yellowvalley

Posted for

brandywine421 's arsonist challenge. Written in, like a half hour. More like getting back into the practice of writing. Unbataed.

Title: Earth in it's many forms
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Character: Elizabeth Weir
Gen, rated G
Characters/Universe not mine. I am making no money.
For #4. Won't tell you which one that is, cuz it'll give it away. :)

Elizabeth would bet that she spent ninety five percent of her time on Atlantis worrying. About the wraith, and the Genii, and other enemies that wanted to wipe the galaxy clean of her people. Mostly though, she worries about her choices, the ones she must make everyday that will have a lasting impact on the success of the mission. Which civilizations to trade with, who more desperately needs the limited aide they can provide, whom to trust enough to work together in the fight against the wraith. Whether to forgive (but never forget, she promises herself) those that have hurt her people, her family, for the sake of gaining something they need.

She worried about home, Earth, and whether they were meeting the challenges presented from the Milky Way better than they were here. Her personal items consisted of pieces of herself and her family, and sometimes she wished she had brought something of home. She dreamt of the sights, sounds, and smells of Earth, and prayed that her people would survive long enough to return.

Before her older self died prior to the siege that first year, she had spoken privately to Elizabeth about her worries as she prepared for her ten thousand year wait for the expedition to arrive.

“Janus knew I needed something to keep my mind occupied until they left and I was able to go into stasis. He gave me a gift, and since we are the same, I will share it with you. Hopefully, it will bring you peace when it seems none is possible.”

A few days after her older self’s passing, when her star team had once again managed to come home bruised and bloody from their look for ZPM’s, she followed the directions given to her by the older Elizabeth to a room not far from the grounding station off the east pier. It was late at night, and she knew it wouldn’t be appreciated that she was out exploring without backup or approval. But the very man that would scold her for it was lying in the infirmary, recovering from a concussion. That thought alone made her feet move more quickly.

The room was large and airy, done in standard Atlantis blues and muted oranges. There were the ancient versions of cabinets along one wall, filled with tools that were achingly familiar to her but alien just the same. One contained small packages, air tight, with ancient script she couldn‘t decipher. The tables, lined in two rows of six long across the room, weren’t tables upon closer inspection. They had four legs, but instead of just a flat surface, they were supporting large tubs with a lid. Looking closer, Elizabeth was able to find the button that retracted the lids, which slid silently to the side exposing dark soil. The lid was now providing information in Ancient about what the soil contained, giving a list of plants that would thrive in the specific mix of minerals and nutrients. Plants she hadn’t heard of before.

She had gathered the tools,and the seeds, and began to prepare that first section of some foreign planet’s soil for life.

Over the past few years, she had grown plants of all shapes, sizes, and colors in her ‘garden’. She started one soil box every few months, taking great care to nurture the plants individually according to the information provided on the individual lids. The purples, deep blood reds, and bright, blinding yellows were always a welcome sight after the unassuming blues of Atlantis herself. The smell of wet, rich soil, though, was never quite right, never quite Earth. The botanists had developed a greenhouse with Earth plants, but the soil was still alien, still smelled different. Even though the plants thrived in the more nutrient rich dirt, it still felt wrong to her and she stayed away.

Two and a half years after she began her garden, Elizabeth retreated once again to seek the peace and quiet. John and Teyla were once again in the infirmary, with the other two members of SG:A-1 nearby, as always. They had offended a people of the planet they were researching, and not even Teyla was sure what they had done to receive such hostile actions. They were all frustrated, and she was beginning to wonder if maybe they would ever be able to say they were no longer strangers in this strange land. Elizabeth felt the need for familiarity, and looked forward to opening a new bin, the last, and beginning the familiar process of aerating the soil.

Opening the lid, Elizabeth read over the compounds in the soil as she began to aerate and loosen the top layer. As she worked, she breathed deeply of the newly wet soil, and found it was what she remembered her Earth gardens had smelled like, when she was in one place long enough to take care of one. She wandered what planet this soil had come from, and if it had other similarities to her home. Her hands were on automatic, using the tools to turn the soil as she continued to slowly read the information in Ancient, until the tool in her left hand hit something hard buried just beneath the surface. Frowning, she scraped away the remaining dirt on top and to find an Ancient storage box, familiar to her since they had been used frequently in the labs to store things as the Ancients prepared to leave for Earth ten thousand years ago. Wiping the dirt from it, Elizabeth depressed the button that would open the lid.

Inside, was a note in her own familiar scrawl.

“We’re in a new galaxy, Elizabeth Ann Weir. And it’s both more and less than what we dreamed of as we prepared for this expedition into the unknown. Janus knew I was homesick, and was nice enough to produce this exact composite of soil, along with the seeds you will find in this container. Just because we are far from home, doesn’t mean we can’t have a little of home here with us.”

Her next deep inhale brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes and a smile to her face.

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From:

brandywine421.livejournal.com

Oh, yays! I really like this! I know the generals of SGA and this fic is so nice. You can really feel her homesickness and the way she just needs a little taste of home every now and again to ground her. Lovely!