(no subject)
Title: Chasing Horizons
Author: JK Ashavah
Summary: "If you can't give me a yes by the time we reach McMurdo, I don't even want you". It takes more than orders to make a life-changing choice, and Major John Sheppard has one in front of him. Missing moment from The Rising, part 1.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: John Sheppard, Jack O'Neill
Spoilers: Just for the pilot!
Rating: General
Word count: 3382
Notes: The quote at the end is really there, on the memorial cross to Scott and his team. This fic was written as a gift for alemara. Huge thanks are due to geo-chick, my faithful sister, patient sounding board, and beta. And a shout-out to psyc2321, whose response to "there are characters loose in my brain and I don't know what to write" is "here, have plot bunnies". Not this one, but plot bunnies.
Disclaimer:It's all owned by MGM, Brad Wright, and Robert C. Cooper. No disrespect intended, no profit being made, etc.
He's not entirely sorry to see the back of O'Neill.
It's not that he doesn't like the guy. Of course, Sheppard never really likes any senior officers and never has, but O'Neill seemed okay, like the sort of guy who got where he is by working at it. He seems like he knows what it's like to do the things the guys under his command are expected to do. He's got the grizzled gruffness of someone who's lived the sort of life that takes a toll. That's something Sheppard can respect in a one-star. As they go, O'Neill's not too bad, but ever since they got in the chopper, he's felt like the guy was sizing him up for something.
Maybe he was.
This was meant to be a simple mission. Like there ever is such a thing in Antarctica: fly a visiting general out to a secret research facility and back, ask no questions, and make sure his trip is as smooth as possible, because it's always a good idea to play nice with generals. There's no such thing as a guaranteed easy ride here, not when the wind can scream down from the mountains and across the plains so quick it's like it's blown up out of nowhere too fast even for the meteorologists to handle. When that happens, it whirls the world into a sudden, impossible whiteout and it's all the pilot can do to get the bird back down on the ground safely.
That's why they tend to ask the best pilots to fly visiting brass and other important busybodies around. It's moments like that when skill shows, and it's in preparation for them that Sheppard is the go-to guy for VIP transport.
It's not arrogance on his part that to know he's the best on the base.
Of all the unexpected things flying in Antarctica can throw at him, aliens was the last one he expected. Sure, he'd been left in no doubt in his briefings that the research going on at this particular base was sensitive way beyond need-to-know, that it was none of his business and his job was just to fly. He'd been cool with that: a guy with a background like his knows when to ask questions and when to leave things be. If he'd had to guess, though, aliens would have been the last suggestion he'd have made.
Hell, he didn't even believe in them until just now. He's still not sure he really does, even with all the evidence he just had thrown at him on that base. Just hearing all this stuff from increasingly excited scientists about the fact that their research facility was full of alien technology they were studying was bad enough, but finding out he was some … long-lost descendant of these Ancient guys is the thing that his mind doesn't quite want to process.
He's the guy with the best ability or genetic compatibility or whatever it was -- Doctor McKay kind of lost him a bit in the middle of his explanation -- with this alien technology they've found, and they want him to go off into the unknown like some sort of explorer with them.
It sounds crazy.
It sounds so crazy that if it weren't for General O'Neill and the Marines he'd occasionally glimpsed around the base, he'd have written it all off as some crackpot's conspiracy theory. There may be crazy one-stars out there, but O'Neill didn't strike him as one.
Nobody else seemed all that crazy, either, if you left out the aliens. Which is … a pretty big concession.
Besides, it's not like crazy has ever been that much of a deterrent to Sheppard in the first place. That's how he got himself into the mess he's in now. Nobody who's not a little bit crazy does what he did that day he finally screwed up his career for good.
Still, it's gonna take some time to get past the crazy bit and actually be able to give it any sort of serious thought. He'd told Doctor Weir that when she offered him the job. Well, sort of: he'd told her that it was a lot to take on board and that he was gonna have to stop and think about it, and she'd seemed to respect that. Her cooly incisive eyes had been friendly when she'd held out her hand for him to shake. It was a good handshake, too, met with a firm, steady gaze. She told him she'd looked forward to hearing from him, and just as he'd been about to leave the cramped little office she was set up in to start getting ready to go, he'd turned, hand still outstretched towards the door handle.
"You're sure this is voluntary, right?"
"I wouldn't ask anyone to come if they didn't want to." Her eyebrows lifted, just for a moment. "And I wouldn't want someone there who wasn't entirely committed to what we're doing."
She'd been hard to read, her expression controlled, her manner businesslike, but still, he'd gotten the feeling she'd wanted to shake that off and make some other entreaty, appeal to him in some other way. She's sure committed to what she's doing, but he's never felt that sort of dedication to anything in his life except flying, the one thing he's best at and the one thing he's had when he'd lost everything else.
She seems to be in charge of this alien-hunting trip to another galaxy, and she'd seemed like the sort of person you could trust. And she'd told him this was his choice to make. That was good enough for Sheppard, but he wasn't counting on O'Neill getting involved.
Most generals he's known haven't wanted anything to do with him in their chain of command, let alone recommending he be a part of something as exclusive and specialised as this project. It's hardly the sort of thing you'd recommend a guy for when he's one foot out of line from being chucked out of the Air Force. He's had some good luck in his time, impressing the right people at the right time to get the right word put into the right ear, but those days are over and this sort of thing is beyond elite. He doesn't even know what the qualifications to be considered for a project like that would be, but they'd be pretty impressive: that was something that was clear to him as soon as he started talking to Weir and Beckett and McKay and the others in that research base.
It was a place for the best and the smartest and probably the craziest people in the world to do the craziest research he's ever heard about, and after 11 months at McMurdo listening to scientists go on about their pet projects on some pretty damn long chopper rides and winter evenings, that's saying something.
Elizabeth Weir didn't seem to mind the black mark on his record: she'd told him that she was impressed with his dedication to his friends and his duty, but that's one thing from a civilian and outsider andanother from a general. Besides, he's pretty sure O'Neill is still mad about the whole sitting down in the glowing alien chair thing. Even if Weir wants him, what good's that going to do even if he did want to go? That black mark, and disgrace and the disapproval and the weight of the failure that had left his friends to die when his rescue attempt had failed aren't going away.
O'Neill sure seems to be the guy in charge of the military things going on around here, and it's clear the general's got something to say as soon as he gets in beside him for the ride back. He doesn't really know what if anything to expect from the guy, but he sure as hell doesn't expect a sales pitch. O'Neill's short-tempered and brusque and it's pretty clear he's not trying to sell Sheppard on the idea of this intergalactic excursion out of any personal desire to have him under his command. That idea seems kind of distasteful to him, like just about every other senior officer since that damn court martial. But distasteful or not, he's trying to sell the idea.
Sheppard does his best to brush off the topic, because as far as he's concerned, if it's really his choice, then no general's going to be telling him what to do. It's not often he can legitimately say that, and he's not about to be ordered into another galaxy, and he's sure as hell not ready to decide on his own yet.
He only just found out about all of this, and now he's being asked to leave behind everything he knows and cares about for the sake of what, going off like some modern-day Lewis and Clark with no idea what's even out there, let alone if they'll come back? That's too soon, and he tells O'Neill as much, but the general's not interested in hearing that he's not ready for this decision or that it's a hell of a lot to think about. But the general doesn't seem like the sort of guy who's all that long on patience.
"You know, this isn't about you, Sheppard," O'Neill snaps over the growing whine of the engine. "It's a lot bigger than that."
"Right now, at this very second, whether I decide to go on this mission or not seems to be about me," Sheppard says, frowning through the windscreen as he puts on his helmet. So call him selfish: this is his life, and maybe he hasn't got a lot left to go home to when this tour in Antarctica ends, but what he has is his. They haven't even taken off and already O'Neill's started into him. This promises to be a trip that's all sorts of awkward.
He preferred it when they were talking about choppers. At least then, he knew where he stood. He was talking about the thing he loves most with someone else who loves it too. O'Neill's a pilot; even if it wasn't clear from one look at his uniform, it was obvious from the way he talks and the things he says and the look on his face as the chopper soared down over the smooth sparkling sea of ice that lay out in front of them as they breasted the mountains.
Not every pilot flies because they're in love with it. To some of them it's just a job or just a way to fill their service obligation before retiring, glamour or excitement or any number of other things. The best pilots, though, are the ones who do it because they can't imagine doing anything else. Like Sheppard, and he'd thought O'Neill was the same.
That's why he pays attention when O'Neill seizes a headset and asks, his words clipped and short, why Sheppard became a pilot.
Sheppard frowns at the controls he's flicking. "I think people who don't want to fly are crazy."
"And I think people who don't want to go through the Stargate are equally as whacked."
That's what makes Sheppard's hand pause, the automatic rhythm of checking this switch and flicking that switch that's as familiar as breathing disrupted for long enough for his eyes to narrow as he begins, for the first time, to really listen to what the general's saying.
This guy's a pilot, and even if Sheppard's read him wrong and he doesn't feel flying like an expansion of his whole being into the world around him the way Sheppard does, he's been there and done it and certainly would have commanded people who feel like their whole universe feels right the moment they sit down in a cockpit.
O'Neill knows what that means.
"Now if you can't give me a yes by the time we reach McMurdo, I don't even want you."
He hasn't decided by the time they reach McMurdo.
Elizabeth Weir said she didn't want anyone who wasn't entirely committed and passionate about what they were doing, and Sheppard knows he's testing O'Neill's temper. He also knows that he can't make a decision like that in the course of a flight that's less than a half hour long. Whatever he might pretend, the General knows it, too.
"Well?" he snaps, as Sheppard cuts the engine and the pitch of the rotor's whine drops as it slows. "What?"
Sheppard takes a deep breath.
"If I tell you I still don't know, are you gonna tell me I can't?"
"You know what, Sheppard?" O'Neill says as he snatches his headset off, "I read your file, I know your type. You're here because there's nowhere else they'll send ya. You've got a problem with following orders, and you've got nothin' here, but the Stargate Program has a place for someone like that. I'll get you your orders, but if you don't show up at Stargate Command when we start getting the expedition together, it's your loss. We don't need you. So you just take your time and think about whether you want to be a part of the biggest adventure you could even dream of or whether it's all too much for you."
O'Neill doesn't say another word to him, and for the few minutes left before they disembark, the atmosphere in the cockpit feels like a pot on the edge of boiling, but O'Neill's said all he has to say and is gone as soon as he's allowed to, and all Sheppard can do is think.
O'Neill moves fast. The promised orders come through and it's only the day after O'Neill leaves that Sheppard's called into his CO's office, where he finds the Colonel sitting behind his desk staring at his computer screen with a vague frown on his face. Sheppard's always kind of liked the guy, because he'd been the first superior officer he'd met after the court martial who hadn't made what happened in Afghanistan the entire basis of their command relationship. He'd trusted Sheppard with responsibility leading a flight, let him prove his abilities as a pilot and as an officer before he'd started shoving regulations and rulebooks down his throat.
"You made quite an impression on General O'Neill, Major."
It's said mildly, and Sheppard, standing at fierce attention, eyes the Colonel, not quite sure where this conversation's going.
"Sir?"
"Says here," the Colonel continues, "that the General's involved in a classified project and requires someone with your skills for immediate transfer to Peterson. You interested in transferring our of here, Major?"
"Sir."
"I'm going to assume there was a *yes* in front of that, Sheppard," the Colonel says, his voice sharp. "This isn't an order. O'Neill specifies that you're only to go if you're not going to waste his time, whatever that means." He turns away from the computer, eyes narrowing. "I take it he spoke to you about this?"
"Yes, sir."
"And are you going?"
Until the moment the question's asked, Sheppard still doesn't know what the answer is, but as soon as he hears it, he finds himself nodding, almost in reflex, without stopping to think about any of the reasons he has not to want this posting.
It's mad. He's mad, but that's nothing new.
"I can't pretend I'll be glad to lose my best pilot, but you belong somewhere better than this. Get out of here, Sheppard. Go back to special ops where you belong, or wherever it is O'Neill's taking you."
Later that afternoon, the sun's still as high as if it were noon, and Sheppard has a little time to spare. He takes it to rug up against the wind that feels like it cuts straight through to the bone and take a walk, stretching his long legs with the climb up Observation Hill to stand with his back to the base and his face turned out to the sound, where the ice lies in vast white sheets locked in an eternal fight with the ocean for supremacy and the clouds lie, low and threatening, out over the distant mountains of the mainland. He's got nobody but the memorial cross for company, and it stands silent against the sky, a solemn tribute to men who lost their lives searching for new horizons.
Up here, there's something like the sense of the vast emptiness that an empty sky and a full tank of fuel gives him, and if the wind blowing across the ice is harsh, it's nothing he can't handle by ducking his chin into the collar of the thick coat the keeps out the worst of its bite. Here, with McMurdo Base and O'Neill and the secret alien research station left behind for just a while, he can find some clear air to think. That air's crisp, so cold he can taste it, but he doesn't care.
Is he really going? Is he really considering this? Antarctica might be the remotest part of the planet and it might have nothing but ice and snow and penguins and flying that's routine until suddenly it's not and he needs every ounce of skill he has to save his ass, but it has its attractions, too. Here, he can pretend his father and his brother and all their disappointed expectations don't matter. Here, he can be okay with his wife leaving him and hooking up with some Beltway lawyer. He can be okay that he's not back there in Afghanistan or Iraq where they need special ops pilots to risk their lives to make sure the mission's done right. He can be okay that this is where his career ends and he'll never be a part of that life again, except that he's never been okay with any of that.
All he can do is lie to himself and the world with a smart mouth and an easy smile that say he understands this is how the world works.
A gust of wind brings a few fluffy flakes of snow dancing in front of his eyes across the vista before they're whisked off in another direction to fall to the rocks at his feet. Sometimes, his fate has felt as lost and drifting as those isolated specks of white, spun around on a wind that's beyond his control, pulling him first one way then another until he's dumped at his destination with no choice and no desire to be there.
Maybe, this time, the wind's changing for the better. If there really can be a place for a guy who's burned his bridges and exhausted his chances, maybe this is an opportunity to be a part of something again. It's a lot to risk for who knows what gain, but when has that ever stopped him? If he'd thought like that, he'd never have taken a gamble that three men's lives were worth whatever the cost to him if he failed. He took a chance when he broke orders and stole a chopper to go after that downed team. He knew what he stood to lose, and he did it anyway. He's not a scientist, but that doesn't mean he thinks knowledge and discovery aren't worth taking risks, and this is more than just pure academic interest.
This is an adventure beyond belief. They might not come back, but he takes that chance every time he sits in a cockpit. That's who and what he is: he wants the horizon and whatever lies beyond it.
Isn't that the spirit of exploration?
To a guy with no future, no wife, no family to leave behind, that seems like a risk that's worth trying, at least. So he'll take the transfer to Colorado.
He nods as he turns away from the view across the continent, and his eyes go back to that solid wooden cross, tracing over the words written there in memory of Scott and his men who came here chasing horizons of their own.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
That could almost be prophetic for these newest explorers.
When they go after that horizon, he'll be there.
Author: JK Ashavah
Summary: "If you can't give me a yes by the time we reach McMurdo, I don't even want you". It takes more than orders to make a life-changing choice, and Major John Sheppard has one in front of him. Missing moment from The Rising, part 1.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: John Sheppard, Jack O'Neill
Spoilers: Just for the pilot!
Rating: General
Word count: 3382
Notes: The quote at the end is really there, on the memorial cross to Scott and his team. This fic was written as a gift for alemara. Huge thanks are due to geo-chick, my faithful sister, patient sounding board, and beta. And a shout-out to psyc2321, whose response to "there are characters loose in my brain and I don't know what to write" is "here, have plot bunnies". Not this one, but plot bunnies.
Disclaimer:It's all owned by MGM, Brad Wright, and Robert C. Cooper. No disrespect intended, no profit being made, etc.
He's not entirely sorry to see the back of O'Neill.
It's not that he doesn't like the guy. Of course, Sheppard never really likes any senior officers and never has, but O'Neill seemed okay, like the sort of guy who got where he is by working at it. He seems like he knows what it's like to do the things the guys under his command are expected to do. He's got the grizzled gruffness of someone who's lived the sort of life that takes a toll. That's something Sheppard can respect in a one-star. As they go, O'Neill's not too bad, but ever since they got in the chopper, he's felt like the guy was sizing him up for something.
Maybe he was.
This was meant to be a simple mission. Like there ever is such a thing in Antarctica: fly a visiting general out to a secret research facility and back, ask no questions, and make sure his trip is as smooth as possible, because it's always a good idea to play nice with generals. There's no such thing as a guaranteed easy ride here, not when the wind can scream down from the mountains and across the plains so quick it's like it's blown up out of nowhere too fast even for the meteorologists to handle. When that happens, it whirls the world into a sudden, impossible whiteout and it's all the pilot can do to get the bird back down on the ground safely.
That's why they tend to ask the best pilots to fly visiting brass and other important busybodies around. It's moments like that when skill shows, and it's in preparation for them that Sheppard is the go-to guy for VIP transport.
It's not arrogance on his part that to know he's the best on the base.
Of all the unexpected things flying in Antarctica can throw at him, aliens was the last one he expected. Sure, he'd been left in no doubt in his briefings that the research going on at this particular base was sensitive way beyond need-to-know, that it was none of his business and his job was just to fly. He'd been cool with that: a guy with a background like his knows when to ask questions and when to leave things be. If he'd had to guess, though, aliens would have been the last suggestion he'd have made.
Hell, he didn't even believe in them until just now. He's still not sure he really does, even with all the evidence he just had thrown at him on that base. Just hearing all this stuff from increasingly excited scientists about the fact that their research facility was full of alien technology they were studying was bad enough, but finding out he was some … long-lost descendant of these Ancient guys is the thing that his mind doesn't quite want to process.
He's the guy with the best ability or genetic compatibility or whatever it was -- Doctor McKay kind of lost him a bit in the middle of his explanation -- with this alien technology they've found, and they want him to go off into the unknown like some sort of explorer with them.
It sounds crazy.
It sounds so crazy that if it weren't for General O'Neill and the Marines he'd occasionally glimpsed around the base, he'd have written it all off as some crackpot's conspiracy theory. There may be crazy one-stars out there, but O'Neill didn't strike him as one.
Nobody else seemed all that crazy, either, if you left out the aliens. Which is … a pretty big concession.
Besides, it's not like crazy has ever been that much of a deterrent to Sheppard in the first place. That's how he got himself into the mess he's in now. Nobody who's not a little bit crazy does what he did that day he finally screwed up his career for good.
Still, it's gonna take some time to get past the crazy bit and actually be able to give it any sort of serious thought. He'd told Doctor Weir that when she offered him the job. Well, sort of: he'd told her that it was a lot to take on board and that he was gonna have to stop and think about it, and she'd seemed to respect that. Her cooly incisive eyes had been friendly when she'd held out her hand for him to shake. It was a good handshake, too, met with a firm, steady gaze. She told him she'd looked forward to hearing from him, and just as he'd been about to leave the cramped little office she was set up in to start getting ready to go, he'd turned, hand still outstretched towards the door handle.
"You're sure this is voluntary, right?"
"I wouldn't ask anyone to come if they didn't want to." Her eyebrows lifted, just for a moment. "And I wouldn't want someone there who wasn't entirely committed to what we're doing."
She'd been hard to read, her expression controlled, her manner businesslike, but still, he'd gotten the feeling she'd wanted to shake that off and make some other entreaty, appeal to him in some other way. She's sure committed to what she's doing, but he's never felt that sort of dedication to anything in his life except flying, the one thing he's best at and the one thing he's had when he'd lost everything else.
She seems to be in charge of this alien-hunting trip to another galaxy, and she'd seemed like the sort of person you could trust. And she'd told him this was his choice to make. That was good enough for Sheppard, but he wasn't counting on O'Neill getting involved.
Most generals he's known haven't wanted anything to do with him in their chain of command, let alone recommending he be a part of something as exclusive and specialised as this project. It's hardly the sort of thing you'd recommend a guy for when he's one foot out of line from being chucked out of the Air Force. He's had some good luck in his time, impressing the right people at the right time to get the right word put into the right ear, but those days are over and this sort of thing is beyond elite. He doesn't even know what the qualifications to be considered for a project like that would be, but they'd be pretty impressive: that was something that was clear to him as soon as he started talking to Weir and Beckett and McKay and the others in that research base.
It was a place for the best and the smartest and probably the craziest people in the world to do the craziest research he's ever heard about, and after 11 months at McMurdo listening to scientists go on about their pet projects on some pretty damn long chopper rides and winter evenings, that's saying something.
Elizabeth Weir didn't seem to mind the black mark on his record: she'd told him that she was impressed with his dedication to his friends and his duty, but that's one thing from a civilian and outsider andanother from a general. Besides, he's pretty sure O'Neill is still mad about the whole sitting down in the glowing alien chair thing. Even if Weir wants him, what good's that going to do even if he did want to go? That black mark, and disgrace and the disapproval and the weight of the failure that had left his friends to die when his rescue attempt had failed aren't going away.
O'Neill sure seems to be the guy in charge of the military things going on around here, and it's clear the general's got something to say as soon as he gets in beside him for the ride back. He doesn't really know what if anything to expect from the guy, but he sure as hell doesn't expect a sales pitch. O'Neill's short-tempered and brusque and it's pretty clear he's not trying to sell Sheppard on the idea of this intergalactic excursion out of any personal desire to have him under his command. That idea seems kind of distasteful to him, like just about every other senior officer since that damn court martial. But distasteful or not, he's trying to sell the idea.
Sheppard does his best to brush off the topic, because as far as he's concerned, if it's really his choice, then no general's going to be telling him what to do. It's not often he can legitimately say that, and he's not about to be ordered into another galaxy, and he's sure as hell not ready to decide on his own yet.
He only just found out about all of this, and now he's being asked to leave behind everything he knows and cares about for the sake of what, going off like some modern-day Lewis and Clark with no idea what's even out there, let alone if they'll come back? That's too soon, and he tells O'Neill as much, but the general's not interested in hearing that he's not ready for this decision or that it's a hell of a lot to think about. But the general doesn't seem like the sort of guy who's all that long on patience.
"You know, this isn't about you, Sheppard," O'Neill snaps over the growing whine of the engine. "It's a lot bigger than that."
"Right now, at this very second, whether I decide to go on this mission or not seems to be about me," Sheppard says, frowning through the windscreen as he puts on his helmet. So call him selfish: this is his life, and maybe he hasn't got a lot left to go home to when this tour in Antarctica ends, but what he has is his. They haven't even taken off and already O'Neill's started into him. This promises to be a trip that's all sorts of awkward.
He preferred it when they were talking about choppers. At least then, he knew where he stood. He was talking about the thing he loves most with someone else who loves it too. O'Neill's a pilot; even if it wasn't clear from one look at his uniform, it was obvious from the way he talks and the things he says and the look on his face as the chopper soared down over the smooth sparkling sea of ice that lay out in front of them as they breasted the mountains.
Not every pilot flies because they're in love with it. To some of them it's just a job or just a way to fill their service obligation before retiring, glamour or excitement or any number of other things. The best pilots, though, are the ones who do it because they can't imagine doing anything else. Like Sheppard, and he'd thought O'Neill was the same.
That's why he pays attention when O'Neill seizes a headset and asks, his words clipped and short, why Sheppard became a pilot.
Sheppard frowns at the controls he's flicking. "I think people who don't want to fly are crazy."
"And I think people who don't want to go through the Stargate are equally as whacked."
That's what makes Sheppard's hand pause, the automatic rhythm of checking this switch and flicking that switch that's as familiar as breathing disrupted for long enough for his eyes to narrow as he begins, for the first time, to really listen to what the general's saying.
This guy's a pilot, and even if Sheppard's read him wrong and he doesn't feel flying like an expansion of his whole being into the world around him the way Sheppard does, he's been there and done it and certainly would have commanded people who feel like their whole universe feels right the moment they sit down in a cockpit.
O'Neill knows what that means.
"Now if you can't give me a yes by the time we reach McMurdo, I don't even want you."
He hasn't decided by the time they reach McMurdo.
Elizabeth Weir said she didn't want anyone who wasn't entirely committed and passionate about what they were doing, and Sheppard knows he's testing O'Neill's temper. He also knows that he can't make a decision like that in the course of a flight that's less than a half hour long. Whatever he might pretend, the General knows it, too.
"Well?" he snaps, as Sheppard cuts the engine and the pitch of the rotor's whine drops as it slows. "What?"
Sheppard takes a deep breath.
"If I tell you I still don't know, are you gonna tell me I can't?"
"You know what, Sheppard?" O'Neill says as he snatches his headset off, "I read your file, I know your type. You're here because there's nowhere else they'll send ya. You've got a problem with following orders, and you've got nothin' here, but the Stargate Program has a place for someone like that. I'll get you your orders, but if you don't show up at Stargate Command when we start getting the expedition together, it's your loss. We don't need you. So you just take your time and think about whether you want to be a part of the biggest adventure you could even dream of or whether it's all too much for you."
O'Neill doesn't say another word to him, and for the few minutes left before they disembark, the atmosphere in the cockpit feels like a pot on the edge of boiling, but O'Neill's said all he has to say and is gone as soon as he's allowed to, and all Sheppard can do is think.
O'Neill moves fast. The promised orders come through and it's only the day after O'Neill leaves that Sheppard's called into his CO's office, where he finds the Colonel sitting behind his desk staring at his computer screen with a vague frown on his face. Sheppard's always kind of liked the guy, because he'd been the first superior officer he'd met after the court martial who hadn't made what happened in Afghanistan the entire basis of their command relationship. He'd trusted Sheppard with responsibility leading a flight, let him prove his abilities as a pilot and as an officer before he'd started shoving regulations and rulebooks down his throat.
"You made quite an impression on General O'Neill, Major."
It's said mildly, and Sheppard, standing at fierce attention, eyes the Colonel, not quite sure where this conversation's going.
"Sir?"
"Says here," the Colonel continues, "that the General's involved in a classified project and requires someone with your skills for immediate transfer to Peterson. You interested in transferring our of here, Major?"
"Sir."
"I'm going to assume there was a *yes* in front of that, Sheppard," the Colonel says, his voice sharp. "This isn't an order. O'Neill specifies that you're only to go if you're not going to waste his time, whatever that means." He turns away from the computer, eyes narrowing. "I take it he spoke to you about this?"
"Yes, sir."
"And are you going?"
Until the moment the question's asked, Sheppard still doesn't know what the answer is, but as soon as he hears it, he finds himself nodding, almost in reflex, without stopping to think about any of the reasons he has not to want this posting.
It's mad. He's mad, but that's nothing new.
"I can't pretend I'll be glad to lose my best pilot, but you belong somewhere better than this. Get out of here, Sheppard. Go back to special ops where you belong, or wherever it is O'Neill's taking you."
Later that afternoon, the sun's still as high as if it were noon, and Sheppard has a little time to spare. He takes it to rug up against the wind that feels like it cuts straight through to the bone and take a walk, stretching his long legs with the climb up Observation Hill to stand with his back to the base and his face turned out to the sound, where the ice lies in vast white sheets locked in an eternal fight with the ocean for supremacy and the clouds lie, low and threatening, out over the distant mountains of the mainland. He's got nobody but the memorial cross for company, and it stands silent against the sky, a solemn tribute to men who lost their lives searching for new horizons.
Up here, there's something like the sense of the vast emptiness that an empty sky and a full tank of fuel gives him, and if the wind blowing across the ice is harsh, it's nothing he can't handle by ducking his chin into the collar of the thick coat the keeps out the worst of its bite. Here, with McMurdo Base and O'Neill and the secret alien research station left behind for just a while, he can find some clear air to think. That air's crisp, so cold he can taste it, but he doesn't care.
Is he really going? Is he really considering this? Antarctica might be the remotest part of the planet and it might have nothing but ice and snow and penguins and flying that's routine until suddenly it's not and he needs every ounce of skill he has to save his ass, but it has its attractions, too. Here, he can pretend his father and his brother and all their disappointed expectations don't matter. Here, he can be okay with his wife leaving him and hooking up with some Beltway lawyer. He can be okay that he's not back there in Afghanistan or Iraq where they need special ops pilots to risk their lives to make sure the mission's done right. He can be okay that this is where his career ends and he'll never be a part of that life again, except that he's never been okay with any of that.
All he can do is lie to himself and the world with a smart mouth and an easy smile that say he understands this is how the world works.
A gust of wind brings a few fluffy flakes of snow dancing in front of his eyes across the vista before they're whisked off in another direction to fall to the rocks at his feet. Sometimes, his fate has felt as lost and drifting as those isolated specks of white, spun around on a wind that's beyond his control, pulling him first one way then another until he's dumped at his destination with no choice and no desire to be there.
Maybe, this time, the wind's changing for the better. If there really can be a place for a guy who's burned his bridges and exhausted his chances, maybe this is an opportunity to be a part of something again. It's a lot to risk for who knows what gain, but when has that ever stopped him? If he'd thought like that, he'd never have taken a gamble that three men's lives were worth whatever the cost to him if he failed. He took a chance when he broke orders and stole a chopper to go after that downed team. He knew what he stood to lose, and he did it anyway. He's not a scientist, but that doesn't mean he thinks knowledge and discovery aren't worth taking risks, and this is more than just pure academic interest.
This is an adventure beyond belief. They might not come back, but he takes that chance every time he sits in a cockpit. That's who and what he is: he wants the horizon and whatever lies beyond it.
Isn't that the spirit of exploration?
To a guy with no future, no wife, no family to leave behind, that seems like a risk that's worth trying, at least. So he'll take the transfer to Colorado.
He nods as he turns away from the view across the continent, and his eyes go back to that solid wooden cross, tracing over the words written there in memory of Scott and his men who came here chasing horizons of their own.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
That could almost be prophetic for these newest explorers.
When they go after that horizon, he'll be there.