entangled and undone at once (stargate atlantis | elizabeth & jack, elizabeth/teyla)

[fiachairecht]

entangled and undone at once. stargate atlantis, elizabeth & jack, elizabeth/teyla. five times elizabeth weir kicked jack o'neill out of her office. 6.1k words, rated t.

i. 1997

The first time Elizabeth Weir kicks Jack O'Neill out of her office, she's at Georgetown, and the office has only been hers for two weeks. Most of the books on her shelves are still the library's, rather than her own, but she's starting to get used to seeing the real nameplate proclaiming her Dr. Elizabeth Weir every day.

She doesn't see him at first, he's half hidden behind the bookcase and she's trying to juggle keys, coffee, purse, coat, several books, and a stack of student short response essays. When she finally gets everything sorted on her desk and focuses enough to notice him, slouched in her second chair like he owns the office, she just sighs. "Office hours don't start for another forty-five minutes, you can sign up on the sheet on my door that you had to pointedly ignore when you walked in."

The words are out of her mouth before she's even sure he's a student, and, in fact, the longer she looks at him the less sure she is that he is. There's something about the studied casualness of his pose, something too bright in his eyes, that makes her wonder.

"I know," he says easily, "that's why I'm here now." Only then does he stand up offering her his hand. "Jack O'Neill, United States Air Force."

Elizabeth suppresses her near-instinctive eyeroll with difficulty but, oh, she should have guessed, so she sets her mug down and shakes his hand anyway. "And the United States Air Force is doing what, exactly, in my office at seven thirty on a Thursday morning?" And then something occurs to her through the pre-second-coffee irritation haze. "Unless you're one of my students trying to preemptively get out of doing their essays."

There's the faintest hint of a smile as he digs his credentials out of a pocket. "No essay skiving, promise."

This time she doesn't suppress the eyeroll. The ID looks genuine enough, though, and she sighs at the thought of all the grading that isn't going to get done this morning. "Fine. Sit down, and explain why you're in my office."

She flings herself into her own chair a little harder than necessary (and makes a mental note to try to steal a more comfortable one from somewhere else as soon as she can) and smirks at the mildly alarmed look O'Neill gives the stack of books occupying the chair opposite the desk. He opts for the less precarious option of returning to the corner chair.

"I see you're still working on diplomatic theory," O'Neill says, tilting his head towards the books.

It's not an answer, not really, and a cold tendril of suspicion winds through Elizabeth's mind. "Still? Are you spying on me?" She takes a steadying sip of her coffee, ignoring the fact that it's still near-scalding.

"Dinner Parties and Detonations: Regime Type and Negotiation Strategies During the SALT & START Negotiations." He watches her evenly, and Elizabeth has the sudden feeling that she's underestimated him.

Elizabeth grips her mug tighter. "Why does the military care about my dissertation?" How much do you know about me, think you know about me, she wants to add, but she doesn't think she wants to know the answer. She studies diplomats; she isn't one.

O'Neill shrugs. "Because it was good?"

Like you read it, is her first thought, followed by the realisation that really wouldn't be the strangest truth she's encountered in the past ten minutes. "It was," she says simply instead, "but that's not an answer." She meets his stare, summoning every I am your professor and you are going to sit down, remove that baseball cap, and start listening to me look she has ever given to misbehaving boys in her classroom.

It works somewhat better on O'Neill, or perhaps the military has just instilled in him a greater amount of respect than Elizabeth thinks those boys will ever gain.

"No, no, it is an answer." He means, she thinks, to sound reassuring, but the words are anything but. "You impressed a lot of people doing fieldwork for that."

"Flattery is appreciated and yet entirely useless for you, Colonel." And it was a good dissertation, too, everyone from her interviewees to her committee chair to her mother agreed. But she was supposed to be done with the military now, had tried to take Carol's advice and get out of that world, no matter the rush of power it gave her.

O'Neill runs a hand through his hair, and despite everything she's a little proud that she's managed to make him uncomfortable. She sips her coffee, and he tries again. "Look, all I'm saying is, you attracted some attention. The good kind! And there's a new project starting up, one that ... one that we'd like you to think about joining."

Her mug clatters against the desk, echoing dully in the tiny office, and she swears as the coffee splashes over her hand. "This is a recruitment meeting? Are you insane?"

"I'm not," he grins and, yes, the smugness is back. Elizabeth's starting to wonder what it's hiding. "I told them you wouldn't go for it.

We, them. Whatever this project is, O'Neill's conflicted about it, and that's maybe the least encouraging realisation she's come to all morning. "Perceptive of you," she says, and it comes out a little sharper than she intended it. "I already have a job."

"I know," he says as he stands. "Just doing my own job." She doesn't do him the courtesy of standing as well. He takes one, two steps towards the door, and hesitates. "For what it's worth, I do think you would be good in the position. Diplomacy, negotiating ... all your theory put into practise on a world-changing scale."

"Teaching is a way to change the world as well," Elizabeth reminds him, and, you're not curious, you're not you're not, she reminds herself.

"I know," he repeats, and maybe she's imaging the hint of sadness hovering at the edges of his mouth now, but the way he's stopped meeting her eyes is unmistakable.

This would be so much easier if curiosity hadn't joined the already overwhelming number of feelings jostling for her attention. Her eyes fall on her stack of grading. You're here now. You're where you want to be. "Then you also know you have to leave."

He nods, once, and drops a business card on her desk. "Let me know if you change your mind. Or just. If you're curious."

"I won't," she says to his retreating back.

They both know it's a lie.

 

*

 

ii. 2000

The second time Elizabeth Weir kicks Jack O'Neill out of her office, she's at the UN, and the office isn't really hers (her officemates, who have taken to adding their own notes to her copies of documents they all need in a vain attempt to save space, might disagree). She's in the middle of trying to piece several Balkan governments back together, he's in full military uniform, and she hates him on so many principles.

She only spares him half a glance when she finds him hovering outside her door, though she snatches one of the coffees from his hand on her way in with unerring precision. They're fallen into a civil sort of ... well, not friendship, but something that might have the potential to turn into it one day, over email since that day back in Georgetown, and while Elizabeth has enjoyed the political sniping as well as the true ideological debates underlying it, she doesn't really need to deal with him today.

"Colonel," she says, flicking her eyes toward Andrea's empty chair in an approximation of an invitation. He takes it without a word. "Ten minutes, and then Carla Del Ponte is going to be in this office, and, trust me, she is astronomically higher on my priority list than you."

"Funny thing about astronomy," he tries, but she holds up a hand to preempt whatever's coming next.

"No. No astronomy, no aliens, no conspiracies. None of that today." Not that she hasn't been enjoying the emails over the past three years, his stories so obviously exaggerated as to be fake but always with the glimmers of something, some truth that he wants to tell but can't underneath it all. Not that she hasn't, late nights when she can't sleep for the black and white printed horrors of her reports crawling along the insides of her eyelids, wondered if there really is something alien in a literal otherworldly way that he wants her to come talk to, work for.

O'Neill blinks, taken aback by the sharpness in her tone. "I ... it's not really about that today. But at some point we're going to have to talk about security clearances and things you actually believe."

Elizabeth narrows her eyes. "Look, I know the office isn't impressive, but between the UN and the International Criminal Court, I've done my share of background checks over the past year. I'm the first person to be doing this sort of peacebuilding work at this level, and you don't get to hold me responsible for your own inability to keep your mouth shut in emails."

She's hit a nerve, no matter how he tries to keep his face unreadable. "Maybe this was a mistake."

"Probably," she agrees, but that damnable curiosity is rising in her again. "But I suppose you deserve the chance to explain why you've bothered to track me down here in the middle of the most important treaty negotiations of the new millennium."

"You haven't guessed?" He looks almost surprised.

Elizabeth flicks halfheartedly at the lid of her coffee cup, watches the steam rising. "I can guess. Join the military, talk to secret aliens. Save the world, because the military that's just co-opted me from drafting reparative justice clauses for new constitutions has upset someone in giant spaceship."

O'Neill shifts uneasily in his chair, swipes a rubber band off Andrea's desk and twists it uneasily. "It's not all military, you know. And we're not in danger of the world ending today."

"Good for you," she says sourly, checking her watch and not bothering to be subtle about it. "Then I can get back to work. Here."

He stands up, military-straight, and in the cramped confines of the office he looks even more out of place like this. "Dr. Weir, with all due respect, we're offering you the chance to do something on a much, much bigger and more important scale."

Elizabeth stands up. Too fast, and her chair crashes into Jason's desk behind her. "Let me tell you something I've learned in this job, Colonel," she snaps, raising her voice just above the sound of something crashing from Jason's desk to the floor. He's going to kill her later, but right now she doesn't care.

"I've learned that it absolutely does not matter what scale you think you're fighting on, it's always the people who need the least added suffering who get the worst of it. Think about your wars. Think about why it's the military doing ... whatever the hell you're doing in that mountain of yours. And do it somewhere that isn't my office."

And he looks at her, just looks at her speechless like it's the first time he's ever seen her. The silence stretches on for so long that she's about to tell him to leave, again, when he turns on his heel and does just that, nearly running into Andrea in the narrow doorway as she wanders in cradling an open binder in one hand and trying to keep her glasses on with the other.

"Who was that?" Andrea looks more offended by the fact that O'Neill interrupted her reading than interested in who he is.

Elizabeth shrugs. "You know. U.S. Air Force. Raising hell about the possibility Del Ponte might go after NATO pilots. Same old story." The lie isn't strictly a necessity at this point, but it comes first, and easiest. One of these days she might start worrying about that.

"Assholes," Andrea declares, and then slips into rapid Italian Elizabeth understands just enough of to be glad it isn't directed at her. She settles for nodding in agreement.

Del Ponte's running late, but not late enough that Elizabeth's managed to shake the idea that O'Neill looked smaller when he left by the time she arrives.

 

*

 

iii. 2004

The third time Elizabeth Weir kicks Jack O'Neill out of her office, she's at Stargate Command, and the office is only hers for another few hours.

She had never meant to come here, had even, for a time, managed to convince herself that she didn't want to know anything about the Stargate programme. After the argument in her UN office, she had given O'Neill the silent treatment for a full six months, until he had messaged her somewhat desperately asking how she would translate some very technical diplomatic language into Russian.

And after that — well, after that, Elizabeth gave up any chance she had at locking her curiosity away. She gathered what information she could with her security clearances, and maybe some people in the Joint Chiefs' offices thought those clearances expired later than they really did, and maybe some of her friends in academia knew more people in government better than they pretended to, and maybe not all of her surprise when she's formally asked to run the Cheyenne Mountain base is genuine.

She almost surprises herself with how quickly she adapts, lets herself get caught up in the tight, nervous, wonderful energy that flies through the mountain's halls: managing the base is not, in the end, so different from managing a classroom, though with infinitely more pressure, and O'Neill was right: it is nice to see the world saved, immediately and right in front of you, because of things you ordered.

(Elizabeth stops, once, just once in the gateroom when miraculously there's no one else around, stares up at the miles of concrete and steel and earth and rock above her head, and thinks: yes, this is right, I've been here before.

And then immediately corrects herself: no, this isn't quite it, it's supposed to be the water.

The thoughts are foreign and true and right now she shakes them off, thinking they have no place in this war for her world, and it will be another year and another galaxy before she understands that this was the moment when she first realised she was going home.)

Still it's a relief to see him back, alive and whole if still not quite present. Relief is a new reaction to seeing him, and she's so discomforted by it that she almost, almost asks him if he wants the office. But then she considers the number of explanations she would have to give if Jack O'Neill fainted on her office floor because she made a Star Trek reference, and settles for, "Welcome back, Colonel."

"Yeah," he says, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "And, uh. It's General. Soon, at least. Apparently you save the world enough times, they promote you into a position where you can't do it as often."

Elizabeth smiles wryly. It's a well-deserved promotion even if only a tenth of the gossip around the base is true, but she can see where he's coming from. Her department back at Georgetown used to have bitter fights over who would get the relief from paperwork not being department chair brought. "The entire collected knowledge of the Ancients in that brain of yours, and none of it that reminds you that this is finally your chance to put that quip about doing something yourself if you want it done right into action?"

He snorts, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Not really the parts I was paying attention to. Although I think we've seen that they weren't that great at the planning parts of world-saving anyway. Nice drones, though."

"Ooh, that is not a phrase I am used to agreeing with," she sighs. "Do you want to sit down? There's a chair, somewhere. Supposedly even a coffeemaker, but I've not really spent enough time actually in the office to really find out."

"No, no, it's fine," he says, waving a hand carelessly. "I have a feeling I'm going to be seeing too much of this office soon. And you always end up making me feel like a third grader who got caught chewing gum in class whenever I sit down in front of your desk, anyway."

And she laughs, the sort of bone-shaking, desk-grabbing laugh that she's missed since she came to the mountain, a laugh made better not only by the fact that she's damn proud of that but also by the fact that it sets him to laughing as well.

"So," he says, when they've both managed to calm down somewhat, a smile still tugging the corners of his mouth. "I hear they're sending you back to the Antarctica base? My condolences."

"I don't mind, Jack, really," she says. "Leading this base, it's ... it's a lot of things, but it's not where I should really be in the programme."

He doesn't, precisely, look like he believes her. "And you don't think Antarctica is kind of ... far?"

Elizabeth raises her eyebrows. "This from a man whose day job has been traveling to other planets for seven years."

"Well, yeah," he concedes with a half-shrug. "But there's people there. Action. Antarctica would be, you know, an exile for a lot of us."

She sighs, props her chin on her hand. "Jack," she says slowly. There's something about this conversation that she can't quite pin down, something about the past few weeks that's swirling and solidifying with something much much older, and the quiet certainty that she holds now isn't foreign but isn't really identifiable, either. "Jack, where was I when you first met me?"

He blinks. "In an assistant professor's office slightly smaller than a shoebox?"

"Exactly," she grins. "Leading doesn't mean anything if it means you give up things like research, learning, community."

Jack shakes his head slowly, and she thinks he looks just like he did that moment in New York when she surprised him for the first time. "Better you than me, is all I can say. But ... you did good work here. It would have been okay. If you stayed."

She can see what the admission costs him, and it warms her after too many cold days. It's taken seven years for her to smile genuinely at him, seven years for him to trust her on a level that matters. And neither of them are willing to put it into words. So instead she says, "Thanks. Now, shoo. I have things to finish before you get the office."

"Yes, ma'am," he grins, and the salute is not nearly as mocking as it could be. He starts to leave, turns around with one foot out the door. "And, Elizabeth?"

"Yeah?"

"Take your time."

She laughs and reaches for a pen, returning to her paperwork to the sound of his comically off-key whistling drifting through the corridor.

 

*

 

iv. 2006

The fourth time Elizabeth Weir kicks Jack O'Neill out of her office, she's on Atlantis, and taking back what's rightfully hers. She never should have left; she knows it, John and Teyla and Kate and Atlantis all know it, but none of that had mattered in front of the combined demands of an IOA commission and several real live Ancients.

Besides, what would she have said? "Sorry, Mr. President, I have to refuse the request that's not really a request from these all-powerful aliens, the city that I have deep philosophical conversations with at three in the morning loves me too much to let me go"? "I see your point but the people I care most about in every galaxy are staying in Pegasus, so I am too"? No, she was able to do the most good as the leader of Atlantis, and just because her people were scattered across two galaxies and she was exiled to Earth, she wouldn't, couldn't put that position in jeopardy. Not to mention the number of secrets it would have meant bringing too close to the light.

(A week into her stay on Earth, she stopped wondering why it felt like an exile.)

But she's back now, back in a city that doesn't keep secrets from her and back on an ocean a shade of blue nothing on Earth could replicate or replace. She's back and she's home and she's re-gathering her people and sleeping through the night for the first time since she left. She's back, and even the fact that Jack O'Neill has his boots on her desk can make her feel anything but elated.

"Feet down," she says from the balcony, though she's too fond of him by now, and too relieved to be back for there to be any real irritation behind the words.

His boots hit the ground with a thud as he spins his chair around. John, on the other side of the desk where he should, theoretically, have been able to see her first, nearly drops his tablet checking his own feet.

"Elizabeth," they chorus, sounding the exact same shade of slightly wounded, and she snickers as she crosses the office to lean her hip against the desk.

"Hey," she shrugs, "as of ten hours ago, this was officially my office again."

Jack narrows his eyes at her, and then fixes John with the same look as he smiles too widely. "I thought the IOA was still deciding that."

"They are," Elizabeth says.

"I think she was counting from the second she stepped foot in the city," John clarifies for her, and she's missed this, being with people she doesn't have to justify her attachment to Atlantis to, people who understand and don't ask questions and feel the echoes of the city not just because they have a gene but because they're hers, hers and her city's.

"You see, that right there is why the IOA is still deciding if they want to hand the city and the expedition back over to you people," Jack sighs. He would fight for them, this time, she thinks, but the implications still prickle.

As if Atlantis is something to be passed around to whoever the IOA picks, she thinks, and starts, "This time—" before John catches her eye.

Don't, he says silently, the emotional shorthand they've perfected over the past three years as clear as it ever was. Elizabeth, he doesn't know, and we need him.

"This time they're going to have to learn from their mistakes," she redirects herself mid-sentence. He has a point, but that doesn't mean she has to like it. She fought for the city for ten thousand years while it cradled her under the ocean, should have fought harder for it when it sparkled under a rapidly falling sky. Will fight for it again, now, smarter even than the last time.

"Yeah, well, maybe not." Jack sighs, changes the subject with nothing resembling grace. "How did you get on the balcony, anyway? It's not ... Replicator things still, is it?"

"I'm gonna go check in with McKay," John says, seizing the opportunity to make his retreat. "Let you two share leadership stories."

Traitor, she glares at him, and too bad, he smirks back, before vanishing into the control room.

"Nothing Replicator," Elizabeth assures him, just a little smug. "I just asked the transporter. Nicely."

Jack frowns. "That never happened when I was here."

Elizabeth shrugs. "Atlantis likes me," she says simply, and the city's hum shifts in pitch just enough to let her know it agrees. She smiles. It's that, more than anything else, that she misses when she's off-world: the responsiveness, the blood-deep knowledge of home. "Hear that?"

"No," Jack says, and draws the word out just long enough to make it clear he thinks she's being weird. But he also looks like he's decided arguing the point can't possibly be in his best interests. "Why you?" He's humouring her, but the question is deceptively simple.

Because I slept here for ten thousand years while they left her to drown, Elizabeth wants to say, but she doesn't. Only Teyla and John know the full extent of what the old Elizabeth told her, and Carson and Kate are the only others who know anything about it, and she wants to keep it that way.

"What," she says instead, opting for something light, the sort of saying-without-saying that she's perfected over the years, "you mean Cheyenne Mountain doesn't like you? Because I'm pretty sure it missed you while you were mostly dead in Antarctica."

He scoffs. "What does that make the city then, your girlfriend?" It's not truly cruel coming from Jack, not like it would be from Woolsey or even General Landry, but it still edges too close to things she shouldn't, can't say, because she and Teyla might not be bound by the rules of the U.S. military but that doesn't mean no one back on Earth will punish them for breaking them.

And it's Teyla who saves her, then, leaning against the doorframe and smirking and saying I am not sure it's for a lack of trying on Atlantis' part, more than lightly enough to crack the tension that's been hanging in the room since John left it.

"Teyla!" Elizabeth exclaims, and, yes, she's seen the other woman several times since the city's been reclaimed but that doesn't mean she's ever going to get tired of seeing her safe and here.

"Elizabeth," Teyla says, slightly more quietly, but she crosses the room, in three quick steps and pulls Elizabeth down to press their foreheads together as if they were alone in the office. "Welcome home," she says warmly, as if it is the first time she's seen her, and Elizabeth recognises the O'Neill-directed excuse for her enthusiasm for what it is. "We have missed you. I am afraid the children will try to drown you in safe return gifts once you are able to leave the city and visit. And you, too, General," she address Jack, "for keeping the city safe while Dr. Weir was away."

But Jack's mind is seemingly miles away, staring at them as if something has just finally clicked into place. "You two," he says, half to himself. "Of course."

If they were anywhere but her office, Elizabeth is pretty sure she would die of embarrassment. "General," she starts calmly, hoping she isn't blushing, but he shakes his head.

"No, Elizabeth, I get it. And anyway, you know. 'Don't tell' means people who know, too, even though it doesn't apply to you in the strictest sense." It's a promise and so much more than she expected, and she tangles her fingers with Teyla's rubbing her thumb over her knuckles to ease the worry she's sure is in her eyes.

"In that case, General," she says, "Perhaps I could have my office back? We can talk more when I've had a chance to finish going over reports."

He smiles. "Of course." He stands up, hesitates for a moment before shaking both their hands. "You have a hell of a lot of good people beside you, Dr. Weir."

"That I do," she agrees.

Elizabeth waits until he's out of sight before dipping her head again to give Teyla a quick kiss. "Well, that could've gone worse," she murmurs.

"In so many ways," Teyla sighs. "Do not leave again, Elizabeth."

"I won't," she promises. "Not while Atlantis still stands."

It shouldn't, really, have been a promise that was hard to keep.

 

*

 

i. 2007

The fifth time Elizabeth Weir kicks Jack O'Neill out of her office, she's only been back on Atlantis for three weeks, and she takes the dismissal back a half second later.

He has tea, and she tells herself that's why she lets him stay. He has her favourite Athosian blend, one that, between the Asurans and the quarantine and the infirmary she hasn't had in longer than she wants to think about and he looks kind like this. So before he's managed to do anything but stand up, she says, "No, Jack, never mind. Stay."

He sits down again slowly, like he's expecting her to change her mind again before his ass hits the chair. When she doesn't, he chances a smile. "You know, it doesn't usually take ten years for people to warm up to me enough to not kick me out of their offices."

Elizabeth smiles, tucks her knees under her chin as she swings her chair in tiny quarter-circles. "Most people don't consider that to be a significant step on their scales of friendship," she says as seriously as she can manage.

"Well," Jack blinks slowly at her. "I think we would both be disappointed if we were most people."

"Mmm," she hums in agreement, reaching out for her tea and cradling the hot mug in hands that haven't felt warm in weeks. The aroma filters through her heightened senses, one more part to the multiplicity of voices whispering home home home really home in her veins. "Kate would want us to talk about that, you know. Dying, and the coming back."

His lips twist in something approaching a smile, nothing approaching cruelty. "Well. Psychologists."

"I've been considering it," Elizabeth says. It's the first time she's actually given voice to the thought, she realises with a start, the first time she hasn't just thought about it to appease Teyla or Kate or John with no intention of following through.

His eyes widen, almost imperceptibly. She wouldn't have noticed it before, she thinks, but now everything is sharp and heightened and more, bleeding around the edges like it's reaching out for the nanites in her blood and the voices in her head. Teyla and Rodney and Jennifer all promise her it's going to get better, that she'll learn to control it, but she's not sure their definitions of better align anymore. But when Jack holds her gaze and tries to keep the surprise off his face and asks really? his curiosity is laced with a vulnerability she's not sure she has a right to.

Elizabeth musters something close to a smile. "Yeah. I figured, you know, I spent three years as the expedition leader refusing to actually talk to Kate about ... well, anything ... it might be time."

Jack leans forward, props his elbows on her desk and his chin in his hands. "I never really saw the point of it, myself. The talking. Either they know what it's like to die and Ascend and come back, or they've decided what it's like and ask you questions until you tell them a story that matches that."

There's a lifetime or two's worth of stories behind that, lifetimes that Elizabeth would want to know everything about it it didn't mean questions she would never dream of asking. "I don't think Kate would do that," she says instead, though she can feel the uncertainty back, running through each nanite one at a time.

"Don't think Kate would do what?" the woman herself asks from the doorway. Colonel Carter's at her side, and Elizabeth snickers as Jack jumps to his feet at the sight of her despite the fact that he technically outranks her.

"Kate, Colonel Carter," Elizabeth greets them. She doesn't stand. So maybe she's still something closer to threat than leader in the eyes of the IOA and a fair amount of Earth's military, the office is still hers. "Worried I've spent too much time under only one pair of watchful eyes?" She knows where they're coming from, knows she would be even more cautious in Carter's place, but damn if the fact that they thought she couldn't be trusted not to destroy a city she'd devoted over ten thousand years to didn't hurt more than she'd expected.

"You have an appointment with Doctor Keller in half an hour," Carter reminds her, before she can come up with a proper answer to Kate's question.

Elizabeth sighs. "That I get to walk to because Rodney's still worried about the way my nanites will react to the transporters, yes, I am aware." She resists the urge to roll her eyes. The nanites have only strengthened the bond she has with Atlantis; the idea that they would be a problem when they were hers was laughable. Not, of course, that Rodney had believed that, muttering about genes and biological versus nonbiological versus was that even really you who stayed, I mean, time travel does crazy things as we know connections.

"Look on the bright side," Kate suggests. "At least you don't get tired from walking around anymore." Always the peacemaker, even though she and Carter had managed to interrupt one of the first moments of peace she'd had since her return, save the few hours in the cells when Teyla had managed to convince her guards to leave her alone.

"Yes," Elizabeth drawls, staring up at the ceiling. "Increased stamina. Definitely makes up for being treated like a prisoner in my own city."

Carter frowns. "Dr. Weir, it's not—"

Jack cuts her off. "And," he adds, "Teyla promised to make you breakfast after." Despite the fact that he's the only one in the room she feels somewhat kindly disposed to at the moment, he's doing a fairly good job of hiding behind Colonel Carter.

Elizabeth pins all three of them with a glare from over the rim of her teacup. "You planned this," she accuses them.

"Well," Kate, at least, has the grace to look somewhat embarrassed.

"It was kinda more of a bribe than a plan," Jack clarifies. Elizabeth thinks about Teyla's general level of cooking skills and wonders if that's supposed to be a euphemism for something. She doesn't blush at the thought. She doesn't.

Carter, for her part, looks like she would rather be just about anywhere else.

Elizabeth breathes deeply, focuses on Atlantis' hum in the back of her mind. She hadn't expected it to meld so seamlessly with the nanites, but her connection to the city was something she'd put too much effort into for it to be overwhelmed even by the Asurans. She wonders, sometimes, how much of her would have remained without the city to anchor her. Remember why you're doing this, she tells herself. It's going to be fine. It has to be. "Well," she says, draining her mug and standing up, "Lead on, then."

Jack and Kate do; Carter hangs back slightly to walk next to her.

"Look, Elizabeth," she says softly, and Elizabeth doesn't miss that Carter's eyes stay sharp on her hands rather than meeting her own, "I know this is weird for you, and trust me, it's weird for me too. But I think they'll clear you to return to the expedition properly. I've ..." She hesitates, and Elizabeth wonders if this is where she's supposed to step in, reassure Colonel Carter — Sam, she used to be Sam, are we really going to sacrifice our friendship because of the Asurans — that she doesn't blame her, that she trusts her with her city. "I've always, well, known that I was just waiting for you to come back."

Elizabeth stops, so suddenly that she nearly misses a turn and hits the wall. Jack and Kate turn around at Carter's noise of surprise. "Who told you that?"

"Well, no one," Carter admits. "It's just ... it's in the city, you know? You could tell that it was waiting for something."

The jealousy that twists in her stomach at that is not altogether unexpected, though Carter's words are. Had she really been gone so long that Atlantis had started finding others? She turns to Kate, looking for ... she's not sure what. She is sure she'd prefer not to be doing this in the middle of a corridor, but there's no going back. "What does she mean?" She's not sure she wants to know the answer.

Kate sighs, fidgets with the pocket of her cargo pants, and looks uncertainly between Elizabeth and Jack and Carter. "The city's been ... was darker after you left. We all mourned, and Atlantis ... joined us, it felt like."

Elizabeth thinks back to the endless stream of time on Asura, the wind too warm and talkative to resemble any that might be found on Atlantis but the sister-feeling of Asura's longing unmistakable. She hadn't wondered if Atlantis had missed her, had taken it for granted, but the knowledge still settles comfortably in her chest.

"It's like you said, last year," Jack says. There's something faraway about his eyes know, and Elizabeth realises with a start that he gets it now, like he never has before. "Atlantis likes you."

But what surprises her even more is that the same look is mirrored in Carter's eyes. "The office is still yours," she says.

And Elizabeth believes her.