Peg^2 (5/?)
Title: Square Peg, or, Peg^2 (Pegasus Squared) [A sequel to Full Circle, set in the Epic Crossover ‘Verse]
Chapter: 5 of ?
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~2,200 words (this part)
Pairing(s): Eliot/Shawn, McShep preslash
Rating: R
General Warnings: gruesome imagery, graphic language, violence, kid!fic, whump, un-beta’d
Beta: If you feel the urge, let me know
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage and SG:A (as well as any other television show, movie or book in existence) do not belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of squeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: So tired. Eliot was being a brat, and Jesse's middle name kept changing, and Atlantis is apparently sentient now... *whiiiine*
One | Two | Three | Four | Five
Summary: In Which Our Heroes Venture Through The Stargate
--SHAWN--
The rippling blue …stuff that filled the giant stonish/metalish ring sparkled just like water; like it was some giant, weird ass kiddie pool that had been tipped on its side somehow.
The fact that the ‘water’ wasn’t spilling out and splashing through the metal grating leading up to the ring was what brought it home to Shawn that this wasn’t all some whacked out hallucination brought on by some really ill-advised pharmaceutical experimentation, because aliens and spaceships and phasers and transport beams didn’t faze him (heh, faze/phaser), but sideways pools of water set his world on its ear. Shawn took a moment to admit that it was possible his world-view might be a little skewed, even if it was just to himself.
“So…” he trailed off, and glanced around Eliot-who, annoyingly, was acting like this was something he did every day-to catch Big Brother’s eye, “Let me get this straight. The fancy sideways kiddie pool is going to magically teleport us to the giant spaceship in another galaxy that is the mythical city of Atlantis.”
“Pretty much,” John drawled back at him, raising an eyebrow at Shawn. Without looking, John darted out a hand and grabbed the back of Jesse’s mini TAC vest and pulled him back to where he’d been standing at John’s side when the kid started making a bee-line for the thing that looked like a BattleBot on steroids-towing a modified trailer of crates and boxes-that was making its way up the ramp towards the ‘gate. “You can play with the MALP on Atlantis, Jesse,” Shawn heard John mutter under his breath to his kid.
Those two words were the longest sentence John had directed at Shawn since they’d found out about the whole half-brothers thing, and it’d been over two days since then. John had been avoiding everyone, fairly obviously, and Shawn certainly hadn’t been making any effort to seek him out. He’d debated for most of that first day after he found out whether or not he should call Henry or his mom and demand an explanation, but eventually decided that he didn’t want to open that can of worms. He could always use it as a conversation starter the next time he was stuck having dinner with the both of them. Thankfully the whole being in another galaxy thing meant he had a good excuse for not showing up to one of those for a while-or at least, that the Air Force would make up a good excuse for him about not showing up to one of those for a while. He actually kinda wanted to see Henry’s face when they trotted out whatever they came up with, but not enough to stick around. He fully expected, however, that the next time he visited the Milky Way that his mom was going to be on the SGC’s payroll. No one could hide anything from her for very long, no matter how unbelievable it was or how good a person was at keeping secrets. Shawn knew that from experience.
He half tuned in to the lecture Big Brother’s pet scientist had been spouting in Shawn’s general direction since he’d made the crack about the kiddie pool, caught the words “not wet,” and “event horizon” and tuned him out again. He could always replay it later in his mind if he got curious. One of the benefits of eidetic memory was that Shawn didn’t have to pay attention now to be able to remember something later. Of course, there was also the flip side of that-Shawn wouldn’t be able to forget it either, no matter how much he wanted to. Which meant eidetic memory sucked way more than it rocked, some days.
But today was not one of those days. Shawn watched in awe as the BattleBot and its trailer vanished into the ‘event horizon’ with a gloopy plop-a sound like how he imagined those slow-motion videos of a water drop hitting a puddle would sound if they had sound. A few groups of people straggled through the event horizon after the BattleBot with less gloopy plops, and then it was their turn. As soon as John let go of Jesse’s tiny TAC vest, the kid ran at the ripply light with a gleeful yell and jumped into it, Big Brother following more sedately with his pet scientist beside him, who walked through mid-word and still waving his arms animatedly as he expounded on something.
He stopped right before the event horizon, Eliot beside him, silent and watching him expressionlessly, though Shawn knew him well enough by now to catch the glint of humor in Eliot’s eyes. Shawn poked event horizon with a finger, just because he could, and because it made Eliot’s mouth twitch with a quick smile. His index finger came back out of the event horizon with a reluctant blopping sound, completely dry but with a faint pins and needles sensation in the part of the finger that’d been inside the wormhole. There was nothing left to stop him, so he stepped forward. Shawn was unable to stop himself from holding his breath as he ducked his head and stepped through the event horizon of the wormhole to another galaxy, his eyes open wide and Eliot right beside him every step of the way.
--ATLANTIS--
Her wiring momentarily sparked with joy and her cloak shivered and prismed, sending rainbows cascading through the city, as her prodigal son once more stepped foot on her superstructure. Her efficacy immediately rose by three percent; the sluggish despondency that had been plaguing her for the past 2361203.87 seconds sloughing away as the loss of her favorite person was alleviated. But then there was another, and then another! The bright sparks had come with her ColonelJohnSheppard through the Astria Porta-he’d brought her back progeny! A quick and gentle puff of air dislodged a few dead skin cells from the bright sparks on her sensors to be absorbed by her flooring; a brother! The son! Her favored one had brought his family to her! Oh, how she loved her ColonelJohnSheppard. She was glad he was returned to her. When he’d left, she’d felt as broken as when her creators had abandoned her beneath the sea with only one faint life sign to sustain for 10,000 years. She loved her DoctorRadekZelenka and LieutenantColonelEvanLorne and DoctorMeredithRodneyMcKay, but she couldn’t speak with them. They were not linked with her as her chosen was, so as much as she adored them, she had had only the silence to speak to.
She had hoped that her ColonelJohnSheppard was not leaving her forever, and she had been right. He had returned. Returned to her, once again, and with his family. Her cloak prismed once again in ecstatic joy; he was home. They were home. The silence was once again filled with speech and thought, and she was not alone any longer.
--ELIOT--
He followed Shawn through the puddle and stepped out on the other side like he’d just stepped through a door; not that he’d expected-or wanted-to feel himself torn apart molecule by molecule and reassembled on the other side, but it felt wrong that it didn’t feel, well, wrong. Keeping track of Shawn and staying at his side took up less than half his attention, and he took in his surroundings with the attention left to spare. It looked like they’d been thrown a ticker-tape parade, shining confetti whirling around them and confusing his eyes. A second later, Eliot realized the colors weren’t confetti but flashes of reflected sunlight. Almost as soon as he’d noticed that, the effect stopped.
The whole room looked bewildered. McKay was barking questions and orders into a radio and tapping at a touchpad computer, but no one looked worried or panicked, just confused.
“I take it that hasn’t happened before?” he asked John quietly after herding Shawn over to where John was-stroking the wall?-absentmindedly. John shook his head and muttered something under his breath at the wall in a language Eliot didn’t know, but sounded a little like Spanish. Like, distant third cousin twice removed, a little.
“She’s out and proud,” Shawn laughed, and Eliot turned to find Shawn leaning up against the wall with as much skin contact as possible, looking like he was trying to become a part of it; he also noticed Jesse hugging a column near the stairs in the background. Eliot groaned. Of course this was genetic.
Great. Now he was going to be competing with a fucking building for Shawn’s attention. He almost would have preferred dealing with Shawn’s thing for Lassiter again.
--JOHN--
There were still nights, even this many years later, where John woke up gasping with horror and choking on bile, the memory of Laura’s death still as vivid and gruesome as it had been the day he’d watched it happen right in front of him, helpless to stop it. He shoved himself out of his no-longer child sized bed and stumbled to the en-suite bathroom to heave fruitlessly over the Ancient excuse for a toilet for the few minutes it took for his stomach to settle.
He had to admit, he thought to himself as his brain scrambled for something that wasn’t Laura’s prematurely haggard visage to focus on, it was pretty damn embarrassing to find out that the expedition had been camping out in, for over five years, what turned out to be the dorm rooms of an Ancient boarding school for kids whose parents lived offworld. What was worse was that no one had even realized it until Daniel Jackson had translated the relevant section of the database a few years ago on one of his now bi-annual pilgrimages-they’d just thought the Ancients had liked ridiculously small beds. The apartment and condo complexes that Atlantis had highlighted for McKay and Lorne in the database once she’d parsed the problem had been in an unexplored, but structurally sound, tower near the South East pier, and the Lanteans had gratefully moved, en masse, to the new living quarters as soon as they’d been declared safe. John’s apartment had a bedroom with a grown-up sized bed and attached bathroom, a bedroom for Jesse (with another attached bathroom), an office, a kitchenette, a decent sized living room (when Jesse’s toys and current projects-in-progress were put away, anyway) and a balcony with a view that was to die for.
He headed for that balcony after splashing his face with cold water to finish waking himself up-he wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight. The ocean breeze was cold, but he didn’t go back inside or snag his coat on the way out, only wrapped his arms around himself and shivered in his threadbare t-shirt and worn pajama pants. Their apartment was halfway up the spire and the balcony faced out to sea, so John could stand on the balcony on nights like tonight and look out through the delicate spires of Atlantis, which glowed faintly and surreally when the cloak was up in a way you could only really notice at night, and stare out over the ocean and into the depth of space and see the individual glows of all the suns in Pegasus. Suns around which planets orbited, many of them worlds John himself had stepped foot on, and a percentage of those were worlds whose peoples’ lives John had actually helped change for the better.
Nights like tonight, when he jerked awake from watching, again, Laura’s horror as the Wraith slammed his hand down onto her chest, the way her eyes always swung around to meet his, the despair filling them at her certain knowledge of her own imminent death, and how he relived, every fucking time, the helplessness of not being able to do a damn thing as that Wraith started draining her. And he relived, every single time, the agony of watching her struggle to lift her gun and put a bullet in her own head as a fuck you to that goddamned Wraith. And every time, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t do a fucking thing to help her. Or to stop her.
Normally, John loved Atlantis, loved Pegasus in all its fucked up glory, and loved his son with all his heart.
But on nights like tonight, staring up at the stars of Pegasus helped him to not regret ever coming here in the first place.
--ATLANTIS--
She felt her ColonelJohnSheppard’s despair, and sped the molecules comprising the shield around his balcony so the ocean breeze was warmed before it reached him. She did not have the arms required to give him a ‘hug’, so she nudged JesseJunaydSheppard awake and let him know his father needed him. He agreed with a loving thought and a mental embrace for her before going to his father and wrapping his arms around him. “Love you, Daddy,” her intercom picked up JesseJunaydSheppard mumbling into the leg he was wrapped around, and her favored son swung his child up into his arms and held on tight. She sent them both a mental caress and carefully edited the recording of a nearby security camera to erase the presence of the liquid sparkling on ColonelJohnSheppard’s cheeks, for she knew he would not appreciate it being remarked upon.
Six-->
Chapter: 5 of ?
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~2,200 words (this part)
Pairing(s): Eliot/Shawn, McShep preslash
Rating: R
General Warnings: gruesome imagery, graphic language, violence, kid!fic, whump, un-beta’d
Beta: If you feel the urge, let me know
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage and SG:A (as well as any other television show, movie or book in existence) do not belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of squeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: So tired. Eliot was being a brat, and Jesse's middle name kept changing, and Atlantis is apparently sentient now... *whiiiine*
One | Two | Three | Four | Five
Summary: In Which Our Heroes Venture Through The Stargate
--SHAWN--
The rippling blue …stuff that filled the giant stonish/metalish ring sparkled just like water; like it was some giant, weird ass kiddie pool that had been tipped on its side somehow.
The fact that the ‘water’ wasn’t spilling out and splashing through the metal grating leading up to the ring was what brought it home to Shawn that this wasn’t all some whacked out hallucination brought on by some really ill-advised pharmaceutical experimentation, because aliens and spaceships and phasers and transport beams didn’t faze him (heh, faze/phaser), but sideways pools of water set his world on its ear. Shawn took a moment to admit that it was possible his world-view might be a little skewed, even if it was just to himself.
“So…” he trailed off, and glanced around Eliot-who, annoyingly, was acting like this was something he did every day-to catch Big Brother’s eye, “Let me get this straight. The fancy sideways kiddie pool is going to magically teleport us to the giant spaceship in another galaxy that is the mythical city of Atlantis.”
“Pretty much,” John drawled back at him, raising an eyebrow at Shawn. Without looking, John darted out a hand and grabbed the back of Jesse’s mini TAC vest and pulled him back to where he’d been standing at John’s side when the kid started making a bee-line for the thing that looked like a BattleBot on steroids-towing a modified trailer of crates and boxes-that was making its way up the ramp towards the ‘gate. “You can play with the MALP on Atlantis, Jesse,” Shawn heard John mutter under his breath to his kid.
Those two words were the longest sentence John had directed at Shawn since they’d found out about the whole half-brothers thing, and it’d been over two days since then. John had been avoiding everyone, fairly obviously, and Shawn certainly hadn’t been making any effort to seek him out. He’d debated for most of that first day after he found out whether or not he should call Henry or his mom and demand an explanation, but eventually decided that he didn’t want to open that can of worms. He could always use it as a conversation starter the next time he was stuck having dinner with the both of them. Thankfully the whole being in another galaxy thing meant he had a good excuse for not showing up to one of those for a while-or at least, that the Air Force would make up a good excuse for him about not showing up to one of those for a while. He actually kinda wanted to see Henry’s face when they trotted out whatever they came up with, but not enough to stick around. He fully expected, however, that the next time he visited the Milky Way that his mom was going to be on the SGC’s payroll. No one could hide anything from her for very long, no matter how unbelievable it was or how good a person was at keeping secrets. Shawn knew that from experience.
He half tuned in to the lecture Big Brother’s pet scientist had been spouting in Shawn’s general direction since he’d made the crack about the kiddie pool, caught the words “not wet,” and “event horizon” and tuned him out again. He could always replay it later in his mind if he got curious. One of the benefits of eidetic memory was that Shawn didn’t have to pay attention now to be able to remember something later. Of course, there was also the flip side of that-Shawn wouldn’t be able to forget it either, no matter how much he wanted to. Which meant eidetic memory sucked way more than it rocked, some days.
But today was not one of those days. Shawn watched in awe as the BattleBot and its trailer vanished into the ‘event horizon’ with a gloopy plop-a sound like how he imagined those slow-motion videos of a water drop hitting a puddle would sound if they had sound. A few groups of people straggled through the event horizon after the BattleBot with less gloopy plops, and then it was their turn. As soon as John let go of Jesse’s tiny TAC vest, the kid ran at the ripply light with a gleeful yell and jumped into it, Big Brother following more sedately with his pet scientist beside him, who walked through mid-word and still waving his arms animatedly as he expounded on something.
He stopped right before the event horizon, Eliot beside him, silent and watching him expressionlessly, though Shawn knew him well enough by now to catch the glint of humor in Eliot’s eyes. Shawn poked event horizon with a finger, just because he could, and because it made Eliot’s mouth twitch with a quick smile. His index finger came back out of the event horizon with a reluctant blopping sound, completely dry but with a faint pins and needles sensation in the part of the finger that’d been inside the wormhole. There was nothing left to stop him, so he stepped forward. Shawn was unable to stop himself from holding his breath as he ducked his head and stepped through the event horizon of the wormhole to another galaxy, his eyes open wide and Eliot right beside him every step of the way.
--ATLANTIS--
Her wiring momentarily sparked with joy and her cloak shivered and prismed, sending rainbows cascading through the city, as her prodigal son once more stepped foot on her superstructure. Her efficacy immediately rose by three percent; the sluggish despondency that had been plaguing her for the past 2361203.87 seconds sloughing away as the loss of her favorite person was alleviated. But then there was another, and then another! The bright sparks had come with her ColonelJohnSheppard through the Astria Porta-he’d brought her back progeny! A quick and gentle puff of air dislodged a few dead skin cells from the bright sparks on her sensors to be absorbed by her flooring; a brother! The son! Her favored one had brought his family to her! Oh, how she loved her ColonelJohnSheppard. She was glad he was returned to her. When he’d left, she’d felt as broken as when her creators had abandoned her beneath the sea with only one faint life sign to sustain for 10,000 years. She loved her DoctorRadekZelenka and LieutenantColonelEvanLorne and DoctorMeredithRodneyMcKay, but she couldn’t speak with them. They were not linked with her as her chosen was, so as much as she adored them, she had had only the silence to speak to.
She had hoped that her ColonelJohnSheppard was not leaving her forever, and she had been right. He had returned. Returned to her, once again, and with his family. Her cloak prismed once again in ecstatic joy; he was home. They were home. The silence was once again filled with speech and thought, and she was not alone any longer.
--ELIOT--
He followed Shawn through the puddle and stepped out on the other side like he’d just stepped through a door; not that he’d expected-or wanted-to feel himself torn apart molecule by molecule and reassembled on the other side, but it felt wrong that it didn’t feel, well, wrong. Keeping track of Shawn and staying at his side took up less than half his attention, and he took in his surroundings with the attention left to spare. It looked like they’d been thrown a ticker-tape parade, shining confetti whirling around them and confusing his eyes. A second later, Eliot realized the colors weren’t confetti but flashes of reflected sunlight. Almost as soon as he’d noticed that, the effect stopped.
The whole room looked bewildered. McKay was barking questions and orders into a radio and tapping at a touchpad computer, but no one looked worried or panicked, just confused.
“I take it that hasn’t happened before?” he asked John quietly after herding Shawn over to where John was-stroking the wall?-absentmindedly. John shook his head and muttered something under his breath at the wall in a language Eliot didn’t know, but sounded a little like Spanish. Like, distant third cousin twice removed, a little.
“She’s out and proud,” Shawn laughed, and Eliot turned to find Shawn leaning up against the wall with as much skin contact as possible, looking like he was trying to become a part of it; he also noticed Jesse hugging a column near the stairs in the background. Eliot groaned. Of course this was genetic.
Great. Now he was going to be competing with a fucking building for Shawn’s attention. He almost would have preferred dealing with Shawn’s thing for Lassiter again.
--JOHN--
There were still nights, even this many years later, where John woke up gasping with horror and choking on bile, the memory of Laura’s death still as vivid and gruesome as it had been the day he’d watched it happen right in front of him, helpless to stop it. He shoved himself out of his no-longer child sized bed and stumbled to the en-suite bathroom to heave fruitlessly over the Ancient excuse for a toilet for the few minutes it took for his stomach to settle.
He had to admit, he thought to himself as his brain scrambled for something that wasn’t Laura’s prematurely haggard visage to focus on, it was pretty damn embarrassing to find out that the expedition had been camping out in, for over five years, what turned out to be the dorm rooms of an Ancient boarding school for kids whose parents lived offworld. What was worse was that no one had even realized it until Daniel Jackson had translated the relevant section of the database a few years ago on one of his now bi-annual pilgrimages-they’d just thought the Ancients had liked ridiculously small beds. The apartment and condo complexes that Atlantis had highlighted for McKay and Lorne in the database once she’d parsed the problem had been in an unexplored, but structurally sound, tower near the South East pier, and the Lanteans had gratefully moved, en masse, to the new living quarters as soon as they’d been declared safe. John’s apartment had a bedroom with a grown-up sized bed and attached bathroom, a bedroom for Jesse (with another attached bathroom), an office, a kitchenette, a decent sized living room (when Jesse’s toys and current projects-in-progress were put away, anyway) and a balcony with a view that was to die for.
He headed for that balcony after splashing his face with cold water to finish waking himself up-he wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight. The ocean breeze was cold, but he didn’t go back inside or snag his coat on the way out, only wrapped his arms around himself and shivered in his threadbare t-shirt and worn pajama pants. Their apartment was halfway up the spire and the balcony faced out to sea, so John could stand on the balcony on nights like tonight and look out through the delicate spires of Atlantis, which glowed faintly and surreally when the cloak was up in a way you could only really notice at night, and stare out over the ocean and into the depth of space and see the individual glows of all the suns in Pegasus. Suns around which planets orbited, many of them worlds John himself had stepped foot on, and a percentage of those were worlds whose peoples’ lives John had actually helped change for the better.
Nights like tonight, when he jerked awake from watching, again, Laura’s horror as the Wraith slammed his hand down onto her chest, the way her eyes always swung around to meet his, the despair filling them at her certain knowledge of her own imminent death, and how he relived, every fucking time, the helplessness of not being able to do a damn thing as that Wraith started draining her. And he relived, every single time, the agony of watching her struggle to lift her gun and put a bullet in her own head as a fuck you to that goddamned Wraith. And every time, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t do a fucking thing to help her. Or to stop her.
Normally, John loved Atlantis, loved Pegasus in all its fucked up glory, and loved his son with all his heart.
But on nights like tonight, staring up at the stars of Pegasus helped him to not regret ever coming here in the first place.
--ATLANTIS--
She felt her ColonelJohnSheppard’s despair, and sped the molecules comprising the shield around his balcony so the ocean breeze was warmed before it reached him. She did not have the arms required to give him a ‘hug’, so she nudged JesseJunaydSheppard awake and let him know his father needed him. He agreed with a loving thought and a mental embrace for her before going to his father and wrapping his arms around him. “Love you, Daddy,” her intercom picked up JesseJunaydSheppard mumbling into the leg he was wrapped around, and her favored son swung his child up into his arms and held on tight. She sent them both a mental caress and carefully edited the recording of a nearby security camera to erase the presence of the liquid sparkling on ColonelJohnSheppard’s cheeks, for she knew he would not appreciate it being remarked upon.
Six-->