(no subject)
So you know that thing where you write, and then realize you have no real point? Yeah. Also, you know that thing where you write because you really want to see how something that sounds totally awesome in your head looks like on paper (or computer screen, whatever)? Yeah.
John's fifteen when he realizes his family isn't what you'd call normal. It's not like he doesn't know what normal is, being a military brat, it's just he never realized that there was more than one kind of not normal.
He's been around military brats his entire life, so it's not weird for the kid next door to know how to field strip a handgun or know how to hold his own in hand to hand. It's not all that unusual to run into a pack of kids who know their way around in the woods, know where and how to forage for supplies and build a shelter against the elements if they get stranded. It's not weird for other kids to answer their father with 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir' with the look of little soldiers in training to them.
What isn't normal, he finds out to his surprise, is that normal people don't lay salt lines to repel spirits, don't carry bottles of holy water, or shotgun shells filled with rock salt instead of buckshot. What isn't normal, he learns one hot summer, is that normal people don't go out with their father to hunt down something in the woods that's been killing kids. What isn't normal, he realizes with a sick feeling in his stomach, is that normal people don't kill nightmare creatures like it's normal when the cute freckle-faced girl in his homeroom class looks at him like he's the monster.
He kind of loses it for a while there, goes into a tailspin while he tries to make sense of what normal means and how it compares to his life, and it takes a while.
He always sort of thought he was talking about the same things the kids he made friend with at whatever military base his family ended up at were, but looking back on it...not so much, no.
He's grateful that he never actually came out and asked any of them what their first hunt was like, if they got the son of a bitch or wounded it or got thrown around bad enough that they had to make a run for the closest emergency room. He's surprised no one ever figured it out, maybe thought he was crazy or something, thinks he might still be, just a little.
Realizes, when he hits seventeen that he doesn't want to be 'That guy', the weird one with the scars and the war stories and the nightmares without ever having set foot on a battlefield. Admits to himself that maybe his dad has reasons for wanting to hunt, for spending every waking moment looking for something to blame his loss, his pain on, but he doesn't want to end up like him. Doesn't want to be a hollowed out shell of a man, old before his time and haunted by ghosts and past failures with a dead woman's name on his lips.
He takes the path of least resistance, because he'd always loved watching the jets racing overhead when he was little. Always loved it when his dad indulged him, took him to air shows and let him walk around, get an up close look at the planes. Always loved the feel of a fast car, loved anything and everything having to do with speed and the Air Force was right there, offering him a way out and something familiar and new and everything he ever thought he wanted.
All he had to do was sign a little piece of his life away.
His dad never understood, really. Thought he was running away, which he was, but he felt he was maybe running towards something too. He gets his wings and they hand him the sky and all they ask for in return is his soul, a piece at a time, and he's not entirely sure he minds, because he's got the sky.
John's old enough to know better when he learns maybe there was a reason his dad didn't want him following in his footsteps so closely, maybe there was truth to 'You'll be sorry, son, you'll be sorry' when he gets shipped to Afghanistan and told 'This is your mission now, this is what you do' by his superiors.
He knows, expects, to finds ghosts and spirits on the battlefield, but thinks that what the chaplain's for. Thinks that it's not his job anymore, it's not his responsibility, because that's not his life anymore. That's not what he does now, not what an Air Force pilot does, not what normal people do.
One but one night he rounds a street corner when he's out drinking with his buddies and sees a woman crying, sobbing next to the burned out rubble of what used to be a home. Hears her wailing, and even though he doesn't know the language he knows she's calling out for her child, cursing and praying and no one, no one, hears her except for him. No one sees her when she looks up, right at him, and pleads for help, begs and begs and begs until John has to turn away, that same sick feeling in his stomach that he had when he realized what normal was.
John's closing in on forty, god, only a few years away, when everything goes to hell and he makes the wrong decision in order to do what's right and people, good people, die anyway. He doesn't care much anymore after that because they're still there, right next to him during everything, bloody and wounded and dead and he finally realizes that maybe normal is overrated. That he won't be able to put them to rest because there's nothing left to salt and burn and maybe he's gone from being a little crazy to all-out nuts and hey, Antarctica sounds kind of nice.
He doesn't come across any spirits there, angry or otherwise, and he still has the sky and his life may be nothing more than shattered glass and broken shards, but he has the sky.
...and then there's that whole thing where he almost gets killed by the Ancient drone, and winds up going to Atlantis and everything's kind of peachy, you know, until the whole thing with the Wraith. And even then John's okay with everything, but they run into the energy sucking entity and he's all 'where's the damned salt', and...yes.
And now I'll just toddle off to work on the Timestamp Meme-thing.
John's fifteen when he realizes his family isn't what you'd call normal. It's not like he doesn't know what normal is, being a military brat, it's just he never realized that there was more than one kind of not normal.
He's been around military brats his entire life, so it's not weird for the kid next door to know how to field strip a handgun or know how to hold his own in hand to hand. It's not all that unusual to run into a pack of kids who know their way around in the woods, know where and how to forage for supplies and build a shelter against the elements if they get stranded. It's not weird for other kids to answer their father with 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir' with the look of little soldiers in training to them.
What isn't normal, he finds out to his surprise, is that normal people don't lay salt lines to repel spirits, don't carry bottles of holy water, or shotgun shells filled with rock salt instead of buckshot. What isn't normal, he learns one hot summer, is that normal people don't go out with their father to hunt down something in the woods that's been killing kids. What isn't normal, he realizes with a sick feeling in his stomach, is that normal people don't kill nightmare creatures like it's normal when the cute freckle-faced girl in his homeroom class looks at him like he's the monster.
He kind of loses it for a while there, goes into a tailspin while he tries to make sense of what normal means and how it compares to his life, and it takes a while.
He always sort of thought he was talking about the same things the kids he made friend with at whatever military base his family ended up at were, but looking back on it...not so much, no.
He's grateful that he never actually came out and asked any of them what their first hunt was like, if they got the son of a bitch or wounded it or got thrown around bad enough that they had to make a run for the closest emergency room. He's surprised no one ever figured it out, maybe thought he was crazy or something, thinks he might still be, just a little.
Realizes, when he hits seventeen that he doesn't want to be 'That guy', the weird one with the scars and the war stories and the nightmares without ever having set foot on a battlefield. Admits to himself that maybe his dad has reasons for wanting to hunt, for spending every waking moment looking for something to blame his loss, his pain on, but he doesn't want to end up like him. Doesn't want to be a hollowed out shell of a man, old before his time and haunted by ghosts and past failures with a dead woman's name on his lips.
He takes the path of least resistance, because he'd always loved watching the jets racing overhead when he was little. Always loved it when his dad indulged him, took him to air shows and let him walk around, get an up close look at the planes. Always loved the feel of a fast car, loved anything and everything having to do with speed and the Air Force was right there, offering him a way out and something familiar and new and everything he ever thought he wanted.
All he had to do was sign a little piece of his life away.
His dad never understood, really. Thought he was running away, which he was, but he felt he was maybe running towards something too. He gets his wings and they hand him the sky and all they ask for in return is his soul, a piece at a time, and he's not entirely sure he minds, because he's got the sky.
John's old enough to know better when he learns maybe there was a reason his dad didn't want him following in his footsteps so closely, maybe there was truth to 'You'll be sorry, son, you'll be sorry' when he gets shipped to Afghanistan and told 'This is your mission now, this is what you do' by his superiors.
He knows, expects, to finds ghosts and spirits on the battlefield, but thinks that what the chaplain's for. Thinks that it's not his job anymore, it's not his responsibility, because that's not his life anymore. That's not what he does now, not what an Air Force pilot does, not what normal people do.
One but one night he rounds a street corner when he's out drinking with his buddies and sees a woman crying, sobbing next to the burned out rubble of what used to be a home. Hears her wailing, and even though he doesn't know the language he knows she's calling out for her child, cursing and praying and no one, no one, hears her except for him. No one sees her when she looks up, right at him, and pleads for help, begs and begs and begs until John has to turn away, that same sick feeling in his stomach that he had when he realized what normal was.
John's closing in on forty, god, only a few years away, when everything goes to hell and he makes the wrong decision in order to do what's right and people, good people, die anyway. He doesn't care much anymore after that because they're still there, right next to him during everything, bloody and wounded and dead and he finally realizes that maybe normal is overrated. That he won't be able to put them to rest because there's nothing left to salt and burn and maybe he's gone from being a little crazy to all-out nuts and hey, Antarctica sounds kind of nice.
He doesn't come across any spirits there, angry or otherwise, and he still has the sky and his life may be nothing more than shattered glass and broken shards, but he has the sky.
...and then there's that whole thing where he almost gets killed by the Ancient drone, and winds up going to Atlantis and everything's kind of peachy, you know, until the whole thing with the Wraith. And even then John's okay with everything, but they run into the energy sucking entity and he's all 'where's the damned salt', and...yes.
And now I'll just toddle off to work on the Timestamp Meme-thing.