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He sat in the white-gray sand of the beach, not watching the breakers carry away the bottle of moonshine he’d tossed into the waves, but his hand combing through the soft grains to leave deep furrows. He did it because she had done it, and loved watching her do it.
“Why are you so fascinated by sand?” he’d asked, a bit grumpy that she’d so easily given up on learning to surf in favour of sitting idly on the beach.
“Because it’s sand on another world in another galaxy; the same but completely different from all other sand. How many people on Earth can say they’ve seen this?”
And that was the moment he’d realized just how different they were: John came to the beach to surf, to remember himself. Elizabeth came to lose herself in the alien wonder of different sand.
He wished he could have been more like her, able to relish the foreignness of their Ancient world, rather than looking for similarities to the one left behind. Elizabeth was the explorer; he was just a soldier who went where he was told. Except this time. He wasn’t supposed to be here now. He threw away his career for this.
He’d made love to her in this sand; and when they had been forced to let the baby go, brought her back to get drunk in this sand and commemorate a life never meant to be.
That had been the last time.
Because then the Replicators came, and took her away from him forever.
Now all he had left was an endless ache in his chest and the memory of sand. Into the fifth of Maker’s Mark they had emptied together, he scooped handfuls of silvery grains, pausing to drop in the ring he would never give her, then buried the gold band under more and capped the bottle.
He watched the dying sunlight reflect off the glass, flakes of quartz glimmering like the tiny diamond his salary had allowed for. John had intended to keep it, but now…
More drunk than he had been that night, and alone this time, he managed to get both feet under him, intent on stumbling up the beach towards the low cliff and fallen rocks that marked the ascent towards solid land.
“Fuuuuuck!” His scream echoed off the rock face as a shard of mica sliced the arch of his bare foot, pain lancing through the fog of alcohol and blurring his vision.
“Fuck.” The second curse was less anger and more of a sob. Sinking to his knees, John howled to the Ancients who had never shown them any mercy. “WHY?! Why her?! She was…she was the best of us. She loved – LOVED – this world! And for some reason, she loved you! How could you do this to her?!”
When he couldn’t scream any more, he cried, and cried, curling into the rocks and sand, welcoming the pain of sharp edges. What kind of hell had she known in her last weeks of life? Why hadn’t he tried harder to get back to her, to save her from those monstrous machines? How was it he was still alive, and she wasn’t? What would it take for him to die now? Maybe the edge of that mica…
“John? John, can you hear me?” The gentle voice was accompanied by a soft hand on his sweat-soaked back, pulling him out of the nightmare and into the bright night.
But it wasn’t her. He knew it wasn’t. Rolling over, he struggled to focus, eyes swollen and gritty, head pounding. “Colonel Carter? How did you-”
“Did you really think you could steal McKay’s prototype Jumper and we wouldn’t come looking for you?” She wasn’t unkind in tone, helping him to sit up and brushing the sand from his face and neck like a fussy mother. “What are you doing back here, John?”
“I – I…” He looked around, completely lost. “I don’t know.”
Reaching down, Sam picked up the dropped bottle, squinting at the handwritten note on the faded label. “RIP…Porter. Who’s Porter?”
“My son,” he whispered. “Our son.”
That was unexpected. “I’m sorry…I had no idea. What happened?”
“He didn’t survive the nanite infection. She…she blamed herself, but…it was my fault. I should have stopped Niam. Never should have let him touch her.”
Sam didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. She’d heard the rumors, of course, but never pressed the issue, and certainly never suspected things had gone that far. (Dr Beckett wasn’t around to question about pertinent details left out of his report regarding the nanite incident, either.) He hadn’t been the same since meeting the Replicator Weir, but she hadn’t expected him to straight up run away two days ago after trashing his quarters. Teyla was the one who had guessed where to find him. “Why did you come here, John?”
“She liked the sand.” As answers went, it was…an answer, and made as much sense as anything else. “So I…I don’t know. I’m sorry, Colonel.”
Sam smiled and handed him the bottle. “There’s enough time for that later. But I think you need to let me get you aboard the Daedalus. Colonel Caldwell is going to start wondering what’s happened down here.”
Hugging the bottle, John let his CO help him to his feet, wincing as he tried to put weight on the one still leaking blood. “Just…give me a minute.”
Hobbling over to the base of a large boulder that slipped from the cliff face aeons ago, John knelt down and dug a small, shallow grave. He reverently placed the bottle in the crevice and covered it with sand and loose pebbles. Then he took one of the larger stones and scratched away at the smooth rock for a few minutes. Finally satisfied, he stood up and limped back over to Carter, who put a supportive shoulder under his arm.
“Come on, John. Let me take you home.”
He nodded sadly, pausing to look back one more time at the chalky epitaph that marked the only tribute to his lost love:
Elizabeth Weir
Mother of Porter
Daughter of Earth
Queen of Atlantis
No one else would ever see it; there was no future for the Expedition on this world.
When they got back to Atlantis, there would be questions, but Sam Carter would make it go away. She knew what it was to be separated from the one you love, and for John, that pain would never end. But there were a lot of people waiting to help him carry that weight until he could do it for himself. And she knew he would, one day.
If there was anything to learn from this, it was that she had pushed the Expedition’s member too soon to move beyond their previous leader. Military personnel were probably more accustomed to losing a CO, but Elizabeth Weir has been more than that to them (certainly to John Sheppard). Sam knew she’d let her own past with the woman cloud her response to Elizabeth’s passing, tried to force a new status quo without pausing to reflect.
Walking Sheppard through the corridors of the Daedalus to the infirmary, she acutely felt her failures as the leader of Atlantis, silently pledging to do better by her people, starting with a formal memorial for Dr Weir, after she got Colonel Sheppard cleaned up, as well as his record. Sam would talk to Jack; he would understand, he would make it go away.
“Sir, what’s in your hand?” one of the nurses asked, trying to get him to open the tightly clenched fingers.
Exhaustion was starting to overtake him, and the answer was not immediately on the tip of his tongue. But Carter understood.
“Could you get me, uh…?” Looking around, Sam grabbed a plastic sample cup from a nearby tray and popped the top off, positioning it under his hand. “It’s okay, you can let go now, John.”
Slowly uncurling the fist, a little stream of white-gray sand tricked into the container. He would bring that much of her memory home to Atlantis.