Postscript

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis/Stargate SG1

Pairing: Carson Beckett/Janet Fraiser

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1,146

Spoilers: SGA: Letters from Pegasus

 

Atlantis

 

“Doctor Weir!”

 

Elizabeth turns when she hears Carson’s voice, arranging her face into what she hopes is a friendly but enquiring smile. “Yes, Carson?” she asks, frowning when he comes a little closer to her, noting that the good doctor seems rather more agitated than usual.

 

“Doctor, it’s about the tapes… the messages home,” he says, and she fights, with everything she has, the urge to sigh, because she’s recorded so many messages to so many families that she’s completely and utterly worn out. Even the thoughts of that damn video camera is enough to have tension creeping across her shoulders, because when she’d sat in the briefing room and said that recording messages home would be good for morale, she hadn’t realised that it would be good for everyone’s but her own.

 

“What about them?” she asks, wincing when she hears the touch of asperity in her voice, and Carson takes a step back.

 

“Nothin’,” he says, holding up one hand, shaking his head. “Nothin’ at all.”

 

Elizabeth closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and calls on her considerable reserves of patience. “It must be something,” she says, even managing to summon up a smile. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have chased me all the way down the hallway.” He has the grace to blush at that, the edges of his lips turning up in an embarrassed little smile. “What is it, Carson?”

 

“It’s just… I was wonderin’… and if you can’t do it, it’s no matter… but would it be all right… that is to say…”

 

That much stuttering could only mean one thing. “You want to redo your message?”

 

Carson’s breath escapes him in a whoosh of air, and he grins. “Would that be a problem?”

 

Elizabeth shrugs. “If Lieutenant Ford doesn’t mind, I don’t either… but I’m sure your mother will be delighted with whatever you say to her.”

 

“Ah.” Carson looks down, shifts on his feet, rubs the bridge of his nose. “Well, it’s not so much that I want to redo the message to my mother, as that I want to send a message to someone else.”

 

He speaks so quickly that, between that and the accent, Elizabeth’s not sure she’s heard him right. “Someone else? Who?” She realises how that must sound, and she squeezes her eyes shut, shakes her head quickly. “Never mind… that’s none of my business.”

 

“No, no, it’s fine…” Carson says, scratching behind his ear. “It’s… ah… it’s actually to my daughter…” Elizabeth’s jaw drops, and she’s ready to ask the obvious question, but Carson beats her to it. “Well, not my daughter actually… in that, I’m not her father, obviously… in fact, we’re not any blood kin to one another… but she’s…”

 

“Carson!” Elizabeth speaks rather more bluntly than she might have otherwise done, but she’s pretty sure she has to, otherwise they could be here all day.

 

“Sorry.” Carson nods, sets his jaw, and she can almost see him trying to collect his thoughts. “I was involved… for a number of years… with someone… who passed away last year. Cassie is her daughter… and I was rather hopin’ that…”

 

“Tape the message Carson,” Elizabeth tells him, cutting him off in mid-sentence, laying a hand on his arm. “And tell Ford to try to include both of them.” His eyes light up, and she holds up a hand quickly. “I can’t promise anything… but we can try.”

 

Carson smiles, nods, already backing away. “I appreciate this… thank you.”

 

Harvard

 

The face on the television screen is a familiar one, albeit a little blurry, though Cassie’s smart enough to know that that’s because her eyes are filled with tears. Ever since Sam called her, told her that the SGC had received a message from Atlantis, she’s been preparing herself for this, preparing herself for the day that the videotape would drop through her door, has been telling herself that she’s ready for this, that she’s strong.

 

Then she saw that face, those blue eyes, and she knew, right away, that she’d been lying to herself.

 

Which is why she’d paused the tape, a vain attempt to give her some time to compose herself, except that staring at his face in freeze frame was even more painful, kind of like peeling off a Band-Aid a little piece at a time.

 

So she takes a deep breath, pushes play on the remote control, and Carson’s face springs to life.

 

“Hello, Cassie love,” he says, and more tears burn at the back of her throat. “It’s me… Carson… though I’m thinkin’ you already know that. I din’nae have much time – there are a lot of people wantin’ to send messages home – but I just wanted you to know… that I’m all right. Things are interestin’ over here… to say the least of it… but I’m doin’ ok… hopin’ that I’ll be able to get back soon to see you…”

 

His voice gets husky towards the end, the way it got the last time she saw him, when he took her out for a last family dinner that they both pretended to like, although Cassie’s pretty sure that Carson wished, as she did, that it had been her mom’s homemade chicken casserole.  He clears his throat, looks right into the camera, and there’s a moment of silence before the screen flickers momentarily, as if the tape was stopped to allow him to pull himself together.

 

“I just wanted to let you know… that I think about you… and that I miss you… that I miss you both... and that I love you both.” He clears his throat again then, and she thinks that there’s a suspicious sheen in his eyes. Then again, hers are once more so blurry that it’s hard to tell. “So, ah… take care of yourself… study hard, but not too hard… eat your vegetables… and stay away from any of those fast-talking Harvard fellas… you know I warned you about them before. And, ah… if you could take your mum some flowers from me… I think she’d like that.”

 

There’s a moment more where his face fills the screen, then he nods at whoever’s behind the camera, and the screen flickers, then snaps to black. With a shaking hand, Cassie stops the tape, presses rewind, and watches the message through a second, then a third time, each time hoping that she’ll watch it through without crying, each time only crying more.

 

She stops the tape, finally gets herself under control, and luckily for her, it’s then that her roommate comes in, sees the envelope open on Cassie’s bed, the empty video cassette box beside it, sees the television still on, no picture on the screen. She tilts her head curiously, looks at Cassie with narrowed eyes. “Someone send you a videotape?” she asks, and Cassie nods, finally looking away from the dark screen.

 

“My father.”

 

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