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seldearBecause I haven't posted anything for a while, but I've been writing like a madwoman.
From an SG1/SGA crossover that obviously isn't going to have taken place anywhere in canon for the simple fact that it would require some major retconning, and people waking up in showers. I'm not sure that these parts are still going to be kept in the text, either - I had to do a rewrite, and I don't think they fit anymore. Pity. I particularly like Jack's thoughts on kinesthetic senses in the second excerpt.
I've really missed writing Jack. He's got such a distinctive voice.
excerpt 1
McKay protested of course. He was needed here. It was nothing that couldn't be dealt with by Zelenka. He'd been working with Sam on the systems and that was an important job. He couldn't go back to Atlantis...
In the end, Sheppard lost his temper. "Rodney, you're going to walk into that 'jumper and head back to Atlantis on your own two feet, or I'll get Ronon to shoot you with his stunner and we'll dump you in the cargo hold for the flight back."
The face McKay made would have done a tantrum-throwing five year-old proud. He walked into the ship, grumbling under his breath. Major Lorne looked wryly at Sheppard. "Thanks, sir."
"Command has some privileges, Lorne," Sheppard said with an airy smugness. "One of them is to stick Rodney with someone else for a change. I'll buy you a beer when we get backto the city."
The major snorted and hit the button to close the back hatch as he went in to join the still-grumbling McKay.
"You know, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder," Jack commented as he and Sheppard left the flight bay and the doors sealed behind them, preparing for hard vacuum.
"'They' never met Rodney," Sheppard said wryly. "You headed back to the... God, wasn't there anything else to call it?"
"Not a Harry Potter fan?"
Sheppard looked sour. "Please. I read the first five while I was stationed at McMurdo. Then, someone started up a book swap in the first month we were away and there were fourteen Harry Potter books in the pile." Jack glanced sideways as the other man smirked. "But, you know, I was the only one who'd brought along 'War and Peace'."
Not exactly Jack's idea of light reading material. "Did you read it?"
"I got to about page sixty-five." Sheppard was defensive. "There were the Wraith and the Gennii - and the paperwork."
"The worst part of any promotion," Jack muttered. "Wait until you get to General."
"Uhuh. Remind me not to make General, sir."
Jack bit back the retort that Sheppard was about as likely to make General as Jack had been three years ago. In his time with the Stargate project, he'd discovered that Fate had a wry sense of humour - either that, or a very sick one. Possibly both.
Sheppard was walking off in the opposite direction down the corridor, though, and Jack frowned. "You're not going to the Room of Requirement?"
Okay, so he used the term just to watch the other man wince. "I...uh...I told Teyla I'd meet her in the workout area for sparring practise once we'd packed Rodney off."
Ah, the legendary sparring practise. Which apparently, neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of blackest space could stay Sheppard from. "Right."
"Besides," Sheppard said with evidence of attempted ingenuity, "they've got you to help them out with their testing."
And that was supposed to make Jack feel so much better? He wasn't in this for the scientists. Just one of them.
"All right," he said. "You have ninety minutes to spar with Ms. Emmagen. After that, you're expected in the Room."
The other man looked relieved and Jack began to wonder if he shouldn't have shortened it to an hour after all. "Yes, sir."
If Sheppard had been the skipping type, he'd have skipped off to his sparring practise. As it was, the ebullient saunter of the man's retreat made Jack highly suspicious.
He'd read the files on Sheppard, Atlantis, and Sheppard's team. They were sent to him as part of his weekly briefing under Homeworld Security, a kind of 'this is all your fault, O'Neill' reminder. He'd been the one to pluck Sheppard out of the frosty, white hell of Antarctica and, according to the logic of someone higher up the brain chain than Jack, was therefore responsible for starting everything that had happened from that point onwards.
At any rate, he'd not only heard the reports of Sheppard's sparring with Ms. Emmagen, he'd seen the video one of the marines had taken of a bout, shortly after the Daedelus arrived in Atlantis and the Wraith were dealt with. Hell, he'd read the whole damn file on Ms. Emmagen - every single word of the reports by members of the Atlantis expedition, present and past.
As he strolled along the corridor, headed back to the Room, Jack reflected that it was probably best that neither Ms. Emmagen, nor Sheppard, had any idea of just how extensive the assessment on her had been.
It was definitely best that nobody in Atlantis had the faintest idea that the sole object and focus of the study had been to determine just how much influence the alien woman had on John Sheppard and whether she might, at some point in the indeterminate future, present a threat to Atlantis and require 'neutralisation.'
Just because you weren't paranoid, didn't mean they weren't out to get you
--
excerpt 2
After the endless debating and conversation in the Room, Jack found the silence a welcome change.
As a result, he didn't walk quite as fast as he might otherwise have.
He'd done this at the SGC, too - an apparently aimless meander that took his path all over the base, peering in at doors to see what various people were doing, and maybe catch them out if they weren't strictly doing work. Jack had discovered all kinds of interesting things about the base personnel by going for a wander at irregular times of day.
The main corridor through the station ran straight for several miles with corridors and splits all coming off it. It was possible to see all the way down the corridor, without a break.
So he saw Ronon Dex approaching while the young man was still a long way off.
A long way off turned into a not-so-long way off very fast. The man might not have many words in him, but he could eat up the miles like a professional sprinter.
Jack almost expected to be nodded at and passed, but the young man slowed as he approached. "General."
"Mr. Dex. Nice day?"
Dex shrugged. "Okay so far."
Definitely not a man of many words. "Seen Sheppard recently?" Jack was running on the assumption that Sheppard was still sparring with Teyla, but it had been an hour, and Jack was pretty sure the younger officer's endurance wasn't that good.
"In the workout room, sparring against Teyla."
Okay, so maybe it was. "Still?"
Dex grinned. "We went for a run first. Wears her out and gives him a better chance fighting."
Reasonable. Jack eyed the Satedan. "So he wins?"
The grin got toothy before Dex turned away. "He hasn't yet."
Jack watched the younger man run off, envying his youth and energy. It had been several years since he could run more than a mile without his knee burning up - and Dex had energy and spare.
Thank God for the transport. In a flash of light, Jack was halfway across the station, and it was a quick stroll over to the living quarters.
Just beyond the section of the station Sheppard's team had designated as the living area was a series of 'rec rooms.' There, the scientists could sit down with their laptops and network, conversations could be held, and card games played. Beyond that were a couple of rooms that had been left open and bare - the workout rooms.
Jack heard the sparring long before he saw it.
The ring of treated wood clashing in the confined space had an almost musical tone to it. Judging by the speed and sound of the blows, it was a pretty serious session.
Given that Sheppard had the gritted look of a man in 'do or die' mode, and Teyla had the wary stance of a woman giving her wholehearted concentration to the fight, Jack supposed this was serious sparring. Probably not to be interrupted.
So he paused a way outside the door and just watched, curious. Videocameras were one thing, the whole sight-and-sound experience was something that Jack had wanted to experience for a while.
He'd seen a lot of fighting in his time, practise and real. He knew how to fight down in the dirt and mud, and on a gym floor with an audience around.
This was somewhere between the two.
The fighting was accentuated by the staves they held, no more than the length of a man's forearm, whirling through the air to strike hard. Wielded with intent, Jack bet they could break bone. It certainly looked like they were trying.
He'd read a lot about this exercise while looking through the Atlantis reports. The members of the early expedition hadn't really approved of it, seeing it as Sheppard putting the moves on a pretty native woman.
But then, most members of the early expedition had been neither Air Force, nor pilots.
Jack was both. And, watching them move back and forth through the room, he knew perfectly well why Sheppard had taken up this fighting style against Teyla.
For a pilot, the kinesthetic sense - hand-eye co-ordination and the tactile sense of the body's self - was important. When half an inch could make a difference between a perfect landing and one which would leave scoremarks on the runway, a pilot had damned well better be certain he knew exactly where his hand was on the controls in relation to where his craft was, or he'd be leaving rubber on the runway.
If he was really bad - or really unlucky - then he'd be leaving a lot more than just rubber: metal scrapes, glass splinters, oil smears, and bloodstains for starters.
In a city like Atlantis with flying craft that could be piloted by people who'd never logged even an hour's time in a cockpit, the need for something to keep the kinesthetic co-ordination honed was utterly vital. Sheppard would know that in his bones - more than just jogging or working out, he'd need kinesthetic interaction.
Doubtless, it helped that Teyla was a head-turner. But it was a long way from the only reason.
And, to give the man his due, Sheppard was pretty good at it.
Teyla was clearly better.
His strikes were full-strength, her deflections were, if not casual, certainly without the tension that marked his shoulders and stance. There was a whirling grace about the woman, like Indian paintings Daniel had once shown him from a book - or had they been Chinese? Some female figure in the middle of a cloud of dust or smoke, a dozen arms wielding various weapons. Jack didn't remember what the spirit had been or even why Daniel had showed it to him, but he figured that this came pretty close.
Teyla let Sheppard spend himself in attack, giving enough resistance to make things interesting, her wide mouth curved in a smile that both challenged and teased his inability to reach her.
Jack had to hand it to Teyla Emmagen. She'd picked one of the few men with enough impatience to expend what he had to know would be futile effort against her, and enough patience to take repeated failure on the chin and still come up with a smile.
In the end, the blow that took down Sheppard was nothing more than a hard hit pushing him off-balance. Teyla took advantage of a misplaced foot and a brief swing off from the centre of gravity, and Sheppard's mouth stretched in a grimace as his shoulder hit the floor with a solid thump.
"I thought we were going easy today," Sheppard complained as she reached down a hand to haul him off the floor.
"That was easy, Colonel," came the serene reply. "I overlooked several opportunities to lay you out before this."
Sheppard's response was slightly sour. "Gee, thanks."
"You are welcome," Teyla said, her smile clear in her voice, even if Jack couldn't see it as she turned away from the room's central light to reach for a drink bottle by the open frame of the room. "Did you wish to contin--"
She paused and her eyes found Jack out in the corridor.
Jack hadn't moved. He was damned certain of that. It seemed Ms. Emmagen's instincts really were as good as the reports said.
"Ms. Emmagen. Colonel."
"General." For a moment, Jack had the impression that she'd retreated, before a smile appeared on her face. "Is there somewhere that Colonel Sheppard needs to be?"
"Why do you assume that he's come looking for me?" Sheppard complained, whirling his stick through the air but not moving an inch from his position. "You never know - he might want stavefighting lessons."
Sheppard wasn't an idiot, any more than Jack. He knew Jack was looking for him, but his attitude also made it clear that he wasn't going to step out of this room unless he absolutely had to. Oh, he knew Jack would make it an order if necessary, but the Colonel was going to stretch his leash as far as it went.
What was it that Bates had said in his report? Has authority issues.
And then some.
--
From an SG1/SGA crossover that obviously isn't going to have taken place anywhere in canon for the simple fact that it would require some major retconning, and people waking up in showers. I'm not sure that these parts are still going to be kept in the text, either - I had to do a rewrite, and I don't think they fit anymore. Pity. I particularly like Jack's thoughts on kinesthetic senses in the second excerpt.
I've really missed writing Jack. He's got such a distinctive voice.
excerpt 1
McKay protested of course. He was needed here. It was nothing that couldn't be dealt with by Zelenka. He'd been working with Sam on the systems and that was an important job. He couldn't go back to Atlantis...
In the end, Sheppard lost his temper. "Rodney, you're going to walk into that 'jumper and head back to Atlantis on your own two feet, or I'll get Ronon to shoot you with his stunner and we'll dump you in the cargo hold for the flight back."
The face McKay made would have done a tantrum-throwing five year-old proud. He walked into the ship, grumbling under his breath. Major Lorne looked wryly at Sheppard. "Thanks, sir."
"Command has some privileges, Lorne," Sheppard said with an airy smugness. "One of them is to stick Rodney with someone else for a change. I'll buy you a beer when we get backto the city."
The major snorted and hit the button to close the back hatch as he went in to join the still-grumbling McKay.
"You know, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder," Jack commented as he and Sheppard left the flight bay and the doors sealed behind them, preparing for hard vacuum.
"'They' never met Rodney," Sheppard said wryly. "You headed back to the... God, wasn't there anything else to call it?"
"Not a Harry Potter fan?"
Sheppard looked sour. "Please. I read the first five while I was stationed at McMurdo. Then, someone started up a book swap in the first month we were away and there were fourteen Harry Potter books in the pile." Jack glanced sideways as the other man smirked. "But, you know, I was the only one who'd brought along 'War and Peace'."
Not exactly Jack's idea of light reading material. "Did you read it?"
"I got to about page sixty-five." Sheppard was defensive. "There were the Wraith and the Gennii - and the paperwork."
"The worst part of any promotion," Jack muttered. "Wait until you get to General."
"Uhuh. Remind me not to make General, sir."
Jack bit back the retort that Sheppard was about as likely to make General as Jack had been three years ago. In his time with the Stargate project, he'd discovered that Fate had a wry sense of humour - either that, or a very sick one. Possibly both.
Sheppard was walking off in the opposite direction down the corridor, though, and Jack frowned. "You're not going to the Room of Requirement?"
Okay, so he used the term just to watch the other man wince. "I...uh...I told Teyla I'd meet her in the workout area for sparring practise once we'd packed Rodney off."
Ah, the legendary sparring practise. Which apparently, neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of blackest space could stay Sheppard from. "Right."
"Besides," Sheppard said with evidence of attempted ingenuity, "they've got you to help them out with their testing."
And that was supposed to make Jack feel so much better? He wasn't in this for the scientists. Just one of them.
"All right," he said. "You have ninety minutes to spar with Ms. Emmagen. After that, you're expected in the Room."
The other man looked relieved and Jack began to wonder if he shouldn't have shortened it to an hour after all. "Yes, sir."
If Sheppard had been the skipping type, he'd have skipped off to his sparring practise. As it was, the ebullient saunter of the man's retreat made Jack highly suspicious.
He'd read the files on Sheppard, Atlantis, and Sheppard's team. They were sent to him as part of his weekly briefing under Homeworld Security, a kind of 'this is all your fault, O'Neill' reminder. He'd been the one to pluck Sheppard out of the frosty, white hell of Antarctica and, according to the logic of someone higher up the brain chain than Jack, was therefore responsible for starting everything that had happened from that point onwards.
At any rate, he'd not only heard the reports of Sheppard's sparring with Ms. Emmagen, he'd seen the video one of the marines had taken of a bout, shortly after the Daedelus arrived in Atlantis and the Wraith were dealt with. Hell, he'd read the whole damn file on Ms. Emmagen - every single word of the reports by members of the Atlantis expedition, present and past.
As he strolled along the corridor, headed back to the Room, Jack reflected that it was probably best that neither Ms. Emmagen, nor Sheppard, had any idea of just how extensive the assessment on her had been.
It was definitely best that nobody in Atlantis had the faintest idea that the sole object and focus of the study had been to determine just how much influence the alien woman had on John Sheppard and whether she might, at some point in the indeterminate future, present a threat to Atlantis and require 'neutralisation.'
Just because you weren't paranoid, didn't mean they weren't out to get you
--
excerpt 2
After the endless debating and conversation in the Room, Jack found the silence a welcome change.
As a result, he didn't walk quite as fast as he might otherwise have.
He'd done this at the SGC, too - an apparently aimless meander that took his path all over the base, peering in at doors to see what various people were doing, and maybe catch them out if they weren't strictly doing work. Jack had discovered all kinds of interesting things about the base personnel by going for a wander at irregular times of day.
The main corridor through the station ran straight for several miles with corridors and splits all coming off it. It was possible to see all the way down the corridor, without a break.
So he saw Ronon Dex approaching while the young man was still a long way off.
A long way off turned into a not-so-long way off very fast. The man might not have many words in him, but he could eat up the miles like a professional sprinter.
Jack almost expected to be nodded at and passed, but the young man slowed as he approached. "General."
"Mr. Dex. Nice day?"
Dex shrugged. "Okay so far."
Definitely not a man of many words. "Seen Sheppard recently?" Jack was running on the assumption that Sheppard was still sparring with Teyla, but it had been an hour, and Jack was pretty sure the younger officer's endurance wasn't that good.
"In the workout room, sparring against Teyla."
Okay, so maybe it was. "Still?"
Dex grinned. "We went for a run first. Wears her out and gives him a better chance fighting."
Reasonable. Jack eyed the Satedan. "So he wins?"
The grin got toothy before Dex turned away. "He hasn't yet."
Jack watched the younger man run off, envying his youth and energy. It had been several years since he could run more than a mile without his knee burning up - and Dex had energy and spare.
Thank God for the transport. In a flash of light, Jack was halfway across the station, and it was a quick stroll over to the living quarters.
Just beyond the section of the station Sheppard's team had designated as the living area was a series of 'rec rooms.' There, the scientists could sit down with their laptops and network, conversations could be held, and card games played. Beyond that were a couple of rooms that had been left open and bare - the workout rooms.
Jack heard the sparring long before he saw it.
The ring of treated wood clashing in the confined space had an almost musical tone to it. Judging by the speed and sound of the blows, it was a pretty serious session.
Given that Sheppard had the gritted look of a man in 'do or die' mode, and Teyla had the wary stance of a woman giving her wholehearted concentration to the fight, Jack supposed this was serious sparring. Probably not to be interrupted.
So he paused a way outside the door and just watched, curious. Videocameras were one thing, the whole sight-and-sound experience was something that Jack had wanted to experience for a while.
He'd seen a lot of fighting in his time, practise and real. He knew how to fight down in the dirt and mud, and on a gym floor with an audience around.
This was somewhere between the two.
The fighting was accentuated by the staves they held, no more than the length of a man's forearm, whirling through the air to strike hard. Wielded with intent, Jack bet they could break bone. It certainly looked like they were trying.
He'd read a lot about this exercise while looking through the Atlantis reports. The members of the early expedition hadn't really approved of it, seeing it as Sheppard putting the moves on a pretty native woman.
But then, most members of the early expedition had been neither Air Force, nor pilots.
Jack was both. And, watching them move back and forth through the room, he knew perfectly well why Sheppard had taken up this fighting style against Teyla.
For a pilot, the kinesthetic sense - hand-eye co-ordination and the tactile sense of the body's self - was important. When half an inch could make a difference between a perfect landing and one which would leave scoremarks on the runway, a pilot had damned well better be certain he knew exactly where his hand was on the controls in relation to where his craft was, or he'd be leaving rubber on the runway.
If he was really bad - or really unlucky - then he'd be leaving a lot more than just rubber: metal scrapes, glass splinters, oil smears, and bloodstains for starters.
In a city like Atlantis with flying craft that could be piloted by people who'd never logged even an hour's time in a cockpit, the need for something to keep the kinesthetic co-ordination honed was utterly vital. Sheppard would know that in his bones - more than just jogging or working out, he'd need kinesthetic interaction.
Doubtless, it helped that Teyla was a head-turner. But it was a long way from the only reason.
And, to give the man his due, Sheppard was pretty good at it.
Teyla was clearly better.
His strikes were full-strength, her deflections were, if not casual, certainly without the tension that marked his shoulders and stance. There was a whirling grace about the woman, like Indian paintings Daniel had once shown him from a book - or had they been Chinese? Some female figure in the middle of a cloud of dust or smoke, a dozen arms wielding various weapons. Jack didn't remember what the spirit had been or even why Daniel had showed it to him, but he figured that this came pretty close.
Teyla let Sheppard spend himself in attack, giving enough resistance to make things interesting, her wide mouth curved in a smile that both challenged and teased his inability to reach her.
Jack had to hand it to Teyla Emmagen. She'd picked one of the few men with enough impatience to expend what he had to know would be futile effort against her, and enough patience to take repeated failure on the chin and still come up with a smile.
In the end, the blow that took down Sheppard was nothing more than a hard hit pushing him off-balance. Teyla took advantage of a misplaced foot and a brief swing off from the centre of gravity, and Sheppard's mouth stretched in a grimace as his shoulder hit the floor with a solid thump.
"I thought we were going easy today," Sheppard complained as she reached down a hand to haul him off the floor.
"That was easy, Colonel," came the serene reply. "I overlooked several opportunities to lay you out before this."
Sheppard's response was slightly sour. "Gee, thanks."
"You are welcome," Teyla said, her smile clear in her voice, even if Jack couldn't see it as she turned away from the room's central light to reach for a drink bottle by the open frame of the room. "Did you wish to contin--"
She paused and her eyes found Jack out in the corridor.
Jack hadn't moved. He was damned certain of that. It seemed Ms. Emmagen's instincts really were as good as the reports said.
"Ms. Emmagen. Colonel."
"General." For a moment, Jack had the impression that she'd retreated, before a smile appeared on her face. "Is there somewhere that Colonel Sheppard needs to be?"
"Why do you assume that he's come looking for me?" Sheppard complained, whirling his stick through the air but not moving an inch from his position. "You never know - he might want stavefighting lessons."
Sheppard wasn't an idiot, any more than Jack. He knew Jack was looking for him, but his attitude also made it clear that he wasn't going to step out of this room unless he absolutely had to. Oh, he knew Jack would make it an order if necessary, but the Colonel was going to stretch his leash as far as it went.
What was it that Bates had said in his report? Has authority issues.
And then some.
--
