Wanderer by boochicken (Halloween challenge)
Title: Wanderer
Author: boochicken
Rating: PG and gen. A bit angsty.
Spoilers: Character mention from from "Sateda"
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. Stargate Atlantis is the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This was written for fun, definitely not for profit.
Ronon first hears about the earth holiday Halloween when someone tapes strange angular faces, cut out of orange paper, all around the brushed-silver walls of the mess hall.
"What're those?" he asks, jerking his head at the paper faces as he sets his tray down in front of McKay. It's been a few months since he came to Atlantis, and McKay no longer twitches when he sees him.
"A sign that this expedition has a median mental age of four," McKay says sourly, and moves his jello out of Colonel Sheppard's reach.
Sheppard nudges McKay in the side. "What, your parents didn't take you trick-or-treating?"
"My mother was a dentist," McKay says, scowling, as though that explains anything, and Sheppard shrugs.
Ronon rolls his eyes. "So what are the orange things?" he says again, just as Teyla slides gracefully into an empty seat across from him.
"I was told they are Jack-o'-lanterns," she says serenely, and takes a bite of her sandwich.
Ronon frowns -- "lantern" he gets, but two marines and one of the botanists are named "Jack" -- "And those are?"
"It's a kid thing," Sheppard says, and sketches a round shape with his hands. "You take a pumpkin --"
Teyla interrupts. "An orange fruit, with a tough outer skin."
"Yeah, you can make pies out of them. And you cut a lid out of the top and scoop out the insides."
"Pumpkin seeds," McKay says wistfully.
Sheppard nods. "Right, those are good roasted. Then you cut a face in the side. You put it in front of your door, with a candle --"
"Or your window if your neighborhood is full of hooligans --"
"McKay," Sheppard chides and miraculously, McKay shuts up. "And everyone walking by your house can see that you're open for trick-or-treaters."
And that's another earth phrase that Ronon understands, at least the individual words, but together they make no sense at all. "And what are those?" he asks patiently. He supposes it's flattering, that they forget so quickly that he and Teyla are from other planets in another galaxy. But it's not very helpful.
"It's when children dress up in ridiculous costumes and go door to door and beg people for candy." Rodney grimaces and digs into his jello with a vengeance. "That's the 'treat,' obviously. The trick is what happens if you don't have any candy to give."
"They smash your lantern," Ronon guesses, and both Sheppard and McKay look surprised. He just avoids rolling his eyes -- clearly, he's been spending too much time with McKay -- but he was a teenager once. Even without ever having seen a pumpkin, he'd bet that his friend Lahan would have happily thrown a dozen into the street just to see them burst.
"Or toilet paper your house," Sheppard says after a moment. "Or egg your car --"
"Okay, why?"
"Because -- because it's what you do," Sheppard says. He looks a little confused, like it's never occurred to him to question why his culture has a day set aside for carving fruit and begging for candy and mild vandalism. "It's tradition, like Christmas trees."
"It's a construct of the sugar and plastic mask conglomerates," McKay announces, and shoves back from the table. "I'm off to the labs."
"See ya," Sheppard says, and tips his head back to finish his juice. It's distracting, watching the long curve of his throat, the faint ripple as he swallows. He wipes his mouth with his hand and turns to Ronon. "If you're interested, you could ask one of the anthropologists. Sparring later?"
"Sure," Ronon says, and leaves Sheppard and Teyla to find Elizabeth.
***
"I don't know much about Halloween," she says prettily, which is her way of saying that she knows much more than Sheppard and McKay. "I do know that it started as a holiday called Samhain, with the Celts -- a very old culture in Scotland and Ireland. You should ask Carson about them."
Ronon shrugs. He could ask Carson -- who thankfully no longer jumps at the sight of him -- but Elizabeth's right here. "So, Samhain?" He stumbles a little on the pronunciation, and she smiles.
"I think it was a harvest festival, but it also had meaning for the dead." She pauses a moment, tapping her pen against her even, white teeth. "That was the day when the dead were closest to the living world, and could actually cross over and walk among the living." She gestures with her empty hands. "Maybe that's where the costumes came from -- if you were afraid of ghosts, it was better to look like one."
"It's about ghosts?" Ronon tries. Sateda has -- had -- a holiday to placate the dead. He remembers being young and going to the burying ground with his grandmother, her bag stuffed with pastries and honeyed tea, and the tiny baked clay statues to place on the graves. It was a fading superstition -- only old ladies seemed to buy the special food, the red ribbons to anchor the dead to the earth for another year -- but it always made sense to him. The Wraith only took those who wandered above ground.
"Well, not precisely." Elizabeth pushes her hair away from her face with both hands; she looks tired. "Not anymore, mostly. In America it's mostly about the candy and the costumes."
"Huh," Ronon says, and flicks a dreadlock over his shoulder. "And the pumpkins?"
Elizabeth smiles at him and shuffles the papers on her desk; ever the diplomat, it's as clear a dismissal as she'll give. "That, I know, is an old Irish story. I'd ask Carson."
***
Carson scowls when Ronon finds him, bent over a lab table and peering at slides. "You do know there's a difference between Ireland and Scotland?"
"Yes," Ronon says, although he doesn't really. It's all earth to him. "Elizabeth said you could tell me about jack 'o lanterns."
"Aye," Carson sighs, and pushes his microscope to the side. "It's from a folk story, right? A man named Jack strikes a deal with the Devil -- "
"Who's that again?" Ronon asks. He's heard the earthers speak of the Devil a few times. He'd thought it might be a nickname for McKay.
Carson gestures vaguely. "It's complicated -- the Prince of Evil, how's that. The opposite of all that's good in the world."
"Right," Ronon says, and he can picture the Devil, his scabrous, dead-white face twisted into a permanent sneer. "So why'd Jack trade with him?"
"I don't recall -- Jack wanted something and the Devil gave it to him, in exchange for his soul." Carson raises a hand before Ronon can speak. "But Jack was clever, and made it so that when he died, the devil couldn't let him into Hell. But they wouldn't take him in Heaven, either -- not with the Devil's claim on his soul."
"So what happened?" Carson isn't quite as good a storyteller as Ronon's sister Nemha had been; she would have pretended to be Jack, then the Devil, switching seamlessly between the faces and voices that she gave them, making them both say outrageous things.
Carson shakes his head. "Well he's stuck, isn't he? So he takes a turnip -- it's a vegetable," Carson amends at Ronon's questioning look, "and carves into a lantern. And then he wanders, looking for a place to rest, carrying his lantern, since neither Heaven nor Hell will have him."
"And that's the jack o' lantern," Ronon says flatly, because he can't believe that's what the earthers would pick to represent their holiday. Except maybe he can, given what Elizabeth said; all the meaning has been bled out of it. And Irish Jack would never have feared the Wraith, whether living or dead.
"Aye." Carson looks at him a little anxiously. "Was there something else you needed?"
"No," Ronon says over his shoulder, striding off towards the gym. He's promised to spar with Sheppard; thankfully, fighting clears his head.
***
Three days later they strike a deal with the inhabitants of PSX-472 for a hundred baskets, each as broad and deep as the length of Ronon's arm, full of something they call worta. Ronon's not sure if it's a vegetable or fruit, if grows above or below ground, but he fishes one of the fist-sized silver globes out of a nearby basket anyway. It feels firm and reassuring in his hand; he flicks an experimental finger against its rind, and it sounds hollow.
Next to him, Rodney has one of the worta shoved practically up his nose. "These smell fantastic," he says happily. "Remember that banquet? Where they had these sliced and fried with butter, and baked into pies?"
"Mmmmm," Ronon agrees, and inhales the scent of his own worta. It's a little bit like the spice the earthers call vanilla, but also something earthy and pungent, like leaves or loam. He likes it.
He approaches Sheppard as he watches the transfer of the baskets through the gate, the full ones being handed through the wormhole and the empty ones tossed back. "I want a basket of these."
Sheppard cocks an eyebrow at him. "A whole basket? Are you that hungry?"
"I don't want to eat them." He squashes the urge to fidget like a teenager, to explain what he has in mind. He doesn't really have the words anyway. Instead he stares at Sheppard until the other man shrugs.
"Sure, I don't see why not. I think we're all going to be sick of worta soon enough." Sheppard turns away to the leader of this planet, to discuss when Carson should come again to perform check-ups and tests, and Ronon goes to pick over the worta, to find the ones he wants.
That night, in his quarters, he carries the basket onto his balcony and lays his knives out in a neat row on the tile floor, smallest to largest. The planet's second moon is nearly full, washing everything in the same grey-white of the worta skin, so he can see even without the light in his room. The Atlantean's Halloween party is tonight; he can hear music and people talking, the sound wafting up from the open windows below. Sheppard had reminded him of the party as they finished the mission debrief, and asked if he planned on coming. Ronon had shrugged. "I have things to do," he'd said, and Sheppard hadn't pressed.
He sits, cross-legged, and sorts through the fruits until he finds one that's nearly perfectly round. The curved knife he used to skin game as a Runner works surprisingly well to cut a circle through the rind around the fragile stem. He lifts it away and sets it aside; the worta turn out to be mostly hollow, filled with a dry, cobwebby membrane that he can sweep away with his fingers. Sliced open, the fruit's distinctive scent is even stronger, and he's glad he's working outside, where the ocean breeze can carry some of it away. He uses the tiniest knife he owns to carve a grinning face into the worta -- slanting, mischievious eyes, a generous mouth, a hint of snub nose -- and when he's done he replaces the stem and sets it on the balcony rail.
That one, he thinks, is for Lahan.
He picks a smaller fruit for Nemha, remembering that when he'd last seen her, she'd barely reached his collarbone. His grandmother's face had been lined with age, creases from laughter around her mouth and eyes; he finds a worta that had grown crooked, wrinkled, and tries to remember what her mouth looked like when she smiled.
It gets harder as the faces get less familiar; eventually he just cuts eyes-nose-mouth, dedicating it to someone in his mind. That one for his third-term teacher, this one for the man who ran the sweet-shop around the corner, three tiny smiling faces carved for the sisters that had lived across the street, whose names he can't quite remember. When the balcony rail is full he starts arranging the lanterns in neat rows across the balcony floor. He cuts a notch in the side of each worta representing his squadron, figuring it's the closest he can come to a tattoo, and lines them up together. He debates whether he ought to carve a lantern for Kell, then throws the fruit in his hand, hard, over the railing and into the ocean. The splash it makes is small but satisfying, just like the idea of Kell wandering alone in the dark.
He's working on the second to last worta when he hears the knock at the door. "Dex?" It's Sheppard. He doesn't say anything, just keeps working, his tongue between his teeth. After a moment he hears his door slide open, Sheppard's quiet steps across the floor.
"Hey, I just thought I'd see what you were -- wow." He can sense Sheppard behind him, standing just at the balcony door. Ronon ignores him, finishes the delicate curve of Malena's mouth, and stares at it. He's not much of an artist, but he can see a little of her in the crude carved face -- her sweetness, her obstinacy. He sets it down, carefully, and rubs his worta-stained fingers hard against his hip.
"You need candles." Sheppard's voice is quiet, almost reverent.
"Yeah," Ronon agrees, and even to his own ears, his voice sounds rusty and hoarse. He thinks it should -- after all, he's been having conversations with the dead.
"I bet McKay can think of something," Sheppard says, still quiet. "I'm guessing you didn't do this for kicks?"
Ronon just shakes his head. How can he explain to Sheppard what he doesn't quite understand himself? Sheppard comes from a planet where the dead only walk once a year, where the living can't be plucked from the earth like fruit. He stares at the sea of tiny mute faces, row after row in endless circles to the very edge of the balcony. The very first lantern he carved seems to wink at him: Lahan would laugh, bright and careless, if he were here.
He hears a rustle as Sheppard crouches down just behind him. He glances back, but there's no judgment in Sheppard's dark eyes, not that he can see. "Want to tell me about them?"
And, to Ronon's surprise, he does.
"That one," he begins, and points. "That one is for my best friend from school...."
Author: boochicken
Rating: PG and gen. A bit angsty.
Spoilers: Character mention from from "Sateda"
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. Stargate Atlantis is the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This was written for fun, definitely not for profit.
Ronon first hears about the earth holiday Halloween when someone tapes strange angular faces, cut out of orange paper, all around the brushed-silver walls of the mess hall.
"What're those?" he asks, jerking his head at the paper faces as he sets his tray down in front of McKay. It's been a few months since he came to Atlantis, and McKay no longer twitches when he sees him.
"A sign that this expedition has a median mental age of four," McKay says sourly, and moves his jello out of Colonel Sheppard's reach.
Sheppard nudges McKay in the side. "What, your parents didn't take you trick-or-treating?"
"My mother was a dentist," McKay says, scowling, as though that explains anything, and Sheppard shrugs.
Ronon rolls his eyes. "So what are the orange things?" he says again, just as Teyla slides gracefully into an empty seat across from him.
"I was told they are Jack-o'-lanterns," she says serenely, and takes a bite of her sandwich.
Ronon frowns -- "lantern" he gets, but two marines and one of the botanists are named "Jack" -- "And those are?"
"It's a kid thing," Sheppard says, and sketches a round shape with his hands. "You take a pumpkin --"
Teyla interrupts. "An orange fruit, with a tough outer skin."
"Yeah, you can make pies out of them. And you cut a lid out of the top and scoop out the insides."
"Pumpkin seeds," McKay says wistfully.
Sheppard nods. "Right, those are good roasted. Then you cut a face in the side. You put it in front of your door, with a candle --"
"Or your window if your neighborhood is full of hooligans --"
"McKay," Sheppard chides and miraculously, McKay shuts up. "And everyone walking by your house can see that you're open for trick-or-treaters."
And that's another earth phrase that Ronon understands, at least the individual words, but together they make no sense at all. "And what are those?" he asks patiently. He supposes it's flattering, that they forget so quickly that he and Teyla are from other planets in another galaxy. But it's not very helpful.
"It's when children dress up in ridiculous costumes and go door to door and beg people for candy." Rodney grimaces and digs into his jello with a vengeance. "That's the 'treat,' obviously. The trick is what happens if you don't have any candy to give."
"They smash your lantern," Ronon guesses, and both Sheppard and McKay look surprised. He just avoids rolling his eyes -- clearly, he's been spending too much time with McKay -- but he was a teenager once. Even without ever having seen a pumpkin, he'd bet that his friend Lahan would have happily thrown a dozen into the street just to see them burst.
"Or toilet paper your house," Sheppard says after a moment. "Or egg your car --"
"Okay, why?"
"Because -- because it's what you do," Sheppard says. He looks a little confused, like it's never occurred to him to question why his culture has a day set aside for carving fruit and begging for candy and mild vandalism. "It's tradition, like Christmas trees."
"It's a construct of the sugar and plastic mask conglomerates," McKay announces, and shoves back from the table. "I'm off to the labs."
"See ya," Sheppard says, and tips his head back to finish his juice. It's distracting, watching the long curve of his throat, the faint ripple as he swallows. He wipes his mouth with his hand and turns to Ronon. "If you're interested, you could ask one of the anthropologists. Sparring later?"
"Sure," Ronon says, and leaves Sheppard and Teyla to find Elizabeth.
***
"I don't know much about Halloween," she says prettily, which is her way of saying that she knows much more than Sheppard and McKay. "I do know that it started as a holiday called Samhain, with the Celts -- a very old culture in Scotland and Ireland. You should ask Carson about them."
Ronon shrugs. He could ask Carson -- who thankfully no longer jumps at the sight of him -- but Elizabeth's right here. "So, Samhain?" He stumbles a little on the pronunciation, and she smiles.
"I think it was a harvest festival, but it also had meaning for the dead." She pauses a moment, tapping her pen against her even, white teeth. "That was the day when the dead were closest to the living world, and could actually cross over and walk among the living." She gestures with her empty hands. "Maybe that's where the costumes came from -- if you were afraid of ghosts, it was better to look like one."
"It's about ghosts?" Ronon tries. Sateda has -- had -- a holiday to placate the dead. He remembers being young and going to the burying ground with his grandmother, her bag stuffed with pastries and honeyed tea, and the tiny baked clay statues to place on the graves. It was a fading superstition -- only old ladies seemed to buy the special food, the red ribbons to anchor the dead to the earth for another year -- but it always made sense to him. The Wraith only took those who wandered above ground.
"Well, not precisely." Elizabeth pushes her hair away from her face with both hands; she looks tired. "Not anymore, mostly. In America it's mostly about the candy and the costumes."
"Huh," Ronon says, and flicks a dreadlock over his shoulder. "And the pumpkins?"
Elizabeth smiles at him and shuffles the papers on her desk; ever the diplomat, it's as clear a dismissal as she'll give. "That, I know, is an old Irish story. I'd ask Carson."
***
Carson scowls when Ronon finds him, bent over a lab table and peering at slides. "You do know there's a difference between Ireland and Scotland?"
"Yes," Ronon says, although he doesn't really. It's all earth to him. "Elizabeth said you could tell me about jack 'o lanterns."
"Aye," Carson sighs, and pushes his microscope to the side. "It's from a folk story, right? A man named Jack strikes a deal with the Devil -- "
"Who's that again?" Ronon asks. He's heard the earthers speak of the Devil a few times. He'd thought it might be a nickname for McKay.
Carson gestures vaguely. "It's complicated -- the Prince of Evil, how's that. The opposite of all that's good in the world."
"Right," Ronon says, and he can picture the Devil, his scabrous, dead-white face twisted into a permanent sneer. "So why'd Jack trade with him?"
"I don't recall -- Jack wanted something and the Devil gave it to him, in exchange for his soul." Carson raises a hand before Ronon can speak. "But Jack was clever, and made it so that when he died, the devil couldn't let him into Hell. But they wouldn't take him in Heaven, either -- not with the Devil's claim on his soul."
"So what happened?" Carson isn't quite as good a storyteller as Ronon's sister Nemha had been; she would have pretended to be Jack, then the Devil, switching seamlessly between the faces and voices that she gave them, making them both say outrageous things.
Carson shakes his head. "Well he's stuck, isn't he? So he takes a turnip -- it's a vegetable," Carson amends at Ronon's questioning look, "and carves into a lantern. And then he wanders, looking for a place to rest, carrying his lantern, since neither Heaven nor Hell will have him."
"And that's the jack o' lantern," Ronon says flatly, because he can't believe that's what the earthers would pick to represent their holiday. Except maybe he can, given what Elizabeth said; all the meaning has been bled out of it. And Irish Jack would never have feared the Wraith, whether living or dead.
"Aye." Carson looks at him a little anxiously. "Was there something else you needed?"
"No," Ronon says over his shoulder, striding off towards the gym. He's promised to spar with Sheppard; thankfully, fighting clears his head.
***
Three days later they strike a deal with the inhabitants of PSX-472 for a hundred baskets, each as broad and deep as the length of Ronon's arm, full of something they call worta. Ronon's not sure if it's a vegetable or fruit, if grows above or below ground, but he fishes one of the fist-sized silver globes out of a nearby basket anyway. It feels firm and reassuring in his hand; he flicks an experimental finger against its rind, and it sounds hollow.
Next to him, Rodney has one of the worta shoved practically up his nose. "These smell fantastic," he says happily. "Remember that banquet? Where they had these sliced and fried with butter, and baked into pies?"
"Mmmmm," Ronon agrees, and inhales the scent of his own worta. It's a little bit like the spice the earthers call vanilla, but also something earthy and pungent, like leaves or loam. He likes it.
He approaches Sheppard as he watches the transfer of the baskets through the gate, the full ones being handed through the wormhole and the empty ones tossed back. "I want a basket of these."
Sheppard cocks an eyebrow at him. "A whole basket? Are you that hungry?"
"I don't want to eat them." He squashes the urge to fidget like a teenager, to explain what he has in mind. He doesn't really have the words anyway. Instead he stares at Sheppard until the other man shrugs.
"Sure, I don't see why not. I think we're all going to be sick of worta soon enough." Sheppard turns away to the leader of this planet, to discuss when Carson should come again to perform check-ups and tests, and Ronon goes to pick over the worta, to find the ones he wants.
That night, in his quarters, he carries the basket onto his balcony and lays his knives out in a neat row on the tile floor, smallest to largest. The planet's second moon is nearly full, washing everything in the same grey-white of the worta skin, so he can see even without the light in his room. The Atlantean's Halloween party is tonight; he can hear music and people talking, the sound wafting up from the open windows below. Sheppard had reminded him of the party as they finished the mission debrief, and asked if he planned on coming. Ronon had shrugged. "I have things to do," he'd said, and Sheppard hadn't pressed.
He sits, cross-legged, and sorts through the fruits until he finds one that's nearly perfectly round. The curved knife he used to skin game as a Runner works surprisingly well to cut a circle through the rind around the fragile stem. He lifts it away and sets it aside; the worta turn out to be mostly hollow, filled with a dry, cobwebby membrane that he can sweep away with his fingers. Sliced open, the fruit's distinctive scent is even stronger, and he's glad he's working outside, where the ocean breeze can carry some of it away. He uses the tiniest knife he owns to carve a grinning face into the worta -- slanting, mischievious eyes, a generous mouth, a hint of snub nose -- and when he's done he replaces the stem and sets it on the balcony rail.
That one, he thinks, is for Lahan.
He picks a smaller fruit for Nemha, remembering that when he'd last seen her, she'd barely reached his collarbone. His grandmother's face had been lined with age, creases from laughter around her mouth and eyes; he finds a worta that had grown crooked, wrinkled, and tries to remember what her mouth looked like when she smiled.
It gets harder as the faces get less familiar; eventually he just cuts eyes-nose-mouth, dedicating it to someone in his mind. That one for his third-term teacher, this one for the man who ran the sweet-shop around the corner, three tiny smiling faces carved for the sisters that had lived across the street, whose names he can't quite remember. When the balcony rail is full he starts arranging the lanterns in neat rows across the balcony floor. He cuts a notch in the side of each worta representing his squadron, figuring it's the closest he can come to a tattoo, and lines them up together. He debates whether he ought to carve a lantern for Kell, then throws the fruit in his hand, hard, over the railing and into the ocean. The splash it makes is small but satisfying, just like the idea of Kell wandering alone in the dark.
He's working on the second to last worta when he hears the knock at the door. "Dex?" It's Sheppard. He doesn't say anything, just keeps working, his tongue between his teeth. After a moment he hears his door slide open, Sheppard's quiet steps across the floor.
"Hey, I just thought I'd see what you were -- wow." He can sense Sheppard behind him, standing just at the balcony door. Ronon ignores him, finishes the delicate curve of Malena's mouth, and stares at it. He's not much of an artist, but he can see a little of her in the crude carved face -- her sweetness, her obstinacy. He sets it down, carefully, and rubs his worta-stained fingers hard against his hip.
"You need candles." Sheppard's voice is quiet, almost reverent.
"Yeah," Ronon agrees, and even to his own ears, his voice sounds rusty and hoarse. He thinks it should -- after all, he's been having conversations with the dead.
"I bet McKay can think of something," Sheppard says, still quiet. "I'm guessing you didn't do this for kicks?"
Ronon just shakes his head. How can he explain to Sheppard what he doesn't quite understand himself? Sheppard comes from a planet where the dead only walk once a year, where the living can't be plucked from the earth like fruit. He stares at the sea of tiny mute faces, row after row in endless circles to the very edge of the balcony. The very first lantern he carved seems to wink at him: Lahan would laugh, bright and careless, if he were here.
He hears a rustle as Sheppard crouches down just behind him. He glances back, but there's no judgment in Sheppard's dark eyes, not that he can see. "Want to tell me about them?"
And, to Ronon's surprise, he does.
"That one," he begins, and points. "That one is for my best friend from school...."