man enough to (SGA, Elizabeth, by quasiradiant)

title: man enough to
author: quasiradiant 
fandom: stargate: atlantis
rating: pg
set: during "the return, pt. 1"
summary: lizzie, he might say, it's about time you learn to be your own man. 
for: nothing_hip week 2: slide by goo goo dolls. sorry i'm late!



Forty-eight hours 'til the end of the world and no, she's not packing it all in or putting it all together or pulling up stakes, or any of the other things her father liked to say.

No meetings with department heads, no radio in her ear, no clever witticisms from John about how things'll all work out in the end Elizabeth, you know they will. No bucking up and taking it on the chin.

No, now she's crying like a little girl and making a spectacle of herself, or she would be if there was anybody around to see.

The problem is, she didn't have any brothers. All these years later, she can still hear her father and his big, booming professor-voice: If I only teach you one thing in my life, let it be this. Always strive to be a man, Lizzie. Always. Every word spoken like he stood behind a lectern in front of a hundred cowering undergrads.

(He was dying from the minute Elizabeth met him. He was a long, slow burn of a man, hot and dark. What she felt when he was gone was something like relief, but with this voice in her ears, she knows he’ll be with her forever.)

So she’s spent her life striving and striving not to be little Lizzie Weir with the pigtails and the crocodile tears. Doctorates hung on the wall of the office back at Georgetown, the one tenure won't allow them to give away. Dissertations on obscure Eastern European politics on her bookshelf. A special vest to wear under her clothes at particularly tense negotiations. She got ‘em, Tiger and never showed her hand and she did it because it was what she was taught to do.

And now he would’ve told her to go out and lead her people back through the 'gate, to bring it on home. He would’ve told her to pack her bags and get ready to go back to Earth. He would’ve told her to be a goddamn man, to set her jaw and do what needs to be done.

But instead she’s standing in her too big, too still quarters, staring out windows that have never opened. Her locked door chimes, but she doesn't answer it.

Later, her laptop dings to announce new email. From Teyla, of course, and all it says is, "They need someone to tell them how to do this. If not you, then who?"

She stops crying and wipes her face. Her father’s dead body is a universe away and she wants to say, “I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t. She won’t. He’s long gone, and she's all grown up.

She unlocks the door, finally and slowly. Goes off to find the people she's taking and the people she's leaving. Goes off to clear her desk. Goes to put the things she can't bring under lock and key, to keep them waiting 'til she comes back.

Goes off to light the homefires she'll have to learn to keep stoking.

It's not easy, no. But she has to, she decides.

She is, after all, the man of the house.