Fic: Woman's Voice: Well Behaved Women (2/?)
Title: Well Behaved Women
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, friendship
Summary: Sergeant Dusty Mehra isn't in the mood for some all women ritual stuff. But it doesn't look as if she has a choice.
A/N: OMG, I totally forgot to post this on LJ when I posted it on ff.net *head desks Anyway... this is the second challenge piece, and this time the topic was memory. Also, because I am stupid and conceited that way and didn't think it was enough, I added a challenge just from myself to me to make it my first ever Bechdel test fic. I hope I succeded in that one. And no, I didn't win this challenge either on that forum... but currently, the entire forum is out of commission... I think I got the better deal in the end. As always, the lovely and wonderful mackenziesmomma betaed this and made me add a language warning, just because Dusty talks like any regular Marine. Tsk. (but seriously, Dusty talks like a goddamn fucking Marine and she really doesn't care who hears her, so if you're delicate that way... maybe stay away from this fic... I mean it... someone on that forum actually thanked me for the language warning and proceeded not to read it... and that was a German forum). Okay. I think I'll stop talking now.
PS.: scherryzade please don't kill me for that last paragraph? Um? It's a hommage to you!
( Private Consultation )
Well Behaved Women
“Well behaved women rarely made history.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
And it’s another alien harvest festival. Somehow she hopes it’ll involve drugs because she could do with some now. In fact, she could do with a lot of them for quite a while. Ever since Captain Vega died, to be precise.
So Captain Vega wasn’t the first fellow soldier on one of the teams she was on who bought it. Captain Vega wasn’t even the first friend - it never mattered to her what she called her friends, not even when she calls them ‘ma’am” most of the time - to have bought it on her watch. But there’s something about the death of the Cap that makes her fucking furious, even though it’s been a couple of months now and they got a replacement.
Johanson is pretty much okay, for a medic and a Zoomie and she doesn’t lay any blame on the LT… but she does on all those people who keep spreading nasty rumors about the late Cap and about her team leader Major Teldy - toughest bitch of a Zoomie she’s ever seen, and that’s a big fucking compliment - and even good Dr. Porter. It’s not the rumors about herself so much, seeing as she’s used to people exchanging exciting bits of crap about her. Has always been, even before she joined the Corps, actually.
There’s nasty stuff flying around about Vega and Teldy and Porter as well though - and she’s pretty sure she’s heard some people bullshitting about their medic and some Colonel from a previous posting as well - and that’s what gets to her. They’re her team, dammit, and nobody talks shit about her team.
It’s all about them all being women and getting another woman on the team, even after the experiment - what experiment, she wants to ask the idiots and then cite to them every bit of hundreds of pages, both official and not really official about the Lioness program in fucking Iraq and the development of a similar program in Afghanistan - obviously failed and some crap about Vega having been a lesbian.
She was, of course, but she wonders what that’s got to do with the way she met her maker or the way she fought side by side with them through every stupid backwater planet shithole they came across under orders from the Atlantis brass. Seriously, some people… she’d like to shake her head now but the ceremony they were forced to attend with a couple of other Atlantis women is about to start and she’s pretty sure Teldy would have her ass if she caught her showing her private feelings on a job.
So she does away with the head shaking and the eye rolling and even discretely had disposed of the ever present chewing gum a while back and she awaits what’s going to happen now. The society they came across is somehow a part time matriarchy of some sorts and they’re here to celebrate some kind of exclusively women event with the locals, having been invited over food talks, or at least that’s what she remembers about the mission specs.
Right now, the moonlight is shining down and giving an eerie glow to the scene; about ten or fifteen women, both from Atlantis and locals, standing around in a circle in a clearing. She feels uneasy but not because of the moonlight. They had to leave their firearms behind and damn, she wants her P90 and her Beretta back. Actually, she feels only half human without them, having been drilled to never ever walk around without her weapons all through boot camp to all the survival missions various members of the Atlantis command stuff had and probably will have in store for the grunts.
One of the local women now steps forward and says, “Now is the moment we have come here for. I would like to ask everyone of you to step forward, one by one and give us the name of a woman. It can be a friend or a mentor or a very important ancestor; it does not matter who it is, as long as it is someone that has deeply impressed you or has been very important for your life. We will honor them by speaking their name here so they will never be forgotten, dead or alive.”
Well, she thinks, that sounds like a nice idea, actually. Certainly better than talking crap about soldiers that got KIA. She’s got no idea what to say but it’s gonna come to her, she’s pretty sure about that. She’s also still some time left, seeing as the round started from left of the local woman and there are a couple of girls between them. First the locals start with foreign sounding names… but she’s surprised to hear that there’s an “Elizabeth Weir” among them. She only came here a couple of months ago but the admiration and respect with which the people in the city who’ve known her speak of her talks enough to tell she must have been a kick-ass leader.
And the round goes on.
“Christa McAuliffe,” Daria Lewis, one of the New Zealanders says solemnly and she wonders why it’s a Kiwi who says that but yeah, that doesn’t really matter anything, seeing as they saw the Challenger explode all over the world and to be touched by the crew’s fate you didn’t necessarily have to be a citizen of the US of A.
Then Antje Dammhagen, one of the couple of Germans in the city steps forward. “Rosa Luxemburg,” the German says and she thinks she remembers reading somewhere in school or something that Luxemburg was one of those early German commies who wrote impossibly long and boring tractates with a fucking scary load of truth in it.
There’s Captain Lavrentya Omashevskaya stepping up now, proudly announcing, “Valentina Tereshkova,” and she remembers that one from reading up on cosmonauts or whatever the Russians call their astronauts in boot camp because she was so bored that comics just wouldn’t cut it and being genuinely in awe of the first woman in space. It’s a good choice, she thinks, making a mental note to congratulate Omashevskaya on it later.
After a couple of other prominent and private ancestors, mentors, friends and whatnot it’s finally her turn and she kind of still hasn’t made up her mind but there’s a name there anyway and feels right in some inexplicable way so she steps up and throws in her lot with, “Captain Alicia Vega.”
Porter and Teldy suddenly come forward as well, both at the same time and they echo her with saying, “Captain Alicia Vega.” She doesn’t look at them but she doesn’t need to anyway; to know that they have the same expression of defiance and pride and respect on their faces that she has. Fuck yeah, the Cap deserved that and so much more.
Johanson is next, and she gives the LT credit for not letting them see anything she might have felt about her team’s pledge of allegiance to a dead soldier… the one she replaced. When she steps forward, the name she says is, “Dr. Lisa Park,” with a kind of lingering sadness along the steadfast calmness or something and she wonders who that was and what happened to her. Maybe she’ll ask the LT about it someday.
But anyway, when they’re done there’s a feast and hey, free food, so why not go and have a bite of it since they’re already here and everything. They even get their firearms back which makes her feel infinitely more at ease. Enough that she can have a good time with her team, cracking stupid Marine jokes that make even Teldy and the LT laugh, have a tremendously fun conversation with Omashevskaya on the Russian space program - the bits she’s allowed to talk about anyway - and generally relax for the first time after that shithole planet with Michael’s eyeless wonders.
Vega, she thinks, would have loved it and when they - the LT included because they’re a team now and that’s enough - raise a private toast to the Cap she thinks coming here maybe wasn’t such a crappy idea after all.
Actually… actually she thinks that it feels fucking good to be here, among people… women who just understand and yeah, maybe Teldy should do the female service members and off-world personnel round table thing after all. She’s not that much about female soldiers and the whole feminism thing but… just talking among the girls sure would be a nice alternative to hanging around with those shit talking dickheads in the Marine common rooms every evening. Yeah… it definitely would.
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, friendship
Summary: Sergeant Dusty Mehra isn't in the mood for some all women ritual stuff. But it doesn't look as if she has a choice.
A/N: OMG, I totally forgot to post this on LJ when I posted it on ff.net *head desks Anyway... this is the second challenge piece, and this time the topic was memory. Also, because I am stupid and conceited that way and didn't think it was enough, I added a challenge just from myself to me to make it my first ever Bechdel test fic. I hope I succeded in that one. And no, I didn't win this challenge either on that forum... but currently, the entire forum is out of commission... I think I got the better deal in the end. As always, the lovely and wonderful mackenziesmomma betaed this and made me add a language warning, just because Dusty talks like any regular Marine. Tsk. (but seriously, Dusty talks like a goddamn fucking Marine and she really doesn't care who hears her, so if you're delicate that way... maybe stay away from this fic... I mean it... someone on that forum actually thanked me for the language warning and proceeded not to read it... and that was a German forum). Okay. I think I'll stop talking now.
PS.: scherryzade please don't kill me for that last paragraph? Um? It's a hommage to you!
( Private Consultation )
Well Behaved Women
“Well behaved women rarely made history.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
And it’s another alien harvest festival. Somehow she hopes it’ll involve drugs because she could do with some now. In fact, she could do with a lot of them for quite a while. Ever since Captain Vega died, to be precise.
So Captain Vega wasn’t the first fellow soldier on one of the teams she was on who bought it. Captain Vega wasn’t even the first friend - it never mattered to her what she called her friends, not even when she calls them ‘ma’am” most of the time - to have bought it on her watch. But there’s something about the death of the Cap that makes her fucking furious, even though it’s been a couple of months now and they got a replacement.
Johanson is pretty much okay, for a medic and a Zoomie and she doesn’t lay any blame on the LT… but she does on all those people who keep spreading nasty rumors about the late Cap and about her team leader Major Teldy - toughest bitch of a Zoomie she’s ever seen, and that’s a big fucking compliment - and even good Dr. Porter. It’s not the rumors about herself so much, seeing as she’s used to people exchanging exciting bits of crap about her. Has always been, even before she joined the Corps, actually.
There’s nasty stuff flying around about Vega and Teldy and Porter as well though - and she’s pretty sure she’s heard some people bullshitting about their medic and some Colonel from a previous posting as well - and that’s what gets to her. They’re her team, dammit, and nobody talks shit about her team.
It’s all about them all being women and getting another woman on the team, even after the experiment - what experiment, she wants to ask the idiots and then cite to them every bit of hundreds of pages, both official and not really official about the Lioness program in fucking Iraq and the development of a similar program in Afghanistan - obviously failed and some crap about Vega having been a lesbian.
She was, of course, but she wonders what that’s got to do with the way she met her maker or the way she fought side by side with them through every stupid backwater planet shithole they came across under orders from the Atlantis brass. Seriously, some people… she’d like to shake her head now but the ceremony they were forced to attend with a couple of other Atlantis women is about to start and she’s pretty sure Teldy would have her ass if she caught her showing her private feelings on a job.
So she does away with the head shaking and the eye rolling and even discretely had disposed of the ever present chewing gum a while back and she awaits what’s going to happen now. The society they came across is somehow a part time matriarchy of some sorts and they’re here to celebrate some kind of exclusively women event with the locals, having been invited over food talks, or at least that’s what she remembers about the mission specs.
Right now, the moonlight is shining down and giving an eerie glow to the scene; about ten or fifteen women, both from Atlantis and locals, standing around in a circle in a clearing. She feels uneasy but not because of the moonlight. They had to leave their firearms behind and damn, she wants her P90 and her Beretta back. Actually, she feels only half human without them, having been drilled to never ever walk around without her weapons all through boot camp to all the survival missions various members of the Atlantis command stuff had and probably will have in store for the grunts.
One of the local women now steps forward and says, “Now is the moment we have come here for. I would like to ask everyone of you to step forward, one by one and give us the name of a woman. It can be a friend or a mentor or a very important ancestor; it does not matter who it is, as long as it is someone that has deeply impressed you or has been very important for your life. We will honor them by speaking their name here so they will never be forgotten, dead or alive.”
Well, she thinks, that sounds like a nice idea, actually. Certainly better than talking crap about soldiers that got KIA. She’s got no idea what to say but it’s gonna come to her, she’s pretty sure about that. She’s also still some time left, seeing as the round started from left of the local woman and there are a couple of girls between them. First the locals start with foreign sounding names… but she’s surprised to hear that there’s an “Elizabeth Weir” among them. She only came here a couple of months ago but the admiration and respect with which the people in the city who’ve known her speak of her talks enough to tell she must have been a kick-ass leader.
And the round goes on.
“Christa McAuliffe,” Daria Lewis, one of the New Zealanders says solemnly and she wonders why it’s a Kiwi who says that but yeah, that doesn’t really matter anything, seeing as they saw the Challenger explode all over the world and to be touched by the crew’s fate you didn’t necessarily have to be a citizen of the US of A.
Then Antje Dammhagen, one of the couple of Germans in the city steps forward. “Rosa Luxemburg,” the German says and she thinks she remembers reading somewhere in school or something that Luxemburg was one of those early German commies who wrote impossibly long and boring tractates with a fucking scary load of truth in it.
There’s Captain Lavrentya Omashevskaya stepping up now, proudly announcing, “Valentina Tereshkova,” and she remembers that one from reading up on cosmonauts or whatever the Russians call their astronauts in boot camp because she was so bored that comics just wouldn’t cut it and being genuinely in awe of the first woman in space. It’s a good choice, she thinks, making a mental note to congratulate Omashevskaya on it later.
After a couple of other prominent and private ancestors, mentors, friends and whatnot it’s finally her turn and she kind of still hasn’t made up her mind but there’s a name there anyway and feels right in some inexplicable way so she steps up and throws in her lot with, “Captain Alicia Vega.”
Porter and Teldy suddenly come forward as well, both at the same time and they echo her with saying, “Captain Alicia Vega.” She doesn’t look at them but she doesn’t need to anyway; to know that they have the same expression of defiance and pride and respect on their faces that she has. Fuck yeah, the Cap deserved that and so much more.
Johanson is next, and she gives the LT credit for not letting them see anything she might have felt about her team’s pledge of allegiance to a dead soldier… the one she replaced. When she steps forward, the name she says is, “Dr. Lisa Park,” with a kind of lingering sadness along the steadfast calmness or something and she wonders who that was and what happened to her. Maybe she’ll ask the LT about it someday.
But anyway, when they’re done there’s a feast and hey, free food, so why not go and have a bite of it since they’re already here and everything. They even get their firearms back which makes her feel infinitely more at ease. Enough that she can have a good time with her team, cracking stupid Marine jokes that make even Teldy and the LT laugh, have a tremendously fun conversation with Omashevskaya on the Russian space program - the bits she’s allowed to talk about anyway - and generally relax for the first time after that shithole planet with Michael’s eyeless wonders.
Vega, she thinks, would have loved it and when they - the LT included because they’re a team now and that’s enough - raise a private toast to the Cap she thinks coming here maybe wasn’t such a crappy idea after all.
Actually… actually she thinks that it feels fucking good to be here, among people… women who just understand and yeah, maybe Teldy should do the female service members and off-world personnel round table thing after all. She’s not that much about female soldiers and the whole feminism thing but… just talking among the girls sure would be a nice alternative to hanging around with those shit talking dickheads in the Marine common rooms every evening. Yeah… it definitely would.