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�A few months after we started going through the �Gate Daniel decided I needed to brush up on my� diplomacy skills� which, I admit, are somewhat lacking,� Jack said awkwardly. �He gave me a bunch of books, yours included.� He shrugged. �There are only so many games of chess you can play against yourself while recovering for assorted alien maladies.�
�Remind me to introduce you to the world of computer solitaire,� Elizabeth said, shaking her head in amusement.
Even though she had spent most of her life travelling, living with so many different cultures that varied from each other in so many ways that it made her head spin at times, Elizabeth was having trouble acclimating to life on Earth after a year in Pegasus.
All the people, the chaos, it reminded her of the panic of the siege or, during one particularly bad rainstorm, the Genii raid on Atlantis. The sound of traffic (especially rush hour with all the honking horns and nearly palpable anger) brought the sounds of Wraith darts to her mind, making her fingers itch for a weapon, any weapon, from the gun the nearest guard had holstered at his hip to the butter knife sitting beside her plate�a desire that, in and of itself, was troubling and more than a little strange considering she had gone though both the Genii raid and the Wraith siege completely unarmed, and, while she knew how to shoot a gun if needed (John had seen to that early on) and knew the basics of fighting with a knife (Teyla had been training her, though their schedules rarely lined up and Elizabeth�s knee often gave her too much trouble to do the moves that the Athosian instructed her to do) Elizabeth knew that defending herself against the things that she felt were attacking her on Earth the way her instincts were telling her to was among the worst ideas ever. Gunning down people who walked up behind her on the street or attacking the waiter with a butter knife because he had long white hair would get her locked up, Elizabeth knew, and she would never see her city again.
Which was completely unacceptable.
Being at the SGC had been a change, for sure, but it wasn�t entirely different from home (security, military types, scientists, John and Rodney and Carson, a few other people that she was close to, a lot of people she knew well enough to have a conversation with but wasn�t close to) so Elizabeth had been able to deal with being in the mountain, though there were some changes that were so glaring (being underground instead of being on top of the ocean, not being in charge, no balcony to escape to, no ocean waves or salty breeze to lull her to sleep) that she had to make a conscious decision not to think about them. Besides, the SGC was safe, she didn�t need to monitor what she said, she could say �Atlantis� and not have people look at her like she was crazy, and no one thought that it was strange that she was a little jumpy from time to time�everyone at the SGC had been through something that haunted them, it was an accepted part of the job that no one liked but everyone dealt with.
But DC�
Elizabeth had always adapted well. She could go from a snow-bound negotiation to the desert heat with little more than a flight and a change of wardrobe. She could pack up her life in a matter of hours and move halfway around the world if the job required that of her. Hell, she had left her home galaxy with little more than a few days notice after Daniel had figured out that Atlantis was in the Pegasus Galaxy and not, as they had expected, the Milky Way.
Still, Elizabeth was finding that she had a new appreciation for quiet.
She never thought that she would consider life around Rodney McKay and John Sheppard �quiet�, but she had discovered that the lack of quiet that they brought to her life was much easier to deal with than the incessant noise of life on Earth.
On their third full day of meetings, her fourth day in DC, her breakfast order of room service had come with a bottle of extra-strength Advil and a note from Jack�he had, somehow, managed to cancel their morning meetings and he expected her to be well-rested and tension free by the time he came to pick her up at lunch. Under the plate that her egg-white omelette with havarti and avocado there was an envelope with a list of spa treatments that were available in the time she had off, along with a note that simply said �call John�.