earth, if they so choose. You know, make it homier. The good doctor pointed out that the lack thereof was detrimental to mental and physical heath, and that if the IOA didn't take action to protect its people, the whole expedition would suffer."

If Elizabeth hadn't been trained in diplomacy, she was pretty sure her jaw would have hit the table. As it was, she felt she still appeared pretty startled. She hadn't known what she had been sending Kate back to Earth to do. If she had, maybe Elizabeth would have cautioned the woman against it; taking on the IOA had to have taken immense bravery. But, if Elizabeth knew one thing about Kate Heightmeyer, it was that when it came to the wellbeing of her patients, she would do anything. And the wellbeing of the Atlantis expedition, which did so much for Earth, was a big chip to have on one's shoulder.

Even so, Elizabeth had just never considered that something like this could be possible.

"Thank you," she managed to say sincerely to her small audience, folding her hands in her lap. "This will make the lives of everyone, especially the senior staff and our military members, immeasurably better. I assume you will be sending me back with a more detailed file on the finer points of the new protocol?"

One of the women on the IOA's panel nodded curtly, appearing none too happy. Elizabeth had to wonder what exactly Kate had said to these people to make them go so quietly. Though, she wasn't sure if she really wanted to know.

General Landry spoke next, glancing anxiously at his watch and gesturing to the unopened file beneath Elizabeth's first. "My apologies, Dr. Weir, but we don't have much time. Colonel Sheppard should be joining us momentarily for this next portion of the briefing."

Acquiescing without complaint, Elizabeth brought the second file to the top of her stack and settled down in the silence that followed to wait for the not-so-punctual Sheppard. Frowning, she idly doodled on a bit of scrap paper at her side: something she was not usually prone to do. The first bit of news she had received was so fantastic, only the second revelation had been capable of eclipsing it. She and John were fine… medically speaking. They had been reinstated in Atlantis without issue. And now, she could deliver the tidings to her people in person that they weren't just a military outpost any more. They were a family.

A happy thought passed through the forefront of her mind like a scrap of flotsam on a sea swell. Perhaps Dr. McKendricks would be able to have his new daughter, little Elizabeth, live with him in the city, if he so wished.

However, this fleeting moment of optimism was overshadowed by her sudden certainty that her quota of good news was exhausted for the day, and that bad news was sure to await her in the unopened file.

John burst into the room in a flurry of false composure and embarrassment before snapping into a salute before the generals. "Sorry, sirs. I was in the infirmary, sirs."

"At ease," O'Neill sighed, taking a seat at Hank's side while John did the same at Elizabeth's. "Did Walter get that file to you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. We can begin."

Upon opening the envelope, Elizabeth could barely abstain from rolling her eyes. She had been entirely correct in her prediction of bad news, (admittedly a concept hijacked from Murphy's Law, but she wasn't about to get technical). Glaring at her from the first page were photos taken from space of a massive Asuran Replicator shipyard, presumably preparing an armada to attack Earth.

Joy.

Elizabeth realized she had tuned out of the conversation only when she tuned back in.

"… and it has been decided upon by both the U.S. Military and the IOA that the best course of action to take in this situation would be to fire nuclear weapons from the new warship Apollo from space to neutralize the threat," Mr. Kenneth was explaining. "Since you were already here at the SGC, it was deemed prudent to inform you of our plans in advance."

John and Elizabeth shared a look. "Absolutely not," he protested at the same time as Elizabeth responded, "That is a very bad idea."

Everyone in the room, including General O'Neill, turned to them in shock. The dull grey of the concrete in the briefing room seemed to reverberate with the sudden quiet. But incidentally, the man was the first to recover. "Care to explain?" he requested, one silver eyebrow raised slightly.

Elizabeth jumped right in. "The Asurans are, obviously, very, very dangerous. The last time they attempted to destroy Atlantis, they nearly succeeded. And this time, they know exactly where to find us to exact retribution," she explained, concerned that those assembled before her could be missing something so obvious. "Nuclear bombs will never destroy them. They'll slow them down, certainly, but not enough for the city to be saved."

"Some say that the best defense is a good offence," General Landry pointed out from his seat. "What makes you so sure the replicators are so powerful? That they'll even have the ability to strike back?"

Leveling his cool grey eyes with Landry's, John reminded him, "First-hand experience sitting over here, remember? Besides, even the Ancients couldn't destroy them all. What makes you think our nukes can?"

The discomfort in the room was tangible. Finally, an IOA representative, whose name, Elizabeth recalled, was Mr. Hatloe, spoke softly, "But I have yet to see you offer a viable alternative. Either we strike now, while we can, or the Replicators attack Earth. What choice do we have?" he demanded.

Deep in frantic thought, Elizabeth lowered her eyes, determined to prove him wrong. But every solution she could think of was either impossible, took too long, or put either Earth or the City in danger. She was aware that John was still arguing with the others at the table, but thinking out loud had never been her way, and she continued to quietly contemplate the puzzle laid out before her. She knew that there had to be another, more elegant, solution. Glancing down at the scrap paper she had doodled on, Elizabeth suddenly realized that she already had her answer.

Giddy with anticipation and terrified that the solution would slip her mind again, Elizabeth stood and strode purposefully over to the whiteboard wheeled into one corner, pulling it closer to the table.

Obviously recognizing the expression on Elizabeth's face, John stood as well. "Elizabeth?" he asked gently.

Elizabeth couldn't find it within herself to deny him. Snatching the scrap paper from the table, she wordlessly held out the pencil sketch of the swirling, medallion-like design that she had dreamed of the night before. She carefully scrutinized John's features until a spark of recognition lit through them. "I've seen this before, but I can't remember where…" he murmured, almost to himself. Then, he raised his eyes to hers excitedly. "But I think I understand."

"Understand what?" Jack asked skeptically from behind them.

John and Elizabeth, having each discovered a whiteboard marker, ignored him, and began their work.

In the end, it didn't take longer than five minutes for the pair of them to complete the crude illustration. The other occupants of the room, however, still seemed completely flabbergasted, so Elizabeth stood to one side and took it upon herself to explain. She started with the seven-symbol 'gate address she had written across the top: the address provided to her of the Replicator's shipyard planet. From there, she took the six symbols that were not the point of origin and arranged them as they were situated in space, the point where their connecting lines met indicated as the target planet. "Look, stargate addresses use six points to fix on a specific point in three-dimensional space, right?" she asked hurriedly.

In a tone so long-suffering that Elizabeth suspected he had heard all of this many, many times before, General O'Neill responded in the affirmative.

"And the ARGs still work on Asurans as far as we know, yes?" she prompted.

"Yeah…"

"Look, what she's trying to say is that if we put jumpers in orbit around the planet at six points, like the reference points for a stargate address, and we retrofit them with ARGs, we can place small satellites here—" John accompanied this word by tapping a small dot he had drawn in his own illustration of the planet. "—here, here, here, here, and here to amplify the frequency and—"

"—we can hit the entire planet with it," Elizabeth finished for him, excitedly, not caring where the improbable double epiphany was coming from. "Because if the wave is made to follow this pattern above and into the atmosphere," She gestured emphatically at the swirling pattern she had drawn, which John was embellishing with his own marker. "It will be amplified enough to effectively encompass the entire surface of the planet, disrupting the nanites and rendering the Asurans completely harmless."

"We can hit the main Replicator planet as well," John recommended calmly, turning back towards the utterly still IOA and pair of Generals, having finished the swirl. "If we synchronize our attacks down to the minute, we would be able to rid Pegasus of the Replicators all at once, without worrying that they might be able to circumvent and protect themselves against the ARG. It won't take more than a matter of minutes."

"In addition, the ARGs only damage the Replicators. All of their equipment, cities, ships, weapons, everything; it will be unharmed and ours for the taking," Elizabeth pressed eagerly.

Beside her, John nodded vigorously. "To the victors go the spoils," he agreed.

Feeling entirely pleased with herself, Elizabeth fell into quiet, everything that had needed saying having already been said. After giving her a quick high-five, John did the same.

Though, in retrospect, Elizabeth realized she hadn't any idea where her burst of information, with its accompanying enthusiasm, had come from. Puzzled, she frowned a bit.

The room before them still seemed a bit shell-shocked, but O'Neill had already attached himself to the wall, grey plastic cord-phone to his ear. "Carter? Yeah, it's me. Listen, you're gonna wanna book it over here fast. I have something you have to see."

Coming soon... more plot! :D

Wish me luck at finding free time. Cheerio, and please, please, please, PLEASE drop a review!