Solitary, by minnow1212, for 38 minutes challenge
Title: Solitary
Author: minnow1212
Sheppard, Gen
Summary: "It’s one of my least favorite continents." "I kinda like it here."
They sent him to Antarctica as a punishment. Every so often some superior officer whom he was chauffeuring around to or from McMurdo would ask, with a hard smile, "Enjoying yourself down there, Major Sheppard?" To which the only possible reply was a smug smirk and a breezy, "Yes, sir." It pissed them off, let them know he wasn’t going to buckle under and beg and brownnose and apologize for doing his goddamn job and going after his men.
What was funnier: it was true. He’d dreaded the assignment, yeah, steeled himself for the solitude and cold by determining that whatever anger he felt--and the anger had been a constant rumbling in the back of his mind and under his skin those days, like the distant thump of bass felt through apartment floors--he wouldn’t let anyone see it. That was before he’d seen the place, though, before he’d flown in through a clear sky and seen the ice stretching out beneath, and it wasn’t much, wasn’t anything he’d ever be able to explain to anyone, but somehow for a moment the sound of the chopper blades and the sharpness of the sky and the way the sun spilled over the ice all tangled together into something clean and harsh and pure, something fine. When he landed, he bantered automatically with the mechanic and guarded his face against the forays of his superior officer, but that night he’d surveyed his tiny, bare quarters and thought of that moment of stillness and let out a chuff of laughter.
It was the lonely and hard, and, until Atlantis, the best duty he’d ever had.
Author: minnow1212
Sheppard, Gen
Summary: "It’s one of my least favorite continents." "I kinda like it here."
They sent him to Antarctica as a punishment. Every so often some superior officer whom he was chauffeuring around to or from McMurdo would ask, with a hard smile, "Enjoying yourself down there, Major Sheppard?" To which the only possible reply was a smug smirk and a breezy, "Yes, sir." It pissed them off, let them know he wasn’t going to buckle under and beg and brownnose and apologize for doing his goddamn job and going after his men.
What was funnier: it was true. He’d dreaded the assignment, yeah, steeled himself for the solitude and cold by determining that whatever anger he felt--and the anger had been a constant rumbling in the back of his mind and under his skin those days, like the distant thump of bass felt through apartment floors--he wouldn’t let anyone see it. That was before he’d seen the place, though, before he’d flown in through a clear sky and seen the ice stretching out beneath, and it wasn’t much, wasn’t anything he’d ever be able to explain to anyone, but somehow for a moment the sound of the chopper blades and the sharpness of the sky and the way the sun spilled over the ice all tangled together into something clean and harsh and pure, something fine. When he landed, he bantered automatically with the mechanic and guarded his face against the forays of his superior officer, but that night he’d surveyed his tiny, bare quarters and thought of that moment of stillness and let out a chuff of laughter.
It was the lonely and hard, and, until Atlantis, the best duty he’d ever had.