SGA fic: Abiding in the Field
Abiding in the Field
Stargate: Atlantis
655 words
Rated G
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is the property of someone not me, and I have not received any monetary or edible recompense for this derivative work.
Summary: Keeping watch over their flock by night.
The crackle of the fire is the only sound in the night air, the hiss and pop the only hint of man's existence. John sits beside the fire, calm and still, watching the night while his team sleeps. He thinks of Antarctica, of living on the very edge of civilization, behind him the small tenacious grip of humanity, before him a vast stark landscape or a dark void, and the sense always of complete isolation until he turned his head to see the base, lights in the darkness; and with the lights, his people, warm and safe. His life there was small but he knew where every piece of it fit, interlocking around him perfectly.
There is a sound behind him, and he turns, but it is only Rodney grumbling in his sleep, protesting some dreamt slight and turning over. Teyla sleeps lightly as she always does offworld (and, John suspects, for at least the first weeks on Atlantis), a delicate warrior's slumber that she throws off quickly when she has to. Ronon sleeps motionless and deeply but never for very long; in too few hours he will awaken of his own accord and join John in staring into the darkness.
For now, though, his team sleeps in peace as John watches the night. When the morning light melts the darkness and they awake to a sober breakfast of ration bars, they will continue their three-way negotiations with these people who ride in the bleak steppes around the Stargate, bleeding their animals for protein to mix with the oatlike grain that the people of the plains grow. It's the grain that interests them, although John has a feeling he's not going to get out of this without having bought at least one horse, and he's going to love explaining that to Elizabeth.
He can just about make out a whuffle or two of large herbivore in the darkness, tethered beside their owners' tents. Nobody really trusts one another here, and so each of the three parties ties their horses and sleeps with a sack of grain for a pillow and keeps watch, sitting beside the fire in the darkness.
***
Elizabeth cannot sleep, and so she paces around the city nodding at everyone she passes, as though to reassure herself of their existence, as though by noting each face in turn she can make the missing faces appear so they can be counted.
She finds herself in the gate room, a ridiculously intimate space for the gravity of such travel, and the technician on duty nods back at her. There has been no word, she knows it, knows that her team has checked in at the scheduled time and that they would have come running to her with the slightest alarming news, but still she raises an eyebrow to receive a slight headshake in return.
The negotiations have lasted for almost a week now and the absence of Rodney and John is felt, not only by the people waiting for a yell that doesn't come or for a flash of hair, a comforting grin, but by Atlantis herself who sits patient and dejected like a puppy waiting for her master to come home. Elizabeth reaches out a hand to the wall as she has caught Carson doing, but there is no response and she continues on.
The long cool hallways of Atlantis are nothing like any others she's walked in her life: not the warm wood and tapestry walls of the consulate sunlit in early evening, not the bright loud industrial halls of her undergraduate dormitory as she paced up and down repeating to herself the timeline of a long-ago war, but this curving glittering city is her home now, every person within her family, and she knows all their faces and the lack of any one.
Elizabeth moves on, continuing on her way around the city, nodding and murmuring greetings and unconsciously counting heads.
*****
Feedback is appreciated.
Stargate: Atlantis
655 words
Rated G
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is the property of someone not me, and I have not received any monetary or edible recompense for this derivative work.
Summary: Keeping watch over their flock by night.
The crackle of the fire is the only sound in the night air, the hiss and pop the only hint of man's existence. John sits beside the fire, calm and still, watching the night while his team sleeps. He thinks of Antarctica, of living on the very edge of civilization, behind him the small tenacious grip of humanity, before him a vast stark landscape or a dark void, and the sense always of complete isolation until he turned his head to see the base, lights in the darkness; and with the lights, his people, warm and safe. His life there was small but he knew where every piece of it fit, interlocking around him perfectly.
There is a sound behind him, and he turns, but it is only Rodney grumbling in his sleep, protesting some dreamt slight and turning over. Teyla sleeps lightly as she always does offworld (and, John suspects, for at least the first weeks on Atlantis), a delicate warrior's slumber that she throws off quickly when she has to. Ronon sleeps motionless and deeply but never for very long; in too few hours he will awaken of his own accord and join John in staring into the darkness.
For now, though, his team sleeps in peace as John watches the night. When the morning light melts the darkness and they awake to a sober breakfast of ration bars, they will continue their three-way negotiations with these people who ride in the bleak steppes around the Stargate, bleeding their animals for protein to mix with the oatlike grain that the people of the plains grow. It's the grain that interests them, although John has a feeling he's not going to get out of this without having bought at least one horse, and he's going to love explaining that to Elizabeth.
He can just about make out a whuffle or two of large herbivore in the darkness, tethered beside their owners' tents. Nobody really trusts one another here, and so each of the three parties ties their horses and sleeps with a sack of grain for a pillow and keeps watch, sitting beside the fire in the darkness.
***
Elizabeth cannot sleep, and so she paces around the city nodding at everyone she passes, as though to reassure herself of their existence, as though by noting each face in turn she can make the missing faces appear so they can be counted.
She finds herself in the gate room, a ridiculously intimate space for the gravity of such travel, and the technician on duty nods back at her. There has been no word, she knows it, knows that her team has checked in at the scheduled time and that they would have come running to her with the slightest alarming news, but still she raises an eyebrow to receive a slight headshake in return.
The negotiations have lasted for almost a week now and the absence of Rodney and John is felt, not only by the people waiting for a yell that doesn't come or for a flash of hair, a comforting grin, but by Atlantis herself who sits patient and dejected like a puppy waiting for her master to come home. Elizabeth reaches out a hand to the wall as she has caught Carson doing, but there is no response and she continues on.
The long cool hallways of Atlantis are nothing like any others she's walked in her life: not the warm wood and tapestry walls of the consulate sunlit in early evening, not the bright loud industrial halls of her undergraduate dormitory as she paced up and down repeating to herself the timeline of a long-ago war, but this curving glittering city is her home now, every person within her family, and she knows all their faces and the lack of any one.
Elizabeth moves on, continuing on her way around the city, nodding and murmuring greetings and unconsciously counting heads.
*****
Feedback is appreciated.