Stargate graduation party - anything-goes version! \o/

[sholio]

I took my last final today - only fifteen years after I started, I have a bachelor's degree! \o/

So I'm celebrating with an SGA/Stargateverse commentfic party!

This is the DW "anything goes" party (any pairing - including gen, any rating, kinks are fine, etc). Over on LJ there's the gen party. You are perfectly welcome to participate in both places!

How to play: Post prompts! Answer other prompts!

Your prompt should be a character(s) (including "any") or pairing, and any kind of prompt: a situation, song lyric, word, picture, sketch, etc. You don't have to answer prompts to leave them, but please leave one prompt per comment; responses to a prompt should be done by replying to the comment.

I want non-writers to be able to play too, so it's fine to answer a prompt with fanart (or a vid, cross-stitch, whatever) rather than a commentfic. You can also post a conversation starter instead (Top five favorite episodes? What does John's black wristband mean?), a character/ship manifesto, or a picspam, although to keep the comments from getting bogged down, if you're going to post more than one picture per comment, please post it at your journal and link to it! Also, if your fic gets long, it's fine to post it at your journal and link (though you don't have to).

Any Gateverse prompt is welcome, though my circle leans SGA-heavy, so those are probably the ones with the greatest chance of being answered! Please don't attack characters or ships in discussions - tell us how much you love X, not why Y is teh suck. Questions are also welcome if you're totally confused, which is a definite possibility.

Commentfic! Art! Discussion! PARTY!

... aaaand GO!

Comments

[tielan]

Elizabeth - the voices in your head

[elegantpi]

The silence in Elizabeth's apartment presses in on her, so she opens the windows. The night also is silent; once upon a time, what seems a very long time ago, she chose this apartment because of its quiet location. Tonight, she would be glad of a wind to stir the trees and make them rustle, or better yet a thunderstorm to shake her windows. Street noise, people noise, anything to break the silence that so pointedly reminds her of where she is not.

Curled up in the chair beside her window, Elizabeth shivers just a little in the late September air. She reaches down to pull a blanket off the floor, wraps it around herself and draws her knees up to her chest. Somewhere in the night, she hears the laughter of a girl and the patter of high heels on the sidewalk.

The phone rings. It's on the other side of the room, across a living room that she hasn't bothered to tidy up for a couple of days. Must remember to throw out those take-out boxes, she thinks, as the phone trills again. They're starting to smell. She turns her head to breathe in air from the window. It smells flat, lusterless, lacking the salty tang to which she has become accustomed. Moving to the sofa, she drags the blanket with her and curls up under it just as the answering machine picks up.

Her eyelids are heavy, so she closes them. It's so easy just to go to sleep these days. Too easy. But she has no reason to stay awake. No crisis to manage, no team to wait for in the control room, no new discoveries to sort through, and no corridors to wander at night nor balconies to haunt that overlook a city and an ocean beneath alien stars. And sometimes, she dreams...

"You've reached Dr. Elizabeth Weir. Please leave me a message and your contact information, and I will return your call as soon as I can." BEEP.

"Um... yes. Elizabeth, this is, um, Rodney... well, you know who I am. I don't really... I just wanted to see how you're doing. Call me sometime? Or, you know, email me, or something. You've got my contact info and all that. At least, I think you do. OK, well, hope to hear from you soon." BEEP.

Maybe it's Rodney's voice that does it, overlapping with those moments of transition between her brain's Alpha and Theta waves, drawing her back to Atlantis. As his voice fades away, it's replaced with the sussurration of ocean waves and the hum of a city alive.

And it's Rodney's voice she hears, on that first incredible day. Oh. So the story of Atlantis is true. A great city that sank in the ocean. Yes, Rodney, it is true.

Then other voices, one on top of the other, but she can pick them out - so familiar, echoing in every room, every corridor.
John, jubilant. I shot him! In the leg!
Carson. I told you I was the wrong person!
Teyla's gentle voice. We have always lived in the shadow of the Wraith... Teyla, oh, Teyla...
Aidan - she can almost see him, too, grinning at her in his boyish way; he was so young! - I could tell my grandma what I've been up to all this time. Then, pleading, ...just let me prove it. Just give me something to do...
Ronon. Ronon rarely speaks, but she can sense him, a solid presence beneath the other voices.

Zelenka and Rodney, bantering, finishing each other's sentences. John's sarcastic interjections. Teyla, across the briefing room table, quirking a smile at her and rolling her eyes at "the boys". Ronon putting his boots up on the table - she knows he knows that it annoys her, and she's sure that's why he does it.

She can feel it coming back now, the familiar weight of responsibility for several hundred lives and perhaps the fate of a galaxy or two. The bustle of daily life and routine, the sharp surges of adrenaline when routine is interrupted. The hum of computers, the glow of an alien sun streaming through stained glass and pooling in colorful shapes on a silver-blue floor. And a different glow, white-hot, blue-tinged, rippling like water, sparking like lightning, tunneling through space and time. No mission reports describe the smell of a wormhole. It's like ozone, a scent like air before a summer storm.

And then another voice, fondly: Look at you - always worrying. You put too much pressure on yourself.

Not anymore, Elizabeth thinks, wandering down a blue hallway, trailing her hand over the intricate copper decorations. Bright water reflections ripple over the walls. The swoosh of a door sliding closed, the hum of the environmental system, the waves rocking against the piers far below, the call of a sea bird. The salty wind on her face, tangling in her hair, and the smooth rail of her balcony under her hands. The smell of Athosian cooking drifting out from the mess hall. Home, oh, home - the voice of home, the scent, the sound of it.

Then: Your guardianship of this city is no longer necessary. The city is now under my control. The cruelty of the words knocks Elizabeth breathless, spoken as they are in such a mild, reasonable voice. She's falling, shattering, space and time coming apart at their infinite seams, and she gasps and drags herself upright, shaking that voice out of her head, denying those words, trying to save herself, hold herself together.

She's surprised to find herself standing up, hands outstretched, reaching. Blanket pooled around her feet, the lights of her apartment on and her window open to the night. It's all fading away, now. The voices of her people, her city, Ronon's fierce presence, Rodney's brash chatter, the lift of John's voice, and Teyla's persistent hope and determination. Gone, stolen, as lost to her now as any legendary lost city had ever been.

Her answering machine is flashing a number in the double digits. She passes it on the way to get a bottle of water from the fridge. She reaches out, and with a brush of her finger, deletes all messages.

[zillah975]

Oh, Elizabeth! This is lovely, very atmospheric and sad. I'm so glad we know that she does get to go back.

[elegantpi]

Thank you! I always felt that being separated from Atlantis hit Elizabeth the hardest. The others were coping, even John and Rodney, but she just shut down.

Whenever I watch the scene of her holed up in her apartment, I just want to give her a hug and tell her everything will be all right... Except, knowing what I know of her future, I would be lying... :(

[michelel72]

Oh, poor Elizabeth! What a very effective snapshot. ::sniff::

[elegantpi]

Thank you! ::shares the box of kleenex::

[sholio]

Elizabeth! Oh, this is gorgeous and poignant; you've very effectively conveyed how lost she is, how alone and adrift.

[elegantpi]

Happy graduation. :) <3 Elizabeth. I want her back.

[tielan]

Oh, Elizabeth!

So very poignant and well-done!

[elegantpi]

Thank you. :)

[tuawahine]

Awww.
This makes me fall in love with her character all over again.

[elegantpi]

I'm so glad. :) Elizabeth needs lots of people to love her.