Title: Home.
Author: vagablonde
Rating: Gen Audiences
Warnings: none
Word Count: 373
Summary: Set at the end of Season 3 -
Author's Notes: Prompt: 7. I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky. But why, why, why can't it be, why can't it be mine?
Even in the almost hermetically sealed environ of Atlantis’ labs, there was a layer of dust on everything.
Everything that hadn’t been moved or used in the last week or so had collected a faint layer of it. Lorne wiped down a large modular unit he had no idea the purpose of, refolded his scrap of rag, and realized it wasn’t worth the salvage effort. He pulled another from the standard 35-pound military issued bag - made from scraps of blankets, uniforms and bedding, laundered and bundled for reuse. The Daedalus brought them every six weeks. On an expedition a few million light years from home, in an Ancient city whose occupants were notoriously efficient, rags were always in short commodity.
The military contingent went about the task of packing coldly and prosaically; this ride was over, move on to the next one. All of them were used to being transferred in their careers, used to striking camp and setting up somewhere else on a moment's notice in the field. They were resigned to the move and the task. More than a few were veterans of Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan or Iraq and were just happy that no one was shooting at them while they did. They went about the task capably, keeping their regrets mostly to themselves as they folded and stacked, taped and boxed.
The labs were finally packed away, stowed and crated, ready for the return trip through the gate. Finished, the airmen and Marines were dismissed to their own personal quarters, to break down the components of the lives they'd brought with them and the ones they'd earned here, compartmentalizing the last three years and then pretend it was just another assignment, just another tour of duty.
Lorne sat on the edge of his bunk, thinking the door closed and stared at his two bags. He packed light, he always had. There wasn't all that much to remove from the ancient city, not much to say he was ever here. He lay down, closing his eyes and feeling the warmth of Atlantis seep into his skin, a subconscious hum, an unspoken, whispery caress somewhere at the back of his mind -
- and knew how empty Earth would forever be........
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