Three dollars and some change

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Also, the 2006 fanfic listing has been updated. Hot damn, I've been prolific this year.



Summary: The moment she walked into Atlantis, Elizabeth Weir changed.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sony and MGM own all things Stargate Atlantis. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Setting: After "Critical Mass" (SGA 213)
Word count:: 357 small words

~*~

She didn't know who she was any more. The old Dr. Elizabeth Weir had rules, morals. Lines she would never cross, lines drawn heavy and black in the sand.

The waves of Atlantis had washed those lines away.

She had been convinced that Kavanagh had sabotaged the city. In her conviction, she was willing to let Ronon torture the man to get the access code to save them all.

A week later, in the cold light of hindsight, she still couldn't name what had prompted her assumption. Was it the evidence, presented in a cold and impartial fashion? Was it that Kavanagh made himself look as guilty as possible? Or was it the rushing panic, knowing that if Elizabeth didn't do something to figure out who had sabotaged her city, everyone on the expedition would die?

These people depended on her to make decisions, to keep them safe at almost any cost. She couldn't have let them die.

But the cost.

Kavanagh was heading back to Earth on the Daedalus. He had probably already tried to file charges against her at the SGC, for all the good it would do him.

For her entire life, Elizabeth had set her faith in diplomacy. Violence and war were the acts of last resort, to be used only when all other means had failed. Violence was the last resort of other men. She was different. She was above that.

No longer. It didn't matter that Ronon would have been the one to hold the blade; she had ordered him to do it. If Ronon wielded the knife, she wielded him, a living weapon to be used in desperate times. He accepted the situation; she still could not believe she had come to this.

If anyone else under her command had ordered what she did, she'd have had their head. Maybe that was why Sheppard had looked to her, not saying a word. It was her decision to make, her responsibility to bear.

The worse part was that Elizabeth knew she would make the same decision again.

Atlantis had changed her, and most days she couldn't bring herself to be sorry.