Fic: "A Complexity of Forms (Ship Made of Paper Remix)" (SGA; Gateverse Remix fic)
A Complexity of Forms (Ship Made of Paper Remix)
Original story: A Complexity of Forms by stop.
Note: Thanks to kethlenda for beta'ing. I also wanted to thank stop for writing such an amazing story. I'm grateful to the challenge for giving me a chance to find and read it. I hope I've done it some kind of justice here.
You learned how to do this a very long time ago.
Now, your hands are uncertain on the paper, clumsy. The folds form crooked or misaligned under your fingers, so you smooth the paper and try again, reaching inside yourself for patience. You know there is a still place deep within you, the one that you find before you pull the trigger. Maybe it's wrong to try to draw this from there as well as death--this art, if it is art, this particular symbol of peace and longevity--but you hope, you hope.
You still your hands, close your eyes, draw a breath and release it through your teeth. You smooth the paper and try again.
You are careful not to wish on the first ones, the awkward and uncertain trial runs. They are ugly ducklings, which isn't their fault, and you tuck them away carefully in your desk before you face a clean sheet of paper. You breathe deep, flex your fingers, and consider the first fold.
You know in that still part of yourself that this one will be perfect. Even so, you are careful not to think of your wish until you are done and it is, a perfect paper crane on the center of your cluttered desk, poised and delicate and simple and complex all at once. You pull the tail and the wings move. Perfect.
"One," you say, and make your wish.
**
You were in third grade, easily distracted and restless and already tired of everything your teachers had to tell you. You had dreams in your head that were bigger than this, better than this, and the faster you got through the pointless busywork put in front of you, the sooner you could get back to them.
They told you to slow down, to be more careful, but faster was better--you felt that strongly, even then, even long before you reached 200 miles per hour--and anyway, it wasn't hard, none of it was all that hard, or even very interesting, and once it was done you were free of responsibilities and could go back to your own thoughts, your own games, things that mattered.
Mrs. Thompson the art teacher put the book in your hands, one day when there was half an hour until recess and you had finished identifying primary and secondary colors, or drawing and coloring a perfect tessellation, or maybe that day's assignment was parallel lines. It wasn't important enough to remember. The book was important--green cover, heavy pages, illustrations in pink and gold and blue--and so was the paper that Mrs. Thompson handed you.
Being you, you dove straight into the instructions and ignored the introduction. You glanced at that much later, weeks maybe, and confirmed what you had already realized with your hands: there were only two folds.
Two folds and a complexity of forms.
**
You watch his hands.
They are never still, except when he's unconscious--and you've seen that more times than you care for--even asleep they twitch and flex and dance along with his dreaming mind as it comes up with things most people can't fathom. You don't understand half of it yourself, but you don't mind. You think you understand the parts that are important. You're pretty sure. You're trying to find out.
His hands cut the air, wave and gesture, fingers pointing or snapping or underscoring something key. You're fascinated by his hands, more than you should be. You can't help it.
Because you watch, you see them draw paper from pockets, smooth and shape and fold, bringing forth an endless army of frogs from scrap paper and air. You noticed it almost right away, though it took you a while to decide on what you're doing now in response. An embarrassingly long while, but you got there. Hopefully that's what counts.
You watch his hands smooth and shape and fold, and you wonder what he does with the cranes--one hundred four, as of this morning--that make their way to him from you.
**
You began with hats and frogs and simple boxes, the blue-edged pages that the book declared easy, but you got bored with them soon and moved on through the pages. You were ambitious. You wanted a wing of dragons on wires above your bed, a desktop full of tesseracts.
The cranes didn't really catch your attention, not then. You made them until you mastered them, then shrugged and moved on. The book mentioned the idea of folding a thousand with a wish, and talked about people who folded and folded in the name of peace or the honor of a memory. You thought about how long that would take, and turned the page.
Peace and longevity and wishes that maybe kind of might come true just didn't mean much to you back then. And the paper cranes didn't even really fly.
**
You know that he suspects, that he's trying to catch you at it. He won't, though; your habit is too different from his, not a nervous tic or a calming mantra but a project, a concrete endeavor with a goal. You set a quota for each day and don't sleep until you meet it unless extenuating circumstances intervene, as they so often do on Atlantis. Still, on any day without crisis, you fold and count and wish under your breath until the number for the day is lined up in front of you, wings aloft, heads held proud.
You can't fold them on missions, like he does; your hands are full of the jumper controls or your gun. You don't fold them during briefings because everyone would see, and even Elizabeth's amused tolerance has a limit, one you're not eager to meet.
Recovering from whatever you've done this time, in the infirmary, that's a good one. Carson and the nurses are eager to give you privacy, and will leave paper if you ask. At your desk, when you can't stand paperwork any longer, or in your quarters late at night when disapproving ghosts won't let you sleep. You make up lots of missed days on those long nights, filling your quotas again and again.
You never lose count. This is the most important part.
**
You were thirteen, and you already knew that the answer was Air Force, and you made the best paper airplanes of any of your friends, perfectly balanced, every fold crisp and guiding them to fly straight and true.
You were thirteen and you rarely bothered with the other things you could make anymore, only once in a while reaching for paper and refreshing yourself on the two folds and the sequences that turned them into anything, everything.
You were thirteen and your parents sat you down and told you that your mother had cancer, and it had already spread and staked its claim deep, and that chances were she didn't have much time.
You remembered the page in the book and--no. First you cried, and then you raged, and then you cursed at God. Then you remembered the page and you started folding and folding, making flocks and flocks of paper cranes, every slight pair of wings balancing a desperate, whispered wish.
You made it to four hundred ninety-two when your mother caught you at it, and took your hands and asked you to stop. She told you not to waste your wishes on the impossible, to save them for something you might truly be able to have, someday.
You threw away four hundred ninety-one cranes. You placed one on a headstone, six months later.
You and your father find that without her, your relationship is as fragile as paper, unable to bear the weight of sorrow on wings that are, after all, only made of two folds.
You didn't touch paper that way again until many years later, in a city floating on the sea.
**
This is a wish you think--you hope--it is possible for you to have. This is the first wish you have thought that about in such a long time that it frightens you. But you have trained yourself to feel fear as adrenaline, as exhilaration, the only way to live at two hundred miles per hour.
And so you fear and hope and wish and fold and tell yourself that if you're wrong, if you're a fool, you can always find someone in this galaxy ready to let you end your questionable career with some dignity. And anyway, the Wraith will probably kill you all well before you reach one thousand.
**
He storms into your office at seven hundred fifty-six, as you make the last fold, pull the tail to test it, say the number aloud and make your wish. He stares at you in confusion and suspicion, long-held defenses in place in case this is somehow mockery.
"It's you," he says, and you look at the flock spread across your desk. You nod.
"What does it mean?" he asks, and your breath catches in your chest, because you figured you had at least two hundred more cranes before you had to start to worry about how to tell him.
**
Changing the wish more than halfway through might be against the rules, but you think that any benevolent higher power--and there must be at least one amidst all the others who want to screw you over--will understand.
The two of you are different, so very different, and yet you work and fit together, two strengths that cross and support and make a complexity of things out of detritus and air.
You touch and that still place in you sings. Your heart flies, strong and true. And you feel as if you can see forever.
Original story: A Complexity of Forms by stop.
Note: Thanks to kethlenda for beta'ing. I also wanted to thank stop for writing such an amazing story. I'm grateful to the challenge for giving me a chance to find and read it. I hope I've done it some kind of justice here.
You learned how to do this a very long time ago.
Now, your hands are uncertain on the paper, clumsy. The folds form crooked or misaligned under your fingers, so you smooth the paper and try again, reaching inside yourself for patience. You know there is a still place deep within you, the one that you find before you pull the trigger. Maybe it's wrong to try to draw this from there as well as death--this art, if it is art, this particular symbol of peace and longevity--but you hope, you hope.
You still your hands, close your eyes, draw a breath and release it through your teeth. You smooth the paper and try again.
You are careful not to wish on the first ones, the awkward and uncertain trial runs. They are ugly ducklings, which isn't their fault, and you tuck them away carefully in your desk before you face a clean sheet of paper. You breathe deep, flex your fingers, and consider the first fold.
You know in that still part of yourself that this one will be perfect. Even so, you are careful not to think of your wish until you are done and it is, a perfect paper crane on the center of your cluttered desk, poised and delicate and simple and complex all at once. You pull the tail and the wings move. Perfect.
"One," you say, and make your wish.
**
You were in third grade, easily distracted and restless and already tired of everything your teachers had to tell you. You had dreams in your head that were bigger than this, better than this, and the faster you got through the pointless busywork put in front of you, the sooner you could get back to them.
They told you to slow down, to be more careful, but faster was better--you felt that strongly, even then, even long before you reached 200 miles per hour--and anyway, it wasn't hard, none of it was all that hard, or even very interesting, and once it was done you were free of responsibilities and could go back to your own thoughts, your own games, things that mattered.
Mrs. Thompson the art teacher put the book in your hands, one day when there was half an hour until recess and you had finished identifying primary and secondary colors, or drawing and coloring a perfect tessellation, or maybe that day's assignment was parallel lines. It wasn't important enough to remember. The book was important--green cover, heavy pages, illustrations in pink and gold and blue--and so was the paper that Mrs. Thompson handed you.
Being you, you dove straight into the instructions and ignored the introduction. You glanced at that much later, weeks maybe, and confirmed what you had already realized with your hands: there were only two folds.
Two folds and a complexity of forms.
**
You watch his hands.
They are never still, except when he's unconscious--and you've seen that more times than you care for--even asleep they twitch and flex and dance along with his dreaming mind as it comes up with things most people can't fathom. You don't understand half of it yourself, but you don't mind. You think you understand the parts that are important. You're pretty sure. You're trying to find out.
His hands cut the air, wave and gesture, fingers pointing or snapping or underscoring something key. You're fascinated by his hands, more than you should be. You can't help it.
Because you watch, you see them draw paper from pockets, smooth and shape and fold, bringing forth an endless army of frogs from scrap paper and air. You noticed it almost right away, though it took you a while to decide on what you're doing now in response. An embarrassingly long while, but you got there. Hopefully that's what counts.
You watch his hands smooth and shape and fold, and you wonder what he does with the cranes--one hundred four, as of this morning--that make their way to him from you.
**
You began with hats and frogs and simple boxes, the blue-edged pages that the book declared easy, but you got bored with them soon and moved on through the pages. You were ambitious. You wanted a wing of dragons on wires above your bed, a desktop full of tesseracts.
The cranes didn't really catch your attention, not then. You made them until you mastered them, then shrugged and moved on. The book mentioned the idea of folding a thousand with a wish, and talked about people who folded and folded in the name of peace or the honor of a memory. You thought about how long that would take, and turned the page.
Peace and longevity and wishes that maybe kind of might come true just didn't mean much to you back then. And the paper cranes didn't even really fly.
**
You know that he suspects, that he's trying to catch you at it. He won't, though; your habit is too different from his, not a nervous tic or a calming mantra but a project, a concrete endeavor with a goal. You set a quota for each day and don't sleep until you meet it unless extenuating circumstances intervene, as they so often do on Atlantis. Still, on any day without crisis, you fold and count and wish under your breath until the number for the day is lined up in front of you, wings aloft, heads held proud.
You can't fold them on missions, like he does; your hands are full of the jumper controls or your gun. You don't fold them during briefings because everyone would see, and even Elizabeth's amused tolerance has a limit, one you're not eager to meet.
Recovering from whatever you've done this time, in the infirmary, that's a good one. Carson and the nurses are eager to give you privacy, and will leave paper if you ask. At your desk, when you can't stand paperwork any longer, or in your quarters late at night when disapproving ghosts won't let you sleep. You make up lots of missed days on those long nights, filling your quotas again and again.
You never lose count. This is the most important part.
**
You were thirteen, and you already knew that the answer was Air Force, and you made the best paper airplanes of any of your friends, perfectly balanced, every fold crisp and guiding them to fly straight and true.
You were thirteen and you rarely bothered with the other things you could make anymore, only once in a while reaching for paper and refreshing yourself on the two folds and the sequences that turned them into anything, everything.
You were thirteen and your parents sat you down and told you that your mother had cancer, and it had already spread and staked its claim deep, and that chances were she didn't have much time.
You remembered the page in the book and--no. First you cried, and then you raged, and then you cursed at God. Then you remembered the page and you started folding and folding, making flocks and flocks of paper cranes, every slight pair of wings balancing a desperate, whispered wish.
You made it to four hundred ninety-two when your mother caught you at it, and took your hands and asked you to stop. She told you not to waste your wishes on the impossible, to save them for something you might truly be able to have, someday.
You threw away four hundred ninety-one cranes. You placed one on a headstone, six months later.
You and your father find that without her, your relationship is as fragile as paper, unable to bear the weight of sorrow on wings that are, after all, only made of two folds.
You didn't touch paper that way again until many years later, in a city floating on the sea.
**
This is a wish you think--you hope--it is possible for you to have. This is the first wish you have thought that about in such a long time that it frightens you. But you have trained yourself to feel fear as adrenaline, as exhilaration, the only way to live at two hundred miles per hour.
And so you fear and hope and wish and fold and tell yourself that if you're wrong, if you're a fool, you can always find someone in this galaxy ready to let you end your questionable career with some dignity. And anyway, the Wraith will probably kill you all well before you reach one thousand.
**
He storms into your office at seven hundred fifty-six, as you make the last fold, pull the tail to test it, say the number aloud and make your wish. He stares at you in confusion and suspicion, long-held defenses in place in case this is somehow mockery.
"It's you," he says, and you look at the flock spread across your desk. You nod.
"What does it mean?" he asks, and your breath catches in your chest, because you figured you had at least two hundred more cranes before you had to start to worry about how to tell him.
**
Changing the wish more than halfway through might be against the rules, but you think that any benevolent higher power--and there must be at least one amidst all the others who want to screw you over--will understand.
The two of you are different, so very different, and yet you work and fit together, two strengths that cross and support and make a complexity of things out of detritus and air.
You touch and that still place in you sings. Your heart flies, strong and true. And you feel as if you can see forever.