![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erdaTitle: Five Fusions for Sheppard
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
keefaq
Word count: ~3000
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon, Ford, Teyla, Elizabeth, Rodney
Pairing:None, Gen or can be read as pre-het, pre-slash.
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Transformative work
Tag for 5.19: Vegas
Summary: Five deaths, five different fandom fusions. Kudos to anyone who recognizes all five settings.
Written for the Season Five Tagathon at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_episodefic
I
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Ronon wasn’t as quick as he should have been, mostly because Rodney had been slow to give up the info he needed to find the detective out in the middle of the desert. Sheppard was stone dead by the time he reached him. He prodded at the body with his sword for a bit, just to be sure.
“This is the mighty and valiant leader of the human race?” he asked the clean up crew. With a sigh, he bent down and hoisted the cadaver over his shoulder. It was a long walk to the temple, but Ronon was strong and swift of foot, and he made the journey in good time. He dumped the body carelessly at the feet of the head priest and dug through his pockets, pulling out a handful of gold coins which he spilled in a long shining arc down into the priest’s tiny wrinkled hands, counting them out painstakingly as they tumbled down, then giving a little nod to himself. It was enough. “Do it quickly,” Ronon said. “Lots of adventures to get to, so hurry up there, old man. Do your job.”
The priest paid him no mind. He was bent over the corpse, long white hair tumbled forward and obscuring his face, doing priestly things, but after a moment the fallen hero opened his eyes, restored to life and looking confused about it. He gazed at Ronon as if he’d never seen anyone like him before. “Is that a hamster?” he finally asked. His voice cracked with uncertainty in the dry desert air.
Ronon looked down to where his little traveling companion was peeking out of his pocket. He grinned. “Time to get up, Sheppard. We have lots more quests to complete. Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel, the stuff of legend.”
Sheppard still looked confused, and Ronon wasn’t sure how to get through to him. He held out one leather-clad arm, and Sheppard grasped it and pulled himself to his feet. Ronon cast around for something to say, some way to make Sheppard understand his destiny. His eyes lit up when he figured it out. “Boo likes you,” he said.
Sheppard still didn’t seem to get it, but he followed Ronon out of the temple willingly enough, and Ronon figured it would just take a little time for Sheppard to get used to his new life. “Squeaky wheel gets the kick,” he said persuasively. Sheppard huffed at that, but didn’t speak. This detective was a man of few words, and Ronon could tell that they were going to get along just fine. No one was a finer judge of character than Boo.
II
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Teyla stood beside the corpse, her body relaxed, eyes staring blindly off into the distance. Despite the desert heat, a chill mist rose around her. This far from the Old Kingdom the path into death was dim, but after a moment she felt the cold water swirling around her bare legs and began walking quickly toward the First Gate. “John,” she called. “Are you here?” There was no answer beyond the rushing of the water through the opening of the gate, and she despaired for a minute. If the detective had already passed through the First Gate, she would not be able to retrieve him from death.
The current was strong this close to the gate, and she stumbled and almost fell, turning slightly and pulling upright with an effort. There was a figure peering at the gate, obscured by the thick sprays of water which, on crashing into the gate, returned in the form of high arcing waves that broke over its head. “John,” she shouted. The figure turned slightly toward her, and she saw with relief that it was him. She held her hand out. “Come away from the gate,” she instructed, but he made no response.
Are you all right?” she asked.
John continued watching her silently until she pulled Dyrim from its pouch, holding the mahogany handle carefully, and gently ringing the tiny bell. Once only its sweet tone rang out, pure and piercing, over the sound of the water, and John’s mouth opened as the undertones died away, compelled to speak by the power of the tone. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Teyla,” she replied. “Come to return you to life.”
He looked away, back toward the gate, as she approached. “I am finished there,” he said.
“No,” she said, putting all the certainty she could into her voice, for she knew how easy it would be for him to let the water carry him through the gate. This close it was hard, even for her, to resist its pull. “You have work yet to do,” she said.
He shook his head, listless with death. “I don’t choose to return.”
“Nonetheless it is the path you will walk,” Teyla insisted.
Behind her there was a sudden growl, and she spun around to see the wraith striding through the water towards them. Her hand went instinctively to her bandolier, but she raised her sword instead, not daring to use the bells lest she inadvertently send John through the gate in an attempt to lay the wraith to rest. The wraith walked straight into the sword, impaling himself carelessly, and used his greater reach to grab her shoulder, pulling her forward and almost under the water. His affinity for death made him even stronger here than in life, and she would have gone under if John hadn’t leapt to her defense, grabbing the sword embedded in the wraith’s chest and using it to push him back enough for her to regain her footing.
She was hampered by her inability to use any magic that would bind the dead without subjecting John to the same fate as the wraith. John joined with her in pushing against the wraith, but they made no progress until she stopped pushing and reached instead for John.
Teyla’s fingers fluttered at his neck, and drawing him forward, she pressed the charter mark on her forehead to his. The marks flared shockingly bright in the dim cavern, and the water rose around them, bubbling and foaming with a sudden influx of power. The wraith reacted with a roar, jerking away from their combined magic and falling back toward the gate, the increased strength of the current helping them.
Teyla dropped her hand from John’s neck to his wrist, and she raised the other hand to touch the charter mark on her forehead before tracing a spell in the air in an attempt to bind him to her. She pulled a larger bell from her bandolier, and swung it out, ringing it twice, it’s tone crying out pure and triumphant over the fetid air in the kingdom of death. She grabbed hold of the sword and finally managed to tear it from the wraith’s body as he tumbled helplessly back through the first gate. She tightened her hand at John’s wrist before he could be swept through after the wraith. They teetered on the edge of the gateway for a horrifying moment before falling backward into the water together, her grip shaken loose in the fall. She flailed about for a moment before connecting with John’s body under the water, fastening a hand into his collar and hauling him back into a shallower pool. He was no longer resisting her.
She heard him coughing weakly as she opened her eyes back in the land of the living. Several members of the clean up crew had approached them and were watching them intently. Living this far from the Old Kingdom, they had perhaps never seen any magic before, certainly not a necromancer in full regalia. Shaking ice crystals out of her hair, Teyla bent down and helped John to sit upright. “It was not yet your time to die,” she said. “This world still has need of you.”
III
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Aiden Ford poured a few drops of the precious liquid into the detective’s mouth. Sheppard coughed as he opened his eyes. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Aiden said. He tried to smile bravely, but the part where he expected to die himself in exchange for Sheppard made it difficult to do.
“Who are you, and why do you look so unhappy that I’m alive?” Sheppard asked. He sounded more curious than worried, as if he could sense that Aiden was no threat to him. Aiden didn’t answer. He was busy waiting to die, wondering how quickly it would happen, and whether it would hurt a lot.
After a few minutes of silence, Sheppard sat up. “Hey, Buddy, are you okay?” he asked, and Aiden realized that he was okay.
Something was wrong. If he wasn’t to exchange his life for Sheppard’s, then whose life was forfeit?
“Who did you say you were?”
“”You don’t know me yet,” Aiden said. “But I know you.”
“Yeah?” Sheppard smirked. “What do you think you know about me?”
“I know you’re a prat,” Aiden said. “You’re also a great warrior, Sheppard, and one day you’ll be a great leader. But first you must learn to listen as well as you fight.” Somehow when Gaius said these things it sounded a lot more portentous and less pretentious than when he did, and Sheppard looked around as if in hopes of finding someone more sane to help him out. “Come with me now. “ Aiden said more prosaically. “We have work to do.”
Sheppard ran his hand across his shoulder and chest, looking puzzled when he found no evidence of a bullet wound. “Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because I am your destiny, as you are mine.”
Surprisingly, Sheppard didn’t laugh in his face. Instead, he got up and tried to brush the Vegas dust from his pants. “And if I were to listen to you, where would we be going?”
“Beyond the White Mountains to the Isle of the Blessed,” Aiden said. “We’ve got to find Nimueh. Together we can stop her from taking the life of an innocent in exchange for yours.”
“Nimueh?” Sheppard asked, but he followed Aiden back to his horse, and clambered up behind him without any further protest.
IV
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Elizabeth tore her royal raiment from throat to groin at the loss of her beloved Sheppard. Nine days she wandered over the desert seeking him, taking neither of food nor drink in her divine grief, asking of man and maid word or thought as to his fate. At last Sam Carter, moved by the spectacle of the mighty queen laid low, took pity upon her, and spoke these words:
“Queen of heaven, I know not the fate of your beloved son, yet I have heard the crack of thunder and the heaving of the earth under him. Let us go back to the mountain and ask General Landry to reveal his fate.”
At these words Elizabeth’s grief was quieted, and so Sam, flaming torches in both her slender hands to light the way, led the giver of earthly gifts to Mount Cheyenne, and so into the presence of Landry, Guardian of Men and Gods.
“Elizabeth, precious jewel of Cheyenne, I tell you truly,” stated Landry. “As the light in the eyes of your beloved was dimmed in death, he was carried like all mortals down to the kingdom of Hades, as is just and fitting.”
At these words, a darkening shadow fell onto Elizabeth’s face and spread to the ground and over the complex, from there outward across the land, so that everywhere plants lost their verdant bloom and fell as if extinguished by their own grief at the loss of Sheppard. Seeing this judgment upon all the land, Landry was moved. “Elizabeth,’ he said. “Your pain and loss have moved me deeply, but we cannot transgress against the nature of man.”
Elizabeth pierced the mighty Landry with her certain gaze. “What makes us gods over heaven and earth but the power to shape the world and its future according to our wishes?” she asked. “Are we to be subjugated to our own creations? If I will that Sheppard pass back into the land of the living, who is above me to negate that will? Give to me this boon, my General, or I tell you now the earth shall be bereft of my nurturing breath and no new life shall bloom there again.”
A chill breeze sprang up to punctuate this speech, and General Landry saw the sun covered by black clouds which plunged the land into darkness. “So touched by the power of your grief am I that I am willing to mitigate this circumstance,” he said to Elizabeth. “If you will but make your way down into the realm of darkness, and so long as no food nor drink of the night has passed the lips of Sheppard there, you may return with him into the day.”
So Elizabeth journeyed down, yearning with swift feet toward Sheppard, who himself, ill content in the land of the dead, had already made his way secretly to the stable of the Lord of the Underworld. At Elizabeth’s urging, and by the use of his divine ATA gene, he harnessed the power of Hades’ chariot and flew them both straight forward out of the bowels of the earth and into the night sky, throwing back his head and laughing a braying laugh that awakened the dead land back into a glorious rebirth.
V
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Rodney pulled him up as if he could push the life back into him, but Sheppard’s head lolled back grotesquely until Rodney grabbed onto the back of his neck and bent him forward into a desperate embrace. “No,’ he said, just once, though inside he was babbling it over and over. He let go suddenly and Sheppard’s body flopped back onto the ground.
Rodney dropped back onto his heels, staring at Sheppard’s lifeless body, trying not to hyperventilate. One of the emergency crew approached. “I’ll take care of the body,” she said. Rodney didn’t move, but something in his face gave her pause. “We have to do this, Sir,” she explained. She stepped closer hesitantly, dragging some sort of body bag thing toward Sheppard, and Rodney’s head cleared instantly. He stood up, his body a shield between her intentions and Sheppard.
“No,” he said. He made it clear and certain and unarguable, and then, just in case there was any doubt, he placed his hand, fingers together, against her shoulder and pushed her gently away. “Go back and help sift through the wreckage,” he said. “I have a special crew coming in to deal with this body. You understand? No one touches this body until my people are finished with it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Of course if the SGC has need of the body…”
”Yes, that’s right,” he said. “We’ll be having a special crew handle this. In fact, I want you to make sure everyone here understands they are not to approach or touch this body or any of the immediate surroundings while I get together what we need to take care of things. Clear?”
The young woman nodded. Rodney was heading for his car, his resolve formed. Maybe he drove away a little too fast, burned a little rubber out of there, but he knew what he was going to do, what he had to do.
When Rodney returned, Sheppard was already sitting up, though he looked confused. “What happened?” he asked, standing up whole and alive, albeit looking a little dazed and shaky.
Rodney walked straight up to him and grabbed on, hugging him so roughly that Sheppard gave a little squeak of surprise. He pulled back, touching one hand to his chest with a pained grimace, than looking down at his hand as if he expected to see something shocking there -blood maybe- but his hand came away clean and dry.
Rodney spun around at the shocked gasp from behind him. It was the young woman he’d warned away from Sheppard’s body earlier. “You…’she said, staring at Sheppard, “you were dead.”
Sheppard’s eyebrows rose and he fixed his gaze on Rodney. The man was too intelligent for his own good, sometimes. “You’re mistaken,” Rodney said, putting all the authority that years of running a secret lab in a hostile galaxy had given him. “The detective was merely knocked unconscious by the force of the blast.” He could feel Sheppard’s disbelieving glare on him like the guilty secret this would have to be, but Sheppard didn’t contradict him. The technician obviously didn’t believe him either, but she probably had some romantic notion that he possessed an ancient healing device or something, and Rodney was not going to inform her that the ancients had no way to reanimate a corpse.
Only an evil deal with a crossroads demon could do that.
Author:
keefaqWord count: ~3000
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon, Ford, Teyla, Elizabeth, Rodney
Pairing:None, Gen or can be read as pre-het, pre-slash.
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Transformative work
Tag for 5.19: Vegas
Summary: Five deaths, five different fandom fusions. Kudos to anyone who recognizes all five settings.
Written for the Season Five Tagathon at
sga_episodeficHe wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Ronon wasn’t as quick as he should have been, mostly because Rodney had been slow to give up the info he needed to find the detective out in the middle of the desert. Sheppard was stone dead by the time he reached him. He prodded at the body with his sword for a bit, just to be sure.
“This is the mighty and valiant leader of the human race?” he asked the clean up crew. With a sigh, he bent down and hoisted the cadaver over his shoulder. It was a long walk to the temple, but Ronon was strong and swift of foot, and he made the journey in good time. He dumped the body carelessly at the feet of the head priest and dug through his pockets, pulling out a handful of gold coins which he spilled in a long shining arc down into the priest’s tiny wrinkled hands, counting them out painstakingly as they tumbled down, then giving a little nod to himself. It was enough. “Do it quickly,” Ronon said. “Lots of adventures to get to, so hurry up there, old man. Do your job.”
The priest paid him no mind. He was bent over the corpse, long white hair tumbled forward and obscuring his face, doing priestly things, but after a moment the fallen hero opened his eyes, restored to life and looking confused about it. He gazed at Ronon as if he’d never seen anyone like him before. “Is that a hamster?” he finally asked. His voice cracked with uncertainty in the dry desert air.
Ronon looked down to where his little traveling companion was peeking out of his pocket. He grinned. “Time to get up, Sheppard. We have lots more quests to complete. Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel, the stuff of legend.”
Sheppard still looked confused, and Ronon wasn’t sure how to get through to him. He held out one leather-clad arm, and Sheppard grasped it and pulled himself to his feet. Ronon cast around for something to say, some way to make Sheppard understand his destiny. His eyes lit up when he figured it out. “Boo likes you,” he said.
Sheppard still didn’t seem to get it, but he followed Ronon out of the temple willingly enough, and Ronon figured it would just take a little time for Sheppard to get used to his new life. “Squeaky wheel gets the kick,” he said persuasively. Sheppard huffed at that, but didn’t speak. This detective was a man of few words, and Ronon could tell that they were going to get along just fine. No one was a finer judge of character than Boo.
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Teyla stood beside the corpse, her body relaxed, eyes staring blindly off into the distance. Despite the desert heat, a chill mist rose around her. This far from the Old Kingdom the path into death was dim, but after a moment she felt the cold water swirling around her bare legs and began walking quickly toward the First Gate. “John,” she called. “Are you here?” There was no answer beyond the rushing of the water through the opening of the gate, and she despaired for a minute. If the detective had already passed through the First Gate, she would not be able to retrieve him from death.
The current was strong this close to the gate, and she stumbled and almost fell, turning slightly and pulling upright with an effort. There was a figure peering at the gate, obscured by the thick sprays of water which, on crashing into the gate, returned in the form of high arcing waves that broke over its head. “John,” she shouted. The figure turned slightly toward her, and she saw with relief that it was him. She held her hand out. “Come away from the gate,” she instructed, but he made no response.
Are you all right?” she asked.
John continued watching her silently until she pulled Dyrim from its pouch, holding the mahogany handle carefully, and gently ringing the tiny bell. Once only its sweet tone rang out, pure and piercing, over the sound of the water, and John’s mouth opened as the undertones died away, compelled to speak by the power of the tone. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Teyla,” she replied. “Come to return you to life.”
He looked away, back toward the gate, as she approached. “I am finished there,” he said.
“No,” she said, putting all the certainty she could into her voice, for she knew how easy it would be for him to let the water carry him through the gate. This close it was hard, even for her, to resist its pull. “You have work yet to do,” she said.
He shook his head, listless with death. “I don’t choose to return.”
“Nonetheless it is the path you will walk,” Teyla insisted.
Behind her there was a sudden growl, and she spun around to see the wraith striding through the water towards them. Her hand went instinctively to her bandolier, but she raised her sword instead, not daring to use the bells lest she inadvertently send John through the gate in an attempt to lay the wraith to rest. The wraith walked straight into the sword, impaling himself carelessly, and used his greater reach to grab her shoulder, pulling her forward and almost under the water. His affinity for death made him even stronger here than in life, and she would have gone under if John hadn’t leapt to her defense, grabbing the sword embedded in the wraith’s chest and using it to push him back enough for her to regain her footing.
She was hampered by her inability to use any magic that would bind the dead without subjecting John to the same fate as the wraith. John joined with her in pushing against the wraith, but they made no progress until she stopped pushing and reached instead for John.
Teyla’s fingers fluttered at his neck, and drawing him forward, she pressed the charter mark on her forehead to his. The marks flared shockingly bright in the dim cavern, and the water rose around them, bubbling and foaming with a sudden influx of power. The wraith reacted with a roar, jerking away from their combined magic and falling back toward the gate, the increased strength of the current helping them.
Teyla dropped her hand from John’s neck to his wrist, and she raised the other hand to touch the charter mark on her forehead before tracing a spell in the air in an attempt to bind him to her. She pulled a larger bell from her bandolier, and swung it out, ringing it twice, it’s tone crying out pure and triumphant over the fetid air in the kingdom of death. She grabbed hold of the sword and finally managed to tear it from the wraith’s body as he tumbled helplessly back through the first gate. She tightened her hand at John’s wrist before he could be swept through after the wraith. They teetered on the edge of the gateway for a horrifying moment before falling backward into the water together, her grip shaken loose in the fall. She flailed about for a moment before connecting with John’s body under the water, fastening a hand into his collar and hauling him back into a shallower pool. He was no longer resisting her.
She heard him coughing weakly as she opened her eyes back in the land of the living. Several members of the clean up crew had approached them and were watching them intently. Living this far from the Old Kingdom, they had perhaps never seen any magic before, certainly not a necromancer in full regalia. Shaking ice crystals out of her hair, Teyla bent down and helped John to sit upright. “It was not yet your time to die,” she said. “This world still has need of you.”
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Aiden Ford poured a few drops of the precious liquid into the detective’s mouth. Sheppard coughed as he opened his eyes. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Aiden said. He tried to smile bravely, but the part where he expected to die himself in exchange for Sheppard made it difficult to do.
“Who are you, and why do you look so unhappy that I’m alive?” Sheppard asked. He sounded more curious than worried, as if he could sense that Aiden was no threat to him. Aiden didn’t answer. He was busy waiting to die, wondering how quickly it would happen, and whether it would hurt a lot.
After a few minutes of silence, Sheppard sat up. “Hey, Buddy, are you okay?” he asked, and Aiden realized that he was okay.
Something was wrong. If he wasn’t to exchange his life for Sheppard’s, then whose life was forfeit?
“Who did you say you were?”
“”You don’t know me yet,” Aiden said. “But I know you.”
“Yeah?” Sheppard smirked. “What do you think you know about me?”
“I know you’re a prat,” Aiden said. “You’re also a great warrior, Sheppard, and one day you’ll be a great leader. But first you must learn to listen as well as you fight.” Somehow when Gaius said these things it sounded a lot more portentous and less pretentious than when he did, and Sheppard looked around as if in hopes of finding someone more sane to help him out. “Come with me now. “ Aiden said more prosaically. “We have work to do.”
Sheppard ran his hand across his shoulder and chest, looking puzzled when he found no evidence of a bullet wound. “Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because I am your destiny, as you are mine.”
Surprisingly, Sheppard didn’t laugh in his face. Instead, he got up and tried to brush the Vegas dust from his pants. “And if I were to listen to you, where would we be going?”
“Beyond the White Mountains to the Isle of the Blessed,” Aiden said. “We’ve got to find Nimueh. Together we can stop her from taking the life of an innocent in exchange for yours.”
“Nimueh?” Sheppard asked, but he followed Aiden back to his horse, and clambered up behind him without any further protest.
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Elizabeth tore her royal raiment from throat to groin at the loss of her beloved Sheppard. Nine days she wandered over the desert seeking him, taking neither of food nor drink in her divine grief, asking of man and maid word or thought as to his fate. At last Sam Carter, moved by the spectacle of the mighty queen laid low, took pity upon her, and spoke these words:
“Queen of heaven, I know not the fate of your beloved son, yet I have heard the crack of thunder and the heaving of the earth under him. Let us go back to the mountain and ask General Landry to reveal his fate.”
At these words Elizabeth’s grief was quieted, and so Sam, flaming torches in both her slender hands to light the way, led the giver of earthly gifts to Mount Cheyenne, and so into the presence of Landry, Guardian of Men and Gods.
“Elizabeth, precious jewel of Cheyenne, I tell you truly,” stated Landry. “As the light in the eyes of your beloved was dimmed in death, he was carried like all mortals down to the kingdom of Hades, as is just and fitting.”
At these words, a darkening shadow fell onto Elizabeth’s face and spread to the ground and over the complex, from there outward across the land, so that everywhere plants lost their verdant bloom and fell as if extinguished by their own grief at the loss of Sheppard. Seeing this judgment upon all the land, Landry was moved. “Elizabeth,’ he said. “Your pain and loss have moved me deeply, but we cannot transgress against the nature of man.”
Elizabeth pierced the mighty Landry with her certain gaze. “What makes us gods over heaven and earth but the power to shape the world and its future according to our wishes?” she asked. “Are we to be subjugated to our own creations? If I will that Sheppard pass back into the land of the living, who is above me to negate that will? Give to me this boon, my General, or I tell you now the earth shall be bereft of my nurturing breath and no new life shall bloom there again.”
A chill breeze sprang up to punctuate this speech, and General Landry saw the sun covered by black clouds which plunged the land into darkness. “So touched by the power of your grief am I that I am willing to mitigate this circumstance,” he said to Elizabeth. “If you will but make your way down into the realm of darkness, and so long as no food nor drink of the night has passed the lips of Sheppard there, you may return with him into the day.”
So Elizabeth journeyed down, yearning with swift feet toward Sheppard, who himself, ill content in the land of the dead, had already made his way secretly to the stable of the Lord of the Underworld. At Elizabeth’s urging, and by the use of his divine ATA gene, he harnessed the power of Hades’ chariot and flew them both straight forward out of the bowels of the earth and into the night sky, throwing back his head and laughing a braying laugh that awakened the dead land back into a glorious rebirth.
He wasn’t a small man, didn’t look small stretched out on his back, offering himself up for the human race. The cleaning crew, sifting through the wreckage, stepped carefully around him, subdued as though they felt complicit in his sacrifice.
Rodney pulled him up as if he could push the life back into him, but Sheppard’s head lolled back grotesquely until Rodney grabbed onto the back of his neck and bent him forward into a desperate embrace. “No,’ he said, just once, though inside he was babbling it over and over. He let go suddenly and Sheppard’s body flopped back onto the ground.
Rodney dropped back onto his heels, staring at Sheppard’s lifeless body, trying not to hyperventilate. One of the emergency crew approached. “I’ll take care of the body,” she said. Rodney didn’t move, but something in his face gave her pause. “We have to do this, Sir,” she explained. She stepped closer hesitantly, dragging some sort of body bag thing toward Sheppard, and Rodney’s head cleared instantly. He stood up, his body a shield between her intentions and Sheppard.
“No,” he said. He made it clear and certain and unarguable, and then, just in case there was any doubt, he placed his hand, fingers together, against her shoulder and pushed her gently away. “Go back and help sift through the wreckage,” he said. “I have a special crew coming in to deal with this body. You understand? No one touches this body until my people are finished with it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Of course if the SGC has need of the body…”
”Yes, that’s right,” he said. “We’ll be having a special crew handle this. In fact, I want you to make sure everyone here understands they are not to approach or touch this body or any of the immediate surroundings while I get together what we need to take care of things. Clear?”
The young woman nodded. Rodney was heading for his car, his resolve formed. Maybe he drove away a little too fast, burned a little rubber out of there, but he knew what he was going to do, what he had to do.
When Rodney returned, Sheppard was already sitting up, though he looked confused. “What happened?” he asked, standing up whole and alive, albeit looking a little dazed and shaky.
Rodney walked straight up to him and grabbed on, hugging him so roughly that Sheppard gave a little squeak of surprise. He pulled back, touching one hand to his chest with a pained grimace, than looking down at his hand as if he expected to see something shocking there -blood maybe- but his hand came away clean and dry.
Rodney spun around at the shocked gasp from behind him. It was the young woman he’d warned away from Sheppard’s body earlier. “You…’she said, staring at Sheppard, “you were dead.”
Sheppard’s eyebrows rose and he fixed his gaze on Rodney. The man was too intelligent for his own good, sometimes. “You’re mistaken,” Rodney said, putting all the authority that years of running a secret lab in a hostile galaxy had given him. “The detective was merely knocked unconscious by the force of the blast.” He could feel Sheppard’s disbelieving glare on him like the guilty secret this would have to be, but Sheppard didn’t contradict him. The technician obviously didn’t believe him either, but she probably had some romantic notion that he possessed an ancient healing device or something, and Rodney was not going to inform her that the ancients had no way to reanimate a corpse.
Only an evil deal with a crossroads demon could do that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-21 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-21 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-21 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:36 pm (UTC)Seriously, though, considering how you seem to read every single SGA story written, I'm not surprised you can't keep up with all the little obscurefandoms.
#1 (Ronon) is Baldur's Gate.
#2 (Teyla) is from the Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix.
#3 (Ford) is Merlin. I really wanted to do Pushing Daisies for Ford, but it was taking too long to refresh my memory on the sources, and Merlin was fresh in my mind.
#4 (Elizabeth)is a reworking of the Demeter and Persephone myth.
#5 (Rodney) is Supernatural.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:55 pm (UTC)I did recognize Demeter and Persephone (I used to be really into Greek mythology), but that one glimpse of recollection got lost amid all the ones I didn't recognize. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-21 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 07:43 pm (UTC)Minsc!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsc)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-07 09:01 pm (UTC)Seriously though, these are really interesting reworkings of all source materials.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-08 02:26 pm (UTC)Thanks for emerging from lurkdom to comment. I get lurky myself a lot, so I understand that sometimes it's hard to pull yourself out of it and interact with people. Hope to hear from you again.