Not Okay

Pairing: Zelenka/Weir
Word Count: ~2000
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Written for the Zelenka/Weir Ficathon for roaringmice, prompt words: ocean, rain, clouds
One thing you would like, in three words or less: pre-ship, friendship
One thing you would not like, in three words or less: porn
Summary: After the events in "The Storm" and "The Eye," Elizabeth struggles to come to terms with their place in the Pegasus galaxy.

The storm that nearly destroyed Atlantis fades to a dull roar, but still it sweeps over the emptiness of the ocean surrounding them, and blankets the city in impenetrable clouds. The rain falls in curtains of gray, in varying shades from charcoal to an unrelenting white that hurts Elizabeth's eyes.

The Athosians and the away team come back from Manara as soon as Rodney declares it safe, after John takes a jumper up into the high atmosphere to see the storm losing cohesion. Twenty or thirty years until the next one, thinks Elizabeth. By then the Wraith will have gotten them, and she will certainly be replaced by then, old, gray. She tries to picture herself then, white hair, wrinkles deepened. There are usually children and grandchildren in that picture, but how will that happen now?

She tries to imagine children: her and Simon with a daughter, but though the daughter's face comes in clear—a dark eyed, dark haired girl with curls and Simon's serious nose—Simon himself remains fuzzy. She could pull up a picture of him on her laptop in a moment, but what does that matter if she can't see his face in her mind?

The truth is we are never going back, thinks Elizabeth. They will live or die with the Pegasus Galaxy, and maybe her grand-nieces and nephews will find a way out here again, discover the records they left. That is what keeps her going on. She doesn't share these fears with the rest of the team, because to her they are as much hopes as fears. Even if we go back . . . well, you never can go home again. Will Simon forgive her for the way she left? He might. He loves her, loved her, with a strength she sometimes finds frightening. He may wait for her.

The rain prevents Elizabeth from making her usual walk around the perimeter of Atlantis. She likes to walk around the piers and look back at the huge city. Hers, she feels, not with a sense of ownership, but with a sense of belonging. Now she walks inside, along the high bridges that connect the buildings that remind her of the rope bridges strung between trees in the Brazilian rainforest.

Bates wanted to send someone with her on her walk, and Elizabeth almost agreed. Being alone is frightening now—she sees Kolya's empty eyes, and the end of his gun when she closes her eyes—but she is still the commander, now that Kolya's gone, and she refuses. There is nothing here but empty corridors. The intruders left behind are in her head alone.

Elizabeth's body still hurts from hours spent awake, cold and shivering. She almost wishes for a head cold like the one Rodney has, something to give her an excuse to lie in bed for a while, at least until the next crisis, but her body betrays her and she stays healthy.

She walks further than she's walked before, her feet echoing on the metal floors. Atlantis is huge; John likes to say it is the size of Manhattan, but it's hard to judge. Manhattan is teaming with people, birds, rats, a giant ecosystem of commerce and decay, but Atlantis is still waiting, still asleep.

Elizabeth stops at the top of one of the bridges and looks down. Below there is only empty ground, the gleaming dully in the gray light, polished by the rain.

She takes a transporter down to the bottom of this tower. It goes deep, under the water and she can feel it pressing in around her. The air is filled with the sound of creaks and groans as Atlantis accommodates the pressure of the ocean.

Elizabeth looks out at the ocean around, through the windows. Huge shapes shift in the distance; they could be shadows from the clouds overhead, or Atlantean leviathans. The water is a murky gray-blue, like the sky, like the steel-gray of Atlantis.

Then she hears a loud bang and throws herself down on the ground. When did I learn to do that?, she wonders. It's a military move, and for all that she's been dealing with governments and dictatorships for years, she isn't yet accustomed to physical danger.

"What was that? Who's there?" she calls out into the blue-green darkness.

"Sorry," calls back a voice. Dr. Zelenka. Elizabeth gets to her feet slowly. Her hands are shaking, and she presses them to her sides to calm herself.

Zelenka is in a room that would have once housed Atlantis's drones, now all depleted. "I did not know you were here," he says when he sees Elizabeth come around the corner.

"What are you doing?" Her voice sounds shaky too, now that her body knows she's not in danger.

"There are no more drones," he says, pointing to the empty arrays, "but it is possible the chair may be used to control some other kind of missile."

Elizabeth crosses her arms over her chest and nods. "Good thinking," she says.

Zelenka shakes his head. His hair is haloed in the glow from his work light. "I don't think it will be possible, unfortunately, not without even one drone to reverse engineer."

Elizabeth walks over closer so they are both in the light and she doesn't have to squint to see him. Zelenka looks her over carefully, and he frowns. "Elizabeth, Dr. Weir, are you alright?"

John asked her that, after Kolya took her hostage. She read his file: John is used to fighting. He saw action many times, lost friends. He knows the terrible power of violence so well he no longer understands people who don't. She envies him that place he went to during the battle, some place beyond fear and pain.

Elizabeth looks at Zelenka, his worried eyes, his mobile mouth. He would understand, perhaps, what it's like to come from a world that seems civilized into this wilderness.

"I'm the leader of Atlantis," she says, voice now calm. "I don't think I'm allowed not to be okay."

"I have . . . something . . . here." He pulls rummages around in the dark outside their little circle of illumination, pulls out what passes for a milk crate here in Atlantis, and motions for Elizabeth to sit down.

Elizabeth sits, gratefully, and Zelenka takes a seat as well. For a moment she doesn't say anything, just stays tense and wary. She can't see much in the shadows, and that is frightening.

"Really, Zelenka, I'll be okay." She let out a loud breath. "It shouldn't bother me. I've seen violence before."

"Tell me what happened," he says. He looks worried, attentive—it's sweet. If she has to run into someone right now, she is glad it's Zelenka. She has worked with him for a long time, but always thought of him as Rodney's less volatile, and possibly less brilliant, foil. Precise about his science, imprecise about his grooming or the cleaning of his glasses. She never has to worry about Zelenka.

So she tells him. She has nerves of steel during confrontations—that's why they chose her for this and many other missions. While part of her made a brilliant case for keeping herself alive—not as good as Rodney's but still, alive—the other part twitched in fear, fear she can't even exorcise now that the danger is gone.

Still, she can manage a conflict, even quaking in fear. Right or wrong, her evaluations always said, Dr. Weir does not back down. She gets to the part where Kolya threatened to kill her, and Rodney stepped in front of the gun, and stops speaking.

I'm not reliving it, she thinks. That is something.

"Have you stood in front of a gun before?" asks Zelenka.

She shakes her head. "I knew there would be danger," she says, "even personal danger to me. I didn't expect it on our front door, and . . ."

Zelenka nods, but doesn't say anything.

"I didn't expect to all the people we met to be so blindly self-serving."

Zelenka looks faintly amused at that. "You didn't?"

Elizabeth smiles ruefully. "I mean, of course I did—certainly everyone on Earth is, leaders especially. But here we have an overwhelming threat. The Wraith are going to kill us all, and together we might resist . . ." She trails off and rubs her forehead. "I don't know why I expected that would make a difference. Still an idealist after all, I guess."

"Elizabeth . . . ," says Zelenka. She expects him to say something like, ‘I should have been there,' or even Rodney-like, ‘I'm glad I wasn't there.'

"Elizabeth, if I may, something . . . people are like this everywhere, but here . . . they broke into your home. That is all." He breaks off and says something in Czech, something that sounds frustrated, although Elizabeth can't understand it. "I don't mean, ‘that is all,' like it's nothing, it's . . ."

"Nooo," says Elizabeth. "I think you're right. I thought Atlantis, at least, was safe from all threats besides the Wraith."

"Finding out your home isn't safe . . . it is not easy."

Elizabeth wants to tell him more: how she's been shaking and jumpy, how she can't sleep, has to force herself not to check around corners. How she went on this walk to test herself, but he won't want to hear that; she's already jeopardized her authority too much with John, she can't do it with Zelenka as well.

"How do you know so much about it?" she asks with a smile, to deflect whatever questions he might ask.

"Communist Czechoslovakia," he says, as if that should answer it all. Elizabeth thinks she hears a little scorn in his voice when he says the old name of his country, two names jammed together like their country was. Elizabeth knows her history, her Vaclav Havel, her Iron Curtain stories. She traveled to the USSR when it still had that name, as a young and idealistic clerk to the ambassador. She remembers seeing the things they couldn't hide: the lines, the fear, the dirt and poverty at the bottom.

"Prague is beautiful city, you know. Pollution hurt the old monuments, but, still . . . you must see it some day, Elizabeth. We lived on a small street, but most streets there are full of old things, full of history." His eyes light up when he talks about his city, and he gestures, sketching buildings in the air with his hands. Now Elizabeth wants to see that city again, with someone who loves it. Zelenka doesn't seem to fear that they won't return to Earth.

When she thinks of Prague, Elizabeth thinks of rain-slicked streets, of spies and secret meetings, but for Zelenka they wouldn't have been characters in novels, but real threats.

"Your family . . .," she prompts. He looks down.

"They were academics. My father wanted his papers to be read by a Western audience. He wasn't selling secrets, he just wanted a free exchange of ideas."

"What all scientists want," says Elizabeth quietly.

"Just so. One expects . . . many people felt if they reported their neighbors, they would be safe. It never worked. Just made everyone more dangered. More in danger. Not so different in this galaxy."

"No, it isn't." She wants to know more, the details of how and why and how old Zelenka was when it happened, but if he doesn't volunteer that information, she won't ask. Unlike Rodney, Zelenka doesn't favor everyone with details of his personal life.

"People do terrible things, Elizabeth, to keep their—themselves safe. Everyone does." And now she hears a chill in his voice, and wonders what past sin he is hiding, whether it is his or his family's.

"Everyone does. Well, we'll just have to watch out for that, won't we?" she says with forced good cheer.

"Yes," he says. He looks around at his scattered tools, and Elizabeth gets the point--he wants to get back to work.

They both stand up. "Thank you for this, Rad—Zelenka." She wants to hug him, thank him for this tiny glimpse of something she should have understood earlier.

"You should call me Radek," he says. "If this is home, safe or not, then we are family here. And friends."

"Yes, Radek," she says, with a smile at his earnest expression. "This is home."


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