Field of Honor
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: This is my first SGA story, so be gentle. I just started watching the show and Elizabeth Weir fascinates me. I may try some Teyla and Weir in the future, but for now, this is simply a little delving into Elizabeth's mind. Some spoilers for season one and the beginning of season two. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes mine.

The sounds of the ocean, the rhythmic slapping of the waves against the walls of the city, the haunting cry of the sea birds whose nests crowned the desolate heights of spires rising far above the ocean, the low keening of the wind slipping through buildings and narrow defiles provided a nightly melody that lulled Elizabeth Weir into fractured, troubled slumber. During her time back on Earth, she had a difficult time sleeping; she found the worrying weight of leaving Atlantis to face dangers without its leaders almost as heavy as the burden of being there. Still, in the silent darkness of her bedroom, she knew that in part, it was simply that she missed the cadences of the sea. Now, laying in bed in her quarters, she could hear once again the lulling music of the waves.

The past few months had been so fraught with crisis that she had little time to think beyond what needed to be done, in a terrifying instant, to save the city of the Ancients. Now, with some of the danger held at bay, like the rushing waters of a flood against a none too sturdy dam, she had time to examine the feelings that rose, in moments of relative quiet, like bile in her throat, almost choking her. She had put them down to loss, to grief at Simon's decision not to join her; at his admission that he had found someone else, someone whose life was easier, simpler, less adventurous.

She had known when she had taken this assignment that there was every possibility that she would never return home to Earth, never see Simon again, and yet, in the recesses of her mind clung the tenuous hope that, not only would she return, but that he would wait for her. Ridiculous. Juvenile. Nauseatingly romantic. All of those adjectives fit, and yet despite the rational part of her brain that scoffed at them, she hadn't been able to quite rid herself of the notions. Until now.

She had sacrificed so much to journey here to a distant galaxy, to this monument to the greatness of a race. They had learned so much about the Ancients, seen the wonders of their technology, even felt in themselves the lingering traces of their glory. And yet, lately, Elizabeth had been aware of a gnawing feeling of suppressed anger whenever she allowed herself moments to contemplate the builders of Atlantis. Rising from the bed, she hastily threw on a pair of pants and a tee shirt, sliding on her shoes and walking purposefully to the nearest outside exit. As she stepped out onto the balcony, she could feel the dampness of the wind against her face and hear the muffled roar of the ocean below her.

The elegant spires rose up toward the speckled blanket of deep blue above them, the few lights of the occupied parts of the city faint yellow beacons in the darkness. Ten thousand years ago, the Ancients had stood where she stood now, had listened to the wind and the waves, had stared, perhaps in equal wonder, at the canopy of solar systems and galaxies the covered them. They were the most advanced of races, the Gate builders, the founders of her own people, and yet they had fallen to the Wraith. Well, not fallen, so much as surrendered.

Surrendered to a race that Elizabeth had recently discovered that the Ancients themselves had inadvertently created. Unable to withstand the onslaught of an epic siege, the Ancients had chosen to sink their glorious city and escape through the Stargate, escape back to Earth, to seed yet another world. They had escaped from Earth as well, though this time through nothing so mundane as the Stargate, but through Ascension, leaving behind their mortal forms. Leaving behind their descendents, just as they had here, in the Pegasus Galaxy.

That was the part Elizabeth was having difficulty accepting. That those mightiest of peoples had simply run away in the middle of a fight, leaving the field, and all those remaining, to a horrific death at the hands of the enemy. Now that the Daedelus had arrived in the Pegasus galaxy, now that Elizabeth knew that she and her people could return home, could simply upload as much data as possible into the ship's computers, destroy the city and leave for home, she had felt her resentment of the Ancients building within her.

They had left billions of humans at the mercy of the Wraith; generation upon generation serving as nothing more than food, knowing that they would never be free of the culling, never be able to build civilizations because each time they advanced just a step forward, the Wraith would descend in ravenous hoards and send them back three steps.

The Ancients had saved themselves, returning to Earth, eventually ascending and left the population of Pegasus to suffer at the hands of a merciless foe, a foe that they had helped create. The awe that she had felt at discovering the lost city, the reverence with which they had all treated the builders of the gates, of the technology beyond their ability to imagine was all but gone now. Logically, she knew that they had done the only reasonable thing. They had salvaged their civilization, preserved their knowledge, continued on their path to a higher plane of existence.

In the face of certain destruction, they had chosen the only rational road available to them. She could cite nation after nation on Earth which had done the same. None of which made it right. But then, right had always been a vague, elusive thing. Given the choice between saving Earth and her own people and leaving the humans of the Pegasus Galaxy to the Wraith, Elizabeth knew what the “right” decision would be.

It was just that she was no longer sure if she could make it.