Fic: Rewind
Title: Rewind
Fandom: SGU
Pairing: Rush/Young
Rating: R (to be safe)
Warnings: um…death of alien bad guys? Wibbly wobbly timey whimey? WIP?
Notes: THIS is the sequel to 28800, but it is not finished. I have no idea how long this is gonna take. Just…you know…fyi. Amnesty fill for the wild card square on my hc_bingo card - I chose to use “experiments by evil scientists”. Take from that what you will. ;)
Summary: Being back on Destiny is like taking a trip through time. That doesn't mean everything's fixed.
They’re advancing on him. They can’t see him, but they know he’s there. All it’ll take is for one of them to look up, and….
Young shoots twice. Headshots, he hopes. He waits.
Nothing.
When he thinks enough time has passed, he climbs out of the tree.
He trades knife for gun as he steps closer to the bodies. He doesn’t like it; he has to get too close to use the knife.
The aliens are small but strong. Just one of them was able to pick him up and sling through to…to here. Wherever he is.
He searches them. They have what looks like rope, a striker, and something he thinks might be canteens. He takes them all. By his count he’s been here a month, at least. Maybe longer.
Rush flinched at every noise, but he didn’t comment when Young snuck into his room.
Young didn’t always sneak in - sometimes he started out the night there, sometimes Rush came and got him. When he did sneak in, Rush was always curled up on the floor, and he never turned him away.
There’s no talking involved. They just hold on to each other, and there’s always too much noise - the ship, their breathing, their hearts - but it’s always just quiet enough, just familiar enough, to work.
He keeps expecting Rush to push him away, and Rush always surprises him by letting him stick around.
Young pauses in skinning one of the lemur-things. Its heart isn’t beating, but its eyes…its eyes were following him.
Disturbed, he tries to cut the head off. What stops him isn’t bone, but wiring. Wiring. God, the entire thing was….
The more flesh he peels back, the more technology he sees. There were fucking computer chips of some kind tucked into its stomach.
Young stumbles away to puke. When his intestines are done trying to climb out his mouth, he turns back to the carcass.
There’s no way he was going to eat that. He buries it instead.
He goes on a few missions - never long ones. The desert planet is fine, quiet. He sticks close to the gate, catches a lizard, waits for his team to find the mineral they need. It’s pretty flat; no place for the enemy to hide. His team comes back okay. He lets the lizard go.
The jungle planet is hard. It’s raining - no, not just raining, storming. It almost drives him back to the ship but he sticks it out.
They came for food, but the rain makes it hard to see. They take the opportunity to gather water. Scott spends an inordinate amount of time in the wet, deliberately walking through puddles and the streams of water that cascade down. It’s strange, but Young flinches at each flash of lightening, so he figures he doesn’t have room to criticize.
It’s nice to be among trees again. He climbs a few; it’s hard when it’s wet, but he’s done it before. Rush was better - lighter, better knees - but Young had a few months on him. He figures he was lucky that he never broke any bones, wonders whether the toad aliens had anything to do with it, whether they would have fixed him or had fixed him already. He tries not to think too much about it.
He gets odd looks, concerned looks, but no one says anything. Scott takes the cut branch without a word.
It occurs to him - when they’re back on Destiny, with the fruit and water and a couple of small unlucky animals, dripping everywhere, Scott miraculously less wet than everyone else - it occurs to Young then, that maybe climbing alien trees in the rain is a stupid idea. He’s spent so much time climbing trees these last years - no, those few hours - that it seems natural to him.
Young expects Rush to call him an idiot, but all Rush does is sneer at the fruit. “Pitiful.”
Young sighs. “You do it next time, since you’re so much better than me.” He shakes his wet hair out of his eyes; Rush makes a face and steps out of range.
When they manage to get across the species of alien they’re dealing with - the ones who look like toads, the ones they’ve encountered before - Scott gets fidgety. He nods steadily through the rest of their explanation, and under the guise of thinking disappears around a corner. When he comes back, he’s rubbing the back of his head and wincing, but he looks a lot calmer. Rush gives him a look that he ignores.
Scott asks if they can read his lips. Young shrugs, Rush says yes. Scott sends Eli off with a kino remote to open the gate, then asks if they have anything that might muffle the sound. Rush gestures towards the hat he’d made.
Scott takes a second look at their improvised winter gear. Young thinks he’s finally starting to grasp how fast time is moving in the rift.
Rush suggests they take a few plants with them, things they can grow in the hydroponics lab. He has to mouth hydroponics a few times to get it across. Scott taps his watch and shrugs. His first priority is to get them back on the Destiny.
They check their gear on more time - food, hides, canteens, the pieces of the sled which they’d split between them. Then, with a final glance at each other, they step into real-time.
They both jump when someone knocks on Rush’s door.
“Dr. Rush? You’re needed in the control room.” The woman knocks again, once, before the door opens.
Lt. Scott doesn’t look surprised to see them on the floor. “Sir, a representative from Homeworld Command is waiting for you in the stone room.” He has a canteen in one hand - one they brought with them from Earth. He hadn’t shied away from handling the alien canteens, but he was careful never to use one.
To Young, and to Rush, it had been more than three years since his time in an alien lab. To Scott, it had only been a matter of weeks.
Rush sighs and Young nods his agreement.
The woman is gone, but Scott doesn’t leave until both of them are on their way.
TJ doesn’t have much in the way of sedatives to spare, but she uses them that first night, when just sitting quietly in the infirmary is a trial. Young isn’t quite sure how they made it to the infirmary in the first place.
In his dreams he’s haunted by flashing lights.
On earth, it would be much longer before Young returned to active duty, but on Destiny they couldn’t afford it. As soon as TJ was sure they could handle it they were on light duty. With Rush that meant jack shit; he re-familiarized himself with Destiny’s systems, spent a lot of time swatting his team away. For Young, that meant mostly administrative things, discussing resources with Wray - who didn’t bat an eye when he switched back and forth between signing and talking - and Rush if they could find him, yawning through bridge duty, and doing a lot of what amounted to sitting on his ass.
Eventually they all agreed he and Rush could go on missions every once in a while, but the stretch of time leading up to that was dull.
Sleep was difficult. For a while, he didn’t sleep so much as periodically pass out in his bed. He was awake until his body forced him to rest, and then the cycle began again. It was cold, the bed was too soft, little noises kept him awake, and if he was honest with himself, he knew that he’d grown used to feeling Rush’s heartbeat beneath his hands.
One night he got tired of it and snuck into Rush’s room. He slept better after that.
Next
Fandom: SGU
Pairing: Rush/Young
Rating: R (to be safe)
Warnings: um…death of alien bad guys? Wibbly wobbly timey whimey? WIP?
Notes: THIS is the sequel to 28800, but it is not finished. I have no idea how long this is gonna take. Just…you know…fyi. Amnesty fill for the wild card square on my hc_bingo card - I chose to use “experiments by evil scientists”. Take from that what you will. ;)
Summary: Being back on Destiny is like taking a trip through time. That doesn't mean everything's fixed.
They’re advancing on him. They can’t see him, but they know he’s there. All it’ll take is for one of them to look up, and….
Young shoots twice. Headshots, he hopes. He waits.
Nothing.
When he thinks enough time has passed, he climbs out of the tree.
He trades knife for gun as he steps closer to the bodies. He doesn’t like it; he has to get too close to use the knife.
The aliens are small but strong. Just one of them was able to pick him up and sling through to…to here. Wherever he is.
He searches them. They have what looks like rope, a striker, and something he thinks might be canteens. He takes them all. By his count he’s been here a month, at least. Maybe longer.
Rush flinched at every noise, but he didn’t comment when Young snuck into his room.
Young didn’t always sneak in - sometimes he started out the night there, sometimes Rush came and got him. When he did sneak in, Rush was always curled up on the floor, and he never turned him away.
There’s no talking involved. They just hold on to each other, and there’s always too much noise - the ship, their breathing, their hearts - but it’s always just quiet enough, just familiar enough, to work.
He keeps expecting Rush to push him away, and Rush always surprises him by letting him stick around.
Young pauses in skinning one of the lemur-things. Its heart isn’t beating, but its eyes…its eyes were following him.
Disturbed, he tries to cut the head off. What stops him isn’t bone, but wiring. Wiring. God, the entire thing was….
The more flesh he peels back, the more technology he sees. There were fucking computer chips of some kind tucked into its stomach.
Young stumbles away to puke. When his intestines are done trying to climb out his mouth, he turns back to the carcass.
There’s no way he was going to eat that. He buries it instead.
He goes on a few missions - never long ones. The desert planet is fine, quiet. He sticks close to the gate, catches a lizard, waits for his team to find the mineral they need. It’s pretty flat; no place for the enemy to hide. His team comes back okay. He lets the lizard go.
The jungle planet is hard. It’s raining - no, not just raining, storming. It almost drives him back to the ship but he sticks it out.
They came for food, but the rain makes it hard to see. They take the opportunity to gather water. Scott spends an inordinate amount of time in the wet, deliberately walking through puddles and the streams of water that cascade down. It’s strange, but Young flinches at each flash of lightening, so he figures he doesn’t have room to criticize.
It’s nice to be among trees again. He climbs a few; it’s hard when it’s wet, but he’s done it before. Rush was better - lighter, better knees - but Young had a few months on him. He figures he was lucky that he never broke any bones, wonders whether the toad aliens had anything to do with it, whether they would have fixed him or had fixed him already. He tries not to think too much about it.
He gets odd looks, concerned looks, but no one says anything. Scott takes the cut branch without a word.
It occurs to him - when they’re back on Destiny, with the fruit and water and a couple of small unlucky animals, dripping everywhere, Scott miraculously less wet than everyone else - it occurs to Young then, that maybe climbing alien trees in the rain is a stupid idea. He’s spent so much time climbing trees these last years - no, those few hours - that it seems natural to him.
Young expects Rush to call him an idiot, but all Rush does is sneer at the fruit. “Pitiful.”
Young sighs. “You do it next time, since you’re so much better than me.” He shakes his wet hair out of his eyes; Rush makes a face and steps out of range.
When they manage to get across the species of alien they’re dealing with - the ones who look like toads, the ones they’ve encountered before - Scott gets fidgety. He nods steadily through the rest of their explanation, and under the guise of thinking disappears around a corner. When he comes back, he’s rubbing the back of his head and wincing, but he looks a lot calmer. Rush gives him a look that he ignores.
Scott asks if they can read his lips. Young shrugs, Rush says yes. Scott sends Eli off with a kino remote to open the gate, then asks if they have anything that might muffle the sound. Rush gestures towards the hat he’d made.
Scott takes a second look at their improvised winter gear. Young thinks he’s finally starting to grasp how fast time is moving in the rift.
Rush suggests they take a few plants with them, things they can grow in the hydroponics lab. He has to mouth hydroponics a few times to get it across. Scott taps his watch and shrugs. His first priority is to get them back on the Destiny.
They check their gear on more time - food, hides, canteens, the pieces of the sled which they’d split between them. Then, with a final glance at each other, they step into real-time.
They both jump when someone knocks on Rush’s door.
“Dr. Rush? You’re needed in the control room.” The woman knocks again, once, before the door opens.
Lt. Scott doesn’t look surprised to see them on the floor. “Sir, a representative from Homeworld Command is waiting for you in the stone room.” He has a canteen in one hand - one they brought with them from Earth. He hadn’t shied away from handling the alien canteens, but he was careful never to use one.
To Young, and to Rush, it had been more than three years since his time in an alien lab. To Scott, it had only been a matter of weeks.
Rush sighs and Young nods his agreement.
The woman is gone, but Scott doesn’t leave until both of them are on their way.
TJ doesn’t have much in the way of sedatives to spare, but she uses them that first night, when just sitting quietly in the infirmary is a trial. Young isn’t quite sure how they made it to the infirmary in the first place.
In his dreams he’s haunted by flashing lights.
On earth, it would be much longer before Young returned to active duty, but on Destiny they couldn’t afford it. As soon as TJ was sure they could handle it they were on light duty. With Rush that meant jack shit; he re-familiarized himself with Destiny’s systems, spent a lot of time swatting his team away. For Young, that meant mostly administrative things, discussing resources with Wray - who didn’t bat an eye when he switched back and forth between signing and talking - and Rush if they could find him, yawning through bridge duty, and doing a lot of what amounted to sitting on his ass.
Eventually they all agreed he and Rush could go on missions every once in a while, but the stretch of time leading up to that was dull.
Sleep was difficult. For a while, he didn’t sleep so much as periodically pass out in his bed. He was awake until his body forced him to rest, and then the cycle began again. It was cold, the bed was too soft, little noises kept him awake, and if he was honest with himself, he knew that he’d grown used to feeling Rush’s heartbeat beneath his hands.
One night he got tired of it and snuck into Rush’s room. He slept better after that.
Next