fic: Living With It [Not Human challenge]
TITLE: Living With It
SUMMARY: John has the choice to use what he has or live with what he is.
CATEGORY: AU, crackerrific, gen
CHARACTERS: Sheppard, O'Neill, Carter
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: My mental description for this AU is 'Marvel Atlantis'. Maybe this should have gone with the 'Sekrit Superpower' challenge, but I think that John going Bug!ly can count as him being 'not human'.
Living With It
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
The resonances jabbed through John's head like glassy stakes, splintering his thoughts and his concentration. His body was on fire, pain spreading through his muscles like serpents, sinking needle-sharp fangs into him until he could take it no longer.
He had to move, had to run, had to act.
Within him, something tore loose, breaking free with a howl and a snarl. He heard something that might have been a man's shocked cry, and then he was out beneath the bright, harsh sun.
There was gritty sand between his fingers and hot sun on his back. His feet scrabbled in the loose shale of the hill as the men below shouted in alarm and shock and his own men cursed and swore behind him.
Rage was a bright thing inside him, incandescent, burning. It leaped like wildfire from instincts to his body, tingling in his nerves, sizzling in his muscles. There were faces, unfamiliar and dark. They cried out in shock as he came face to face with them, moving faster than his mind could comprehend, than they could see. And then they died beneath his talons, sharp and clawed and vicious.
The steady chatter of weapons fire didn't deter him, he could sense the bullets coming, dodge them.
Elation filled him, vicious and powerful, like a lover's touch, and he struck down men like bowling pins - one, two, many, more..
The shots that hit him came from behind, stabbing into his back and spine, causing him to hiss in pain and anger. His hands curled into claws and he spun on his heel, prepared to leap.
Until he saw the man who'd shot him.
His second-in-command's eyes were clear and wide, fierce and fearful as he settled his weapon back against his shoulder. His lips moved, and John could barely make out the words through the pain and rage.
I'm sorry, sir.
A spray of bullets slammed into his chest, distant pricks of pain, and, somewhere in his mind, John realised that the someone screaming was him.
--
John didn't glance up from the motorcycle part he was cleaning at the workbench as the door opened to a wave of warm air, summer sunshine, and the lingering scents of a pristine company car.
He carefully brushed away the speck of dust that would otherwise abrade the section of metal, and said out loud, "If you're looking for your wife, sir, she went inside to get a snack an hour ago. She's probably watching one of the replays on TV."
"I know where my wife is, thank you very much, Sheppard." O'Neill sounded gruff, but not cranky, and John lifted his head, but didn't turn around. There were a lot of nuances to his former commander's voice; he could hear them, even if he couldn't identify what they meant.
What he could identify was the uncertainty that preceded the general into the shed, a questioning note amidst the flat motor oil, acrid rusting iron, and sharp metal dust. "Right, so, how can I help General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force, today, then?"
He expected a casual joke, some comment about a cup of coffee and being a good host to senior officers.
He didn't expect the answer he got.
"You can come back."
John stilled.
Outside the shed, the crickets hiccuped in their chirping, a temporary lull, as though they'd sensed John's moment of vivid elation, the rolling tide of exultation that swamped him before he clamped down on it with ruthless determination. With the joy of flight came the possibility of falling. He'd known both in his time as a pilot with USAF.
"Have the Air Force changed their employment policies, then?" His voice was calm as he stared at the back wall of the shed, hung with oiled and rusting tools, lined with jars filled with loose nuts and bolts, flat washers, and electrical wire, but he paused in his work, resting his hands on the benchtop so they wouldn't visibly shake. "They're willing to hire freaks instead of discharging them?"
"There wasn't anyone willing to work with you at the time," O'Neill said, and John could hear the prickly underpinnings of regret in his voice.
In a single, fluid motion, he swivelled on his stool, his eyes tracking with unnatural swiftness to the tall, lean form standing by the gutted 1940s Indian that John was working on with Sam. "And there is now?"
One hand danced lightly across the Indian's seat before the general stuck it in his pocket and looked up. If there was compassion in his O'Neill's eyes, there was also exasperation at John's skepticism. "The President called for a special division to be formed of people with...particular abilities."
"Freaks." John took a vicious satisfaction in the term with all it's pejorative meaning. He still remembered the way his men's eyes had slid away without even looking at him during the court-martial, the way his former friends had avoided him. He might have looked human, but they were never going to forget what he'd become in those brief minutes that had changed his life.
John was never going to be allowed to forget it.
"You know, I don't think your colleagues are going to like your name for them," said O'Neill, apparently lightly, but with a hint of annoyance.
"They're not my colleagues."
"But they could be." O'Neill let that hang in the air just long enough for hope to blossom before John managed to tell himself it wouldn't happen. "You've heard of the Pegasus report."
"Hasn't everyone?" It had been on the news the other night. John had changed the channel, unwilling to be reminded of what he was.
"There are others who are also showing abilities."
Abilities? Is that what they're calling it now?
It was a risk, but John had always skirted the edge of playing it safe anyway.
He let the beast out. Not entirely, no. He had more of a conscience than to let the beast loose on O'Neill - he had a lot of respect for the older officer. But he let out just enough of the beast for his eyes to turn yellow and slit-pupilled, for his arm to transform into blue leather tipped with sharp, ivory claws, for the world to turn sharp with hungry edges.
His perspective changed, altering with his eye. Vision was defined by movement and stillness rather than shape and colour - a hunter's gaze, spatially aware, prey-oriented. Everything was sharper, harder, more vicious against his senses - painfully so.
If keeping the beast inside clawed him ragged, letting it out was just as painful.
"And did these others require shooting by their own men in order to be stopped?" Even his voice transformed under the aegis of the beast, growing deeper and rougher with the animal growl. "Are they capable of killing two dozen men in under five minutes with their bare hands?"
O'Neill looked steadily back at him, remaining exactly where he'd been and not moving a step. He showed no fear, his scent betrayed nothing, but his eyes were like obsidian as he answered, "Most of them have never been in a situation like that. But someday they might be."
John forced the beast back down again. He thought of it like hauling on a chain, dragging the thing back inside him, locking it up with a force of effort that was as much physical as it was mental.
As he watched, scales turned to skin, and claws to oil-greased fingers. He felt his sight revert to pure human tones again, and the almost-painful awareness of sound and scent and taste faded, leaving him human - or mostly. And with the beast caged up, he could think again and not just react.
"They think we could be a danger."
The older man snorted. "Sheppard, even without your ability, you're a danger. The animal or creature or whatever you call it--"
"The beast."
"Whatever," O'Neill said. "That only makes you lethal. Who you're lethal to depends on you. Not everyone who changed has your discipline - or your loyalty."
John narrowed his eyes. "Extremists?"
Long-fingered hands half-lifted in a gesture of ignorance. "Probably. We don't know. The UN is trying to form a superhuman watchdog - but the fact that there are so many countries involved makes it a bitch to manage. China's got the numbers, but they've also got the Asian countries riding them - the little countries don't want China as a superpowered superpower anymore than we do. Our reports from Russia suggest that it's safer not to be known to have any unusual abilities - they're trying to reproduce the effects in 'ordinary humans.'" O'Neill's mouth thinned with displeasure. "You can imagine how they're going about it."
The Cold War might be over, but old sins were hard to forgive - especially for the older military personnel.
John's eyes narrowed. "I'm surprised they didn't try it here."
He was pinned by the sharpness in the dark gaze. "Who says they didn't?"
There were fragments in John's memory of the first time he changed into the beast. He remembered the sand burning beneath his knuckles, and the jagged shape of the mountain against the pale sky. John could recall the way flesh had torn beneath his touch and bone had shattered beneath his grip, the sickening hunger that came with the bloodshed, primal as rape, intoxicating as a drug high, and terrifying.
His body jerked slightly, in reaction to the vivid memory of the bullets that embedded in his flesh, each individual slug like poison in his furious body. He shivered, remembering the cold restraints they'd bound him with, the cage they'd left him in, even when he reverted back to human form after digging out the bullets with his claws.
John remembered waking up hours later in a pristine, white cell, human, naked, and alone.
"On me?"
"No." O'Neill looked away. "I pulled strings to get you out. Others weren't so lucky."
John read the guilt in the man's face and looked away.
"Are they still--?"
"No." The answer was instant and fierce. "We did what we could to transfer people, shut down divisions. When Hayes became President, he closed down the whole operation."
"Casualties?"
"More than enough."
And John was willing to bet that O'Neill carried those names on his conscience. It was the kind of thing the man would do.
It was the kind of thing John would do.
"So the government's collecting its own private freak show," he said, carefully banishing the old memories and returning to the topic of conversation. "And you want me to sign up?"
John had had his fill of people staring at him from the two months he'd spent undergoing the court-martial process. If there were any murmurs about his 'freak' abilities, they'd been only murmurs at the time, discounted for lack of evidence. His men had been loyal to him in that much, anyway, and John had come out of the court-martial, with his professional reputation bruised but not blackened.
The court-martial didn't bother him. The stares and whispers, combined with his own recognition of what he was becoming - had become - did. And John would never forget the day he was summoned to the base commander's office and more or less told he was being given an honourable discharge. No reasons, no explanations, and no need for either.
O'Neill knew all this. He knew all this because he'd come out to find John when he got the news of the discharge, grumpy as hell at both the news and the interruption of his fishing vacation.
"They'll need someone with experience in field operations." O'Neill's hands dug deeply into his pockets, almost facing off against John. "We've got a couple of military men in there, a couple of jarheads, another USAF officer, several sergeants." The dark eyes watched John's face. "You'd be more or less senior."
He let none of his eagerness show, but the beast strained inside him, tugging at the reins he was tired of holding to keep it leashed. "That's kinda difficult considering I retired."
"You can come out of retirement," O'Neill pointed out. "I did. Long story," he added when John raised his eyebrows queryingly. "And better told over lunch. Which, Carter will attempt to make if you don't hurry up. She gave me fifteen minutes to break the news and beat you over the head with it before she said she'd try her hand at the barbecue."
John snorted. Sam's lack of culinary skills was near legendary among her friends - in any other era, she and her family would have starved. Usually, she left the cooking to other people or ordered take-out.
"Then I guess we'd better get over there."
While he closed up the shed, John glanced over at O'Neill, who was toeing rocks out of the nearby ditch, and kicking them into the long grass. "Is it just me, or has Sam been getting...domestic, lately?"
"Don't look at me," came the prompt response. "I didn't marry her for the white picket fence."
But when they got into the house, Sam was kicking back on the recliner with a beer and a replay of the weekend game between Arizona State and UCLA . A less domestic image of a woman, John couldn't imagine. However, it suited Sam to a tee.
"So, is he in?" She asked without taking her eyes from the screen as Arizona played a wide pass that slipped through the UCLA defences and gained them twenty-five yards.
"You could ask me," John said pointedly. "And I see you found the beer."
She glanced over at him with the brilliant grin that had stopped many a young cadet in his tracks back in their days at the Academy. "And the remote control." Then she turned her gaze to her husband and read his displeasure. Her expression turned innocent. "I couldn't find the hockey channel, Jack."
O'Neill rolled his eyes. "Spare me. Where's the meat?" He said to John.
"In the fridge. Top shelf."
The older man huffed and rolled his eyes at John, but with the kind of exasperation that was obviously sham. A moment later, he was in the kitchen, rummaging for tongs and a knife. "You having a beer?"
"Yes, please," Sam called out, winking at John, who grinned in spite of himself.
"Actually, I thought maybe I'd just have an orange juice today..."
"Uhuh. There's none in your fridge. You'll have to make do with a beer."
A minute later, an opened beer was sitting on the side table in reach of John's hand, and another one was set beside Sam's hand as O'Neill leaned down and muttered something about demanding women. She kissed him dutifully, then pushed him in the direction of the barbecue, her eyes never leaving the television screen.
O'Neill rolled his eyes at a half-grinning, half-envious John before going out onto the patio to start the barbecue.
John slouched down beside Sam. "So," he said, figuring he'd get it out of the way. "What's with the freak show thing anyway?"
She didn't look away from the screen. "You mean the Atlantis Project? Don't look at me. I'm not involved in organising it."
"I just figured, you know, being married and all..."
Sam snorted. "John, did you tell your ex-wife everything about your work?"
"That's different. You've got classification."
Silence fell, and they watched as UCLA tackled the ball to the ground and the Arizona coach called time out. "They need you," she said as they watched the players mill about on the field.
"Is that what O'Neill said?"
"That's my own professional opinion," she said, taking a sip from the beer O'Neill had brought her. "The situation's not dire yet, but it's only a matter of time before someone starts collecting their own private superpowered army."
"Superpowered?"
Her head tilted to one side as she looked at him, her mouth tugging sideways in a wry smile. "It's not the best term, I know."
"I'm sure I can think of better."
"Then you do that." She took a swig of beer. "Other countries are already developing the people they've located with special powers. We know of China and Russia, but we have spies in place and diplomats working on the ground in those countries. More worrying are countries like India and Pakistan, or the Middle East. The government's already put a ban on superpowered people of any nationality travelling into the US - but that doesn't even begin to cover how to keep track of teleporters and seevees."
John thought he knew what a teleporter was - thank you, Star Trek - but a seevee? "Seevees?"
"Chrono-variants," Sam said. "C-Vs." She continued talking as her eyes tracked the progress of the ball across the football field on the screen. "Time-travellers. There's at least one chronovariant and teleporter mix we know of, and we were lucky. He immigrated out here from Eastern Europe a few days after the m-- explosion. If it wasn't for that, he'd be working for Russia."
"Mexplosion?"
Sam waved that away. "They're mostly civilians - we've channelled them into various projects for the government. The military personnel are a variety of ranks and disciplines. There's at least one other Air Force guy - Major Evan Lorne. Nice guy."
"So let him lead."
This time, when the silence fell, he turned to look at Sam and found her watching him. "He's not the same material as you, John."
"You sure of that?"
"Right now I am. His records show reliability and initiative, but he hasn't got the experience you have."
"You mean he's not a maverick."
She snorted. "John, by some people's standards, I'm a maverick. Oh, yeah, run it!" In a single fluid move, without even pausing to take a breath, she sat up and segued into cheering on the UCLA team as they passed wide to a receiver who skidded his way through the defence to score a thirty-yard TD.
John couldn't quite stop his grin. Of all the women he'd ever known, Sam Carter was in a class all her own. When he'd been younger, he'd thought it a pity he wasn't attracted to her - or she to him. Now, he figured it was just as well. She reminded him a little too much of himself at times. "So you think I should?"
She put her beer down on the coffee table and leaned back in the couch. "You know what I think," she said with a sideways look. "But this is a decision you need to make by yourself for yourself."
Yeah, he'd figured she'd say something like that. "Helpful."
"Look, the project starts on the fifteenth July," Sam said. "Turn up." She picked up the remote control and began flipping through the channels. "You don't know, you might decide you'd like to be part of something bigger again."
For that, he was minded not to bother going at all. "That's a low blow," he told her.
"Yep," she agreed, unsmiling. "But don't expect me to believe that you're happy here in your own personal Antarctica."
In the six years since his discharge, John had kept his hand in. Technically, he was out of the Air Force. Retired a Major, never got to Light Bird. But O'Neill had worked out some kind of deal with someone up where the air was thin. John never asked the details, he just took the jobs. A few things here, a few things there. A pilot who knew the layout of the hills in northern Afghanistan, or around the India-Pakistani border, someone who could get in and get out under radar where possible, who could deal with tense situations when they couldn't stay beneath the radar. Someone reliable but expendable, and who knew to keep his mouth shut.
John Sheppard fit the bill; John Sheppard got the jobs.
"Antarctica's a long way south of here," he murmured, ignoring the remembered sting of being needed but not wanted. "And a lot colder."
Sam gave him a look that said he knew exactly what she meant.
Okay, so she was right. He missed being part of something bigger.
O'Neill had offered him a change. A chance to do something with what he was. He'd offered John a chance to not only be needed but wanted in this Atlantis Project thing, even if it did just turn out to be a freak show.
"The fifteenth July?"
"Yep."
"Just because I turn up doesn't mean I have to sign on the dotted line, right?" The look Sam gave him was irritated and he shrugged. "I'm just checking."
"You turn up, you work out the deal, you meet the others, and you see the situation for yourself," she told him, clearly exasperated with his hesitation. "It's not rocket science, John."
John made a face she didn't see, and figured he should let her get on with the game. Anyone who ever generalised by gender had obviously never met Sam Carter.
He eased back in the chair to watch the play, but his brain was busy thinking over O'Neill's offer. The fifteenth was in a week's time. He could just go and check it out - just go and see what was happening, maybe meet others like him.
If he liked what he saw in the project, in the other 'freaks' with whom he'd be working, he'd think about staying.
And if he didn't like it, he could always just wash his hands, walk away and live with what he was.
--
SUMMARY: John has the choice to use what he has or live with what he is.
CATEGORY: AU, crackerrific, gen
CHARACTERS: Sheppard, O'Neill, Carter
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: My mental description for this AU is 'Marvel Atlantis'. Maybe this should have gone with the 'Sekrit Superpower' challenge, but I think that John going Bug!ly can count as him being 'not human'.
Living With It
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
The resonances jabbed through John's head like glassy stakes, splintering his thoughts and his concentration. His body was on fire, pain spreading through his muscles like serpents, sinking needle-sharp fangs into him until he could take it no longer.
He had to move, had to run, had to act.
Within him, something tore loose, breaking free with a howl and a snarl. He heard something that might have been a man's shocked cry, and then he was out beneath the bright, harsh sun.
There was gritty sand between his fingers and hot sun on his back. His feet scrabbled in the loose shale of the hill as the men below shouted in alarm and shock and his own men cursed and swore behind him.
Rage was a bright thing inside him, incandescent, burning. It leaped like wildfire from instincts to his body, tingling in his nerves, sizzling in his muscles. There were faces, unfamiliar and dark. They cried out in shock as he came face to face with them, moving faster than his mind could comprehend, than they could see. And then they died beneath his talons, sharp and clawed and vicious.
The steady chatter of weapons fire didn't deter him, he could sense the bullets coming, dodge them.
Elation filled him, vicious and powerful, like a lover's touch, and he struck down men like bowling pins - one, two, many, more..
The shots that hit him came from behind, stabbing into his back and spine, causing him to hiss in pain and anger. His hands curled into claws and he spun on his heel, prepared to leap.
Until he saw the man who'd shot him.
His second-in-command's eyes were clear and wide, fierce and fearful as he settled his weapon back against his shoulder. His lips moved, and John could barely make out the words through the pain and rage.
I'm sorry, sir.
A spray of bullets slammed into his chest, distant pricks of pain, and, somewhere in his mind, John realised that the someone screaming was him.
--
John didn't glance up from the motorcycle part he was cleaning at the workbench as the door opened to a wave of warm air, summer sunshine, and the lingering scents of a pristine company car.
He carefully brushed away the speck of dust that would otherwise abrade the section of metal, and said out loud, "If you're looking for your wife, sir, she went inside to get a snack an hour ago. She's probably watching one of the replays on TV."
"I know where my wife is, thank you very much, Sheppard." O'Neill sounded gruff, but not cranky, and John lifted his head, but didn't turn around. There were a lot of nuances to his former commander's voice; he could hear them, even if he couldn't identify what they meant.
What he could identify was the uncertainty that preceded the general into the shed, a questioning note amidst the flat motor oil, acrid rusting iron, and sharp metal dust. "Right, so, how can I help General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force, today, then?"
He expected a casual joke, some comment about a cup of coffee and being a good host to senior officers.
He didn't expect the answer he got.
"You can come back."
John stilled.
Outside the shed, the crickets hiccuped in their chirping, a temporary lull, as though they'd sensed John's moment of vivid elation, the rolling tide of exultation that swamped him before he clamped down on it with ruthless determination. With the joy of flight came the possibility of falling. He'd known both in his time as a pilot with USAF.
"Have the Air Force changed their employment policies, then?" His voice was calm as he stared at the back wall of the shed, hung with oiled and rusting tools, lined with jars filled with loose nuts and bolts, flat washers, and electrical wire, but he paused in his work, resting his hands on the benchtop so they wouldn't visibly shake. "They're willing to hire freaks instead of discharging them?"
"There wasn't anyone willing to work with you at the time," O'Neill said, and John could hear the prickly underpinnings of regret in his voice.
In a single, fluid motion, he swivelled on his stool, his eyes tracking with unnatural swiftness to the tall, lean form standing by the gutted 1940s Indian that John was working on with Sam. "And there is now?"
One hand danced lightly across the Indian's seat before the general stuck it in his pocket and looked up. If there was compassion in his O'Neill's eyes, there was also exasperation at John's skepticism. "The President called for a special division to be formed of people with...particular abilities."
"Freaks." John took a vicious satisfaction in the term with all it's pejorative meaning. He still remembered the way his men's eyes had slid away without even looking at him during the court-martial, the way his former friends had avoided him. He might have looked human, but they were never going to forget what he'd become in those brief minutes that had changed his life.
John was never going to be allowed to forget it.
"You know, I don't think your colleagues are going to like your name for them," said O'Neill, apparently lightly, but with a hint of annoyance.
"They're not my colleagues."
"But they could be." O'Neill let that hang in the air just long enough for hope to blossom before John managed to tell himself it wouldn't happen. "You've heard of the Pegasus report."
"Hasn't everyone?" It had been on the news the other night. John had changed the channel, unwilling to be reminded of what he was.
"There are others who are also showing abilities."
Abilities? Is that what they're calling it now?
It was a risk, but John had always skirted the edge of playing it safe anyway.
He let the beast out. Not entirely, no. He had more of a conscience than to let the beast loose on O'Neill - he had a lot of respect for the older officer. But he let out just enough of the beast for his eyes to turn yellow and slit-pupilled, for his arm to transform into blue leather tipped with sharp, ivory claws, for the world to turn sharp with hungry edges.
His perspective changed, altering with his eye. Vision was defined by movement and stillness rather than shape and colour - a hunter's gaze, spatially aware, prey-oriented. Everything was sharper, harder, more vicious against his senses - painfully so.
If keeping the beast inside clawed him ragged, letting it out was just as painful.
"And did these others require shooting by their own men in order to be stopped?" Even his voice transformed under the aegis of the beast, growing deeper and rougher with the animal growl. "Are they capable of killing two dozen men in under five minutes with their bare hands?"
O'Neill looked steadily back at him, remaining exactly where he'd been and not moving a step. He showed no fear, his scent betrayed nothing, but his eyes were like obsidian as he answered, "Most of them have never been in a situation like that. But someday they might be."
John forced the beast back down again. He thought of it like hauling on a chain, dragging the thing back inside him, locking it up with a force of effort that was as much physical as it was mental.
As he watched, scales turned to skin, and claws to oil-greased fingers. He felt his sight revert to pure human tones again, and the almost-painful awareness of sound and scent and taste faded, leaving him human - or mostly. And with the beast caged up, he could think again and not just react.
"They think we could be a danger."
The older man snorted. "Sheppard, even without your ability, you're a danger. The animal or creature or whatever you call it--"
"The beast."
"Whatever," O'Neill said. "That only makes you lethal. Who you're lethal to depends on you. Not everyone who changed has your discipline - or your loyalty."
John narrowed his eyes. "Extremists?"
Long-fingered hands half-lifted in a gesture of ignorance. "Probably. We don't know. The UN is trying to form a superhuman watchdog - but the fact that there are so many countries involved makes it a bitch to manage. China's got the numbers, but they've also got the Asian countries riding them - the little countries don't want China as a superpowered superpower anymore than we do. Our reports from Russia suggest that it's safer not to be known to have any unusual abilities - they're trying to reproduce the effects in 'ordinary humans.'" O'Neill's mouth thinned with displeasure. "You can imagine how they're going about it."
The Cold War might be over, but old sins were hard to forgive - especially for the older military personnel.
John's eyes narrowed. "I'm surprised they didn't try it here."
He was pinned by the sharpness in the dark gaze. "Who says they didn't?"
There were fragments in John's memory of the first time he changed into the beast. He remembered the sand burning beneath his knuckles, and the jagged shape of the mountain against the pale sky. John could recall the way flesh had torn beneath his touch and bone had shattered beneath his grip, the sickening hunger that came with the bloodshed, primal as rape, intoxicating as a drug high, and terrifying.
His body jerked slightly, in reaction to the vivid memory of the bullets that embedded in his flesh, each individual slug like poison in his furious body. He shivered, remembering the cold restraints they'd bound him with, the cage they'd left him in, even when he reverted back to human form after digging out the bullets with his claws.
John remembered waking up hours later in a pristine, white cell, human, naked, and alone.
"On me?"
"No." O'Neill looked away. "I pulled strings to get you out. Others weren't so lucky."
John read the guilt in the man's face and looked away.
"Are they still--?"
"No." The answer was instant and fierce. "We did what we could to transfer people, shut down divisions. When Hayes became President, he closed down the whole operation."
"Casualties?"
"More than enough."
And John was willing to bet that O'Neill carried those names on his conscience. It was the kind of thing the man would do.
It was the kind of thing John would do.
"So the government's collecting its own private freak show," he said, carefully banishing the old memories and returning to the topic of conversation. "And you want me to sign up?"
John had had his fill of people staring at him from the two months he'd spent undergoing the court-martial process. If there were any murmurs about his 'freak' abilities, they'd been only murmurs at the time, discounted for lack of evidence. His men had been loyal to him in that much, anyway, and John had come out of the court-martial, with his professional reputation bruised but not blackened.
The court-martial didn't bother him. The stares and whispers, combined with his own recognition of what he was becoming - had become - did. And John would never forget the day he was summoned to the base commander's office and more or less told he was being given an honourable discharge. No reasons, no explanations, and no need for either.
O'Neill knew all this. He knew all this because he'd come out to find John when he got the news of the discharge, grumpy as hell at both the news and the interruption of his fishing vacation.
"They'll need someone with experience in field operations." O'Neill's hands dug deeply into his pockets, almost facing off against John. "We've got a couple of military men in there, a couple of jarheads, another USAF officer, several sergeants." The dark eyes watched John's face. "You'd be more or less senior."
He let none of his eagerness show, but the beast strained inside him, tugging at the reins he was tired of holding to keep it leashed. "That's kinda difficult considering I retired."
"You can come out of retirement," O'Neill pointed out. "I did. Long story," he added when John raised his eyebrows queryingly. "And better told over lunch. Which, Carter will attempt to make if you don't hurry up. She gave me fifteen minutes to break the news and beat you over the head with it before she said she'd try her hand at the barbecue."
John snorted. Sam's lack of culinary skills was near legendary among her friends - in any other era, she and her family would have starved. Usually, she left the cooking to other people or ordered take-out.
"Then I guess we'd better get over there."
While he closed up the shed, John glanced over at O'Neill, who was toeing rocks out of the nearby ditch, and kicking them into the long grass. "Is it just me, or has Sam been getting...domestic, lately?"
"Don't look at me," came the prompt response. "I didn't marry her for the white picket fence."
But when they got into the house, Sam was kicking back on the recliner with a beer and a replay of the weekend game between Arizona State and UCLA . A less domestic image of a woman, John couldn't imagine. However, it suited Sam to a tee.
"So, is he in?" She asked without taking her eyes from the screen as Arizona played a wide pass that slipped through the UCLA defences and gained them twenty-five yards.
"You could ask me," John said pointedly. "And I see you found the beer."
She glanced over at him with the brilliant grin that had stopped many a young cadet in his tracks back in their days at the Academy. "And the remote control." Then she turned her gaze to her husband and read his displeasure. Her expression turned innocent. "I couldn't find the hockey channel, Jack."
O'Neill rolled his eyes. "Spare me. Where's the meat?" He said to John.
"In the fridge. Top shelf."
The older man huffed and rolled his eyes at John, but with the kind of exasperation that was obviously sham. A moment later, he was in the kitchen, rummaging for tongs and a knife. "You having a beer?"
"Yes, please," Sam called out, winking at John, who grinned in spite of himself.
"Actually, I thought maybe I'd just have an orange juice today..."
"Uhuh. There's none in your fridge. You'll have to make do with a beer."
A minute later, an opened beer was sitting on the side table in reach of John's hand, and another one was set beside Sam's hand as O'Neill leaned down and muttered something about demanding women. She kissed him dutifully, then pushed him in the direction of the barbecue, her eyes never leaving the television screen.
O'Neill rolled his eyes at a half-grinning, half-envious John before going out onto the patio to start the barbecue.
John slouched down beside Sam. "So," he said, figuring he'd get it out of the way. "What's with the freak show thing anyway?"
She didn't look away from the screen. "You mean the Atlantis Project? Don't look at me. I'm not involved in organising it."
"I just figured, you know, being married and all..."
Sam snorted. "John, did you tell your ex-wife everything about your work?"
"That's different. You've got classification."
Silence fell, and they watched as UCLA tackled the ball to the ground and the Arizona coach called time out. "They need you," she said as they watched the players mill about on the field.
"Is that what O'Neill said?"
"That's my own professional opinion," she said, taking a sip from the beer O'Neill had brought her. "The situation's not dire yet, but it's only a matter of time before someone starts collecting their own private superpowered army."
"Superpowered?"
Her head tilted to one side as she looked at him, her mouth tugging sideways in a wry smile. "It's not the best term, I know."
"I'm sure I can think of better."
"Then you do that." She took a swig of beer. "Other countries are already developing the people they've located with special powers. We know of China and Russia, but we have spies in place and diplomats working on the ground in those countries. More worrying are countries like India and Pakistan, or the Middle East. The government's already put a ban on superpowered people of any nationality travelling into the US - but that doesn't even begin to cover how to keep track of teleporters and seevees."
John thought he knew what a teleporter was - thank you, Star Trek - but a seevee? "Seevees?"
"Chrono-variants," Sam said. "C-Vs." She continued talking as her eyes tracked the progress of the ball across the football field on the screen. "Time-travellers. There's at least one chronovariant and teleporter mix we know of, and we were lucky. He immigrated out here from Eastern Europe a few days after the m-- explosion. If it wasn't for that, he'd be working for Russia."
"Mexplosion?"
Sam waved that away. "They're mostly civilians - we've channelled them into various projects for the government. The military personnel are a variety of ranks and disciplines. There's at least one other Air Force guy - Major Evan Lorne. Nice guy."
"So let him lead."
This time, when the silence fell, he turned to look at Sam and found her watching him. "He's not the same material as you, John."
"You sure of that?"
"Right now I am. His records show reliability and initiative, but he hasn't got the experience you have."
"You mean he's not a maverick."
She snorted. "John, by some people's standards, I'm a maverick. Oh, yeah, run it!" In a single fluid move, without even pausing to take a breath, she sat up and segued into cheering on the UCLA team as they passed wide to a receiver who skidded his way through the defence to score a thirty-yard TD.
John couldn't quite stop his grin. Of all the women he'd ever known, Sam Carter was in a class all her own. When he'd been younger, he'd thought it a pity he wasn't attracted to her - or she to him. Now, he figured it was just as well. She reminded him a little too much of himself at times. "So you think I should?"
She put her beer down on the coffee table and leaned back in the couch. "You know what I think," she said with a sideways look. "But this is a decision you need to make by yourself for yourself."
Yeah, he'd figured she'd say something like that. "Helpful."
"Look, the project starts on the fifteenth July," Sam said. "Turn up." She picked up the remote control and began flipping through the channels. "You don't know, you might decide you'd like to be part of something bigger again."
For that, he was minded not to bother going at all. "That's a low blow," he told her.
"Yep," she agreed, unsmiling. "But don't expect me to believe that you're happy here in your own personal Antarctica."
In the six years since his discharge, John had kept his hand in. Technically, he was out of the Air Force. Retired a Major, never got to Light Bird. But O'Neill had worked out some kind of deal with someone up where the air was thin. John never asked the details, he just took the jobs. A few things here, a few things there. A pilot who knew the layout of the hills in northern Afghanistan, or around the India-Pakistani border, someone who could get in and get out under radar where possible, who could deal with tense situations when they couldn't stay beneath the radar. Someone reliable but expendable, and who knew to keep his mouth shut.
John Sheppard fit the bill; John Sheppard got the jobs.
"Antarctica's a long way south of here," he murmured, ignoring the remembered sting of being needed but not wanted. "And a lot colder."
Sam gave him a look that said he knew exactly what she meant.
Okay, so she was right. He missed being part of something bigger.
O'Neill had offered him a change. A chance to do something with what he was. He'd offered John a chance to not only be needed but wanted in this Atlantis Project thing, even if it did just turn out to be a freak show.
"The fifteenth July?"
"Yep."
"Just because I turn up doesn't mean I have to sign on the dotted line, right?" The look Sam gave him was irritated and he shrugged. "I'm just checking."
"You turn up, you work out the deal, you meet the others, and you see the situation for yourself," she told him, clearly exasperated with his hesitation. "It's not rocket science, John."
John made a face she didn't see, and figured he should let her get on with the game. Anyone who ever generalised by gender had obviously never met Sam Carter.
He eased back in the chair to watch the play, but his brain was busy thinking over O'Neill's offer. The fifteenth was in a week's time. He could just go and check it out - just go and see what was happening, maybe meet others like him.
If he liked what he saw in the project, in the other 'freaks' with whom he'd be working, he'd think about staying.
And if he didn't like it, he could always just wash his hands, walk away and live with what he was.
--