Fic: Hearts Divided by Friendshipper (Sholio)
Title: Hearts Divided
Author: friendshipper (Sholio)
Word Count: 500, give or take (hey! I wrote an actual flashfic instead of an epic!)
Characters: Elizabeth, team
Rating/Warnings: gen, no warnings
Summary: Elizabeth knows them first by their masks, and only later, by what they hide beneath.
A/N: I imagine that many people are going to take this particular tack with this challenge (how could they not?), but this was tossed off this morning as a bit of freewriting, so I decided to clean it up and go with it.
Elizabeth knows them first by their masks, and only later, by what they hide beneath.
Sheppard wears a mask of humor -- the lazy class clown, slouching in her office doorway. She can imagine him in school, pulling the girls' hair and throwing smart-ass comments back at the teachers. It has taken her time to perceive the still waters that, in John Sheppard, run very deep indeed: the razor-sharp intellect, the steel will and courage, and the capacity to love that may be greater than in anyone else she has known. The things that she admires in him are the things that, for whatever reason, he seems ashamed to reveal.
With Rodney, it is sarcasm. She does not want to know what sort of youth he must have had, to bury him in so many layers of bitterness like the skins of an onion. And she does not know if he realizes how his eyes reveal what he is really feeling, cutting straight through his heavy emotional armor to the person underneath -- the person who will step in front of a gun, held in a madman's hands, to save a friend. Her desire to protect Rodney surprises her, sometimes, as much as his desire to protect others apparently surprises him.
Teyla has her serenity, and wears it like a cloak. The world could fall apart around her -- in fact, more than once, it has -- and still she will wear a slight smile, as if nothing in this life could touch her. This, Elizabeth knows, is a great and terrible lie, but still it is hard to see beneath Teyla's placid surface, for she will let few inside. Over time, Elizabeth has learned to recognize the subtle signs of love and friendship and grief in her friend. Yet it is always the sly sense of humor that startles her the most.
And then there is Ronon, who uses anger as both a tool and a barrier. It hardens him, sharpens him, and cushions his soul from the shocks of a world he knows to be both brutal and unfair. Unlike the rest of Sheppard's team, Elizabeth has never come to know him well. But she knows what she has heard, what she has seen, and slowly she has built up a mental picture of the man she believes Ronon to be: a man who held a knife to his own throat to save his teammates' lives, a man who is not embarrassed to embrace a loved one or to state the hard truths that no one else will.
Four people, who show the world one face and hide a different face beneath. Elizabeth wonders sometimes if she herself does the same. In negotiations, certainly, but to her friends ... she does not think so. Her life has not always been easy, but it has not given her need for armor to hide her most secret heart from those she loves.
But she understands them well enough to know that they need their defenses, and to respect that. She is not Kate Heightmeyer; she cannot repair a heart divided, nor does she want to. All she can do is love them for who they are -- both on the surface, and underneath.
EDIT: I edited this a teeny tiny bit after posting it -- basically just cleaning up some sentences that were clumsily worded. This is what I get for posting things without thoroughly editing them first!
Author: friendshipper (Sholio)
Word Count: 500, give or take (hey! I wrote an actual flashfic instead of an epic!)
Characters: Elizabeth, team
Rating/Warnings: gen, no warnings
Summary: Elizabeth knows them first by their masks, and only later, by what they hide beneath.
A/N: I imagine that many people are going to take this particular tack with this challenge (how could they not?), but this was tossed off this morning as a bit of freewriting, so I decided to clean it up and go with it.
Elizabeth knows them first by their masks, and only later, by what they hide beneath.
Sheppard wears a mask of humor -- the lazy class clown, slouching in her office doorway. She can imagine him in school, pulling the girls' hair and throwing smart-ass comments back at the teachers. It has taken her time to perceive the still waters that, in John Sheppard, run very deep indeed: the razor-sharp intellect, the steel will and courage, and the capacity to love that may be greater than in anyone else she has known. The things that she admires in him are the things that, for whatever reason, he seems ashamed to reveal.
With Rodney, it is sarcasm. She does not want to know what sort of youth he must have had, to bury him in so many layers of bitterness like the skins of an onion. And she does not know if he realizes how his eyes reveal what he is really feeling, cutting straight through his heavy emotional armor to the person underneath -- the person who will step in front of a gun, held in a madman's hands, to save a friend. Her desire to protect Rodney surprises her, sometimes, as much as his desire to protect others apparently surprises him.
Teyla has her serenity, and wears it like a cloak. The world could fall apart around her -- in fact, more than once, it has -- and still she will wear a slight smile, as if nothing in this life could touch her. This, Elizabeth knows, is a great and terrible lie, but still it is hard to see beneath Teyla's placid surface, for she will let few inside. Over time, Elizabeth has learned to recognize the subtle signs of love and friendship and grief in her friend. Yet it is always the sly sense of humor that startles her the most.
And then there is Ronon, who uses anger as both a tool and a barrier. It hardens him, sharpens him, and cushions his soul from the shocks of a world he knows to be both brutal and unfair. Unlike the rest of Sheppard's team, Elizabeth has never come to know him well. But she knows what she has heard, what she has seen, and slowly she has built up a mental picture of the man she believes Ronon to be: a man who held a knife to his own throat to save his teammates' lives, a man who is not embarrassed to embrace a loved one or to state the hard truths that no one else will.
Four people, who show the world one face and hide a different face beneath. Elizabeth wonders sometimes if she herself does the same. In negotiations, certainly, but to her friends ... she does not think so. Her life has not always been easy, but it has not given her need for armor to hide her most secret heart from those she loves.
But she understands them well enough to know that they need their defenses, and to respect that. She is not Kate Heightmeyer; she cannot repair a heart divided, nor does she want to. All she can do is love them for who they are -- both on the surface, and underneath.
EDIT: I edited this a teeny tiny bit after posting it -- basically just cleaning up some sentences that were clumsily worded. This is what I get for posting things without thoroughly editing them first!