Fic: Five People Who Remember Nine Eleven
Title: Five People Who Remember Nine Eleven
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: gen
Summary: "We all need to know that those attacks did not only kill thousands of Americans, but they also hit the entire world," Dr. Peter Struck said on September 12 2001. What's the world saying today? (five OCs, in Atlantis, on September 11 2011)
A/N: This is a spontaneous Five Things fic that came to me earlier today. I'd like to include trigger warning for this, both for past real world events and for current real world events (that is, stuff that happened this year). I'm a little nervous about this story, seeing as this includes stuff a lot of people are senstive about. If I did it wrong... please tell me so and I'll improve it.
Also, this one isn't betaed because I wanted to post it today. Hope it's still okay.
Five People Who Remember Nine Eleven
„Unser tiefes Mitgefühl gilt allen, die gestern in New York oder in Washington aus ihrem friedlichen Leben in sinnlose Vernichtung gerissen worden sind. Unsere Gedanken und unsere Solidarität gehören dem amerikanischen Volk, das durch mörderische Kräfte angegriffen worden ist. Wir alle müssen wissen, dass die Angriffe nicht nur Tausende von Amerikanern getötet haben, sondern dass sie auch die gesamte Welt getroffen haben. Heute sind wir alle Amerikaner.“*
Dr. Peter Struck, in an address to the German parliament, on September 12 2001
I
When the second airplane hit the North Tower, his drill instructor was yelling at him to goddamn put on the fucking gas mask or he would never become an officer of the German Army goddammit. He’d struggled with it and when he’d managed to put it on, the battalion commander had come out on the range and told them the exercise was canceled until further notice because the Americans just had a second Pearl Harbor.
Five years later, he was fighting alongside US Army Rangers, hunting Taliban and insurgents up and down the Hindu Kush and he saw his fellow soldiers die and save his ass and he shared his rations with them and his dirty jokes. When they came back home, people were shaking their hands. When he came back home, people liked to pretend they didn’t know what he does for a living.
Ten years later he was just made a lifer and he’s still fighting alongside the Americans, this time Marines and Airmen. On the day the planes hit New York and Washington and Pennsylvania, they gather in the control room and hear Mr. Woolsey give a speech and there’s one by Colonel Sheppard, too. They stand at attention and they listen but the best part is the gathering after that. They remember and they drink and they joke around and people from all over the city come to shake their hands and thank them for their service. He thinks he never wants to go back home.
II
He saw the planes hit the Twin Towers on CNN, the images grainy and the sound sometimes unintelligible. It was in a Jordanian backyard and he was a high school kid, trying to repair his grandma’s radio. The entire day, they saw it happening, over and over again. He never finished repairing that radio.
He went to college a year later and he was trying to enjoy it. But it was MIT and it was in the US and he spoke English with an accent and couldn’t deny his Arabian heritage, even if he’d wanted to. It’s not like it was hell, except that it often was. He finished it with summa cum laude but he wishes he’d had had more friends there.
He worked all over the world, a first class radio technician, one of the best in his fields. When they offered him a position in a top secret US government program he almost hadn’t accepted it. He’s still working in it, ten years after the western world changed irrevocably and he’s glad about it. He still doesn’t know what to say when people start talking about the attacks but here in this city, they listen to him anyway. And no one ever made him wish he wore the passport of a different country.
III
It was around 11 pm when she saw the first pictures of the attack. It was a spring day in Broken Hill, New South Wales and a week day, and she’d just returned from a 36 hour shift on the Flying Doctors Service plane. She’d just wanted to unwind in front of the TV for a couple of minutes and then go to bed. She’d watched for two hours until she passed out from sheer exhaustion.
The next day, the hospital was abuzz with rumor and speculation and she just couldn’t get all those firefighters and those cops and most of all the paramedics out of her head. It was so very far away and much too close to home. She’d tried to reach her best friend from nursing school who’d decided to spent a year in New York as a paramedic and she still remembers the panic rising and rising until she finally got her on the phone twelve hours later, too exhausted to string two coherent sentences together.
It was that friend who recommended her to the Stargate program for the Atlantis expedition because she just didn’t want to go herself, having had enough mass casualties for the rest of her entire life on that day. To her, that friend is the Nine Eleven victim that she knows and when they gather in the control room to commemorate its tenth anniversary, it’s that friend whom she silently prays for.
IV
She’d been a diplomat in the service of His Majesty the King of Norway for six years when they saw CNN reporting live from New York and Washington, D.C. in the Norwegian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. She’d had a first class education, a doctorate in political science and one in philosophy and she was fast tracked for a career in the corps diplomatique. But she couldn’t understand what was going on.
She’d been a diplomat for 16 years in the service of His Majesty the King of Norway and a diplomat for five years in the service of the IOA when a bomb exploded in Oslo and Anders Breivik killed children on Utoya and she’d been home on leave in Lillehammer. She’d seen a giant laser beam destroying Atlantis and she’d seen a city flying through space in another galaxy. But she couldn’t understand what was going on in her home country.
Only a couple of months later, she’s back in Atlantis and they’re commemorating the first event she ever couldn’t understand or explain and she can’t help thinking back to the second as well, still so fresh. She’s glad she’s here because she feels safe here. Safer than she’ll ever feel on her home planet again.
V
September 11 2001 was a nice sunny day in New York. It was a Tuesday and she’d just started her PhD in theoretical physics at Columbia University a couple of days ago. She’d been there impossible early, as always and she’d been nursing her second cup of coffee that day, trying to get some order in her notes when all of that became irrelevant.
For three years afterwards, nothing was relevant except the fact that her brother had been on the 102nd floor of the South Tower, in a meeting and that his last message was “There’s smoke here and it’s unbearably hot. I don’t think I’ll make it out of here. Love you all!”
Then something must have snapped and she stopped mourning and started to do what he always wanted her to do and started working on that PhD again and it brought her to a new galaxy and she’s grateful for that. Before today, ten years after the day when everything stopped making sense, rolled around she thought she’d maybe break again but instead she’s talking and crying and laughing with the people in her quarters, long after the official commemoration ended. Hannes Böhm, Fayid Emra, Sarah MacMillan, Lina Westgaard. They’re the people the city has given her, as friends, as partners, as a team. They’re the people she wouldn’t have met, if she hadn’t decided to honor her brother’s memory, after all. She couldn’t do without them.
*“Our deepest sympathy goes to everyone in New York and Washington who was torn from their peaceful lives into meaningless destruction yesterday. Our thoughts and our solidarity belong to the American people who were attacked by murderous forces. We all need to know that those attacks did not only kill thousands of Americans, but they also hit the entire world. Today, we’re all Americans.”
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: gen
Summary: "We all need to know that those attacks did not only kill thousands of Americans, but they also hit the entire world," Dr. Peter Struck said on September 12 2001. What's the world saying today? (five OCs, in Atlantis, on September 11 2011)
A/N: This is a spontaneous Five Things fic that came to me earlier today. I'd like to include trigger warning for this, both for past real world events and for current real world events (that is, stuff that happened this year). I'm a little nervous about this story, seeing as this includes stuff a lot of people are senstive about. If I did it wrong... please tell me so and I'll improve it.
Also, this one isn't betaed because I wanted to post it today. Hope it's still okay.
Five People Who Remember Nine Eleven
„Unser tiefes Mitgefühl gilt allen, die gestern in New York oder in Washington aus ihrem friedlichen Leben in sinnlose Vernichtung gerissen worden sind. Unsere Gedanken und unsere Solidarität gehören dem amerikanischen Volk, das durch mörderische Kräfte angegriffen worden ist. Wir alle müssen wissen, dass die Angriffe nicht nur Tausende von Amerikanern getötet haben, sondern dass sie auch die gesamte Welt getroffen haben. Heute sind wir alle Amerikaner.“*
Dr. Peter Struck, in an address to the German parliament, on September 12 2001
I
When the second airplane hit the North Tower, his drill instructor was yelling at him to goddamn put on the fucking gas mask or he would never become an officer of the German Army goddammit. He’d struggled with it and when he’d managed to put it on, the battalion commander had come out on the range and told them the exercise was canceled until further notice because the Americans just had a second Pearl Harbor.
Five years later, he was fighting alongside US Army Rangers, hunting Taliban and insurgents up and down the Hindu Kush and he saw his fellow soldiers die and save his ass and he shared his rations with them and his dirty jokes. When they came back home, people were shaking their hands. When he came back home, people liked to pretend they didn’t know what he does for a living.
Ten years later he was just made a lifer and he’s still fighting alongside the Americans, this time Marines and Airmen. On the day the planes hit New York and Washington and Pennsylvania, they gather in the control room and hear Mr. Woolsey give a speech and there’s one by Colonel Sheppard, too. They stand at attention and they listen but the best part is the gathering after that. They remember and they drink and they joke around and people from all over the city come to shake their hands and thank them for their service. He thinks he never wants to go back home.
II
He saw the planes hit the Twin Towers on CNN, the images grainy and the sound sometimes unintelligible. It was in a Jordanian backyard and he was a high school kid, trying to repair his grandma’s radio. The entire day, they saw it happening, over and over again. He never finished repairing that radio.
He went to college a year later and he was trying to enjoy it. But it was MIT and it was in the US and he spoke English with an accent and couldn’t deny his Arabian heritage, even if he’d wanted to. It’s not like it was hell, except that it often was. He finished it with summa cum laude but he wishes he’d had had more friends there.
He worked all over the world, a first class radio technician, one of the best in his fields. When they offered him a position in a top secret US government program he almost hadn’t accepted it. He’s still working in it, ten years after the western world changed irrevocably and he’s glad about it. He still doesn’t know what to say when people start talking about the attacks but here in this city, they listen to him anyway. And no one ever made him wish he wore the passport of a different country.
III
It was around 11 pm when she saw the first pictures of the attack. It was a spring day in Broken Hill, New South Wales and a week day, and she’d just returned from a 36 hour shift on the Flying Doctors Service plane. She’d just wanted to unwind in front of the TV for a couple of minutes and then go to bed. She’d watched for two hours until she passed out from sheer exhaustion.
The next day, the hospital was abuzz with rumor and speculation and she just couldn’t get all those firefighters and those cops and most of all the paramedics out of her head. It was so very far away and much too close to home. She’d tried to reach her best friend from nursing school who’d decided to spent a year in New York as a paramedic and she still remembers the panic rising and rising until she finally got her on the phone twelve hours later, too exhausted to string two coherent sentences together.
It was that friend who recommended her to the Stargate program for the Atlantis expedition because she just didn’t want to go herself, having had enough mass casualties for the rest of her entire life on that day. To her, that friend is the Nine Eleven victim that she knows and when they gather in the control room to commemorate its tenth anniversary, it’s that friend whom she silently prays for.
IV
She’d been a diplomat in the service of His Majesty the King of Norway for six years when they saw CNN reporting live from New York and Washington, D.C. in the Norwegian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. She’d had a first class education, a doctorate in political science and one in philosophy and she was fast tracked for a career in the corps diplomatique. But she couldn’t understand what was going on.
She’d been a diplomat for 16 years in the service of His Majesty the King of Norway and a diplomat for five years in the service of the IOA when a bomb exploded in Oslo and Anders Breivik killed children on Utoya and she’d been home on leave in Lillehammer. She’d seen a giant laser beam destroying Atlantis and she’d seen a city flying through space in another galaxy. But she couldn’t understand what was going on in her home country.
Only a couple of months later, she’s back in Atlantis and they’re commemorating the first event she ever couldn’t understand or explain and she can’t help thinking back to the second as well, still so fresh. She’s glad she’s here because she feels safe here. Safer than she’ll ever feel on her home planet again.
V
September 11 2001 was a nice sunny day in New York. It was a Tuesday and she’d just started her PhD in theoretical physics at Columbia University a couple of days ago. She’d been there impossible early, as always and she’d been nursing her second cup of coffee that day, trying to get some order in her notes when all of that became irrelevant.
For three years afterwards, nothing was relevant except the fact that her brother had been on the 102nd floor of the South Tower, in a meeting and that his last message was “There’s smoke here and it’s unbearably hot. I don’t think I’ll make it out of here. Love you all!”
Then something must have snapped and she stopped mourning and started to do what he always wanted her to do and started working on that PhD again and it brought her to a new galaxy and she’s grateful for that. Before today, ten years after the day when everything stopped making sense, rolled around she thought she’d maybe break again but instead she’s talking and crying and laughing with the people in her quarters, long after the official commemoration ended. Hannes Böhm, Fayid Emra, Sarah MacMillan, Lina Westgaard. They’re the people the city has given her, as friends, as partners, as a team. They’re the people she wouldn’t have met, if she hadn’t decided to honor her brother’s memory, after all. She couldn’t do without them.
*“Our deepest sympathy goes to everyone in New York and Washington who was torn from their peaceful lives into meaningless destruction yesterday. Our thoughts and our solidarity belong to the American people who were attacked by murderous forces. We all need to know that those attacks did not only kill thousands of Americans, but they also hit the entire world. Today, we’re all Americans.”