Not in Saskatchewan Anymore
Title: Not in Saskatchewan Anymore
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: John Sheppard/Daniel "Oz" Osbourne
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of language and a bit of innuendo
Disclaimer: <----
Length: about 4.5K
Notes: My deepest apologies to the sequence of tenses and English grammar in general. Several years ago, I read Catch-22, which introduced me to stream-of-consciousness. Then I read The Dictionary of the Khazars and I was lost. Basically, this is my brain on crack. If at the end you have more questions than answers, that's because this is chapter one. Plays around a little with Buffy canon and completely ignores the comics. AU'd from Runner in season two of SGA.
Beta'd by htebazytook. Crossposted to crossoverfic and stargateslash.
John sighs and rubs his wrist where his watch usually is, where it is now wrapped in a crude field bandage. John sprained it during the painstaking descent from the Onegrans' cliff-city at the top of which everyone but Rodney is once more. Rodney is not in the prison cell that John is sharing with only Oz (because the Onegrans consider it improper for men and women who are not married to one another to sleep in the same room, oh irony) because Rodney fell into the bushes. John does not want to consider the possibility that Rodney broke something or concussed himself or smashed his head in either when he hit the bushes or when he presumably hit the ground after presumably descending in some manner from the twenty-foot-high tops of the bushes, but at the same time John has to consider it because he has to weigh all their options for escape or rescue. Rodney on his own is at least unlikely to implement a hair-brained rescue scheme until he has back-up. The other reassuring thing about Rodney is that he's brilliant, even if he is a pain in the ass. Everyone tells him so, and since 'everyone' comprises a large international and interplanetary sampling, the allegation seems valid enough to stand up in court. Putting Rodney on trial would satisfy Kavanaugh, who believes that Rodney is a petty, megalomaniacal dictator who has it in for him. Elizabeth's waning efforts to calm Kavanaugh are impeded by the fact that Rodney McKay often exhibits many of the traits of a petty, megalomaniacal dictator and has it in for Kavanaugh.
"I don't have it in for Kavanaugh!" Rodney protests when Elizabeth asks him outright in a confidential tone behind the closed door of her office, in a voice which is undoubtedly heard by the Marine on guard on the other side of the door. "The man is an idiot, that's all. When he stops being an idiot, I'll stop yelling at him. What, would you rather I let him blow us all up the next time we try and power the shield by positing that the wave property of energy is roughly equivalent to the consistency of bread pudding?"
And there the discussion ends, much as the discussion about the Onegrans ends when Teyla pulls them all over the edge of the cliff and almost drops them the three hundred feet to the pebble-speckled, bush-dotted ground. Instead, she only drops Rodney; but that's later, after Oz's yell of pain makes his feet slip and it's all John can do to hang onto the back of Teyla's vest in a decoupling human chain.
After that, Rodney waits for Atlantis to dial in as he peers through the furry foliage of the twenty foot tall bushes. He thinks he heard something. Maybe he didn't. It's unimportant at the time, like a scientist speaking too meekly for Rodney to bother registering the voice. Zelenka is the only one who really seems to have figured Rodney out, either that or he's stubborn and arrogant enough to ignore Rodney's shit, which is the trick anyway. Rodney is a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man in his thirties who is learning to be physically fit for the first time in his life mostly by running away from people who point guns at him. Rodney never has enough time. Every pointed second-hand is the enemy, the follicle-by-follicle recession of his hairline ticking away his life inexorably, a clock whose battery-himself-is gradually running out.
Life in Pegasus introduces a new factor to Rodney's frenzy: imminent doom. He has less time, he has no time, and the brilliant, mind-bogglingly important work that may save them all in a few months is constantly being impinged upon by the necessity of staying alive to do it. Stupidity is death; Rodney's stupidity (in the three scattered nanoseconds out of each year he admits to it) is a massacre waiting to happen and it's terrifying because it's like pulling teeth to get anyone besides Zelenka and that idiot Kavanaugh to challenge him on most things. Which, Rodney reminds himself, is because he is a genius and they are idiots incapable of understanding one tenth of the tenth of Ancient technology that Rodney understands. Inhaling, Rodney raises his head from his hands and deactivates his screensaver. Stupid Ancients and their stupid, stupid conversion beams. If Rodney can ever figure out what they were doing, he's certain he'll be smarter than they were because will he invent something whose express purpose is to turn someone into guacamole? I don't think so. Although it might be nice to play turn-and-turn-about with the Wraith and ohmygod, I did not just think that. Rodney massages his forehead with the heels of his hands.
It occurs to Rodney that perhaps the Ancients left all this highly unstable technology out on the counter, so to speak, with practically nothing on the way of safeguards or warnings to serve as a booby-trap. Take all the polished products with them and leave behind the glitchy prototypes, dangerous failed experiments and unsafe specimens for the next suckers.
It sounds much too plausible to think about any longer. Really, the situation is untenable. He has half a mind to reconstruct one of the seven or so methods of time-travel the SGC has stumbled onto over the years just so he can go back and yell at them. Maybe, if he's loud enough, they'll write some user's manuals.
His situation, John meditates morosely, bears a great resemblance to that of six months ago, when he wakes up with his head throbbing and a gun in his face to find that his feet and hands are tied and he has no back-up. It is, on the other hand, quite different from the one in which he finds himself this morning, with Oz draped mostly over top of him on the double bed in John's quarters that is just barely not too short and which he has never quite got around to replacing. John wants to steal the larger, more comfortable bed from Oz's quarters. Better yet, he wants to steal Oz's quarters, but they are too far away from the nearest transporter and Ops. When the attack comes, whichever attack it is, but there will be an attack because John Sheppard attracts trouble like he attracts everyone else; he doesn't have to go looking for it anymore: it seems it wasn't just Atlantis waiting expectantly for him in Pegasus but every death trap, geological or meteorological or technological or ecological, every human perversity, disease, and twist of logic; every secret and cousin of Murphy and odd chance either way-if he is out of reach, then every bang of his feet that resounds down the corridor is more people dead and the rush of static in his ear is more damaging than the ocean's angriest waves. It's a struggle not to cough, and it's a wonder he doesn't scream. John never screams, not like he wants to, not like McKay does when he falls, not even when his hand starts slipping on the rock face and he throws all his weight back into it in a last effort of desperation.
The sun-pounded rock under his fingers and pressing briefly against his face as he leans into it afterwards to regain his equilibrium is scorching hot. John has a brief vision of Oz's foot interrupting the white sun-glare off Atlantis' metal deck. He risks a downward glance to check on everyone. Four little monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and broke his head. Three little monkeys... They're moving again. John finds a new handhold and resumes the process of oozing his way down the escarpment even though the ambient pain, internal and external, in his left wrist makes it feel like he's wearing a glove made of razor blades. That's it; slow and careful. No more mistakes. Just concentrate.
Faster! faster! scream John's nerves. Does he hear something? John continues meticulously oiling slowly towards the ground, what he won't give for the pull of gravity to wrench itself at a ninety-degree angle. Breathe, remember to breathe. Teyla tells him, Oz tells him; he gets into these situations (way too fucking often) and it's like adrenaline kicks him half out of his body, who knows how he's breathing or running or manoeuvring, that's incidental to the main game. John lives for moments like this, when he's living on the inside and outside of his skin at once, with a curious vacancy in between where pain is, where fatigue is. Flying is like this. Not running; running is a heavy rhythm that pounds away thought and clears his head, except for sometimes when he's running for his life. Fighting is. Flooring it along the flat, straight western roads is.
This is too slow by far for John's comfort. Someone might have heard Oz's yelp or McKay's scream. John hardly doubts that the Onegrans have quicker ways to the bottom of the cliff than this careful (not careful enough) inching. All he can hope is that they don't have long-distance projectile weapons, but he doesn't quite trust them that far. Sitting on the cold, hard floor of their prison, John feels justified beyond doubt in his lack of confidence. Fat load of good it does him now.
Oz watches John shifting against the other wall. There isn't much else to watch. No windows, nothing with which he can distract himself. Oz does not like being locked up. Other than being experimented on, it's pretty much the crappiest way to spend his time he can think of, though the two go more or less hand-in-hand. In retrospect, it's probably something he should have considered before taking the job. Especially given the number of stories people have told him recently that have included periods of random alien incarceration, a disproportionate number of which came from persons on his new team. Maybe next time he should try falling off the cliff. The smell of old books and leather bindings still brings back the coolness of metal grate between his fingers and the sound of the lock clicking into place. And eyes: Buffy-eyes, Giles-eyes, Xander-eyes. Willow-eyes. They don't meet his, and then he's past her. Walks away from cages.
The problem with walking away from things is sometimes they follow you. There are two ways he can go with that. The symbolism is visible to a blind man face-down in the mud. Maybe the universe doesn’t give a shit that he decided not to be the beast, to be hunted and trapped: it will do with him what it chooses. Maybe, or maybe, it just doesn’t care. Panting, ragged and utterly terrified, he scrabbles through the rain. They are after him. They can hear his heart pounding through the miles and across the rivers; they can see inside his skull, and he cannot escape them there. The bulldozer of fate is gaining. He is a speck under the fingernail of whatever god there is. Not a loving or omniscient god, but a Greek god, human and apathetic, completely oblivious.
Then kill the gods, supplies a voice in his bones. When their marrow is eaten, I will have freedom. Sun, a full belly and a mate. Oz smiles lazily at John and the remains of whipped cream. John’s return smile is, Oz knows for a fact, taboo on at least one planet and probably illegal in certain states. Tomorrow, the gods will have brought him around the circle again.
"Hoop," McKay corrects him. That is yesterday, when there is alcohol, and also more people. Oz is unsure of whether it is yesterday or tomorrow right now, having lost track of today somewhere along the line. On the far side of the line he's drawn in the sand, because that's yesterday too. "Like you jump through."
"Rodney has a point," John agrees. "Have you tried not jumping?"
Oz peers into the bottom of the bottle, looking for the label. This is good, good stuff. He considers the new possibility solemnly.
"Oz?" Teyla prods him with her toe. Hey, feet.
"I," Oz pronounces, "should have let the Wraith eat me." They certainly don't taste very good. He trembles, black blood staining his tongue and spilling over until he feels sick and wishes for the rain. It could be the rain or the blood that makes him sick. The sickness saves him. Nothing can save him now. He must run: there is no alternative, and it sounds like a good idea anyway. There is no Buffy to dismember these strange blue demons, although this is maybe the kind of demon that thwarts Buffy's Hercules routine. Better Giles and Willow with a spell, but they aren't here either, in this freaky-ass cave filled with huddling people, with a disturbing sense of life about it. Oz shivers when he first sets foot on Atlantis, the dim and disturbing recollection of a similar feeling buzzing in the back of his head until he can pin it down and then it sends a more distinct shiver down Oz's currently hackle-less spine. It 's a bright, open, airy space; and hey, no freaky blue demons who feed on people like vampires do, suck the life out of them until they're bloodless and dry, husks that are at least less disturbing than what vampires leave behind. Oz gets looks when he says that one day, talking with Sheppard and some of the Marines. A few scientists are there, too, and the looks they give him are downright skeeved, but some of the guys Oz learns did stints at the legendary SGC nod, tight-lipped. At least when a Wraith is done, you know that's the end of it. Oz sees too many of the kids he grows up with no longer behind their own eyes and watches them melt away, a thousand times more unnatural than the old, dead bodies he sees in Pegasus.
It's weirder than Oz had thought, being back on Earth. The moon here feels like no other moon. He wonders, if he bit someone in Pegasus, if he bit someone on a world with no moon, would they ever feel this? It's more than magic, although Oz could swear he smells it even in this remote Colorado air. It's not something he notices before he leaves Earth the first time.
Every moon pulls Oz's bones, like a magnetism and impossible to mislocate. This moon is a taste on the back of his tongue and the rush of blood through his veins. It feels stranger than anything he's felt since the place with two moons. Oz spaces out, right in the middle of the field of oddly meaty round things that grow on three-foot stalks, feeling not unlike taffy in a pull and oh, he cannot think of food right now and wow, hey, he is standing up; why are the plants taller than he is? Shaking himself, Oz stumbles in a direction until he finds water. It's dark, but he finds a hollow to curl up in for the night and continues to feel miserable.
It is not until morning when Oz sits back on his haunches and cocks his head at his reflection that he understands why the meat-fruit stalks are taller than he is. New look. New feeling. His eyes are the most familiar thing; he catches glimpses of them sometimes in the mirror, just on either side of a change, in his memory afterwards. Oz retches and curls up on himself, trying to feel that this is a cosy, underground burrow, snug and safe, and not a windowless cell dug deep into the mountain, but who's he kidding? He hugs his knees closer and ignores the old monk; he doesn't want to see.
'This is hard," Sun Yun says finally. "You must trust Roxanne." His old voice shakes with sincerity. Oz swallows; he is afraid. Green eyes, doctor-eyes, Willow-eyes; they follow him.
"There is nothing more intimate than this," Roxanne tells him. She's part Chinese and part Aztec goddess-not literally-and more incredibly centred than Oz would have ever guessed possible. She makes the mountain Oz has been buried under for the last two and a half months seem transient. She is holding Oz's gaze like set concrete, eyes like she never looks away from anything and it's pretty intense. John doesn't look away and neither does Oz. It's freakin' unnatural, but what else is new? The kid looks mostly like a wolf, maybe a bit bigger, heavier-boned, and the fur, geez, is only a few shades darker than his human hair which does not exist anymore but which was there two minutes ago. John gets a serious case of the heebie-jeebies from the undeniable intelligence boring holes through his Face of Military Professionalism. Oooh, yeah, there's some hostility there. Elizabeth is looking a bit shell-shocked by the time Oz changes back, turning around before pulling his clothes back on and giving them a nice view of the scars and already healing incision on his back as well as an almost Gaelic-looking tattoo that snakes up Oz's forearm, over his shoulder and around his torso. John is most definitely not checking out his ass. At all.
John quickly follows Elizabeth's suit and turns around himself, not that the four marines on guard right now with their eyes bugging leave the guy much privacy.
"Well, that was convincing," John says quietly, earning himself a dry look for his understatement. He turns serious. "Hey, so what are we doing with him? I kinda don't think keeping him locked up down here is going to earn us much good faith."
"I don't want to; but we hardly know anything about him. What if he has a criminal record?" Elizabeth sighs. "Legal jurisdiction out here is a big grey area. If we can get his real name, the Daedalus can bring us a background check on him. If he hurts anyone-"
"Christ, you're not going to leave him in there for months, are you?" John glances back at Oz, watching them intently from the Wraith-cell.
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I've called a senior staff meeting to discuss our options."
"I'll be right up," John tells her. Elizabeth nods and leaves, giving Oz a brief, reassuring smile before she disappears. Oz quirks an eyebrow rather than say anything. He does that a lot, John notices; small things that take the place of mundane speech. He has entire conversations with Oz that are more than half unverbalised, which drives Rodney to make exasperated comments about pot-baked California surfers, which is really unfair because John only spends less than a decade in California all told.
"The surfing's great, though. Maybe I should requisition a board when the Daedalus comes in. Man, you should see the size of the waves they get on the mainland," he tells Oz excitedly. "There's this beach near the Athosian settlement-"
"Yes, yes, fine, all right. You have once more proven that you are in fact seventeen years old. Now would one of you please turn this on? And don't blow anything up," Rodney adds.
Oz holds out his hand for Rodney's latest gadget, which is shaped vaguely like either a Nintendo controller or a gun, with a few dead panels and buttons but without any apertures. It lights up happily in Oz's hand just as easily as the Ancient ice-cream maker does, which hitherto has accepted no-one but John to its yellow and glowing bosom, resulting in a marked skew in the cooking rotation. John is far too relieved for Oz's comfort when the onus falls to him.
"Hey, you gotta pull your weight around here somehow," Rodney chimes in around a mouthful of noogle-berry (almost like peach, but tangy) flavoured goodness.
"Thank you, Rodney," John says primly. He leans back in his chair and spins around a few times.
"I think it goes this way," Oz says. "It what, turns you invisible?"
Rodney makes an exasperated noise. "Point it at something and find out, will you?"
Oz points it at Miko's desk lamp; nothing happens. Rodney sighs and heads for the rest room. He's sure he'll be back before they find the right button.
"Where'd Sheppard go?" he asks upon re-entering the lab. There's an interesting look on Oz's face.
"Well-" Oz begins.
"Ooh, oh my god I can't believe how long it's been since I've had actual-"
"NO!" Oz tackles Rodney before he gets more than a few steps.
"Help! Someone help! I'm being attacked! Oh, please don't bite me!" Rodney squeals.
"The igraakl are harmless pets, Rodney," Teyla reassures him. Rodney watches in horror as one of the seven-foot lizards winds itself around her torso and licks her face enthusiastically. She smiles and scratches its bright, beaded skin.
John laughs, watching Rodney try to disentangle himself. His own attempt to properly greet the village elders is hampered by Rodney's flinging the disgruntled raakl at him with several mild oaths and the raakl's admittedly toothy mouth gaping in his face, surrounded by an aureole of electric blue ridges.
"It looks like it swallowed a blue papaya," Weir says when they bring it back. She gazes bemusedly into its tawny eyes. Zelenka, passing behind her, doubles over in a mad fit of giggles. Perhaps someone should remind him about the incident with the wings, or the coffee pot and the vat of jell-o, Weir thinks dangerously.
"Colonel Sheppard has dubbed the raakl our new 'mascot'," Teyla explains. She, Oz notices, is barely keeping a straight face. Oz does not at all mind having the conversation he's been having with Weir interrupted. He blinks from John's eyes to the raakl's, which shifts its stare to him with suspicion.
"It even matches our decor!" John continues excitedly. The graakl begins weaving its head back and forth very slightly.
"Well, if it matches the decor."
"Igraakl are completely harmless. Much like these Earth dogs which I hear so much about," Teyla suggests. She watches Oz start to mirror the raakl's movements with growing amusement. "Lick it between the eyes," she suggests. "It is considered a sign of dominance."
Lick it? Oz raises an eyebrow. What the hell. The scales taste dusty and a little bitter. Oz makes a face. Rodney makes half-hysterical statements about hygiene and the size of Oz's brain. The raakl makes what is hopefully a happy sort of hiss and debarks from its current perch with an ungainly hop, sending John sprawling into Teyla. Oz makes an even more comic show of almost falling over and concussing himself like he must have in Serbia, by the cliff, in the mud. No doctors there to diagnose him, but it fits the descriptions nicely. Of course, he has other things to be thinking about at the time.
His boots churning the mud leave traces a blind corpse could follow. Running in his bare feet isn't quite as bad, but these pursuers don't need footprints to find him. The slick clay mud clutches at his ankles like hands. There's a pop of suction he can feel every time he lifts a foot that's lost in the thunderous rain-sound of the storm. He's running through a strange wood. The only good thing about the rain is the way it hides the sky, but he can still feel them up there. He stumbles and feels the ominous crack of a bone that is no longer shaped correctly. Oz fights it. He chants to bring his breathing back under control and his mind back into focus and his body back into alignment. Shapes flicker in the trees to his right. Demons are racing him, two breaths behind, and what Sunnydale teaches him about magic is that it doesn't work the way you want it to; the monsters don't vanish if you don't look behind you, if you break into the clearing before they catch you.
The light doesn't protect you. In the creeping moonlight, in a pause in the storm, Oz sees a boulder, a miniature cliff with glacially rounded edges. He sees movement on his left, too, now. The rain dies, sputtering. Surrounded. Dandy, Oz thinks. The Wraith step into the moonlight, shadows with two shadows each. Oz is afraid and he cannot think and he is tired of running. Just plain damn tired. The Wraith charge. It's-easy to loose the fight.
On all fours in the muck, life is much simpler. It usually is, although mud is unpleasant all around. The clean mountain air is much preferable. Staggering around in this half-drizzled mess, even the moon feels out of focus. The Wraith are still running forward. Before they have a chance to process the change, the wolf meets them, launched by hind legs like coiled steel. The wolf knows what to do with vulnerable throats and clumsy bipedal reflexes. The wolf can run faster, with thick and oily black blood on his tongue, staining his teeth and streaking his fur, too thick for the renewed downpour to blast away. The wind of his passage is like a gentle hand. The world is right and not right. He turns, snarling and snapping, to confront his pursuer and is thrown easily against the rock, pinned. To add insult to injury, he can feel her teeth prick delicately at his throat, poised half a breath away from ripping it out. He lets the fight go out of him and shows his belly, fire turned to shame.
The teeth are put conscientiously away. A voice replaces them, strangling him with strange words and soft hands. Oz wakes up in his cell, feeling pretty much like someone has run him over with a steamroller, used him for a tap-dancing stage, then rung him through a pasta machine. Staring up at the unremarkable rock ceiling, he thinks he's perhaps had better ideas in his life. Most of which do not involve caves. Caves are not really the nicest places in the world, and Oz should know, he ends up in enough of them.
"Definitely substandard," Oz remarks, causing John to snort.
"I'll be sure to make a note of that for the Pegasus Michelin. Onegrans: substandard cave habitations. But look at the spread." John jerks his chin at the trestle tables set up under the open sky in the village square, heavy with food. Several large spaces are still left empty for the centrepieces.
Teyla's looking worried. Since nothing dangerous is happening, she's probably afraid they're going to embarrass her. Rodney does look kind of like he's going to throw himself into one of the gigantic pudding bowls. Well, it's been a while since breakfast.
That's about when Teyla grabs them all and practically throws them over the edge of the cliff. Later, in their cells (which in Oz's opinion are if anything worse than the crude caves they came up through during their tour of the Onegran village), Oz and John are playing footsie because they can. It occurs to him to ask why the Onegrans are so enthusiastic about retaining their company. John stares at him and he stares back. God, their brains are not on right now. In bed that morning, they tangle themselves together in a patch of sunlight and kiss.
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: John Sheppard/Daniel "Oz" Osbourne
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of language and a bit of innuendo
Disclaimer: <----
Length: about 4.5K
Notes: My deepest apologies to the sequence of tenses and English grammar in general. Several years ago, I read Catch-22, which introduced me to stream-of-consciousness. Then I read The Dictionary of the Khazars and I was lost. Basically, this is my brain on crack. If at the end you have more questions than answers, that's because this is chapter one. Plays around a little with Buffy canon and completely ignores the comics. AU'd from Runner in season two of SGA.
Beta'd by htebazytook. Crossposted to crossoverfic and stargateslash.
John sighs and rubs his wrist where his watch usually is, where it is now wrapped in a crude field bandage. John sprained it during the painstaking descent from the Onegrans' cliff-city at the top of which everyone but Rodney is once more. Rodney is not in the prison cell that John is sharing with only Oz (because the Onegrans consider it improper for men and women who are not married to one another to sleep in the same room, oh irony) because Rodney fell into the bushes. John does not want to consider the possibility that Rodney broke something or concussed himself or smashed his head in either when he hit the bushes or when he presumably hit the ground after presumably descending in some manner from the twenty-foot-high tops of the bushes, but at the same time John has to consider it because he has to weigh all their options for escape or rescue. Rodney on his own is at least unlikely to implement a hair-brained rescue scheme until he has back-up. The other reassuring thing about Rodney is that he's brilliant, even if he is a pain in the ass. Everyone tells him so, and since 'everyone' comprises a large international and interplanetary sampling, the allegation seems valid enough to stand up in court. Putting Rodney on trial would satisfy Kavanaugh, who believes that Rodney is a petty, megalomaniacal dictator who has it in for him. Elizabeth's waning efforts to calm Kavanaugh are impeded by the fact that Rodney McKay often exhibits many of the traits of a petty, megalomaniacal dictator and has it in for Kavanaugh.
"I don't have it in for Kavanaugh!" Rodney protests when Elizabeth asks him outright in a confidential tone behind the closed door of her office, in a voice which is undoubtedly heard by the Marine on guard on the other side of the door. "The man is an idiot, that's all. When he stops being an idiot, I'll stop yelling at him. What, would you rather I let him blow us all up the next time we try and power the shield by positing that the wave property of energy is roughly equivalent to the consistency of bread pudding?"
And there the discussion ends, much as the discussion about the Onegrans ends when Teyla pulls them all over the edge of the cliff and almost drops them the three hundred feet to the pebble-speckled, bush-dotted ground. Instead, she only drops Rodney; but that's later, after Oz's yell of pain makes his feet slip and it's all John can do to hang onto the back of Teyla's vest in a decoupling human chain.
After that, Rodney waits for Atlantis to dial in as he peers through the furry foliage of the twenty foot tall bushes. He thinks he heard something. Maybe he didn't. It's unimportant at the time, like a scientist speaking too meekly for Rodney to bother registering the voice. Zelenka is the only one who really seems to have figured Rodney out, either that or he's stubborn and arrogant enough to ignore Rodney's shit, which is the trick anyway. Rodney is a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man in his thirties who is learning to be physically fit for the first time in his life mostly by running away from people who point guns at him. Rodney never has enough time. Every pointed second-hand is the enemy, the follicle-by-follicle recession of his hairline ticking away his life inexorably, a clock whose battery-himself-is gradually running out.
Life in Pegasus introduces a new factor to Rodney's frenzy: imminent doom. He has less time, he has no time, and the brilliant, mind-bogglingly important work that may save them all in a few months is constantly being impinged upon by the necessity of staying alive to do it. Stupidity is death; Rodney's stupidity (in the three scattered nanoseconds out of each year he admits to it) is a massacre waiting to happen and it's terrifying because it's like pulling teeth to get anyone besides Zelenka and that idiot Kavanaugh to challenge him on most things. Which, Rodney reminds himself, is because he is a genius and they are idiots incapable of understanding one tenth of the tenth of Ancient technology that Rodney understands. Inhaling, Rodney raises his head from his hands and deactivates his screensaver. Stupid Ancients and their stupid, stupid conversion beams. If Rodney can ever figure out what they were doing, he's certain he'll be smarter than they were because will he invent something whose express purpose is to turn someone into guacamole? I don't think so. Although it might be nice to play turn-and-turn-about with the Wraith and ohmygod, I did not just think that. Rodney massages his forehead with the heels of his hands.
It occurs to Rodney that perhaps the Ancients left all this highly unstable technology out on the counter, so to speak, with practically nothing on the way of safeguards or warnings to serve as a booby-trap. Take all the polished products with them and leave behind the glitchy prototypes, dangerous failed experiments and unsafe specimens for the next suckers.
It sounds much too plausible to think about any longer. Really, the situation is untenable. He has half a mind to reconstruct one of the seven or so methods of time-travel the SGC has stumbled onto over the years just so he can go back and yell at them. Maybe, if he's loud enough, they'll write some user's manuals.
His situation, John meditates morosely, bears a great resemblance to that of six months ago, when he wakes up with his head throbbing and a gun in his face to find that his feet and hands are tied and he has no back-up. It is, on the other hand, quite different from the one in which he finds himself this morning, with Oz draped mostly over top of him on the double bed in John's quarters that is just barely not too short and which he has never quite got around to replacing. John wants to steal the larger, more comfortable bed from Oz's quarters. Better yet, he wants to steal Oz's quarters, but they are too far away from the nearest transporter and Ops. When the attack comes, whichever attack it is, but there will be an attack because John Sheppard attracts trouble like he attracts everyone else; he doesn't have to go looking for it anymore: it seems it wasn't just Atlantis waiting expectantly for him in Pegasus but every death trap, geological or meteorological or technological or ecological, every human perversity, disease, and twist of logic; every secret and cousin of Murphy and odd chance either way-if he is out of reach, then every bang of his feet that resounds down the corridor is more people dead and the rush of static in his ear is more damaging than the ocean's angriest waves. It's a struggle not to cough, and it's a wonder he doesn't scream. John never screams, not like he wants to, not like McKay does when he falls, not even when his hand starts slipping on the rock face and he throws all his weight back into it in a last effort of desperation.
The sun-pounded rock under his fingers and pressing briefly against his face as he leans into it afterwards to regain his equilibrium is scorching hot. John has a brief vision of Oz's foot interrupting the white sun-glare off Atlantis' metal deck. He risks a downward glance to check on everyone. Four little monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and broke his head. Three little monkeys... They're moving again. John finds a new handhold and resumes the process of oozing his way down the escarpment even though the ambient pain, internal and external, in his left wrist makes it feel like he's wearing a glove made of razor blades. That's it; slow and careful. No more mistakes. Just concentrate.
Faster! faster! scream John's nerves. Does he hear something? John continues meticulously oiling slowly towards the ground, what he won't give for the pull of gravity to wrench itself at a ninety-degree angle. Breathe, remember to breathe. Teyla tells him, Oz tells him; he gets into these situations (way too fucking often) and it's like adrenaline kicks him half out of his body, who knows how he's breathing or running or manoeuvring, that's incidental to the main game. John lives for moments like this, when he's living on the inside and outside of his skin at once, with a curious vacancy in between where pain is, where fatigue is. Flying is like this. Not running; running is a heavy rhythm that pounds away thought and clears his head, except for sometimes when he's running for his life. Fighting is. Flooring it along the flat, straight western roads is.
This is too slow by far for John's comfort. Someone might have heard Oz's yelp or McKay's scream. John hardly doubts that the Onegrans have quicker ways to the bottom of the cliff than this careful (not careful enough) inching. All he can hope is that they don't have long-distance projectile weapons, but he doesn't quite trust them that far. Sitting on the cold, hard floor of their prison, John feels justified beyond doubt in his lack of confidence. Fat load of good it does him now.
Oz watches John shifting against the other wall. There isn't much else to watch. No windows, nothing with which he can distract himself. Oz does not like being locked up. Other than being experimented on, it's pretty much the crappiest way to spend his time he can think of, though the two go more or less hand-in-hand. In retrospect, it's probably something he should have considered before taking the job. Especially given the number of stories people have told him recently that have included periods of random alien incarceration, a disproportionate number of which came from persons on his new team. Maybe next time he should try falling off the cliff. The smell of old books and leather bindings still brings back the coolness of metal grate between his fingers and the sound of the lock clicking into place. And eyes: Buffy-eyes, Giles-eyes, Xander-eyes. Willow-eyes. They don't meet his, and then he's past her. Walks away from cages.
The problem with walking away from things is sometimes they follow you. There are two ways he can go with that. The symbolism is visible to a blind man face-down in the mud. Maybe the universe doesn’t give a shit that he decided not to be the beast, to be hunted and trapped: it will do with him what it chooses. Maybe, or maybe, it just doesn’t care. Panting, ragged and utterly terrified, he scrabbles through the rain. They are after him. They can hear his heart pounding through the miles and across the rivers; they can see inside his skull, and he cannot escape them there. The bulldozer of fate is gaining. He is a speck under the fingernail of whatever god there is. Not a loving or omniscient god, but a Greek god, human and apathetic, completely oblivious.
Then kill the gods, supplies a voice in his bones. When their marrow is eaten, I will have freedom. Sun, a full belly and a mate. Oz smiles lazily at John and the remains of whipped cream. John’s return smile is, Oz knows for a fact, taboo on at least one planet and probably illegal in certain states. Tomorrow, the gods will have brought him around the circle again.
"Hoop," McKay corrects him. That is yesterday, when there is alcohol, and also more people. Oz is unsure of whether it is yesterday or tomorrow right now, having lost track of today somewhere along the line. On the far side of the line he's drawn in the sand, because that's yesterday too. "Like you jump through."
"Rodney has a point," John agrees. "Have you tried not jumping?"
Oz peers into the bottom of the bottle, looking for the label. This is good, good stuff. He considers the new possibility solemnly.
"Oz?" Teyla prods him with her toe. Hey, feet.
"I," Oz pronounces, "should have let the Wraith eat me." They certainly don't taste very good. He trembles, black blood staining his tongue and spilling over until he feels sick and wishes for the rain. It could be the rain or the blood that makes him sick. The sickness saves him. Nothing can save him now. He must run: there is no alternative, and it sounds like a good idea anyway. There is no Buffy to dismember these strange blue demons, although this is maybe the kind of demon that thwarts Buffy's Hercules routine. Better Giles and Willow with a spell, but they aren't here either, in this freaky-ass cave filled with huddling people, with a disturbing sense of life about it. Oz shivers when he first sets foot on Atlantis, the dim and disturbing recollection of a similar feeling buzzing in the back of his head until he can pin it down and then it sends a more distinct shiver down Oz's currently hackle-less spine. It 's a bright, open, airy space; and hey, no freaky blue demons who feed on people like vampires do, suck the life out of them until they're bloodless and dry, husks that are at least less disturbing than what vampires leave behind. Oz gets looks when he says that one day, talking with Sheppard and some of the Marines. A few scientists are there, too, and the looks they give him are downright skeeved, but some of the guys Oz learns did stints at the legendary SGC nod, tight-lipped. At least when a Wraith is done, you know that's the end of it. Oz sees too many of the kids he grows up with no longer behind their own eyes and watches them melt away, a thousand times more unnatural than the old, dead bodies he sees in Pegasus.
It's weirder than Oz had thought, being back on Earth. The moon here feels like no other moon. He wonders, if he bit someone in Pegasus, if he bit someone on a world with no moon, would they ever feel this? It's more than magic, although Oz could swear he smells it even in this remote Colorado air. It's not something he notices before he leaves Earth the first time.
Every moon pulls Oz's bones, like a magnetism and impossible to mislocate. This moon is a taste on the back of his tongue and the rush of blood through his veins. It feels stranger than anything he's felt since the place with two moons. Oz spaces out, right in the middle of the field of oddly meaty round things that grow on three-foot stalks, feeling not unlike taffy in a pull and oh, he cannot think of food right now and wow, hey, he is standing up; why are the plants taller than he is? Shaking himself, Oz stumbles in a direction until he finds water. It's dark, but he finds a hollow to curl up in for the night and continues to feel miserable.
It is not until morning when Oz sits back on his haunches and cocks his head at his reflection that he understands why the meat-fruit stalks are taller than he is. New look. New feeling. His eyes are the most familiar thing; he catches glimpses of them sometimes in the mirror, just on either side of a change, in his memory afterwards. Oz retches and curls up on himself, trying to feel that this is a cosy, underground burrow, snug and safe, and not a windowless cell dug deep into the mountain, but who's he kidding? He hugs his knees closer and ignores the old monk; he doesn't want to see.
'This is hard," Sun Yun says finally. "You must trust Roxanne." His old voice shakes with sincerity. Oz swallows; he is afraid. Green eyes, doctor-eyes, Willow-eyes; they follow him.
"There is nothing more intimate than this," Roxanne tells him. She's part Chinese and part Aztec goddess-not literally-and more incredibly centred than Oz would have ever guessed possible. She makes the mountain Oz has been buried under for the last two and a half months seem transient. She is holding Oz's gaze like set concrete, eyes like she never looks away from anything and it's pretty intense. John doesn't look away and neither does Oz. It's freakin' unnatural, but what else is new? The kid looks mostly like a wolf, maybe a bit bigger, heavier-boned, and the fur, geez, is only a few shades darker than his human hair which does not exist anymore but which was there two minutes ago. John gets a serious case of the heebie-jeebies from the undeniable intelligence boring holes through his Face of Military Professionalism. Oooh, yeah, there's some hostility there. Elizabeth is looking a bit shell-shocked by the time Oz changes back, turning around before pulling his clothes back on and giving them a nice view of the scars and already healing incision on his back as well as an almost Gaelic-looking tattoo that snakes up Oz's forearm, over his shoulder and around his torso. John is most definitely not checking out his ass. At all.
John quickly follows Elizabeth's suit and turns around himself, not that the four marines on guard right now with their eyes bugging leave the guy much privacy.
"Well, that was convincing," John says quietly, earning himself a dry look for his understatement. He turns serious. "Hey, so what are we doing with him? I kinda don't think keeping him locked up down here is going to earn us much good faith."
"I don't want to; but we hardly know anything about him. What if he has a criminal record?" Elizabeth sighs. "Legal jurisdiction out here is a big grey area. If we can get his real name, the Daedalus can bring us a background check on him. If he hurts anyone-"
"Christ, you're not going to leave him in there for months, are you?" John glances back at Oz, watching them intently from the Wraith-cell.
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I've called a senior staff meeting to discuss our options."
"I'll be right up," John tells her. Elizabeth nods and leaves, giving Oz a brief, reassuring smile before she disappears. Oz quirks an eyebrow rather than say anything. He does that a lot, John notices; small things that take the place of mundane speech. He has entire conversations with Oz that are more than half unverbalised, which drives Rodney to make exasperated comments about pot-baked California surfers, which is really unfair because John only spends less than a decade in California all told.
"The surfing's great, though. Maybe I should requisition a board when the Daedalus comes in. Man, you should see the size of the waves they get on the mainland," he tells Oz excitedly. "There's this beach near the Athosian settlement-"
"Yes, yes, fine, all right. You have once more proven that you are in fact seventeen years old. Now would one of you please turn this on? And don't blow anything up," Rodney adds.
Oz holds out his hand for Rodney's latest gadget, which is shaped vaguely like either a Nintendo controller or a gun, with a few dead panels and buttons but without any apertures. It lights up happily in Oz's hand just as easily as the Ancient ice-cream maker does, which hitherto has accepted no-one but John to its yellow and glowing bosom, resulting in a marked skew in the cooking rotation. John is far too relieved for Oz's comfort when the onus falls to him.
"Hey, you gotta pull your weight around here somehow," Rodney chimes in around a mouthful of noogle-berry (almost like peach, but tangy) flavoured goodness.
"Thank you, Rodney," John says primly. He leans back in his chair and spins around a few times.
"I think it goes this way," Oz says. "It what, turns you invisible?"
Rodney makes an exasperated noise. "Point it at something and find out, will you?"
Oz points it at Miko's desk lamp; nothing happens. Rodney sighs and heads for the rest room. He's sure he'll be back before they find the right button.
"Where'd Sheppard go?" he asks upon re-entering the lab. There's an interesting look on Oz's face.
"Well-" Oz begins.
"Ooh, oh my god I can't believe how long it's been since I've had actual-"
"NO!" Oz tackles Rodney before he gets more than a few steps.
"Help! Someone help! I'm being attacked! Oh, please don't bite me!" Rodney squeals.
"The igraakl are harmless pets, Rodney," Teyla reassures him. Rodney watches in horror as one of the seven-foot lizards winds itself around her torso and licks her face enthusiastically. She smiles and scratches its bright, beaded skin.
John laughs, watching Rodney try to disentangle himself. His own attempt to properly greet the village elders is hampered by Rodney's flinging the disgruntled raakl at him with several mild oaths and the raakl's admittedly toothy mouth gaping in his face, surrounded by an aureole of electric blue ridges.
"It looks like it swallowed a blue papaya," Weir says when they bring it back. She gazes bemusedly into its tawny eyes. Zelenka, passing behind her, doubles over in a mad fit of giggles. Perhaps someone should remind him about the incident with the wings, or the coffee pot and the vat of jell-o, Weir thinks dangerously.
"Colonel Sheppard has dubbed the raakl our new 'mascot'," Teyla explains. She, Oz notices, is barely keeping a straight face. Oz does not at all mind having the conversation he's been having with Weir interrupted. He blinks from John's eyes to the raakl's, which shifts its stare to him with suspicion.
"It even matches our decor!" John continues excitedly. The graakl begins weaving its head back and forth very slightly.
"Well, if it matches the decor."
"Igraakl are completely harmless. Much like these Earth dogs which I hear so much about," Teyla suggests. She watches Oz start to mirror the raakl's movements with growing amusement. "Lick it between the eyes," she suggests. "It is considered a sign of dominance."
Lick it? Oz raises an eyebrow. What the hell. The scales taste dusty and a little bitter. Oz makes a face. Rodney makes half-hysterical statements about hygiene and the size of Oz's brain. The raakl makes what is hopefully a happy sort of hiss and debarks from its current perch with an ungainly hop, sending John sprawling into Teyla. Oz makes an even more comic show of almost falling over and concussing himself like he must have in Serbia, by the cliff, in the mud. No doctors there to diagnose him, but it fits the descriptions nicely. Of course, he has other things to be thinking about at the time.
His boots churning the mud leave traces a blind corpse could follow. Running in his bare feet isn't quite as bad, but these pursuers don't need footprints to find him. The slick clay mud clutches at his ankles like hands. There's a pop of suction he can feel every time he lifts a foot that's lost in the thunderous rain-sound of the storm. He's running through a strange wood. The only good thing about the rain is the way it hides the sky, but he can still feel them up there. He stumbles and feels the ominous crack of a bone that is no longer shaped correctly. Oz fights it. He chants to bring his breathing back under control and his mind back into focus and his body back into alignment. Shapes flicker in the trees to his right. Demons are racing him, two breaths behind, and what Sunnydale teaches him about magic is that it doesn't work the way you want it to; the monsters don't vanish if you don't look behind you, if you break into the clearing before they catch you.
The light doesn't protect you. In the creeping moonlight, in a pause in the storm, Oz sees a boulder, a miniature cliff with glacially rounded edges. He sees movement on his left, too, now. The rain dies, sputtering. Surrounded. Dandy, Oz thinks. The Wraith step into the moonlight, shadows with two shadows each. Oz is afraid and he cannot think and he is tired of running. Just plain damn tired. The Wraith charge. It's-easy to loose the fight.
On all fours in the muck, life is much simpler. It usually is, although mud is unpleasant all around. The clean mountain air is much preferable. Staggering around in this half-drizzled mess, even the moon feels out of focus. The Wraith are still running forward. Before they have a chance to process the change, the wolf meets them, launched by hind legs like coiled steel. The wolf knows what to do with vulnerable throats and clumsy bipedal reflexes. The wolf can run faster, with thick and oily black blood on his tongue, staining his teeth and streaking his fur, too thick for the renewed downpour to blast away. The wind of his passage is like a gentle hand. The world is right and not right. He turns, snarling and snapping, to confront his pursuer and is thrown easily against the rock, pinned. To add insult to injury, he can feel her teeth prick delicately at his throat, poised half a breath away from ripping it out. He lets the fight go out of him and shows his belly, fire turned to shame.
The teeth are put conscientiously away. A voice replaces them, strangling him with strange words and soft hands. Oz wakes up in his cell, feeling pretty much like someone has run him over with a steamroller, used him for a tap-dancing stage, then rung him through a pasta machine. Staring up at the unremarkable rock ceiling, he thinks he's perhaps had better ideas in his life. Most of which do not involve caves. Caves are not really the nicest places in the world, and Oz should know, he ends up in enough of them.
"Definitely substandard," Oz remarks, causing John to snort.
"I'll be sure to make a note of that for the Pegasus Michelin. Onegrans: substandard cave habitations. But look at the spread." John jerks his chin at the trestle tables set up under the open sky in the village square, heavy with food. Several large spaces are still left empty for the centrepieces.
Teyla's looking worried. Since nothing dangerous is happening, she's probably afraid they're going to embarrass her. Rodney does look kind of like he's going to throw himself into one of the gigantic pudding bowls. Well, it's been a while since breakfast.
That's about when Teyla grabs them all and practically throws them over the edge of the cliff. Later, in their cells (which in Oz's opinion are if anything worse than the crude caves they came up through during their tour of the Onegran village), Oz and John are playing footsie because they can. It occurs to him to ask why the Onegrans are so enthusiastic about retaining their company. John stares at him and he stares back. God, their brains are not on right now. In bed that morning, they tangle themselves together in a patch of sunlight and kiss.