War and Peace by Mhalachaiswords (Superpowers challenge)
War and Peace
The Secret Superpowers Challenge
Character: John Sheppard
Genre: Gen, angst
Setting/Spoilers: Minor spoilers up to Sateda. Setting is pre-series up to the middle of season one, before the Storm/Eye.
Rating: PG for cussing
Word count: 1,361
Note: I always thought John's personal item, his copy of War and Peace, deserved a guest starring role. One line from Rising, written by the wonderful Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper. Yes, this is my second go at this challenge, but it's just too shiny to give up.
~*~
John didn't read anymore. Not when he could get away without it; he just couldn't really deal with seeing his future pop out at him from between the words on the page.
The first time it happened, he was seven, spending the day in the public library because his foster father was once again drunk at noon. A smart child, gifted the teachers said, John read anything he could get his hands on. He'd read all the interesting books in the kids' section and no one was around to see when he wandered up the stairs to the adult books.
Hidden by the bathrooms was a display on war novels. Now, John loved soldiers and guns and tanks and all that army stuff. The war in Vietnam was going badly, his teachers said, but John didn't understand how, or why, and no one took the time to explain it to a scrawny little orphan. John looked at the display, knowing he shouldn't be up here. Quickly, before anyone caught him, he grabbed the closest book and bolted.
Breathless with his daring, John found himself a corner and curled up out of sight. He traced the lettering on the front cover. "All Quiet on the Western Front," he read in a whisper. The book wasn't too long. John figured he could probably finish it before the library closed.
He opened the book and began to read.
A librarian found him just before closing time and chased him out of the library. John was left standing on the sidewalk in the dying April sun, staring up at the clouds, wondering what had happened. He'd read the words in the book, but they were nothing like the images that had appeared in his head. It was like he'd been watching the grainy TV in the foster home, with images of soldiers and helicopters and crying people and somber newscasters.
Slowly, John dragged himself home. Dinner was almost ready, and John slipped past his glowering foster mother to wash up. He returned to a silent table with the TV turned on for noise.
Halfway through dinner, John glanced up from his plate. There on the TV, right in front of his eyes, were the same images as he'd seen in his head while reading that afternoon. This time, there was sound, and John listened to the newscaster explaining about the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in South Vietnam.
"When did this happen?" John asked, breaking the cardinal foster home rule about not speaking unless spoken to.
His foster mother glared at him sharply. "An hour ago," she snapped. "Now shut your mouth."
John closed his lips together, unease churning in his stomach. If this had happened an hour before, then how had he seen it in his head earlier in the afternoon?
~~
It was as if a dam had burst open in John's head. Anytime he read a book, or a magazine, or even test papers at school, he saw things. There was never any sound, and no explanation, and John never knew what he was seeing or when it would happen.
He trained himself to learn things quickly, so he didn't have to read anything more than once. His teachers called him a precocious student; his social worker called him challenging, and his foster father called him a smart-assed little bastard. It didn't matter. John never told anyone what he saw when he read, never told anyone he was a freak.
He never knew when he'd see something familiar. Riding his bike, on a test... John hated his photographic memory, being able to remember each and every image. He never knew what would happen next, or how he was supposed to react when it did. As he aged, he pulled away from people, refused to make real friends, wouldn't let himself get too close to anyone. As much as he hated them, he pulled the images around him like a blanket, protecting him from the outside unknown world.
Some of the images came back to him many times, like reruns on a soundless TV. John stacked up a repertoire of familiar images, things he'd think about when he was lying in bed, waiting vainly for sleep.
A silver and sapphire and bone chair on a platform of ice.
A beautiful woman, tiny yet regal, running through phantasms toward him.
That same woman, staring up at him with wide eyes as he put a necklace around her throat.
Watching down the barrel of a gun as a tall man with dreadlocks was beaten by a monster.
Sitting across a table from a man with a Canadian flag on his sleeve, while the man ranted soundlessly, blue eyes sparking.
Staring out a vast ocean from a tower, watching the sun set in a blood-red sky.
~~
He knew, the moment he heard the Scottish accent deep in Antarctica, that something was very wrong. John stalked over toward the man, intent on getting angry about almost being blown out of the sky by a glowing missile, when he spotted it.
The chair.
His chair.
It was just as it had been in his head, all those years. Now, the sounds of the underground base pressed in on John, overwhelming him. The chair pulled him in. Unable to resist, John reached out and touched it, then sat down.
The chair knew him and lit up like a freaking Christmas tree. Feeling the chair pulse under him, John stared up at the alien writing on the ceiling. He couldn't read the words, but all the same, images flashed in front of his eyes, more vivid, more real than ever before.
John had never been so happy to see anyone in his life, as when General O'Neill ran back into the room.
That relief was short-lived. Behind the General was a man in an orange jacket. John had never seen the man before, but still, he knew him. It was the blue-eyed Canadian ranter.
Too stunned to do much else, John did exactly what the man asked, to picture the solar system. The images that sprang up blocked out the alien writing, and the images fell silent in John's head.
"Did I do that?"
~~
He'd been planning on taking a football as his personal item to Atlantis. It was a good generic item, something to pass the time with. Hell, the ball was sitting on his gear when he'd picked up his orders for a final read.
He was on the third word when an image blasted into his brain, of some crazy lady attacking an ancient, broken version Colonel Sumner.
Throwing the paper across the room made the image stop, but John couldn't get the image out of his head.
What the hell was he doing? What the hell was he going to do? What did the image mean?
Not for the first time, John wished he could dig this curse out of his body. He didn't want to be able to see an unchangeable future, but didn't know how to make it stop.
~~
Sumner was dead. The Wraith were awake. Teyla, the dark-eyed angel from his visions, was real, as real as Rodney McKay. John wondered idly when he'd see the dreadlocked man, but he didn't let that bother him much. It'd come true some day. Everything always did.
Taking a deep breath, John picked up the item he'd brought in place of the football. It was the thickest book he could find: War and Peace. He wondered how far he'd get into the book before he started to see things. Even if he couldn't change what he saw, at least he'd be prepared.
He opened the book to the first page, and was assailed.
Lt. Ford, out of uniform and different, somehow, on a Wraith ship, turning and running away from John.
A man holding a gun at Elizabeth's head, backing them both towards an open Stargate.
A young Wraith female, blue scales on her face, hissing and leaping toward him.
Looking at a nuclear bomb on a Jumper, then turning in the pilot's seat and flying toward a Hive ship.
John kept reading.
--fin