Eat Your Cake and Have It by 2ndary_Author (cake or death challenge, amnesty 2008)
John Sheppard, who always does things on his own schedule or not at all, doesn’t freak out until four months after they lose Ford. That’s the word he uses on the rare occasions when he mentions the kid-“lose”-and it’s clear to Rodney that he means “temporarily misplace,” like Ford is a set of keys, the other blue sock, bound to turn up sooner or later as long as they keep looking. Like a bad penny, Rodney thinks, and then shakes the thought out of his head because the first sign of Sheppard’s freak-out was his attempts to teach English colloquialisms to Teyla and the Satedan caveman. Look before you leap, good fences make good neighbors, you can’t eat your cake and have it, no man can serve two masters. Rodney’s of the opinion that Sheppard should take some of his own good advice, but for once he holds his tongue (“no, no, not literally, it means to not say anything”) and just digs into his jello as the major-lieutenant colonel, now-explains the concept of a gift horse, and why one shouldn’t look it in the mouth.
“My people also have such sayings,” Teyla offers, looking thoughtful. “For instance, we say: a hasty fool drinks milk with a fork.”
“Uh,” Sheppard looks flummoxed, but only for a moment. “Yeah. Kind of like that. How about you, Ronon-any Satedan proverbs?”
“No,” the caveman says around a mouthful of spaghetti, and that’s the end of the proverb lesson.
But not the end of….whatever this is. Two weeks later, Sheppard is refusing to take the kitchen staff at its word about the impossibility of making ice cream out of the milk from the Athosian goat-like creatures. Billy, the head of food services, is a petty officer seconded from the US Coast Guard, a man who revels in his salty-dog image and has been slinging hash since Archimedes figured out what makes things float. He just shakes his head, wraps Sheppard in a giant apron, gives him a spoon, and tells him to go at it. The result is more like pudding or pablum than ice cream: flavor is fine, but the texture is just not right. Billy serves it anyway; “homesickness takes the taste out of everything,” he says. Rodney’s pretty sure it’s more than that. After all, he was with Sheppard on Earth: the man wasn’t happy there, either.
After the failed ice cream, it’s teaching the Athosian kids how to play baseball. That’s when Rodney starts to get suspicious, because Sheppard’s game has always been football.
It was Ford who-oh. Oh, yes, it was Ford who liked baseball, who knew batting averages and hall of fame statistics, who played seven years of mediocre little league and then quit to coach his cousin’s team ‘cause nobody else would do it. Ford who always said “nice play,” regardless of whose team scored, who enlisted for the GI Bill because he wasn’t quite good enough to get an athletic scholarship and he couldn’t ask his grandparents to foot four years of college.
Ford who loved ice cream, who could recite all 31 Baskin Robbins flavors.
Ford who had a vocabulary full of weird expressions because he’d grown up in New York, but he’d been born in the deep, deep South, where people talk in pictures.
Rodney feels a little stupid for not figuring it out sooner. He is, after all, a genius. Sheppard wasn’t missing Earth: he was missing Ford missing Earth.
The game does not go well. The Athosians are used to individual tests of skill-footraces, stickfighting-not team sports, and so the kids keep trying to tag everybody out, teammate and opponent alike. Then, too, they’re a left-dominant society, a team of southpaws who keep hitting foul balls and trying to run the bases backwards. Rodney hears all about the fiasco afterwards, from SPC Perkinson, but he would have known anyway: Sheppard came back more subdued than he had since SGC OK’d the return to Atlantis.
He’s not the only one, of course, who thought that returning to Atlantis would make everything all right again.
One would think Sheppard would have learned his lesson, but he’s either very persistant or extremely stupid. Rodney hasn’t quite made up his mind on that issue. He begins to lean toward “stupid,” though. A week later, Rodney’s half-way to the mess hall, and three-quarters of the way through an argument with Zelenka, when he hears the horrible, grating sound that his Sheppard laughing. (Holy God, the man really should just stick to that supercilious smirk of his).
Rodney follows the sound, and Zelenka follows Rodney, and they find the rest of the gate-team in Elizabeth’s conference room. They’re gathered around a laptop, and Rodney doesn’t even need to see the screen to know what they’re watching.
Tht skit made Ford laugh so hard he couldn’t even stand up straight.
Ronon is staring, head cocked, at the screen with a confused expression on his face. Sheppard stops snickering long enough to catch his breath. “Get it?” he manages.
“It is quite...” Teyla begins.
“What is the…churchofengland?” Ronon interrupts.
“It’s a cult.”
“Rodney!” Zelenka sounds appalled.
“Well,” Rodney waves his hand, “cult-religion-worship community; tomato, tomahto.”
“Want to watch it again?” Sheppard asks, and pulls up the clip before anyone can answer.
The voices sound tinny coming through the speakers and Zelenka’s idea of a quick explanation starts back with the concept of closed communion and the Council of Trent. Even Sheppard isn’t really watching anymore-he’s facing the screen, but it’s clear that he’s not paying attention. Why his eyes are so glassy…well, that’s not quite so clear. Rodney's pretty sure it's scientifically impossible to actually laugh until you cry?
Rodney stifles his sympathy. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s cause and effect; equal and opposite reaction. Too late to go back now, and even if they could, Sheppard would do the same thing again. When it comes to cake or death, they all know what Sheppard-so long, Rodney-would pick if given the choice.
Also, this doesn't get it's own post, because it's really a sequel to an amnesty entry...but for anyone who's been playing along at home: Signs of Rapture, Called Apocalypse (part the third)