icepixie | The Atlantis Crackfic!

And be warned that it is definitely on crack...

DISCLAIMER: MGM, Gekko, Double Secret, and Universal own all. I'm making no money. Please don't sue.
FEEDBACK/ARCHIVING: Both would be awesome. Please let me know where it's going by dropping a line to author1[at]comcast[dot]net.
CATEGORY: Sillyfic that I think degenerated into parody at some point along the line. Also, possibly a tiny bit of Sheppard/Weir UST if you want to read it that way.
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: "Suspicion"
SUMMARY: Elizabeth Weir gains some invisible friends. Sort of. In a manner of speaking.
NOTES: Premise shamelessly stolen from the short-lived FOX series *Wonderfalls* and altered to fit my nefarious purposes. Thanks to

trickster_ for the beta. :)

"Chance of Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Insanity Continuing into Afternoon"
Icepixie, August 2004

* * *

Elizabeth Weir awoke to the beepbeepbeep of the alarm on her Palm Pilot, bright sunlight streaming through the windows in her bedroom, and...a very slurred male voice singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"?

She sat straight up in bed and looked around the room, her heart beating wildly as she clutched the comforter in her fists. God, McKay had better not be drunk off his ass on Athosian moonshine and trying to sneak into her bed again--*how* many times had she told him that something would happen between them over her dead body, and he'd better not take that as an invitation? She tossed the covers back and got out of bed.

As far as she could tell after looking both in the closet and under the bed, there was no one else in the room. However, the singing, if you could call it that, was definitely still there. The singer had gotten to the eighty-sixth bottle of beer on the wall. Oddly enough, she thought it was coming from the little table beside her bed. She grabbed the Palm Pilot and checked to make sure no one had managed to hack into it and put a sound file on there. With nearly forty people from twelve different countries who spoke computer code as a native language, one could never be too paranoid.

A thorough check revealed only the alarm, which she turned off. Now it was just the voice, which had reached seventy-nine bottles. Elizabeth was at a loss, and quickly growing annoyed. "Hello?" she called. "Who's there?"

The sound stopped. Elizabeth barely had time to let out a sigh of relief before the same voice said, "I was wonderin' when you were gonna talk to me."

Elizabeth jumped about a foot, and may--may--have let out a little shriek, although she would never admit to it. "Who the hell are you?" she asked in her most authoritative voice once she'd gotten her breathing under control.

"Check out your necklace."

Elizabeth looked at the silver pendant that was currently laying on the table. To her horror, the little heart was balancing on its pointed bottom. In the blank space that the metal outlined, it had grown a little set of eyes and a mouth, a visage that was currently leering rather spectacularly at her. "Come on. Put me 'round your neck. You don't have *much* cleavage, but it's still fun to play in."

Okay, *that* was a shriek. She backed away from the table until she ran into the chest of drawers, the corner of which was going to leave a nice bruise on her left shoulder blade.

"What?" the necklace drawled. "C'mon, baby. Simon gave me to you. I won't do anything he wouldn't do. And I can make it worth your while..." The necklace waggled its tiny tongue at her.

Elizabeth told herself that this was all just a sign that she was very, very tired, and she would take herself right off to the infirmary after this morning's briefing with Major Sheppard and his team. She grabbed some clothes and began to shuck off her pajamas.

"Ooooh, yeah, baby!"

Elizabeth glared at the necklace. It may have been just a figment of her imagination, but she was not going to listen to catcalls. Even if it was her own mind making them. And oh, God this was confusing. She grabbed her clothes and scurried out to get dressed in her living room.

* * *

The conference room was blessedly silent when she got there. Weir took a few seconds to wallow in the fact that there were no talking necklaces cooked up by her over-worked brain lurking around. As she sat down and spread out all the documents she had on P8X-549, a world Sheppard's team was scheduled to 'Gate to that afternoon, the major himself walked into the room. In practically every other way, he was a cut-up and just this side of insubordinate, but he was always punctual. It was sort of scary, actually.

"Good morning, John," she greeted him as he took the seat at the corner of the table to her right.

"Hey, Lizzie." He smirked; she gritted her teeth. She'd lost track of how many times she'd told him not to call her that. However, she had not made a successful career in diplomacy without learning when to pick her battles, and this was definitely one to pass over in favor of bigger things.

She bent over the papers again, making notes here and there in tight, neat script. John's voice caused her to look up again. "How come you're not wearing your necklace?"

She touched the skin a few inches below her collarbone, where the pendant would be if she were wearing it. "I, uh, must have forgot to put it on this morning." She hoped he didn't notice the blatant lie.

John looked suspicious, but didn't question her. Both of them were soon distracted as Ford and McKay entered the room, followed soon after by Teyla.

As most briefings did, this one eventually degenerated into McKay rambling on about...something. It was a rehash of his theory on why the atmospheric readings the MALP had taken two days ago were a little weird. As she had read it in his preliminary assessment of the planet already, Elizabeth tuned out, doodling absently on one of the other reports in front of her.

And then one of the little smiley faces she'd drawn on the paper hissed at her. Elizabeth gasped, then quickly looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. McKay was still nattering on, and Teyla looked like she was almost following him, while Sheppard and Ford weren't even pretending to pay attention, instead playing a covert game of tic-tac-toe on John's notepad. Elizabeth returned her gaze to the smiley face, which wasn't so much smiling as glaring. "Nice to have your attention, Miss Pollyanna," it said.

Elizabeth looked around the table again. Surely someone had heard...no, Rodney was *still* talking, Teyla looked like she'd given up the ghost and was about to fall asleep, and Ford, who had just won the latest round of tic-tac-toe, was doing a little victory dance in his chair while John pouted. Feeling a nervous flutter in her stomach, she turned back to the not-smiley face, which was talking to her again. "What's with drawing little happy faces all over the place? You gonna be putting hearts over your i's next? Drawin' flowers across the top of the page?"

Elizabeth shrank into her seat. "I was just doodling," she whispered before thinking about how that would sound to the rest of the people in the room.

Thankfully, John was the only one who seemed to have noticed anything. He glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. Helplessly, she stared back at him, trying to communicate through her eyes that little happy face doodles had started yelling at her. As long as she didn't actually *say* it, then it didn't sound quite so crazy.

"Hey, I'm talkin' to you!" Elizabeth was forced to return her attention to the paper. "You think your 'doodles' *like* being happy all the damned time? Well, do you, punk?"

"No!" she said rather more loudly than she'd intended. And now everyone's eyes were on her.

"Elizabeth?" Rodney asked, looking ticked that she'd interrupted his presentation.

She gulped. "I, um, need some air," she stammered out, then practically leapt from her seat and out the door. McKay's general inquiry of, "Are atmospheric nitrogen levels really that fascinating?" echoed behind her.

* * *

John found her just outside, slumped against the wall and taking deep breaths as she tried to convince herself that she was not, in fact, going completely off her rocker. She couldn't go crazy. There wasn't even a nuthouse out here to put her in.

"Elizabeth?" he asked gently. Her head shot up and the way she stared at him with such wide eyes reminded him a bit of Bambi. Assuming Bambi had been into crack. "Are you okay?"

"Um." Yes, this would be fun to explain. Her necklace had hit on her and a happy face she'd drawn had called her a punk. That would go over well. "I think I need to go see Dr. Beckett."

He looked her up and down and nodded slowly. "You do look a little pale. I'll walk you down there." He wrapped a hand around her forearm.

She would have told him that she could do this herself, but it might be nice to have company. In case the happy face followed her. Or something.

A few minutes and several staircases later, they arrived at the infirmary. Sheppard looked unsure about leaving her, but she put on her brightest smile and said, "I'll be fine. You have a mission to get ready for, you should go."

He didn't look entirely convinced, but acquiesced and left the infirmary after saying he'd be back to check on her before they left. Weir peeked around into the laboratory area of the infirmary. "Carson?"

The doctor was hunched over a table, intent on whatever he was looking at through a microscope and poking. "Are you bleeding profusely or in imminent danger of dying?"

"Uh, no, I don't think so."

"Have a seat, then. I'll be there in just a second."

"All right." She wandered back out into the infirmary proper and chose one of the beds at random. As she settled herself upon it, she noticed that high up on one of the shelves built into the wall was a small brown teddy bear. Why Carson would have such a thing in the infirmary was beyond her. After a moment, she decided not to question it and instead zoned out as she rehearsed exactly how she would explain this, er, condition to Dr. Beckett.

"Yooooo-hoooo!"

"Oh, God," Elizabeth muttered before looking around for the latest voice.

"Up here!" This voice was gratingly chirpy, like a child with a lot of sugar in his or her system. Elizabeth looked up to find the teddy bear waving at her. She let her head fall into her hands. Why her? Why now? Who had she pissed off in some kind of cosmic way?

"Ready or not, here I come!" Elizabeth looked up just in time to see the bear do a somersault and come flying down to her lap, like the Snuggle Bear jumping down into a pile of laundry in those incredibly irritating Downy commercials that had been everywhere right before they left the galaxy. "Can I have a hug?"

"No! Get away from me!" Elizabeth screamed. Dignity? What was that? She threw the bear across the room, where it slid onto a cart full of medical supplies with a crash.

"Dr. Weir?" Beckett asked tentatively. Her eyes wild, Elizabeth looked over at where he had poked his head around the divider separating the lab and the infirmary, the rest of his body hidden behind the wall. "Who are you talking to?"

Elizabeth glanced at the cart, but found no bear. The floor around the cart also showed no evidence of a stuffed animal. Slowly, she moved her gaze to the shelf, where, sure enough, the bear was sitting quietly, looking as inanimate as ever. Until it winked at her. And she fainted.

* * *

"How's the patient? Invisible friends still talking to you?" Sheppard asked through the forcefield that separated Weir from the rest of the infirmary. Beckett, unable to determine whether her hallucinations were the result of an infection or not, had quarantined her just in case. All 'Gate travel had also been canceled until they'd figured out what was going on, which explained why John was tormenting her at this very moment. Actually, no, it didn't. As of right now, there were still at least fifteen different pieces of paperwork in various stages of past due that he had yet to turn in to her. Why he couldn't be doing that during this unexpected downtime, she had no idea.

"John, if you can't be helpful, you're welcome to leave." If he stayed, she may very well have to circumvent the forcefield and wring his neck.

She was saved from having to do just that when Teyla and Beckett ran up to the quarantine area. "Dr. Weir," Carson said, "Teyla here may have figured out why you're having these hallucinations. You know that Wraith we have stored down in one of the holding cells?"

"Yes?" Elizabeth failed to see where he was going with this.

"The Wraith can make one see and hear things that do not exist," Teyla elaborated. Oh. Right.

"You mean this is just a bigger, weirder version of those...ghost-things we see every time they come after us?" Sheppard asked. "Why aren't all of us seeing things, then?"

"I am not sure. Perhaps we should ask the Wraith himself," Teyla said.

Sheppard spoke up immediately. "I'll go."

"I will go as well," Teyla added.

Elizabeth saw movement in the corner of her eye, and turned her head fractionally. Was the bear...yes, the bear was mooning her. Oh, God. She shut her eyes tightly for a moment, then returned her attention to the three people on the other side of the forcefield. "I'd like to go, too."

"Dr. Weir, I can't let you out of quarantine until we know for sure what's wrong with you," Carson said.

Elizabeth glanced back at the bear. Was it...ooookay, that was something she did *not* need to see. She squeezed her eyes shut again. "That bear over there"--she waved her hand in the stuffed animal's general direction--"is doing very bad things, and if I don't get out of here very soon, I think I really will go crazy." She opened her eyes again. Ooooh, lots of multicolored stars. And tunnel vision. When had she last eaten, anyway? "You said I'm not showing any signs of infection, right?"

"None of the classic signs, no, but we're not sure this is the Wraith's doing. I can't let you out of there without being absolutely certain you can't pass any infection on to the rest of the city. We're a long way from any outside help, you know."

Elizabeth pouted, ignoring the amused expression that spread over Sheppard's face. She'd known that Beckett wouldn't let her out, but she'd felt she had to try.

"You can listen in through the radio," John offered.

There really wasn't any way she was going to be allowed to go, was there? "All right," she sighed. "Just get it to stop. Quickly." She chanced another look at the bear. None of the stuffed animals she'd had as a child had ever looked quite like *that*, or been able to do exactly what this one was doing.

John and Teyla conferred with Beckett for a moment, then hightailed it out of the room, leaving Elizabeth alone with the doctor and the bear. Beckett turned to leave. "Carson?" she asked meekly.

"Yes?"

"Would it be possible to get rid of that teddy bear up there?"

Beckett looked confused. "What teddy bear?"

* * *

Elizabeth had known from the moment John opened with, "All right, you bastard, whatever it is you're doing to her, it's time to stop," that it wasn't going to go well. She was right. After ten minutes of trying to get the Wraith to admit knowledge of why Weir was suddenly hallucinating, John had given up and tranquilized him with the dart Beckett had given him before he left the infirmary. Mercifully, the bear immediately vanished, and they had their answer. Elizabeth gave serious thought to kissing the floor.

However, that didn't solve the problem that they now had. Once the Wraith woke up, there was nothing to keep him from starting right up again with his mind games, and Weir was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to deal with another hour of that, much less however long it took to extract all the information they hoped to gain from the Wraith. Also, they had no idea of the extent of his mental powers--he could start screwing around with *everyone's* mind, and then they'd really be in a mess.

"Ideas, people?" Elizabeth asked. She had gathered Sheppard, McKay, Beckett, Teyla, Ford, and Grodin in the conference room. They had about two hours--so Beckett thought, anyway--until the tranquilizer wore off.

Six blank faces met her gaze. "We could keep him sedated except when we're questioning him?" Ford finally offered.

Beckett immediately shook his head. "We'd run out of sedative in a few weeks at that rate."

More silence. Elizabeth was about to call for a break just so they wouldn't all keep staring at the shiny tabletop when John said, "We can't let some...vampiric catfish get the best of us."

Teyla looked at him blankly. "Catfish?"

"Yeah, they're fish with these whiskers that..." He tried to demonstrate by placing his fingers on his cheeks. "Never mind."

"Too bad they don't respond to catnip," McKay said, looking depressed.

"What is catnip?" Teyla had missed the leap of logic again.

"It's this plant; the scent makes cats--little four-legged furry things we keep as pets--either very hyper or very mellow," McKay explained. "If we had some for the Wraith, we could probably use it like a truth serum, or at least keep it doped up without any of our limited medical supplies."

Teyla cocked her head. "In the old stories, there was mention of a plant that produced tranquilizing effects and made it impossible to tell a falsehood when given in large enough quantities to a Wraith. We have never seen it for as long as anyone can remember. But it was described as a vine with clusters of three leaves that can grow on the ground or up trees."

Ford and Sheppard both looked disbelieving. "You have to be kidding," John said at the same time as Ford asked, "Poison ivy?"

Before Teyla could ask for an explanation, John said, "Poison ivy grows all over Earth. If you touch it, you break out in a huge rash."

"But if it once existed on Teyla's planet, then the Ancients must have brought it to this galaxy. It could possibly be growing on the continent where the Athosian refugees are," Elizabeth said. Crazy as the whole idea sounded, she would gladly go and collect enough of it for an army of Wraiths with her bare hands if it would keep this one out of her mind.

"I can keep the Wraith under for as long as you need to find some," Beckett offered.

"And my people will help us search," Teyla added.

Elizabeth sighed in relief. If this worked, then they could find out everything this Wraith knew about his people's weapons, strategy, and numbers. Afterwards, they could feed him misinformation about Atlantis, then drop him off on some uninhabited planet with the transmitter from Teyla's necklace. She indicated Sheppard, McKay, Ford, and Teyla. "Take a Puddle Jumper to the southern coast. If you find any poison ivy, bring back as much as you can. Report back in four hours if you haven't found any." They nodded and stood to leave. "Don't forget to bring gloves!" she called at their backs. Good lord, she was starting to sound like a den mother--for what quite possibly was the Scout troop from hell.

Elizabeth, Beckett, and Grodin followed the others out into the hall, the two men going their separate ways once Elizabeth dismissed them with a nod. When she reached her office, she didn't walk right in, but instead poked her head around the door, expecting some inanimate object to stand up and start doing God-knew-what. She knew that the Wraith currently had enough sedative in its system to knock out an elephant, but the deep-seated part of her brain that said hallucinations = bad was not so easily convinced.

When nothing jumped out at her, she cautiously went inside and sat at her desk. She massaged the bridge of her nose. God, she was never going to be able to look at a teddy bear or smiley face the same way after this. Not to mention Simon's necklace--she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to wear it again. She groaned softly. She'd gone into this knowing that they would run into things weirder than anyone could imagine, but somehow she hadn't pictured anything quite like this.

A rustling on her desk made her open her eyes and look around. "Over here," a nasal little voice called. Elizabeth stared in horror at the photo of her dog that was propped up against the lamp. The once-sweet expression on the dog's face had turned into something almost sinister. "Hi, Lizzie..."

End

So for me, this is right on the border between kinda Sheppard/Weir shippy and too gen to post to any of the S/W lists/community in good conscience. (Well, the loons on sheppard_n_weir would probably get a kick out of it anyway...) What do y'all think?

*runs off on errands/shopping trip, will be back to reply to comments that have been filling up inbox later today*

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