FanFic100: #020 Colorless
That one she really likes best. The colors are perfect - expressive, vivid, but always well-placed and well-dosed. She knows he took very long to perfect it, really took his time with it. It had cost him a lot of patience - babies aren’t exactly easy models - but he’d never lost his nerve with Torren, even when Teyla nearly had. She’d been there most of the sessions they’d had and just once she had been able to reign in her restless energy and just sit on the sidelines, content to watch how he had wrestled with the right perspective, the right position, the right colors.
Almost unconsciously, her fingers trace the roughness of the oil paint against the canvas, a relief all in its own. She remembers how happy and how proud he’d been when he had finished this one. It’s not really big, but little Torren looks great on it. She could sit here for hours and hours and look at this picture, although she knows she really shouldn’t pass time in his quarters.
She’s been here much too often in the last few days… over a week now. For a short moment she squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to think about the reason why she’s coming to his quarters again and again, although she knows she shouldn’t. Instead, she puts the painting away and takes up his sketchbook.
Her gaze falls on a sketch of one of the mainland’s beaches, his next project. He’d said after Torren he’d wanted to do something that didn’t move… or at least didn’t move quite that often and unpredictably. When he’d told her she’d already looked forward to it, especially when he’d also told her he’d wanted her to come with him. Just the two of them, two or three afternoons, very quiet… soothing for both of them after so much hassle from the last weeks.
And then… She shakes her head, concentrates on the pictures again. She loves looking at his pictures… except a few certain ones. She knows in there are also pictures of her, but she somehow always avoided looking at them. It feels like where other men would pay her compliments he draws her - but compliments of every kind make her uncomfortable and she’s afraid of what she might see in these pictures, since his way of drawing and painting tells so much about him.
In the way he painted Torren she can see that he longed to see his nephews again… so lovingly the strokes, so careful the details. Then there is a picture of Samantha Carter they asked him to paint for the Colonel’s one year anniversary on Atlantis. It’s not here - and not in Colonel Carter’s office either, which just serves to harden her suspicions that it’s rather hanging somewhere on Earth - but she still remembers that he put a lot of respect into that picture, cautious not to paint her in a standard portrait position but rather deep in thought at her desk, engrossed in her work.
Afraid she’ll stumble over one of the pictures he drew of her, she shuts the sketchbook. For a moment, her throat constricts with the tears she forbids herself to spill and through the inevitable moisture in her eyes, his quarters suddenly look strangely fogged… all the colors blur into a hideous gray… or is that just her mind mirroring how she feels inside ever since he didn’t come back from that mission over a week ago?
She shouldn’t sit here. She has a job to do. He wouldn’t want her sitting around and getting teary-eyed over his paintings. With a determination she doesn’t really feel, she stands up again and manages to take one step after the other, until she’s finally out of the door and in one of the many Atlantis corridors again. She forces herself to walk away from the empty quarters, back into more crowded areas, where it’s easier to hide away from the dreadful feelings inside.
Just as she is about to enter her lab to pass another day with pretending to herself that working her ass off can turn the gray inside into colors again, she suddenly bumps into something… someone solid. She looks up to see… unruly hair and a raised eyebrow. Oh. Dammit. Flustered, she hastens to apologize to Colonel Sheppard, but he just shakes his head. “It’s okay, Lieutenant.” She wants to say something, but her throat is still clogged with all the tears she swallowed. Embarrassed, she wants to turn away, but Sheppard forces her to hold his gaze and adds, “We’ll find him, Cadman. We’ll find him and bring him home in one piece. Trust me.”
Oh God, how she wants to. But it’s been over a week now… and the chances that they do find him and bring him home sink with every day and every lead that ends up in the middle of nowhere. And with every day… there seem to be a little less colors and a little more gray. She takes a deep breath. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
Sheppard wants to say something, but is cut short by someone raising him on the radio. He listens to it, then answers in very short terms, only telling them to have his team and a jumper ready. When he’s done, he almost turns to run, but then he seems to remember her. “Lieutenant… would you mind tagging along on something very likely to become search and rescue?”
She swallows and when her brain registers what he just said… the corridor seems to brighten up a bit. Maybe… maybe she will get her afternoons on the mainland after all. “No, sir. I wouldn’t mind it at all.”