Conceited - August 10th
Twisted Shorts August Fic-a-Day Challenge - Day 10
Title: Conceited
Author: hermione2be
Rating: PG/FR13/K+
Crossover: BtVS/SG:A
Disclaimer: I do not own any of BtVS/Angel or Stargate people, places, or ideas. This fiction is done simply for pleasure and I receive no profit.
Summary: Faith fights for someone whose situation hits too close to home.
Notes: Part 37 of Faith Sheppard - Links Page
Seasons: Post-series/Season 3
Word Count: 2200
Faith woke up with her back pressed to Haly’s. It was just after seven in the morning.
“Up, up, up,” she muttered, rolling out of bed.
Haly, like all children her age, did not wake easily. She slept like the dead. Sometimes you could manage to get her right at the lightest point in her sleep cycle - but there was never a guarantee.
“Come on, kid,” Faith said as she made her way to the bathroom. “Weir and Woolsey are supposed to be here in a few hours. We need to eat and make sure we have all our corners square. I have no idea why the IOA is coming but I can guess it’s probably to rake people over coals.”
“Rake people over coals?” Haly asked.
“I swear all people think I talk to you about it fighting, death, and demons.” She sighed. “Let’s go, Haly, busy morning and I want to get a move on before Ronon steals all the waffles.”
Haly frenzied from under the blankets and ran to the dresser. “Waffle morning!” She looked at the clock. “Why did you let me sleep so long!?”
Faith rolled her eyes and focused on brushing her teeth.
88888888
After watching Haly and Ronon race to stuff waffles in their mouths, Faith was more than ready to get the morning on with. She dropped Haly at her first lesson, biology with Katie. Then she was running to check in with Carson. Then to a meeting with a couple of Marines about the current advanced training schedule.
“Woah,” Caldwell called as she dashed past.
Faith applied the brakes and straightened to look at him. “Sorry, Colonel.”
He frowned down at her. “Something going on?”
“No, just checking some things off my list before Elizabeth gets here.” She looked at her watch. “And I have to see if I write a report that even begins to explain what the hell I did standing on the bridge of Daedalus two weeks ago.”
“You haven’t written that report?”
“It’s not easy to write what happened, especially when I don’t quite understand it myself.”
“Faith,” a Marine, Arias, said as he approached her at a clip. “The Wraith is requesting your presence.”
Faith sighed. “And now, I get to go have a discussion with Michael about…something.”
“Should that really be a priority?” Caldwell asked.
“Considering only my even keel is keeping Ronon from killing him. The heads of the departments want to use him as a science experiment. My options are to keep him off everyone else’s list or run interference.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, heading off down the hall. She took a moment in the hall to shake off all her thoughts and concentrate on the task at hand. Also, prepare for an attack.
Faith stepped through the maze of guards and knocked on the clear door.
Michael looked up. Spotting her, he stood in the center of the room. The blinds had been shuttered, keeping the room as un-sunny as possible. Not easy with the corner of glass letting in a lot of light.
“Hello, Michael,” she greeted.
“I have finished the…story you suggested,” he said.
It had been a few days and the novel was fairly short. She had expected him to request her presence before now. Faith took a seat on the arm of small chair. “Ah. What did you think?”
He stared at the cover of the book for a long time before looking at her again. “I identify with the Monster.” He returned his gaze to her. “Do you?”
“For a long time,” she admitted. “The question becomes are you still trying to strangle us all?”
Michael held out the book. “Are you going to run from me? Or will you chase me to the Pole?”
Faith smirked and took the book, dropping it into her bag. “I guess that depends on you.”
His gaze darted past her a moment. “Someone is trying to get your attention.”
Faith tilted her head a bit, keeping him in her periphery. She spotted Haly on the bridge near Michael’s quarters. “She’s not here for me,” she informed him.
He stood and stared. “Then why is she there?”
“Because she does not see you as the rest of them do. She met human-you first.”
“You do not look at me as the rest of them do. This is the only face you have seen.”
“I’ve seen far scarier and far darker faces than yours.”
Faith lifted her arm and tapped her watch. Haly’s eyes widened and she waved cheerily at both of them before disappearing. “She’s late for instruction,” Faith explained. “And I’m due with Zelenka to go over what I did with the Drones.” She stood and headed for the door.
Michael took a step towards her but paused when the guards raised their guns. “Do you have any other stories?”
She turned around, nodding, “Yes.” She reached into her bag and extracted two more paperback books. “Here.”
She handed them over.
Michael took both books. “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” he read the cover. “I, Robot.”
“If you like it, you can keep I, Robot. I never was much for the premise, but Jekyll and Hyde is a favorite of mine.”
He frowned. “You would give me this?”
She nodded. “If you get into robotics, sure.” She turned and left the room, weaving through the contingent of guards.
Michael stood for a moment, before retreating to the far end of the couch. He looked between the books before sitting down and opening Jekyll and Hyde.
88888888
Elizabeth sighed watching Faith run around the corner and just avoid colliding with Doctor Yasser. Only her years of athleticism and skill allowed Faith to twirl out of the way with an apology.
“If I didn’t know you, I’d ask where the fire is,” Elizabeth told her.
Faith laughed. “Ever had one of those days where there aren’t enough hours in the day?”
“Even with our twenty-eight hour days?”
“Yes.”
“Have we put that much on your plate?”
Faith slipped into the seat across from Elizabeth’s desk. “Are you kidding me? I love this. I’ve got scheduled fights and training, meals at regular intervals - almost always with a friend. There is time for storytelling with Haly every night.”
“Then what’s got you running around?”
“Apparently Carson and Susan had a set amount of time for Haly’s lessons. A time which expires this week. So I was requesting a small extension until I can review Haly’s educational needs.” She explained. “But there is also reviewing Michael’s files.”
“I was informed.” She sat back. “I don’t appreciate armchair quarterbacking.”
“I don’t appreciate science experiments on sentient beings.”
“We needed to test the retrovirus on a living Wraith.”
“Agreed.”
“Then why are you against refining and testing the retrovirus again?”
“U.S. military and a group of scientists did this shit on Earth too,” Faith told her. “Thought they could control the supernatural element, turn demons into attack dogs. Make the humans safe. They put behavior chips in those they considered a threat. Killed others, even though they didn’t understand what that demon was-”
“We know what the Wraith are.”
“That’s conceited.”
“Excuse me?”
Faith exhaled. “You tried to defang the boogieman. Carson can study the biology all he wants, Ronon can recount every fight. But that is only a fraction of what there is to know. They are thousands of years old, it hasn’t been all feed and hibernate.”
Elizabeth’s face was stony. “You’re saying we can learn from them?”
“I’m saying you have the chance to pick the brain of one who was actually there during some of the battles against the Ancients. Someone who has been rejected by his own kind. Right now, he’s not too pleased with Atlantis, but we offer a hell of a lot more than going back to them.”
“You want me to make him a member of this expedition?”
“I want you to take responsibility,” Faith snapped. “I want everyone involved in this to own up. That means you can’t shunt him off to another site, it means you can’t treat him as though you have the right to dictate his life. You want information or strategy or codes - threats and torture aren’t an okay way to get it.”
“If he were to resume the retrovirus treatment, I may be able to consider it.”
Faith scoffed and stood up. “Right, because the problem is that he’s a Wraith.”
Elizabeth stood. “It is.”
“Then you shouldn’t have named him, you shouldn’t have let him think he was human. You should have seen the retrovirus worked and terminated the test subject.”
She blanched at the suggestion.
“Couldn’t do it when he looked human, but you’d have no problem giving that order now. Right? Because he doesn’t look like you.” She straightened and reigned in her emotions. “You justified your choices because he was the enemy. You hold him up to your moral standards for what it is to be good - you never even question if you measure up.”
Faith turned on heel and left the office.
Elizabeth stared after her. Only dimly aware that her office door had been open. She saw Woolsey standing at the end of the bridge between her office and the control room. He had clearly heard more than his share.
88888888
Faith sighed and leaned back against the wall. She had needed a place to let go of her anger that didn’t involve other people. She had been holed up for more than thirty minutes, collecting herself.
The door at the end of the hall swished open and booted feet moved towards her. She could tell from the gait that it was John. He rounded the corner a second later, spotting her. He sat down on the floor next to her, crossing his long legs at the ankles.
“When you dig in, you really go all the way,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” she told him. “Don’t act like I’m being irrational.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Your entire team doesn’t know what the hell to do about my opinion, Elizabeth is convinced that she knows better.”
“You don’t think she does?”
Faith looked straight ahead again.
“Why do you feel so strongly about this?”
“He saved your life, John. And Ronon and Rodney.”
“That’s not all this is.”
“I’m the Slayer,” she said simply.
“So you think you know more about this?”
“How you and Elizabeth see Michael, that’s exactly how the Council saw me. Irredeemable. Something that was better off dead than allowed to exist.”
He watched her profile.
“Angel - a vampire - is the only reason I’m still here. Because he chose to fight for me, to stand up against B, who had every reason to want me dead. There was nothing in my actions that suggested I was good, that I deserved redemption.” She twisted her lips. “I had literally just come from beating his friend half to death.”
“You think there is something good in a Wraith?”
“I don’t,” she replied.
He frowned. “Then why are we having this argument?”
“Because I believe there is something to find in Michael.”
“He’s a Wraith.”
“So? You’re a man.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I should have hated you on that alone. Every man had treated me poorly - save, maybe three. What reason did I have to think that you would be any different?”
Not every man is like that, the unspoken words hung between them. It was her entire point.
“You know,” he said instead. “I just got Ronon back to his normal surly self.”
“Really? You did?” She observed him from the corner of her eye. “I had no idea that kissing him was a group win.”
John wrinkled up his face. “What are you talking about?”
“I worked things out with Ronon,” she replied.
He thought about it. He couldn’t recall seeing anything between them. Except the whole thing on the Daedalus, but Ronon was always good about taking care of injured members of the expedition. How had he missed that?
John shook his head. “Michael could still betray us.”
“Yes. And there is his need to feed - it will become an issue.”
“Soon, I’m sure.”
Faith sighed.
“But, as long as we can guarantee the safety of Atlantis, maybe we can see where this leads.”
88888888
“What is this?” Michael hissed.
“A compromise,” John said. “You wear these, put in some time helping us, and we don’t kill you.”
He stared at the strange devices that had been placed over the palms of his hands. The bottom piece was a bracelet with a complicated locking mechanism that could only be undone by two hands. It led to a small thin silicone alloy along the center of his palm to the base of his finger, where rings were used to keep everything in place.
“It’s been tested by the strongest person on Atlantis. It can withstand a lot. But if you try to mess with either one, it’s rigged with a small explosive charge. Enough to cost you your hands.”
Title: Conceited
Author: hermione2be
Rating: PG/FR13/K+
Crossover: BtVS/SG:A
Disclaimer: I do not own any of BtVS/Angel or Stargate people, places, or ideas. This fiction is done simply for pleasure and I receive no profit.
Summary: Faith fights for someone whose situation hits too close to home.
Notes: Part 37 of Faith Sheppard - Links Page
Seasons: Post-series/Season 3
Word Count: 2200
Faith woke up with her back pressed to Haly’s. It was just after seven in the morning.
“Up, up, up,” she muttered, rolling out of bed.
Haly, like all children her age, did not wake easily. She slept like the dead. Sometimes you could manage to get her right at the lightest point in her sleep cycle - but there was never a guarantee.
“Come on, kid,” Faith said as she made her way to the bathroom. “Weir and Woolsey are supposed to be here in a few hours. We need to eat and make sure we have all our corners square. I have no idea why the IOA is coming but I can guess it’s probably to rake people over coals.”
“Rake people over coals?” Haly asked.
“I swear all people think I talk to you about it fighting, death, and demons.” She sighed. “Let’s go, Haly, busy morning and I want to get a move on before Ronon steals all the waffles.”
Haly frenzied from under the blankets and ran to the dresser. “Waffle morning!” She looked at the clock. “Why did you let me sleep so long!?”
Faith rolled her eyes and focused on brushing her teeth.
88888888
After watching Haly and Ronon race to stuff waffles in their mouths, Faith was more than ready to get the morning on with. She dropped Haly at her first lesson, biology with Katie. Then she was running to check in with Carson. Then to a meeting with a couple of Marines about the current advanced training schedule.
“Woah,” Caldwell called as she dashed past.
Faith applied the brakes and straightened to look at him. “Sorry, Colonel.”
He frowned down at her. “Something going on?”
“No, just checking some things off my list before Elizabeth gets here.” She looked at her watch. “And I have to see if I write a report that even begins to explain what the hell I did standing on the bridge of Daedalus two weeks ago.”
“You haven’t written that report?”
“It’s not easy to write what happened, especially when I don’t quite understand it myself.”
“Faith,” a Marine, Arias, said as he approached her at a clip. “The Wraith is requesting your presence.”
Faith sighed. “And now, I get to go have a discussion with Michael about…something.”
“Should that really be a priority?” Caldwell asked.
“Considering only my even keel is keeping Ronon from killing him. The heads of the departments want to use him as a science experiment. My options are to keep him off everyone else’s list or run interference.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, heading off down the hall. She took a moment in the hall to shake off all her thoughts and concentrate on the task at hand. Also, prepare for an attack.
Faith stepped through the maze of guards and knocked on the clear door.
Michael looked up. Spotting her, he stood in the center of the room. The blinds had been shuttered, keeping the room as un-sunny as possible. Not easy with the corner of glass letting in a lot of light.
“Hello, Michael,” she greeted.
“I have finished the…story you suggested,” he said.
It had been a few days and the novel was fairly short. She had expected him to request her presence before now. Faith took a seat on the arm of small chair. “Ah. What did you think?”
He stared at the cover of the book for a long time before looking at her again. “I identify with the Monster.” He returned his gaze to her. “Do you?”
“For a long time,” she admitted. “The question becomes are you still trying to strangle us all?”
Michael held out the book. “Are you going to run from me? Or will you chase me to the Pole?”
Faith smirked and took the book, dropping it into her bag. “I guess that depends on you.”
His gaze darted past her a moment. “Someone is trying to get your attention.”
Faith tilted her head a bit, keeping him in her periphery. She spotted Haly on the bridge near Michael’s quarters. “She’s not here for me,” she informed him.
He stood and stared. “Then why is she there?”
“Because she does not see you as the rest of them do. She met human-you first.”
“You do not look at me as the rest of them do. This is the only face you have seen.”
“I’ve seen far scarier and far darker faces than yours.”
Faith lifted her arm and tapped her watch. Haly’s eyes widened and she waved cheerily at both of them before disappearing. “She’s late for instruction,” Faith explained. “And I’m due with Zelenka to go over what I did with the Drones.” She stood and headed for the door.
Michael took a step towards her but paused when the guards raised their guns. “Do you have any other stories?”
She turned around, nodding, “Yes.” She reached into her bag and extracted two more paperback books. “Here.”
She handed them over.
Michael took both books. “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” he read the cover. “I, Robot.”
“If you like it, you can keep I, Robot. I never was much for the premise, but Jekyll and Hyde is a favorite of mine.”
He frowned. “You would give me this?”
She nodded. “If you get into robotics, sure.” She turned and left the room, weaving through the contingent of guards.
Michael stood for a moment, before retreating to the far end of the couch. He looked between the books before sitting down and opening Jekyll and Hyde.
88888888
Elizabeth sighed watching Faith run around the corner and just avoid colliding with Doctor Yasser. Only her years of athleticism and skill allowed Faith to twirl out of the way with an apology.
“If I didn’t know you, I’d ask where the fire is,” Elizabeth told her.
Faith laughed. “Ever had one of those days where there aren’t enough hours in the day?”
“Even with our twenty-eight hour days?”
“Yes.”
“Have we put that much on your plate?”
Faith slipped into the seat across from Elizabeth’s desk. “Are you kidding me? I love this. I’ve got scheduled fights and training, meals at regular intervals - almost always with a friend. There is time for storytelling with Haly every night.”
“Then what’s got you running around?”
“Apparently Carson and Susan had a set amount of time for Haly’s lessons. A time which expires this week. So I was requesting a small extension until I can review Haly’s educational needs.” She explained. “But there is also reviewing Michael’s files.”
“I was informed.” She sat back. “I don’t appreciate armchair quarterbacking.”
“I don’t appreciate science experiments on sentient beings.”
“We needed to test the retrovirus on a living Wraith.”
“Agreed.”
“Then why are you against refining and testing the retrovirus again?”
“U.S. military and a group of scientists did this shit on Earth too,” Faith told her. “Thought they could control the supernatural element, turn demons into attack dogs. Make the humans safe. They put behavior chips in those they considered a threat. Killed others, even though they didn’t understand what that demon was-”
“We know what the Wraith are.”
“That’s conceited.”
“Excuse me?”
Faith exhaled. “You tried to defang the boogieman. Carson can study the biology all he wants, Ronon can recount every fight. But that is only a fraction of what there is to know. They are thousands of years old, it hasn’t been all feed and hibernate.”
Elizabeth’s face was stony. “You’re saying we can learn from them?”
“I’m saying you have the chance to pick the brain of one who was actually there during some of the battles against the Ancients. Someone who has been rejected by his own kind. Right now, he’s not too pleased with Atlantis, but we offer a hell of a lot more than going back to them.”
“You want me to make him a member of this expedition?”
“I want you to take responsibility,” Faith snapped. “I want everyone involved in this to own up. That means you can’t shunt him off to another site, it means you can’t treat him as though you have the right to dictate his life. You want information or strategy or codes - threats and torture aren’t an okay way to get it.”
“If he were to resume the retrovirus treatment, I may be able to consider it.”
Faith scoffed and stood up. “Right, because the problem is that he’s a Wraith.”
Elizabeth stood. “It is.”
“Then you shouldn’t have named him, you shouldn’t have let him think he was human. You should have seen the retrovirus worked and terminated the test subject.”
She blanched at the suggestion.
“Couldn’t do it when he looked human, but you’d have no problem giving that order now. Right? Because he doesn’t look like you.” She straightened and reigned in her emotions. “You justified your choices because he was the enemy. You hold him up to your moral standards for what it is to be good - you never even question if you measure up.”
Faith turned on heel and left the office.
Elizabeth stared after her. Only dimly aware that her office door had been open. She saw Woolsey standing at the end of the bridge between her office and the control room. He had clearly heard more than his share.
88888888
Faith sighed and leaned back against the wall. She had needed a place to let go of her anger that didn’t involve other people. She had been holed up for more than thirty minutes, collecting herself.
The door at the end of the hall swished open and booted feet moved towards her. She could tell from the gait that it was John. He rounded the corner a second later, spotting her. He sat down on the floor next to her, crossing his long legs at the ankles.
“When you dig in, you really go all the way,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” she told him. “Don’t act like I’m being irrational.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Your entire team doesn’t know what the hell to do about my opinion, Elizabeth is convinced that she knows better.”
“You don’t think she does?”
Faith looked straight ahead again.
“Why do you feel so strongly about this?”
“He saved your life, John. And Ronon and Rodney.”
“That’s not all this is.”
“I’m the Slayer,” she said simply.
“So you think you know more about this?”
“How you and Elizabeth see Michael, that’s exactly how the Council saw me. Irredeemable. Something that was better off dead than allowed to exist.”
He watched her profile.
“Angel - a vampire - is the only reason I’m still here. Because he chose to fight for me, to stand up against B, who had every reason to want me dead. There was nothing in my actions that suggested I was good, that I deserved redemption.” She twisted her lips. “I had literally just come from beating his friend half to death.”
“You think there is something good in a Wraith?”
“I don’t,” she replied.
He frowned. “Then why are we having this argument?”
“Because I believe there is something to find in Michael.”
“He’s a Wraith.”
“So? You’re a man.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I should have hated you on that alone. Every man had treated me poorly - save, maybe three. What reason did I have to think that you would be any different?”
Not every man is like that, the unspoken words hung between them. It was her entire point.
“You know,” he said instead. “I just got Ronon back to his normal surly self.”
“Really? You did?” She observed him from the corner of her eye. “I had no idea that kissing him was a group win.”
John wrinkled up his face. “What are you talking about?”
“I worked things out with Ronon,” she replied.
He thought about it. He couldn’t recall seeing anything between them. Except the whole thing on the Daedalus, but Ronon was always good about taking care of injured members of the expedition. How had he missed that?
John shook his head. “Michael could still betray us.”
“Yes. And there is his need to feed - it will become an issue.”
“Soon, I’m sure.”
Faith sighed.
“But, as long as we can guarantee the safety of Atlantis, maybe we can see where this leads.”
88888888
“What is this?” Michael hissed.
“A compromise,” John said. “You wear these, put in some time helping us, and we don’t kill you.”
He stared at the strange devices that had been placed over the palms of his hands. The bottom piece was a bracelet with a complicated locking mechanism that could only be undone by two hands. It led to a small thin silicone alloy along the center of his palm to the base of his finger, where rings were used to keep everything in place.
“It’s been tested by the strongest person on Atlantis. It can withstand a lot. But if you try to mess with either one, it’s rigged with a small explosive charge. Enough to cost you your hands.”