Lessons Learned (PG) by Miriel

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Title: Lessons Learned
Author: miriel
Beta: wymsie
Universe: Bridges
Pairing: Background Elizabeth Weir/Ladon Radim.
Author's Note: Apparently I'm on a roll, or something. This (like my other "Masks & Masquerade" submissions) is set in the Bridges universe, but doesn't require any detailed knowledge of it. For background on the Weir/Radim pairing, click here, but that's minor in the scope of things.

---

The first thing Elizabeth learned about politics as a summer intern on Capital Hill was that image is everything.

The first thing Elizabeth learned about diplomacy after she made it into the state department was that image is half of everything, and the other half is hard realism. The trick was knowing what to use, and when to use it.

Elizabeth was a realist in private, and an optimist in public.

Take family, for example. Publicly, she loved her parents dearly. She'd like to eventually marry and have children; she just hadn't found the right man yet.

Privately, she realized that she would never have (and more importantly, never wanted) a picket fence and 2.3 children around the same time she concluded that there would never be world peace. Sure, they were both beautiful, fluffy ideals, but she functioned best in a state of mild crisis. Her idea of a crisis didn't involve a screaming toddler (oh, a screaming toddler was a crisis, but not one she would step into voluntarily. Give her the threat of nuclear weapons testing any day).

Simon had wanted a picket fence, but he'd been willing to settle for a dog instead of kids. She probably should have realized sooner than she did that Sedge would only buy her so long. The ending of that relationship had not been unexpected, but the manner had been jarring; it put her off of dating altogether, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing given her position in Atlantis.

Then, for all intents and purposes, her world had ended. Everything she had fought for had been stripped away in the blink of an eye, by a woman whose race Elizabeth had once idolized. That was one image that would never be the same again, and it had been a hard dose of reality. Suddenly, Elizabeth was once again the foreigner, unwelcome in her own home in a way she had not been since returning from her first overseas assignment and finding that her mother had turned her bedroom into storage space.

The first things Elizabeth learned about diplomacy in the Pegasus Galaxy were that possession is 9/10s of the law, everyone is hiding something, and there are times when you shoot first, and ask your questions at the autopsy.

Despite all of that, image still mattered; it was just a different kind of image. Before coming to Atlantis, Elizabeth had negotiated peace treaties and cease-fires; she had never negotiated with kidnappers or terrorists or the fanatically desperate. Each requires a very different game face - different priorities and acceptable losses. Never let it be said that Elizabeth Weir is a slow learner.

She put each and every one of those lessons to use when she established the Alliance of Atlantis, and against all odds the Alliance held fast with Elizabeth as the solitary administrator - neutral and unaffiliated, save to the good of the city. It was an image that was essential, but at its heart it was still only an image.

Publicly, Elizabeth was wedded to Atlantis in every way that mattered. She had given up her home-world, her family, and her people to accept the mantle of Administrator. She was the final authority on actions taken by the largest organized group of humans in the Pegasus Galaxy, and it was enough.

Privately, when doors were closed and lights turned low, she became Elizabeth again for a few brief hours in the arms of her lover. It was what some might call a marriage of convenience, except that marriage had never truly been an option for either of them. She was the Administrator, and he the Chancellor of the Genii - while the political benefits of such a union might be many, the eventual drawbacks would be far greater.

The most important thing that Atlantis taught Elizabeth, and something she all too often forgot, was that lines in the Pegasus Galaxy are drawn in pencil, not in ink. The line between public and private is still just a line, and all lines drawn in pencil will eventually blur.

~ Finis ~

Comments

[shara50.livejournal.com]

Great insight into Elizabeth.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Ever since I started Bridges You Cross (http://www.mardahin.net/sga/Bridges/bridges_revisited.html), she's become a favorite of mine. Certainly not something I'd expected, but not something I regret, either ^_^

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

I like your Elizabeth.

I like what you do with your worldbuilding, too; sometimes I think the greatest thing about SGA is the scope it gives us for imagination.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Thanks; I'm glad that I write a character who's real enough to be appealing. A lot of the reason I like to write her is because I want to explain the inconsistencies we see, and she's also such a great venue for exploring moral areas that are never addressed. Except a lot of her angst is internal, because she's really not in a position where she can vent to someone or cry on their shoulder.

I totally agree about that being the greatest thing about SGA - for the most part, they've really been good about not getting into things if they're not really going to explain them (see also: Daniel's "We don't know why they left. Why does it matter? We know where they went; that's good enough, right?" in the pilot). It gives us so much room to theorize and build.

Then, of course, there's the simple basis of the show that makes it ideal for fanfiction in general - you're in another universe, you've got random massive plot holes, and you know there are supposed to be at least 1,000 worlds out there with humans, never mind a completely different base psychology due to the 10,000 years of Wraith 'oversight'.

There's just so much room to play!!.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

//There's just so much room to play!!//

There is, isn't there? *happy smile*

Elizabeth is... I came here from Gundam Wing fandom, so I was expecting Elizabeth to be the grown-up version of Relena. And in some ways she absolutely is, and then every so often she'll do something that smacks far more of fanon-Relena -- and when somebody else's sixteen-year-old girl could do a better job than the character who's supposed to be good at it, it's generally a sign that you need better writers.

(Which is why I appreciate it whenever she gets some.)

Seriously, on the show, my best guess for some of the inconsistencies is that for some reason or another her brain chemistry is fluctuating, so that when she's on she's on and when she's off she has no idea that she is off. Of course, this leads me to speculate what could be causing it (other than menopause, which might work but would be very cliché and which leaves me feeling rather a traitor to my sex).

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Well, Elizabeth's a bit young for even pre-menopause - even adding on a few years to TH's age (I'd been figuring Elizabeth as being around 40 in season 3, at the outside she's no older than 45, and even that's young for serious menopausal symptoms. More likely she's got an unrecognized reaction to something local - a substitute grain or a fruit - that has a mild but distinctive effect on her brain chemistry. She's never "off" far enough that others pick up on it, because no one knew her back on Earth when she was "on" all the time; the sleep deprivation may also be getting to her, periodically).

I really wish the female characters in Stargate got more regular good exposure, but then if wishes were puddle jumpers, Carson would fly. Or, you know, fly well.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

//I'd been figuring Elizabeth as being around 40 in season 3, at the outside she's no older than 45, and even that's young for serious menopausal symptoms.//

The perils of fuzzy thinking; Elizabeth reminds me here and there of my mother, so obviously I'd picked up the impression somewhere that she was closer to my mother's age than she is. o.O

//More likely she's got an unrecognized reaction to something local - a substitute grain or a fruit - that has a mild but distinctive effect on her brain chemistry. She's never "off" far enough that others pick up on it, because no one knew her back on Earth when she was "on" all the time; the sleep deprivation may also be getting to her, periodically.//

Yes. I knew someone would be able to come up with something more plausible. And something like that could be affecting other people; if it's also affecting Heightmeyer, that right there is an excellent recipe both for its not being identified for some time and for matters to compound before they get better.

(Also something that, once realized, is going to be quietly hidden by the command staff until and possibly after they get the affected people back to normal -- if most people don't have this reaction, the temptation on the part of Earth would be to replace those affected, and that would be all kinds of bad.)

//I really wish the female characters in Stargate got more regular good exposure,//

Yeah -- the one silver lining of their viciously breaking my OTP was that they then had no further opportunities to do violence to her character.

Ah, well, this is why fanfiction was invented.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Well, Torri Higginson is still in her thirties; there's only so far you can age up a character from their actor.

Oh, you totally know that if something affecting brain chemistry were discovered, that knowledge would stay in Atlantis and under wraps until treatment had been concluded, and probably even then.

Yup. Fanfiction is the opiate of the fannish masses. So much more useful than religion, eh?

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

//Well, Torri Higginson is still in her thirties; there's only so far you can age up a character from their actor.//

Oh, okay. Judging someone's age is like facial recognition -- incredibly complex pattern-matching routines that those who have don't fully appreciate how hard it can be to compensate for with normal pattern-matching (which is a fancy way of saying that I cannot tell people's ages, except in the most general "the-one-with-gray-hair-and-wrinkles is probably older than the-one-without" sort of way); so in the absence of other data, such as not bothering to look up the actor's age, I recall that my mother was forty-seven when she became general counsel of a national association and assume that director of a multinational intergalactic expedition would require at least that much experience.

(Which was probably unwarrantedly optimistic of me, given the part where their provisioning sucks.)

//Oh, you totally know that if something affecting brain chemistry were discovered, that knowledge would stay in Atlantis and under wraps until treatment had been concluded, and probably even then.//

Exactly; and there'd be the periods of "oh, look, the Daedalus, everyone pretend Elizabeth's still in charge; Elizabeth, remember that you still can't quite trust your judgment, try not to be in a position where you have to make command decisions without surreptitiously running them by whomever."

//Fanfiction is the opiate of the fannish masses. So much more useful than religion, eh?//

As an opiate, certainly. ^_^

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

See, when I learned TH's rough age, I sat down to try to sort out how Weir got where she was, and came up with a general timeline that is (at least) no more incredible than anything else in Stargate (Daniel Jackson, anyone?).

She was 17-turning 18 when she went into undergrad at American University (known for its international relations program), graduated in 3 years instead of four (certainly not impossible, and especially if she came in with several AP courses under her belt that placed her at "Sophomore Standing"). So she was twenty when she graduated undergrad, and went straight into her masters-followed-by-PhD.

Twenty-four, and with her doctorate, she goes into the state department. She lands a not-very-prestigious location that ends up an unexpected hot-spot, and suddenly is seen by someone of influence. This leads to a series of political appointments and nudges in the right direction from those who have decided she is going to be a "rising star".

By the time she's thirty, she's well known across the globe and has her name on the credits of several very prestigious treaties. Life is good. Then, at 34 or 35, she's chosen as a sacrificial lamb to be the political appointee who takes over the SGC in lieu of Jack O'Neill (they expect things to go badly - she's disposable, and actually just under-qualified enough that if/when that happens the gov't can blame her, but still well enough known to satisfy prying eyes initially). Thus begins her involvement with the Stargate Program - and as we all know, Mother Mountain is a great yawning chasm that sucks in careers left and right; people transfer in, but they never transfer out. She's 36 or 37 by the time the AE actually departs, which puts her at 39-40 in season 3.

"oh, look, the Daedalus, everyone pretend Elizabeth's still in charge; Elizabeth, remember that you still can't quite trust your judgment, try not to be in a position where you have to make command decisions without surreptitiously running them by whomever."

LOL! I have an SGA/Quantum Leap fic (that's kind of stalled out, I admit) that runs under almost exactly that premise! Sam leaps into Elizabeth, who was in the process of delicate negotiations.

As an opiate, certainly. ^_^

That was what I was referring to, yes. I try to avoid theological debate when I can ~_^

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

//See, when I learned TH's rough age, I sat down to try to sort out how Weir got where she was, and came up with a general timeline that is (at least) no more incredible than anything else in Stargate (Daniel Jackson, anyone?).//

And yours makes sense; with Point A given, it is quite possible to work out how a given character gets from Point A to Point B. (Without it, one is likely to come in on a completely different vector.)

Although now I'll have to change one of the lines in "Guises in Four Seasons," because there's no way that Elizabeth could be "nearly as old as Charin." Hm. Perhaps if I had Teyla say "my father's age" instead?

//LOL! I have an SGA/Quantum Leap fic (that's kind of stalled out, I admit) that runs under almost exactly that premise! Sam leaps into Elizabeth, who was in the process of delicate negotiations.//

There can never be too many Stargate/Quantum Leap fics; I hope your inspiration for it returns soon!