Fic: (Im)possible Universes
Title or description: (Im)possible Universes
Recipient's name:
briar_pipe
Pairing/Genre: Team as family (really Gen, but OT4 if you like)
Prompt or prompts used: Objects or rituals that have personal meaning; a sense of place, whether it's Atlantis, Sateda, Earth, or somewhere else.
Rating: PG, barely
Wordcount: 2,150ish
Warnings: Spoilers through S4.
Author's Notes: I'm so, so sorry I'm late. Thanks to
raisintorte and
smittywing for late night cheerleading! Title from the quote from Ray Bradbury: "We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.'
McKay likes to talk about alternate universes a lot. Actually, McKay just likes to talk. A lot. And sometimes - pretty often, particularly when something's about to go really, really, wrong - McKay talks about alternate universes and the possibility that somewhere else, there was a what if that came true.
Sometimes - more often than Rodney probably realizes - Ronon really is paying attention. McKay says a lot of things, and some of them can be pretty useful. You just have to know what you're listening for. The fact that in some universe, somewhere, there's a version of Rodney that understands golf and gets along with his sister is pretty good proof that anything can happen.
Actually, Ronon thinks, looking at the time-weathered fragments of plastic and stone and metal in his palm, his own life is pretty much proof enough of that.
"Ronon," Teyla calls as she leaves the jumper, "do not be long. There is a storm coming."
He looks at the sky, clear, blue, and cloudless, and nods. "I won't," he answers, and drops the debris back into his pocket.
Ronon knows that change doesn't always come with a warning.
When the Wraith came to Sateda, there wasn't time to carry anything away. They'd lived under the threat for centuries, but they hadn't recognized the immediacy of this particular danger until it was too late. They'd thrown everything they had into one last hard-fought, scrabbling defense. Ronon had tried to throw everything he had onto a transporter. Trouble was, she'd always had a mind of her own. Ronon doesn't remember much after the windows blew in and buried her under the debris. He remembers putting the little girl down. He remembers the heat of the ruptured power conduits as they touched the bed linens and turned them to flames. He remembers digging, clawing, fighting against brick and mortar; remembers the grit of the rubble against raw fingers. He remembers the stunner that finally took him out.
He only remembers bits and pieces after that - at least for awhile.
Mostly, he remembers that only a month before, he'd thought he had everything he ever wanted in life.
Somewhere, in one of McKay's alternate realities, he'd like to think that he got to keep it.
The path to the shoreline is quiet - there's little traffic, despite the balmy weather. Ronon stops along the way to check the security perimeter - he and Sheppard set it the first time one of those damn snakes carried off a nice fat yantak they'd been raising to slaughter and cure for the winter. Sheppard had been livid, grumbling and grumpy and taciturn for a solid week, which Ronon, frankly, had found hysterical - and kind of a surprise. Except they'd only just set up permanent camp a few months ago, and they were all - well, except for Teyla - kind of new at this. Not to mention that the kid was at the height of the worse-than-terrible twos, and they'd traded a -lot- of tava for that yantak, and most of all, Atlantis still stood there, winking just out of reach on the horizon, far enough away that you couldn't see the blasted metal and close enough to remind you of everything they'd decided to leave. So yeah, Sheppard the angry farmer was kind of unexpected - but they all had a bit of steam to blow off, and Keller wasn't going to waste medical supplies on their sparring injuries. Not anymore.
That was before McKay had figured out how to unjam the doors to the jumper bay. Now, if Sheppard needed out, he just flew.
Then, they'd all watched him pace and snarl and eventually Teyla forced him into bantos practice and McKay figured out how to interface the iPod's memory with the jumper systems and Ronon had dragged him out one day and set up something that was part-ditch, part-fence, part-early warning system.
They've improved it since then - it surrounds the whole settlement, and it's a hell of a lot more effective, now that the botanists and the engineers and the security experts among the Marines have gotten involved. The snakes can still be a problem, and they're lucky that none of the kids have had a run in, but it's better than nothing. It protects them.
Ronon checks the latch on the shoreward gate and thinks of Teyla tucking Davan in at night, of her hand, callused and strong and gentle as it brushes the hair off her son's face. He thinks of Davan, his presently snaggle-toothed face soft and droopy with sleep - of Miko's daughter, barely six months old, cradled in her mother's arms as she debates the merits of various building materials with the rest of the scientists.
There is still so much worth protecting.
When Ronon came to Atlantis, he hadn't carried much with him beyond the knives in his hands and the memories in his head. He'd had nothing to lose. He'd thought at the time he'd had nothing to gain, but it was better than running and Sheppard's men called him a good commander, so he'd stayed. He'd stayed, and he'd stayed, and the Ancients had come and the Lanteans had left, and he'd realized - again - that somehow he'd turned into someone with something left to lose. Again. And that he'd lost it. Again.
Only he'd gotten it back, by some remarkable blessing of fortune. Ronon doesn't, as a rule, trust to luck - but in this case he'd been willing to make an exception. In the end, of course, luck had proved a rotten bitch, because nothing else could explain a year where they cheated death on strange planets, with all the decks stacked, only to lose Carson and Weir within Atlantis's own hallways just when hope was within reach. Those losses hurt - more than Ronon would have thought possible only a year before. They hurt - but Atlantis was still there. His team was still there, Sheppard and Teyla and McKay, all of them bound together at some level Ronon couldn't - still can't - even begin to define.
His second year in Atlantis, Ronon realized he'd found a home, and that it was more tenuous, more fragile, and in some ways, infinitely more precious than the one he'd already lost. He's pretty sure that he doesn't get that lucky in all of McKay's universes - or even in most of them.
By the time Ronon makes it to the edge of the ocean, there's whitecaps on the water and the surf sounds angry. A thick line of clouds threaten in the distance, although the day is still bright. The city glitters in front of the gathering storm, and for a moment, Ronon can imagine that the spires aren't crudely broken in places, that the central tower still stands elegant and proud, not sheared off just above the jumper bay's iris. McKay still comes here on occasion to think: he claims he finds it inspiring. Ronon, who is called upon to play bodyguard on these excursions when he's available, thinks Rodney finds it a challenge - one that has so far refused to bow before the power of his brain.
That's not entirely true. Atlantis may not be habitable, but Rodney is nothing if not determined. They've salvaged much, including the remainder of the jumper fleet, thanks to McKay's unique blend of intelligence and stubbornness. The ZPM is drained so low it can't power basic living requirements for the long term, not even for their small gang, but it will run the gate, and now that the bay doors are open, it means they're not entirely without a means of strategic retreat. They make trading runs, periodically, although they don't dare try to contact the Milky Way. They're cannibalizing the stable parts of the city for raw materials - and for any of their own goods they can find. Ronon and Sheppard and Teyla and Rodney head over every week or two to try to open up new sections. Lorne has offered to go, more than once, but Sheppard always leaves him in command. Ronon likes Lorne, but he's not sorry. The trips they take back to the city are theirs - his team's - and their visits there feel more like religious rites than the scavenger hunt-cum-reconnaissance missions Ronon supposes they really are.
They go every week or two, until the rainy season starts and the weather turns untrustworthy. They've only just returned from this year's last run, and apparently they got back just in time. The city's structural integrity is, in Rodney's words, highly suspect - which Sheppard translates as "too goddamn dangerous" - when the winds are high. Every year, they wait out the rains and every year they go back to find some floor flooded, or some balcony sheared away, or some new window blown to pieces. After centuries asleep and mere moments of waking, Ronon thinks, Atlantis is finally crumbling. He wonders what they'll find next year. He wonders if they'll still be here when the gateroom falls away into the sea.
Raindrops spatter his face and he comes back to himself with a shock. He's been daydreaming for too long - the clouds have rolled in to hang thick and low, and he doesn't relish the idea of getting soaked. He shoves his hand back in his pocket and retrieves the handful of metal and rocks and plastic. He came here to do something, not to stand and stare. Atlantis will still be there tomorrow, at least for now.
When the Lanteans fled Atlantis for the final time, it wasn't by choice and - to Ronon's mind - it wasn't fair. They'd won the long battle against Michael and his super-race, despite the odds, despite the casualties, despite the ominous and unexplainable radio silence from Stargate Command - they'd won. But the final battle had cost them: they'd been under siege for weeks by the time McKay and Zelenka figured out how to rig the chair to release a pure bolt of energy from the ZPM, and the city had sustained heavy damage outside of the central tower as they scaled back the shield in an attempt to conserve energy. The plan worked, in the end, shattering Michael's ship into innumerable tiny pieces, flaring like stars as they fell through the sky. The plan worked, but it had drained the ZPM badly and their generators pretty much completely. The plan worked, but the city itself had sustained more damage than they could ever hope to repair, damage that made even a simple trip to the mess both an obstacle course and an unpredictable hazard. In the end, the decision had been as unavoidable as it was unpleasant. They'd gathered what they could and headed to the mainland to lick their wounds and regroup.
Ronon remembers leaving, this time. He remembers every moment of loading the two jumpers they'd managed to work free of the lower bays, first with people and then with supplies, until they'd taken everything they could find at the time. He remembers McKay removing the ZPM, tucking it into its storage case with hands so tired they shook. He remembers Teyla taking one last sweep of the gateroom, looking for something, anything, that they'd missed. He remembers Sheppard walking into the jumper, face set and hard, and never looking back.
He remembers standing by one of the broken walls, thinking of every time he'd left a home behind without anything to remember it by, and reaching down for a handful of debris, of simple, ugly rubble. It wasn't much. It wasn't Atlantis. But it had been part of that whole, and in some reality, Ronon thinks, the city is still standing.
---
Technically, Ronon supposes, the city is still standing in the here and now, but he doesn't think it counts. Nor, he thinks, weighing his pocketful of scree, does it really seem to matter anymore. Atlantis is hidden by the clouds, but he doesn't need to see it to know where it is - it's been his lodestone for a long, long time. Except, Ronon thinks, that it's never really been the city at all. He grins, quick and sudden and almost fierce, and flings his pieces of Atlantis into the ocean, then turns away from the ocean and jogs back up the path.
It hasn't ever been the city. Not really. They aren't in Atlantis, not anymore, but Ronon knows he's home, just as he knows Teyla's favorite trick with the bantos and Sheppard's complete inability to grow plants and Rodney's grand architectural plans for their current sturdy, if ramshackle, quarters. He wouldn't trade it for all the infinite possibilities in all the universes that ever were or ever will be. It is home, and it is his. It is more than enough.
Recipient's name:
briar_pipe
Pairing/Genre: Team as family (really Gen, but OT4 if you like)
Prompt or prompts used: Objects or rituals that have personal meaning; a sense of place, whether it's Atlantis, Sateda, Earth, or somewhere else.
Rating: PG, barely
Wordcount: 2,150ish
Warnings: Spoilers through S4.
Author's Notes: I'm so, so sorry I'm late. Thanks to
raisintorte and
smittywing for late night cheerleading! Title from the quote from Ray Bradbury: "We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.'
McKay likes to talk about alternate universes a lot. Actually, McKay just likes to talk. A lot. And sometimes - pretty often, particularly when something's about to go really, really, wrong - McKay talks about alternate universes and the possibility that somewhere else, there was a what if that came true.
Sometimes - more often than Rodney probably realizes - Ronon really is paying attention. McKay says a lot of things, and some of them can be pretty useful. You just have to know what you're listening for. The fact that in some universe, somewhere, there's a version of Rodney that understands golf and gets along with his sister is pretty good proof that anything can happen.
Actually, Ronon thinks, looking at the time-weathered fragments of plastic and stone and metal in his palm, his own life is pretty much proof enough of that.
"Ronon," Teyla calls as she leaves the jumper, "do not be long. There is a storm coming."
He looks at the sky, clear, blue, and cloudless, and nods. "I won't," he answers, and drops the debris back into his pocket.
Ronon knows that change doesn't always come with a warning.
When the Wraith came to Sateda, there wasn't time to carry anything away. They'd lived under the threat for centuries, but they hadn't recognized the immediacy of this particular danger until it was too late. They'd thrown everything they had into one last hard-fought, scrabbling defense. Ronon had tried to throw everything he had onto a transporter. Trouble was, she'd always had a mind of her own. Ronon doesn't remember much after the windows blew in and buried her under the debris. He remembers putting the little girl down. He remembers the heat of the ruptured power conduits as they touched the bed linens and turned them to flames. He remembers digging, clawing, fighting against brick and mortar; remembers the grit of the rubble against raw fingers. He remembers the stunner that finally took him out.
He only remembers bits and pieces after that - at least for awhile.
Mostly, he remembers that only a month before, he'd thought he had everything he ever wanted in life.
Somewhere, in one of McKay's alternate realities, he'd like to think that he got to keep it.
The path to the shoreline is quiet - there's little traffic, despite the balmy weather. Ronon stops along the way to check the security perimeter - he and Sheppard set it the first time one of those damn snakes carried off a nice fat yantak they'd been raising to slaughter and cure for the winter. Sheppard had been livid, grumbling and grumpy and taciturn for a solid week, which Ronon, frankly, had found hysterical - and kind of a surprise. Except they'd only just set up permanent camp a few months ago, and they were all - well, except for Teyla - kind of new at this. Not to mention that the kid was at the height of the worse-than-terrible twos, and they'd traded a -lot- of tava for that yantak, and most of all, Atlantis still stood there, winking just out of reach on the horizon, far enough away that you couldn't see the blasted metal and close enough to remind you of everything they'd decided to leave. So yeah, Sheppard the angry farmer was kind of unexpected - but they all had a bit of steam to blow off, and Keller wasn't going to waste medical supplies on their sparring injuries. Not anymore.
That was before McKay had figured out how to unjam the doors to the jumper bay. Now, if Sheppard needed out, he just flew.
Then, they'd all watched him pace and snarl and eventually Teyla forced him into bantos practice and McKay figured out how to interface the iPod's memory with the jumper systems and Ronon had dragged him out one day and set up something that was part-ditch, part-fence, part-early warning system.
They've improved it since then - it surrounds the whole settlement, and it's a hell of a lot more effective, now that the botanists and the engineers and the security experts among the Marines have gotten involved. The snakes can still be a problem, and they're lucky that none of the kids have had a run in, but it's better than nothing. It protects them.
Ronon checks the latch on the shoreward gate and thinks of Teyla tucking Davan in at night, of her hand, callused and strong and gentle as it brushes the hair off her son's face. He thinks of Davan, his presently snaggle-toothed face soft and droopy with sleep - of Miko's daughter, barely six months old, cradled in her mother's arms as she debates the merits of various building materials with the rest of the scientists.
There is still so much worth protecting.
When Ronon came to Atlantis, he hadn't carried much with him beyond the knives in his hands and the memories in his head. He'd had nothing to lose. He'd thought at the time he'd had nothing to gain, but it was better than running and Sheppard's men called him a good commander, so he'd stayed. He'd stayed, and he'd stayed, and the Ancients had come and the Lanteans had left, and he'd realized - again - that somehow he'd turned into someone with something left to lose. Again. And that he'd lost it. Again.
Only he'd gotten it back, by some remarkable blessing of fortune. Ronon doesn't, as a rule, trust to luck - but in this case he'd been willing to make an exception. In the end, of course, luck had proved a rotten bitch, because nothing else could explain a year where they cheated death on strange planets, with all the decks stacked, only to lose Carson and Weir within Atlantis's own hallways just when hope was within reach. Those losses hurt - more than Ronon would have thought possible only a year before. They hurt - but Atlantis was still there. His team was still there, Sheppard and Teyla and McKay, all of them bound together at some level Ronon couldn't - still can't - even begin to define.
His second year in Atlantis, Ronon realized he'd found a home, and that it was more tenuous, more fragile, and in some ways, infinitely more precious than the one he'd already lost. He's pretty sure that he doesn't get that lucky in all of McKay's universes - or even in most of them.
By the time Ronon makes it to the edge of the ocean, there's whitecaps on the water and the surf sounds angry. A thick line of clouds threaten in the distance, although the day is still bright. The city glitters in front of the gathering storm, and for a moment, Ronon can imagine that the spires aren't crudely broken in places, that the central tower still stands elegant and proud, not sheared off just above the jumper bay's iris. McKay still comes here on occasion to think: he claims he finds it inspiring. Ronon, who is called upon to play bodyguard on these excursions when he's available, thinks Rodney finds it a challenge - one that has so far refused to bow before the power of his brain.
That's not entirely true. Atlantis may not be habitable, but Rodney is nothing if not determined. They've salvaged much, including the remainder of the jumper fleet, thanks to McKay's unique blend of intelligence and stubbornness. The ZPM is drained so low it can't power basic living requirements for the long term, not even for their small gang, but it will run the gate, and now that the bay doors are open, it means they're not entirely without a means of strategic retreat. They make trading runs, periodically, although they don't dare try to contact the Milky Way. They're cannibalizing the stable parts of the city for raw materials - and for any of their own goods they can find. Ronon and Sheppard and Teyla and Rodney head over every week or two to try to open up new sections. Lorne has offered to go, more than once, but Sheppard always leaves him in command. Ronon likes Lorne, but he's not sorry. The trips they take back to the city are theirs - his team's - and their visits there feel more like religious rites than the scavenger hunt-cum-reconnaissance missions Ronon supposes they really are.
They go every week or two, until the rainy season starts and the weather turns untrustworthy. They've only just returned from this year's last run, and apparently they got back just in time. The city's structural integrity is, in Rodney's words, highly suspect - which Sheppard translates as "too goddamn dangerous" - when the winds are high. Every year, they wait out the rains and every year they go back to find some floor flooded, or some balcony sheared away, or some new window blown to pieces. After centuries asleep and mere moments of waking, Ronon thinks, Atlantis is finally crumbling. He wonders what they'll find next year. He wonders if they'll still be here when the gateroom falls away into the sea.
Raindrops spatter his face and he comes back to himself with a shock. He's been daydreaming for too long - the clouds have rolled in to hang thick and low, and he doesn't relish the idea of getting soaked. He shoves his hand back in his pocket and retrieves the handful of metal and rocks and plastic. He came here to do something, not to stand and stare. Atlantis will still be there tomorrow, at least for now.
When the Lanteans fled Atlantis for the final time, it wasn't by choice and - to Ronon's mind - it wasn't fair. They'd won the long battle against Michael and his super-race, despite the odds, despite the casualties, despite the ominous and unexplainable radio silence from Stargate Command - they'd won. But the final battle had cost them: they'd been under siege for weeks by the time McKay and Zelenka figured out how to rig the chair to release a pure bolt of energy from the ZPM, and the city had sustained heavy damage outside of the central tower as they scaled back the shield in an attempt to conserve energy. The plan worked, in the end, shattering Michael's ship into innumerable tiny pieces, flaring like stars as they fell through the sky. The plan worked, but it had drained the ZPM badly and their generators pretty much completely. The plan worked, but the city itself had sustained more damage than they could ever hope to repair, damage that made even a simple trip to the mess both an obstacle course and an unpredictable hazard. In the end, the decision had been as unavoidable as it was unpleasant. They'd gathered what they could and headed to the mainland to lick their wounds and regroup.
Ronon remembers leaving, this time. He remembers every moment of loading the two jumpers they'd managed to work free of the lower bays, first with people and then with supplies, until they'd taken everything they could find at the time. He remembers McKay removing the ZPM, tucking it into its storage case with hands so tired they shook. He remembers Teyla taking one last sweep of the gateroom, looking for something, anything, that they'd missed. He remembers Sheppard walking into the jumper, face set and hard, and never looking back.
He remembers standing by one of the broken walls, thinking of every time he'd left a home behind without anything to remember it by, and reaching down for a handful of debris, of simple, ugly rubble. It wasn't much. It wasn't Atlantis. But it had been part of that whole, and in some reality, Ronon thinks, the city is still standing.
---
Technically, Ronon supposes, the city is still standing in the here and now, but he doesn't think it counts. Nor, he thinks, weighing his pocketful of scree, does it really seem to matter anymore. Atlantis is hidden by the clouds, but he doesn't need to see it to know where it is - it's been his lodestone for a long, long time. Except, Ronon thinks, that it's never really been the city at all. He grins, quick and sudden and almost fierce, and flings his pieces of Atlantis into the ocean, then turns away from the ocean and jogs back up the path.
It hasn't ever been the city. Not really. They aren't in Atlantis, not anymore, but Ronon knows he's home, just as he knows Teyla's favorite trick with the bantos and Sheppard's complete inability to grow plants and Rodney's grand architectural plans for their current sturdy, if ramshackle, quarters. He wouldn't trade it for all the infinite possibilities in all the universes that ever were or ever will be. It is home, and it is his. It is more than enough.