SGA Fic: Two ficlets
I wrote these two teensy fics for the stargateland challenge. Sadly, nobody voted for them, but I still think they're pretty good.
Title: Waiting Around to Die
Rating: PG-13/Teen for violent intentions
Author's Note: Title from the Townes Van Zandt song.
Prompt: pain
Months of careful planning have led you here, to this same-seeming world like so many others but still different from your own homeworld. There is no dark above, save night, but you know how to craft dusk from dirt and metal. You know how to bury.
Long corridors will keep you safe, keep your prize hidden. No one will unearth your pretty gem. No Lantean will take back that which you've rightfully stolen. Sheppard is yours to break, yours to school. You will teach him the meaning of each deep, keening note of Vir's Keerteza as you first learned it, waiting in hungry, lonely exile for your chance to reclaim your galaxy.
If it takes a year, a decade, you won't stop until nothing is left of Sheppard but his shell. Keeping a Wraith fed and leashed as if it were a tevarina is no small feat, and sometimes you laugh with the same child's delight at having such a pet at your beck and call. And how the luck of Vrivik must have kissed you to encounter Sheppard at just the right time, and how doubly blessed must be the souls of your ancestors to have found all that you need on this world so unlike your own.
Pain is a tool. It tears you down, time after time, making you an alloy of yourself, old and new hardened into new form. But pain has more uses than building strength of character. Pain can be employed to achieve so much more when wielded by a skilled practitioner. Sometimes you poke at a sore tooth with your tongue just to relish the sweet frisson of pain that radiates outward from jaw to joints; you shudder at the sensation, nervous system flaring bright and hot with pleasure-pain. You will savor these next hours.
Title: Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G/All Ages
Author's Note: Title from the Carbon Leaf song.
Prompt: hope
Hope is a new bloom in John's chest, buried under dark layers of weed and thorn. It is red and sweet, deep in his heart, unfurling over long months and years of knowing and loving. Love is a mathematical formula for John, and it goes something like this: the square root of a lifetime x (proximity + intimacy + friendship) = love.
sqr(Lf · (Pr+In+Fr))=Lv
His lips and tongue are unfamilar with the shape of these words, but they exist inside him, burned into his bones.He sees his own care returned in Ronon's stride as they move through the corridors of Atlantis in the early hours, feels it in the cool touch of Teyla's forehead to his, hears it in the fond cadence of Rodney's voice.
Each night that he falls asleep in his own bed, or Rodney's, each night that ends with him in his city, that seed of hope cracks open just a little wider. In his dreams, John arches up to face the sun of New Lantea and lets hope grow.
Title: Waiting Around to Die
Rating: PG-13/Teen for violent intentions
Author's Note: Title from the Townes Van Zandt song.
Prompt: pain
Months of careful planning have led you here, to this same-seeming world like so many others but still different from your own homeworld. There is no dark above, save night, but you know how to craft dusk from dirt and metal. You know how to bury.
Long corridors will keep you safe, keep your prize hidden. No one will unearth your pretty gem. No Lantean will take back that which you've rightfully stolen. Sheppard is yours to break, yours to school. You will teach him the meaning of each deep, keening note of Vir's Keerteza as you first learned it, waiting in hungry, lonely exile for your chance to reclaim your galaxy.
If it takes a year, a decade, you won't stop until nothing is left of Sheppard but his shell. Keeping a Wraith fed and leashed as if it were a tevarina is no small feat, and sometimes you laugh with the same child's delight at having such a pet at your beck and call. And how the luck of Vrivik must have kissed you to encounter Sheppard at just the right time, and how doubly blessed must be the souls of your ancestors to have found all that you need on this world so unlike your own.
Pain is a tool. It tears you down, time after time, making you an alloy of yourself, old and new hardened into new form. But pain has more uses than building strength of character. Pain can be employed to achieve so much more when wielded by a skilled practitioner. Sometimes you poke at a sore tooth with your tongue just to relish the sweet frisson of pain that radiates outward from jaw to joints; you shudder at the sensation, nervous system flaring bright and hot with pleasure-pain. You will savor these next hours.
Title: Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G/All Ages
Author's Note: Title from the Carbon Leaf song.
Prompt: hope
Hope is a new bloom in John's chest, buried under dark layers of weed and thorn. It is red and sweet, deep in his heart, unfurling over long months and years of knowing and loving. Love is a mathematical formula for John, and it goes something like this: the square root of a lifetime x (proximity + intimacy + friendship) = love.
sqr(Lf · (Pr+In+Fr))=Lv
His lips and tongue are unfamilar with the shape of these words, but they exist inside him, burned into his bones.He sees his own care returned in Ronon's stride as they move through the corridors of Atlantis in the early hours, feels it in the cool touch of Teyla's forehead to his, hears it in the fond cadence of Rodney's voice.
Each night that he falls asleep in his own bed, or Rodney's, each night that ends with him in his city, that seed of hope cracks open just a little wider. In his dreams, John arches up to face the sun of New Lantea and lets hope grow.