Fic: No Drop of Water
Title: No Drop of Water
Authors: little_giddy & hariboo_smirks
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~1300
Pairing(s): gen, John/Elizabeth pre-ship.
Warning(s): spoilers for "The Last Man."
Prompt: "The Last Man". What if the Last Man was really a woman?
Summary: After a mission goes wrong Elizabeth finds herself on a desert planet, alone. Now she has to survive and try and make it back home.
Beta: little_giddy
Disclaimer: SGA does not belong to me.
A/N: these things just happen with us.
It ends on the salt flats.
----
Words, words were once easy. They snapped and flowed like so many fish in a stream, breaking ripples and lines across stones.
Sentences rub against each other and their edges don't fit; not even words flow easily from one into another anymore. The sharpened ends of sentences jar and jerk between each she ekes from her mind. They cause friction and heat in her already overrun mind because they don't make sense as they should as she lurches from thought to thought.
She left him in the days of plenty, a hand on her wrist by the illusion of water. She doesn't step anymore; she falls, catching herself time and again like a pendulum drawn back at the edge of being too far off-balance. She keeps stepping, even though she recognises that now the earth isn't burning, isn't moving - she is. She bumps and staggers across its surface as if a breeze pushes her.
Nineteen seventy-six: her mother makes pastry in the oven and lets her draw shapes on its surface. As the heat grows, as she stares wide-eyed through the oven window, the pastry expands up and up to eventually smooth out those same designs.
How presumptious. How typical. A human being throwing herself intermittently across unfamiliar but solid ground, with the temerity to call it 'earth'.
The water's long gone. The rain is years away. This planet has no oceans to taunt her; the salt from long dried, cool expanses crackles under her worn flat boots.
They have no right to call it 'earth', to call it 'home': more right on this of all planets in this galaxy they don't own. More right, but more right doesn't mean much.
Puddlejumper. Gates - stargates. The guard's last act was to steer hers towards the city. Water-gates, one planet called them. Not exactly, but through translations she's sure she once had to work to do, that's what it meant. If only she could stop thinking of water, she'd feel less pain.
She's tripped before: she trips again. Still a thrill to see a glint beneath the dusty worn surface, to realise she's not holding the rocks of this earth. It means she's close.
Standing, there's a flat surface in front of her. Vertically, which is why it takes her a minute of standing stock still to pull her eyes in from their distant focus.
It's a gate; a door, not a gate. Gates, she reminds herself forcefully, are different. It's been so long since that world that it's not easy.
"You just missed him."
She hears it from her position crouched on all fours on a hard, smooth floor in a dark - but getting lighter - hallway.
Then why am I here?
Her voice is long gone with the water, the sun she can see and the bearable air, but the transparent figure of Rodney McKay understands the look in her eyes as she coughs and peels off the goggles.
"You're the city's insurance- both of you, but you're the secret."
He points in the direction of an eastern corridor becoming more familiar if she imagines the windows full of an ocean, not darkness, when she points to her throat.
"Elizabeth-"
His hand passes through hers. The hologram stands as she does and she raises her head.
"There's not much time - we're sending you back."
Rodney's hologram is spouting things - things her brain can't process because she's too tired and thirsty to think right. He tells her of timelines, and research and sending her back. She can't focus on anything else beside those words: sending her back. She doesn't even care to when just as long as he does.
He's telling her to just hang on a little longer. She nods, or at least she thinks she does, her voice is too raw for words and she can barely work up some saliva anymore. Rodney tells her what happened, his voice a ghost in the city because he needs to close the hologram to suck as much power from the city.
The walls are her guide, Rodney's voice her beacon. You're almost there, he tells her. His voice echoes in the dark halls, but the timber is familiar and comforting.
"Without you, everything was lost," he whispers, "We were lost. We floundered, we teetered on the edge for years until everything was gone. Everything that mattered. You're the base code, Elizabeth."
What does that mean?
"Those 10,000 years. You connected with the city, it mattered."
He's keeps talking and talking and just doesn't stop. He tells her everything, tells her it doesn't matter if she knows, because she's to change it anyway. She doesn't have any tears left in her, but she's crying for them.
"We're here, it's just on the other side of the door."
It sounds so easy, after days of thirst and her aching bones, all she needs to do is cross the threshold. Her knees give out on her and she falls to the floor, one hand is clutching at the door and her dry heaves ripple across the hall. She can't move, she's too close and her body has just given up on her.
Rodney appears again, crouched in from of her and doesn't see him - she sees past him. Past the flicking hologram, the wrinkled face, the blue eyes, her eyes can't attach this image to Rodney, and just when he tells her she can make it the door slides opens.
Door to the past. In the future. She can barely make it up and stumbles into the Gateroom. She collapses against the stairs, her eyes fluttering closed, as Rodney talks more about solar flares, time, timelines, and going back. To before, but after than she remembers.
"I have to go now, Elizabeth. I'm using the last of my power to send you back." She can feel the hologram in front of her and can't even understand how she can. Her eyes open, slow, too slow and she can't smile, but she tries.
"Ro--"
"You'll be fine. You're a fighter, Elizabeth." He pauses, and his wrinkled face stretches into a smile that takes years away, "Don't wait too long this time." He flickers out and she can hear the chevrons dialing.
When the wormhole engages she uses the last of her strength to half-walk, half-crawl to the it. At the edge she pauses and looks back to the city - her city, now full of ghost and falls through the wormhole, finally letting her body go. Going through the Gate - the door, it swings both ways - she remembers everything and nothing.
Her body then hits the floor, knees slamming on impact, and she hears sounds - voices, ocean, John, guns, feet - all around her. The voices sound shocked and rushed. There are hands at her back, around her neck, tilting her face.
She sees hazel.
She's back.
----
It ends in Atlantis.
END.
Authors: little_giddy & hariboo_smirks
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~1300
Pairing(s): gen, John/Elizabeth pre-ship.
Warning(s): spoilers for "The Last Man."
Prompt: "The Last Man". What if the Last Man was really a woman?
Summary: After a mission goes wrong Elizabeth finds herself on a desert planet, alone. Now she has to survive and try and make it back home.
Beta: little_giddy
Disclaimer: SGA does not belong to me.
A/N: these things just happen with us.
It ends on the salt flats.
----
Words, words were once easy. They snapped and flowed like so many fish in a stream, breaking ripples and lines across stones.
Sentences rub against each other and their edges don't fit; not even words flow easily from one into another anymore. The sharpened ends of sentences jar and jerk between each she ekes from her mind. They cause friction and heat in her already overrun mind because they don't make sense as they should as she lurches from thought to thought.
She left him in the days of plenty, a hand on her wrist by the illusion of water. She doesn't step anymore; she falls, catching herself time and again like a pendulum drawn back at the edge of being too far off-balance. She keeps stepping, even though she recognises that now the earth isn't burning, isn't moving - she is. She bumps and staggers across its surface as if a breeze pushes her.
Nineteen seventy-six: her mother makes pastry in the oven and lets her draw shapes on its surface. As the heat grows, as she stares wide-eyed through the oven window, the pastry expands up and up to eventually smooth out those same designs.
How presumptious. How typical. A human being throwing herself intermittently across unfamiliar but solid ground, with the temerity to call it 'earth'.
The water's long gone. The rain is years away. This planet has no oceans to taunt her; the salt from long dried, cool expanses crackles under her worn flat boots.
They have no right to call it 'earth', to call it 'home': more right on this of all planets in this galaxy they don't own. More right, but more right doesn't mean much.
Puddlejumper. Gates - stargates. The guard's last act was to steer hers towards the city. Water-gates, one planet called them. Not exactly, but through translations she's sure she once had to work to do, that's what it meant. If only she could stop thinking of water, she'd feel less pain.
She's tripped before: she trips again. Still a thrill to see a glint beneath the dusty worn surface, to realise she's not holding the rocks of this earth. It means she's close.
Standing, there's a flat surface in front of her. Vertically, which is why it takes her a minute of standing stock still to pull her eyes in from their distant focus.
It's a gate; a door, not a gate. Gates, she reminds herself forcefully, are different. It's been so long since that world that it's not easy.
"You just missed him."
She hears it from her position crouched on all fours on a hard, smooth floor in a dark - but getting lighter - hallway.
Then why am I here?
Her voice is long gone with the water, the sun she can see and the bearable air, but the transparent figure of Rodney McKay understands the look in her eyes as she coughs and peels off the goggles.
"You're the city's insurance- both of you, but you're the secret."
He points in the direction of an eastern corridor becoming more familiar if she imagines the windows full of an ocean, not darkness, when she points to her throat.
"Elizabeth-"
His hand passes through hers. The hologram stands as she does and she raises her head.
"There's not much time - we're sending you back."
Rodney's hologram is spouting things - things her brain can't process because she's too tired and thirsty to think right. He tells her of timelines, and research and sending her back. She can't focus on anything else beside those words: sending her back. She doesn't even care to when just as long as he does.
He's telling her to just hang on a little longer. She nods, or at least she thinks she does, her voice is too raw for words and she can barely work up some saliva anymore. Rodney tells her what happened, his voice a ghost in the city because he needs to close the hologram to suck as much power from the city.
The walls are her guide, Rodney's voice her beacon. You're almost there, he tells her. His voice echoes in the dark halls, but the timber is familiar and comforting.
"Without you, everything was lost," he whispers, "We were lost. We floundered, we teetered on the edge for years until everything was gone. Everything that mattered. You're the base code, Elizabeth."
What does that mean?
"Those 10,000 years. You connected with the city, it mattered."
He's keeps talking and talking and just doesn't stop. He tells her everything, tells her it doesn't matter if she knows, because she's to change it anyway. She doesn't have any tears left in her, but she's crying for them.
"We're here, it's just on the other side of the door."
It sounds so easy, after days of thirst and her aching bones, all she needs to do is cross the threshold. Her knees give out on her and she falls to the floor, one hand is clutching at the door and her dry heaves ripple across the hall. She can't move, she's too close and her body has just given up on her.
Rodney appears again, crouched in from of her and doesn't see him - she sees past him. Past the flicking hologram, the wrinkled face, the blue eyes, her eyes can't attach this image to Rodney, and just when he tells her she can make it the door slides opens.
Door to the past. In the future. She can barely make it up and stumbles into the Gateroom. She collapses against the stairs, her eyes fluttering closed, as Rodney talks more about solar flares, time, timelines, and going back. To before, but after than she remembers.
"I have to go now, Elizabeth. I'm using the last of my power to send you back." She can feel the hologram in front of her and can't even understand how she can. Her eyes open, slow, too slow and she can't smile, but she tries.
"Ro--"
"You'll be fine. You're a fighter, Elizabeth." He pauses, and his wrinkled face stretches into a smile that takes years away, "Don't wait too long this time." He flickers out and she can hear the chevrons dialing.
When the wormhole engages she uses the last of her strength to half-walk, half-crawl to the it. At the edge she pauses and looks back to the city - her city, now full of ghost and falls through the wormhole, finally letting her body go. Going through the Gate - the door, it swings both ways - she remembers everything and nothing.
Her body then hits the floor, knees slamming on impact, and she hears sounds - voices, ocean, John, guns, feet - all around her. The voices sound shocked and rushed. There are hands at her back, around her neck, tilting her face.
She sees hazel.
She's back.
----
It ends in Atlantis.
END.