Two gen ficlets.
Remember that 20 Characters Meme from a million years ago? The one where I give you 20 characters, and you pick two of them and provide a prompt? Well, here are two more I just found hiding in my fic folder.
'Walking the Line' (G, Gen) for soapbox_solo38
Jennifer Keller and Cameron Mitchell: His last words to her before she left Earth were: "Give 'em hell."
Maybe Cameron Mitchell had somehow known how painfully under-prepared Jennifer was for this place.
The first time they met, he caught her talking to herself in one of the endless hallways in the SGC that conspired to look exactly like every other hallway, probably for the nefarious goal of making newly arrived staff such as herself look as ridiculous as possible. Not that Cam interrupted her or offered to help. No, he just leaned against the nearest wall and watched her fumble with her orientation papers as she stared at the completely unhelpful color-coded lines on the floor, until she finally noticed he was there.
He grinned lazily at her as if he didn’t have anywhere else in the galaxy to be at that moment. She really hoped this wasn’t a sign of what it would be like to work for the military.
“Are you just going to stare at me, or help me out?” she snapped, her aggravation getting the better of her. What the hell was she thinking, accepting an assignment in another galaxy?
He didn’t seem to take exception to her tone. “Maybe I want to give you a chance to figure it out yourself first,” he said with a shrug.
Rolling her eyes, she randomly selected a line to follow. She liked the color yellow. It was as good a reason as any.
“You could go that way,” he said in a way that made her stop mid-step. “If you’re lookin’ to make an intergalactic call.”
She closed her eyes, briefly sending up a prayer for just a little more perseverance. After all, the damn Hippocratic Oath sort of frowned on physical violence. “Okay, so yellow leads to the control room?”
He nodded. “Yellow for yodels.”
“Excuse me?”
He pointed down at the rainbow of lines on the floor. “Yellow for yodels. Red is restricted. Blue is for bandages. Green is for ‘get out quick’.”
She blinked back at him incomprehensibly, as if he had suddenly started speaking tongues, which she wasn’t entirely certain he hadn’t.
Looking a little defensive now, he said, “It’s a mnemonic device. You know, a trick for-.”
“I know what a mnemonic device is.”
“Great.”
She stared down at the lines, the Colonel’s crooked little nursery rhyme dancing in her head. She wondered the chances that he was just messing with her, having a little fun at the expense of the pathetic civilian. She must have been insane, taking this job with the military.
“What about the white line?” she asked, realizing he’d left one off.
His face creased for a moment, and he frowned down at the line like it was a misbehaving pet. “That one leads to command. The boss man.”
“What, no snappy little rhyme for that one?” she quipped.
He looked sheepish. “Couldn’t come up with anything that started with ‘W’.” Then his expression shifted, suddenly looking determined. “Yet.”
God. This guy might actually be for real. “You really aren’t messing with me, are you,” she said, feeling her shoulders finally relax.
“No. Why would I do that?” He honestly looked like he couldn’t imagine anyone doing that. She’d found herself an honest-to-God boy scout, right here in the middle of ‘aliens are real’ central.
Letting out a breath, she shoved her papers back into her bag and leaned back against the wall next to him. “So,” she said, “you’re saying there was a time you had a hard time getting around in here too.”
He shoved his hands back in his pockets, shrugging one shoulder, but his gaze felt anything but nonchalant. “Everyone gets lost now and again,” he said, holding her gaze steady and she could feel it there, the advice and empathy he carefully layered in the words.
Everyone gets lost now and again.
He shot her one last smile and walked off before she could say anything else. Looking down at the lines beneath her feet, she pushed off the wall, stepping down determinedly on the middle one.
“Blue is for bandages,” she muttered to herself.
She made it the rest of the way without a single wrong turn.
* * *
Cam Mitchell was there again, the day she was finally supposed to step through the wormhole to another galaxy. He stood by the door to the gateroom, watching the latest set of personnel heading off to Pegasus, giving them all encouraging smiles like they were off on the adventure of a lifetime.
It was a little infectious, all things told.
“Give ‘em hell,” he said with that lazy grin of his as she passed.
Straightening her shoulders, she smiled right back at him, her stomach finally settling down into something like resolve. She could do this. She would do this.
“Count on it,” she called back over her shoulder.
'Let Us Begin' (PG, Gen, Drama) for katcorvi
Sha’re and Bra'tac "When you're going through hell, keep going." (Winston Churchill)
“There was a time I would have found this forest unbelievable,” Sha’re said, her voice weak and raspy, the warmth of her blood seeping in beneath Bra’tac’s armor.
He quickened the pace of his step, dragging the diminutive woman with him. Under the garish makeup and golden regalia of a goddess, he could just make out the girl she must have once been, a girl who would have found the sight of trees growing so close together a miracle.
Having once been a goddess, could she still believe in miracles?
The woods were busy with noise and movement, even in the dark of night, the fires burning in the distance lighting the horizon with false dawn.
“How long will this work?” she asked, her fingers lifting to the device on her neck. It was Tollan, a people Bra’tac had never met, but apparently had once held great technologies in their possession, even if they took most of it to the grave with their once mighty civilization. That great technology had not saved them from the Goa’uld, but for the moment, at least, it appeared to keep Amaunet at bay.
“I do not know,” Bra’tac said, pulling them both behind a tree at the approaching sound of pounding footsteps.
The rebellion they found themselves caught in was not one born of liberated Jaffa, but rather the tumultuous rabble of human slaves pushed beyond their endurance for oppression. In many ways it was a more dangerous form of revolution, the long enslaved humans knowing nothing of freedom or a higher goal, but only bloodlust and rage. Anything that got in their way would be destroyed.
Coming upon them, the humans would only see a false goddess and her servant, the tools of their oppression. Rebellion and possession, lack of choice, would mean little to them.
The footsteps passed by them, once more fading into the hum of sound in the distance.
Next to him, Sha’re breathed out. “They will not stop searching for me,” she said, her fingers tightening on his arm.
Bra’tac turned to her, prepared to dull the truth, to speak the easy lie to keep meager hopes alive, to keep them moving, but having seen the ghost of the girl underneath the smudged makeup, and now the fearless, practical tilt of her chin, the empty words died on his tongue. This was one who deserved the truth.
He nodded. “The chappa’ai will also be heavily guarded. And the device is uncertain,” he said, his eyes darting to the contraption on her neck.
She took a moment as if to digest this, flinching closer into his body at the flash and groan of an explosion far too nearby for comfort. Bra’tac adjusted his grip on her and pushed them once more into motion, plowing through the heavier brush.
She did not speak again until they were even deeper into the forest, the weak moonlight shining down through a break in foliage.
“If the device should fail…,” she said as they picked their way carefully across a stream.
Bra’tac looked down, catching sight of her feet encased in impractical, delicate heels, the way her step was determined and steady in spite of them, splashing through the water without hesitation.
“I will know how to act,” he assured her.
She nodded, giving him a tremulous smile. “I only ask that you be quick,” she said. Her jaw tightened. “Amaunet must not rise again.” He saw the fear now, under her resolve. It did nothing to diminish her.
“I am your servant,” Bra’tac said with a short bow of his head.
The look she gave him was close to rebuke, her lips pressing together in disapproval as one hand swept the gentle gold crown from her head, letting it fall carelessly to the stones and dirt under their feet. “No,” she corrected. “You are my akhserr, my brother-in-arms. And though our options seem limited, I am not prepared to fall to your sharp aim just yet.”
She seemed to have come into focus, the shock of wound and free-will fading as she took in the forest around them, the chaos spilling free behind them in the distance. She pointed toward the low rising hills on the distant edge of the valley. “Less than a day’s walk to the east are a series of caves. Emergency supplies and a tel’tac are kept there. Few know of it. And certainly not the slaves.”
Bra’tac’s eyes followed the gesture, analyzing the distance to the rising hills, the darkness masking the angle of ascent, creating deep shadows across the face. They would be lucky to see the night through, Bra’tac knew, let alone complete a day’s journey.
He believed she saw something of his doubt in his face, but did not mirror it in her own. She tilted her head to one side, half-entreaty, half-challenge. “Shall we not see if we can put Amaunet’s paranoia to good use?”
Bra’tac felt a smile tug at his lips. “Come, kinswoman,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “If your husband’s people have taught me anything, it is of the value of never letting your step falter, no matter how steep the terrain.”
Her smile was grim, but her voice steady. “Then let us begin.”