Many Roads, One Destination: The Spunkiest Girl, by Sophonisba [crossing challenge]
-title- Many Roads, One Destination: The Spunkiest Girl
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-ratings/warnings- Nonstandard characterization; implied unpleasantness; implications of possible nonheterosexuality. Some more mature themes.
-timeframe- A. D. 1997.
-other fandoms- Stargate the movie, Lois & Clark, Thoughtcrimes
-spoilers- Er... for the second season of L&C, which anyone who knows enough to recognize most likely knows about anyway. And, well, for the Stargate movie, which most of you probably REALLY know about anyway.
-characters- Sheppard, Carter, movie-Daniel, Brendan Dean, others ^_^
-notes- I need another multicrossover AU like I need a hole in the head, so naturally I've written a pilot for one. Technically this is also a crossover with the newer series of The Tomorrow People, but from this part you really couldn't tell, so I didn't bother listing it up there.
-disclaimer- None of these are mine; all I did was put them together. Some aspects of the story were suggested by themes that have cropped up now and again in SGA fandom.
-word count- 1736
-summary- Sheppard wakes up after an experimental lifesaving treatment with a decidedly... odd... aftereffect or two.
Many Roads, One Destination:
The Spunkiest Girl
"No, I have no idea what caused it," Lori says for what seems to be the thousandth time.
Really, she doesn't -- Project Mermaid was for breathing water (and it didn't exactly work, plus the Egyptian coffin box seems to have undone those changes at the same time it was sucking a phenotype off of Brendan).
At least her brother is among this round of interrogators, so she knows someone among them actually believes her for a change. Someone besides Clark, who has been hovering around for the past half-hour in uniform, ready to toss everyone but family out on their ear should she give the word. Lori considers it, but regretfully decides that it's probably the sort of abuse of power that Rat Bastard would have enjoyed, and therefore to be avoided until it starts getting on her nerves.
"It might be," the blonde military woman -- she didn't have the good grace to come in uniform so Lori could read her rank -- who came in with Daniel suggests, "that you and Agent Sheppard are identical twins after all."
"Dean," Brendan corrects her as he tugs on his floppier, neater hair.
The woman looks from him to Lori.
"Legally changed," Brendan says at the same time Lori explains "My ex and I picked it out of a hat when we got married." She tilts her head, thinking for a moment. "Uh, would I still be allowed to talk about that?"
The official interrogators all look at each other without meeting each other's eyes. Brendan swallows hard, as if the reality of what Lori must be and do from now on has only now hit him.
"Because," the blonde (captain? major?) goes on hastily, "female is sort of the default pattern, so if something got in the way of the one chromosome expressing you'd have grown up the way you did until the sarcophagus fixed it -- "
Daniel and Clark have been keeping themselves from speaking during this, telling each other not to in that silent roommate nonverbal communication thing they haven't managed to forget since college. It's straining them a bit, though, and so Lori speaks up.
"Yes, but I got pregnant once," she points out. "Wouldn't that -- "
"Yes, it wouldn't," the blonde agrees. "Scratch that idea."
"You didn't tell me you were pregnant," Brendan accuses.
Lori runs a hand through her cropped hair. "It's over and done with. You were busy."
"Hey, I hadn't heard Lori'd gotten divorced until just now," Daniel offers, trying once again to soothe the waters.
"I sent you a note, but you'd fallen off the face of the earth," Lori shrugs.
Daniel and the blonde and the weaselly-faced scientist all stiffen. Huh. Maybe he literally fell off its face.
This almost certainly isn't the best time to bring that up, and so Lori offers "I married him because he was a hell of a copilot, or maybe because I was, and it turns out that you have to be married on the ground as well, so it went to pieces and Cam took his maiden name back." As opposed to Lori, who hadn't seen the need to confuse the issue further by another name change and now most likely had one ahead of her anyway. Besides, she'd known what she was getting into when she married him, and he'd claimed that he had had no idea about her, ah, personality issues (although he hadn't even tried to alert her superior officers to them. Which was good. She'd been kind of fond of him at one point, and she'd just as soon not kill him, even if she could have ensured that Clark would never find out).
"Should he be notified?" Clark wonders.
Lori blinks at him. "Whatever for?"
"So," Brendan says, trying to direct the conversation, "have you any answers? What caused this? Will it reverse itself? Is Lori going to be allowed to date again, ever?"
"Brendan!" Lori hisses, and looks at the faceless decision-makers, making her eyes big and wide. "More importantly, this won't get in the way of being cleared for flight, will it?"
"I don't think so," the blonde says, "and that's about the only question I can answer."
"Maybe your casket thing is busted," Lori repeats her speculation. "I'm probably lucky it didn't turn me fourteen again. Or, I don't know, Chinese."
"Ms. Parker was healed with no other effects," the weaselly guy sniffs.
"Ms. Parker," Lori points out, "had been on expensive pills to keep her DNA from decomposing since 1994. The box probably had enough to get done getting her back to her prototype's state of health. She might have reset it wrong being stuck in it first, for all I know. Did it fix her delusion?"
"I'm not sure you can call her memories of being Bonnie Parker a delusion," Daniel offers. "It's not as if it's an isolated pattern."
Brendan nods, and says "You did run Clark through it, didn't you?" He adds, when the agents of three security agencies and two militaries look at him inquiringly, "He was brought back to life by the same mechanism as Ms. Parker, if after a much shorter period of, uh, deaditude -- "
"And he kept having to duck away and take his pills," Lori fills in, because half the essence of a good lie is repetition, and this one's spectacular.
"I did that before Lori got shot," Clark explains in measured words, calm with the control asserted in microseconds. "He'd be here if you'd let him, although I doubt he'd have anything to add. Where did the... 'sarcophagus'... come from, anyway?"
Half the people in the room look expectantly at the other half, who bite out "It's classified," forbidding glares firmly in place.
"I think you could find that out if you looked," Daniel offers helpfully. "It's not as if you're likely to discover anything new in this interview than you haven't in the days before, and you're still waiting on the results from -- that thing." He shudders, and Lori wonders if he's reacting to the thought of what the ghod-knows-who-built-it does, or what it could do in the hands of, well, anything less scrupulous than Brendan (never mind Daniel or Clark), or maybe to something personal.
Most of her interrogators, thankfully, seem to take that as a directive and file out. The worst part about living in a world full of other humans was having to deal with them. Sometimes she can almost understand Rat Bastard's point of view (and then she has to take a long shower; bad enough to share half her genetic code with the man, but since she was eight years old she has defined herself by what-he-wasn't. She's tried patterning herself on Brendan, but he got all weirded out by that when they were twelve. Maybe he'll let her now).
The blonde pauses in the doorway. "Daniel? Aren't you coming?"
"I thought I'd catch up with Lori for a bit, now I've got the chance."
"I didn't know you knew each other."
"Lori was sort of dating my college roommate," Daniel explains, which is probably decent code for "she crashed in our room for the better part of a year (while Clark kindly gave up his bed for her), and had morning sickness in our shower a few times."
"Uh," Lori says.
"You can talk about your past with people who know as long as you aren't stupid about it," the blonde tells her, or maybe Daniel, and leaves with one last fascinated glance at Clark.
"Dating?" Brendan says, puzzled.
"I told you," Lori sighs, "I met them when I ran away and they let me stay with them. Daniel was dating freaky-chick at the time, so when the four of us went to do something it was nearly a double date."
"Her name was Sarah," Daniel sighs.
Lori shrugs. "So are you dating that blonde who came in with you now? I like her better."
"I -- no, I am not dating Sam, did I tell you I got married?"
"Married?!" Lori and Clark both lean forward, startled, and Brendan blinks at the latter.
The moment is broken when a small woman in hospital scrubs comes in. "Finally," she sighs. "I thought they'd never leave."
"Lo-is," Clark sighs.
"What? They just leave these scrubs out in closets where anyone could put them on. If they wanted to keep people from wandering in, they'd lock the door," Lois says righteously. "Besides, I wanted to make sure Lori wasn't being experimented on or brainscrambled or something."
"No more than normal," Lori says, half-wishing for the elements of her disguise -- two-and-a-half years undercover as a society reporter didn't so much make her fond of her "coworkers" as it did make this one "uncomfortably real, and harder to take in this situation."
"The... device... inhibits empathy for a little bit after you get out," Daniel offers, "but that'll have worn off by now."
"Huh. I thought it was stress." Although it was a relief when she woke up this morning and realized that she did care -- that the Real People were once again Real -- before she met them again, that she doesn't have to disguise that unpleasant dissonance in real-time.
She wonders, sometimes, how the others manage through days full of real people whose pain and inconveniences are real. As far as she's concerned, all four of the other valid people in the world are here in her hospital room with her, although if there are four there could be more somewhere that she hasn't met yet.
It might have been interesting if the box had copied that off of Brendan when he put her in it as well as his Y-chromosome, but at least she is not utterly a stranger to herself.
"It would have helped," Lois continues her end of the conversation, "if they'd labeled things 'Lori' somewhere."
"Nah, they're changing my name already," Lori explains. "I told them to use 'John' again -- at least I'm kind of used to answering to it."
Lois snorts. Clark smiles -- a very Clark-ish smile, and it's probably just as well Brendan's in the wrong place to see it.
"I missed a LOT," Daniel observes, slightly bemused, and L-- John smiles at him even as she leans back to let the married couple handle his interrogation.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-ratings/warnings- Nonstandard characterization; implied unpleasantness; implications of possible nonheterosexuality. Some more mature themes.
-timeframe- A. D. 1997.
-other fandoms- Stargate the movie, Lois & Clark, Thoughtcrimes
-spoilers- Er... for the second season of L&C, which anyone who knows enough to recognize most likely knows about anyway. And, well, for the Stargate movie, which most of you probably REALLY know about anyway.
-characters- Sheppard, Carter, movie-Daniel, Brendan Dean, others ^_^
-notes- I need another multicrossover AU like I need a hole in the head, so naturally I've written a pilot for one. Technically this is also a crossover with the newer series of The Tomorrow People, but from this part you really couldn't tell, so I didn't bother listing it up there.
-disclaimer- None of these are mine; all I did was put them together. Some aspects of the story were suggested by themes that have cropped up now and again in SGA fandom.
-word count- 1736
-summary- Sheppard wakes up after an experimental lifesaving treatment with a decidedly... odd... aftereffect or two.
Many Roads, One Destination:
The Spunkiest Girl
"No, I have no idea what caused it," Lori says for what seems to be the thousandth time.
Really, she doesn't -- Project Mermaid was for breathing water (and it didn't exactly work, plus the Egyptian coffin box seems to have undone those changes at the same time it was sucking a phenotype off of Brendan).
At least her brother is among this round of interrogators, so she knows someone among them actually believes her for a change. Someone besides Clark, who has been hovering around for the past half-hour in uniform, ready to toss everyone but family out on their ear should she give the word. Lori considers it, but regretfully decides that it's probably the sort of abuse of power that Rat Bastard would have enjoyed, and therefore to be avoided until it starts getting on her nerves.
"It might be," the blonde military woman -- she didn't have the good grace to come in uniform so Lori could read her rank -- who came in with Daniel suggests, "that you and Agent Sheppard are identical twins after all."
"Dean," Brendan corrects her as he tugs on his floppier, neater hair.
The woman looks from him to Lori.
"Legally changed," Brendan says at the same time Lori explains "My ex and I picked it out of a hat when we got married." She tilts her head, thinking for a moment. "Uh, would I still be allowed to talk about that?"
The official interrogators all look at each other without meeting each other's eyes. Brendan swallows hard, as if the reality of what Lori must be and do from now on has only now hit him.
"Because," the blonde (captain? major?) goes on hastily, "female is sort of the default pattern, so if something got in the way of the one chromosome expressing you'd have grown up the way you did until the sarcophagus fixed it -- "
Daniel and Clark have been keeping themselves from speaking during this, telling each other not to in that silent roommate nonverbal communication thing they haven't managed to forget since college. It's straining them a bit, though, and so Lori speaks up.
"Yes, but I got pregnant once," she points out. "Wouldn't that -- "
"Yes, it wouldn't," the blonde agrees. "Scratch that idea."
"You didn't tell me you were pregnant," Brendan accuses.
Lori runs a hand through her cropped hair. "It's over and done with. You were busy."
"Hey, I hadn't heard Lori'd gotten divorced until just now," Daniel offers, trying once again to soothe the waters.
"I sent you a note, but you'd fallen off the face of the earth," Lori shrugs.
Daniel and the blonde and the weaselly-faced scientist all stiffen. Huh. Maybe he literally fell off its face.
This almost certainly isn't the best time to bring that up, and so Lori offers "I married him because he was a hell of a copilot, or maybe because I was, and it turns out that you have to be married on the ground as well, so it went to pieces and Cam took his maiden name back." As opposed to Lori, who hadn't seen the need to confuse the issue further by another name change and now most likely had one ahead of her anyway. Besides, she'd known what she was getting into when she married him, and he'd claimed that he had had no idea about her, ah, personality issues (although he hadn't even tried to alert her superior officers to them. Which was good. She'd been kind of fond of him at one point, and she'd just as soon not kill him, even if she could have ensured that Clark would never find out).
"Should he be notified?" Clark wonders.
Lori blinks at him. "Whatever for?"
"So," Brendan says, trying to direct the conversation, "have you any answers? What caused this? Will it reverse itself? Is Lori going to be allowed to date again, ever?"
"Brendan!" Lori hisses, and looks at the faceless decision-makers, making her eyes big and wide. "More importantly, this won't get in the way of being cleared for flight, will it?"
"I don't think so," the blonde says, "and that's about the only question I can answer."
"Maybe your casket thing is busted," Lori repeats her speculation. "I'm probably lucky it didn't turn me fourteen again. Or, I don't know, Chinese."
"Ms. Parker was healed with no other effects," the weaselly guy sniffs.
"Ms. Parker," Lori points out, "had been on expensive pills to keep her DNA from decomposing since 1994. The box probably had enough to get done getting her back to her prototype's state of health. She might have reset it wrong being stuck in it first, for all I know. Did it fix her delusion?"
"I'm not sure you can call her memories of being Bonnie Parker a delusion," Daniel offers. "It's not as if it's an isolated pattern."
Brendan nods, and says "You did run Clark through it, didn't you?" He adds, when the agents of three security agencies and two militaries look at him inquiringly, "He was brought back to life by the same mechanism as Ms. Parker, if after a much shorter period of, uh, deaditude -- "
"And he kept having to duck away and take his pills," Lori fills in, because half the essence of a good lie is repetition, and this one's spectacular.
"I did that before Lori got shot," Clark explains in measured words, calm with the control asserted in microseconds. "He'd be here if you'd let him, although I doubt he'd have anything to add. Where did the... 'sarcophagus'... come from, anyway?"
Half the people in the room look expectantly at the other half, who bite out "It's classified," forbidding glares firmly in place.
"I think you could find that out if you looked," Daniel offers helpfully. "It's not as if you're likely to discover anything new in this interview than you haven't in the days before, and you're still waiting on the results from -- that thing." He shudders, and Lori wonders if he's reacting to the thought of what the ghod-knows-who-built-it does, or what it could do in the hands of, well, anything less scrupulous than Brendan (never mind Daniel or Clark), or maybe to something personal.
Most of her interrogators, thankfully, seem to take that as a directive and file out. The worst part about living in a world full of other humans was having to deal with them. Sometimes she can almost understand Rat Bastard's point of view (and then she has to take a long shower; bad enough to share half her genetic code with the man, but since she was eight years old she has defined herself by what-he-wasn't. She's tried patterning herself on Brendan, but he got all weirded out by that when they were twelve. Maybe he'll let her now).
The blonde pauses in the doorway. "Daniel? Aren't you coming?"
"I thought I'd catch up with Lori for a bit, now I've got the chance."
"I didn't know you knew each other."
"Lori was sort of dating my college roommate," Daniel explains, which is probably decent code for "she crashed in our room for the better part of a year (while Clark kindly gave up his bed for her), and had morning sickness in our shower a few times."
"Uh," Lori says.
"You can talk about your past with people who know as long as you aren't stupid about it," the blonde tells her, or maybe Daniel, and leaves with one last fascinated glance at Clark.
"Dating?" Brendan says, puzzled.
"I told you," Lori sighs, "I met them when I ran away and they let me stay with them. Daniel was dating freaky-chick at the time, so when the four of us went to do something it was nearly a double date."
"Her name was Sarah," Daniel sighs.
Lori shrugs. "So are you dating that blonde who came in with you now? I like her better."
"I -- no, I am not dating Sam, did I tell you I got married?"
"Married?!" Lori and Clark both lean forward, startled, and Brendan blinks at the latter.
The moment is broken when a small woman in hospital scrubs comes in. "Finally," she sighs. "I thought they'd never leave."
"Lo-is," Clark sighs.
"What? They just leave these scrubs out in closets where anyone could put them on. If they wanted to keep people from wandering in, they'd lock the door," Lois says righteously. "Besides, I wanted to make sure Lori wasn't being experimented on or brainscrambled or something."
"No more than normal," Lori says, half-wishing for the elements of her disguise -- two-and-a-half years undercover as a society reporter didn't so much make her fond of her "coworkers" as it did make this one "uncomfortably real, and harder to take in this situation."
"The... device... inhibits empathy for a little bit after you get out," Daniel offers, "but that'll have worn off by now."
"Huh. I thought it was stress." Although it was a relief when she woke up this morning and realized that she did care -- that the Real People were once again Real -- before she met them again, that she doesn't have to disguise that unpleasant dissonance in real-time.
She wonders, sometimes, how the others manage through days full of real people whose pain and inconveniences are real. As far as she's concerned, all four of the other valid people in the world are here in her hospital room with her, although if there are four there could be more somewhere that she hasn't met yet.
It might have been interesting if the box had copied that off of Brendan when he put her in it as well as his Y-chromosome, but at least she is not utterly a stranger to herself.
"It would have helped," Lois continues her end of the conversation, "if they'd labeled things 'Lori' somewhere."
"Nah, they're changing my name already," Lori explains. "I told them to use 'John' again -- at least I'm kind of used to answering to it."
Lois snorts. Clark smiles -- a very Clark-ish smile, and it's probably just as well Brendan's in the wrong place to see it.
"I missed a LOT," Daniel observes, slightly bemused, and L-- John smiles at him even as she leans back to let the married couple handle his interrogation.