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Title: The Past Always Finds You - Part Four
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Characters: Team
Rating: PG13
Note: Prologue - the sga_flashfic entry Minor In Action
Spoilers: None.
*Thanks to my beta superfox*
Link to Part One
Summary: If John was as skilled as he had been when serving at Atlantis, they had a potentially dangerous man currently cooling his heels in a city that would respond to his every whim unlike anyone else there.
Eckles was a childhood ailment that saw children of Graneve in bed for a few days with a fever and a general lack of energy, but it was something no one feared because it had always been seen as minor.
Both Lorne and Sheppard were admitted into the hospital in the nearest city when neither boy showed any signs of improvement after five days.
“Could we have seen this coming?” Chikara asked, his eyes circled with dark smudges. They had watched their first son die slowly and he wasn’t sure he could live through it again, with both boys no less.
Their family physician, a kindly man named Brevair, shook his head slowly. “We took precautions. Something like this was bound to happen so we guarded against it as much as possible. They’re strong boys. They’ll see the other side of this.” Brevair knew of the unusual way Chikara and Karei came to have their second boys. He had been confided in as a matter of course for just such an occasion.
“They look so small,” Karei sighed, moving to first Sheppard’s bedside and then Lorne’s, smoothing back their hair from sweat soaked brows. They had turned thirteen just that past dry season and had both seemed to shoot up overnight, Sheppard getting tall and lanky and Lorne broader. Now, huddled in their beds and suffering through their sickness, they looked barely bigger than the first time Chikara had swept them both into his arms.
***
The Eckles had left both boys pale, weak and housebound, a source of great consternation to them both. They had taken to arguing and being sullen; two things neither had ever done with the other. Finally, desperate for some time to himself, Sheppard crawled into the attic of their Taku. It was hot and dusty, but Sheppard pulled free some old clothes from a box and lay down, breathing deeply.
Something was scratching his arm, irritating the skin so he arched up and retrieved it, pulling it out from under his back. It was a small jacket with a patch on the sleeve and numerous pockets. He turned it over in his hands, wondering if perhaps it had belonged to the brother he and Lorne had never met. Lorne appeared through the trapdoor in the floor and rolled his eyes. “There you are,” he sighed, crawling over to Sheppard and flopping down on the pile of clothes next to him.
“I came up here to get away from you,” Sheppard grumbled, but he was secretly glad Lorne had sought him out. He fingered the patch on the sleeve, running fingertips along the lines of red and white and then circling the stars against the blue background with his thumb.
“What’s that?” Lorne asked, propping himself up on one elbow. He’d lost weight through his illness and his cheeks were hollow as a result, his eyes shadowed.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve seen this before, but I don’t know where,” Sheppard answered, frowning. He pulled the patch free of the small jacket with a tiny rip and rubbed it with his fingers again. “Does it look familiar to you?”
Lorne accepted the patch handed over and pressed it between his palms. “I…yes. Maybe these were ours when we were little,” he offered, picking the jacket up and gesturing with it.
“I don’t think so. This is so annoying,” Sheppard growled, rolling up to his knees and taking the patch back, balling it into his fist. “I keep seeing things that look familiar but aren’t or shouldn’t be. We get hospitalised from Eckles, our names don’t mean anything and mum keeps telling us that we’re special and a gift from the gods. It stinks. Everything about it stinks!”
Lorne, looking troubled, huffed. “I heard Mum and Dad talking to the Doctor when we were sicker when they thought we were asleep. They said something about knowing this would happen, that we’d get sick this way.”
“How could they know that?”
“Remember Boondah used to say that he thought we were from through the Ring of the Ancestors because we were so different.”
“That’s stupid,” Sheppard sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Maybe it’s not.” Lorne said slowly. “We are different.”
“From another world? That’s pretty different.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt like I fit, you know? I mean, I fit with you… but nowhere else.”
“Sometimes I catch mum looking at me and she’s got the strangest expression, like she’s trying to figure something out, or like I’m confusing her when I’m not even doing anything.” Sheppard said, lowering back to his haunches and suddenly feeling very tired.
“What do you think it means?”
Sheppard looked at Lorne, his green eyes unreadable in the dying light.
“I think it’s time for the truth.”
… The not so distant Now…
“It’s just… surreal,” Elizabeth murmured, standing at the observation window overlooking one of the isolation rooms in the infirmary at the figure of John Sheppard, barely past twenty years old, sitting across the bed like he always did, legs on either side.
“There are so many things about him that are familiar. He moves the same, same gestures. He just looks… smaller.”
Elizabeth looked at Rodney and noted that some of the lines had disappeared from his face. Over the last few years she had only seen him very sporadically and he had always looked more and more haggard. Seeing John and Lorne step through the gate seemed to have invigorated him to such an extent that he looked more like the Rodney she had first met than he had in almost fifteen years. He turned to face her, a grin on his face. “But we always knew he’d come home.”
Elizabeth smiled gently, hiding her concern about the situation. If John was as skilled as he had been when serving at Atlantis, they had a potentially dangerous man currently cooling his heels in a city that would respond to his every whim unlike anyone else there. Elizabeth wanted to be happy to have her boys home, but the word stranger still tolled through her mind, sending out dark ripples of worry.
She also didn’t want to see Ronon, Teyla and especially Rodney hurt.
They had all waited so long.
***
The Doctor, the small tyrannical woman that had terrorised Rodney only too recently, shrugged.
“He doesn’t have one.”
“How can he not have one?” Rodney demanded, pacing. “He was with a bunch of people that did. You’re missing it.”
The woman blew her fringe out of her face with an exasperated sigh. “I’ve scanned him from head to toe. Unless he’s got a different tracking device that defies Ancient technology, he doesn’t one.”
“What did he say when you told him he doesn’t?” Elizabeth asked, putting a gentle but restraining hand on Rodney’s elbow.
“He said that he already told us he didn’t have one.”
Rodney crossed to the observation window and looked down at John, who had laid back on the infirmary bed, propped up on one elbow and legs crossed at the ankle. Anyone would think he was relaxing but Rodney could see the way his fists were loosely clenched and the way his head was canted, listening for anyone approaching.
“I do not understand. Why would Colonel Sheppard put himself in harm’s way like that when it was not necessary?” Teyla pondered.
Rodney crossed back over to the window overlooking Lorne’s room and watched as the nurse carefully patched the place on his back where a device had been removed. “To stay with Lorne,” Rodney said, his voice barely above a whisper.
***
It didn’t take much convincing for Elizabeth to be the one to first interview John. Daniel looked relieved when she put herself forward, chary of stepping on his authority but also knowing that either she or one of the other Heritage Atlanteans would be best to gauge whether John was the man they once knew or someone completely different.
John watched her enter the room, green eyes appearing mild but Elizabeth knew she would be weighed and measured and John’s very first impression of her would affect the way he dealt with her from then on. She was hoping to get the serious and gentle John Sheppard but was more likely to encounter his acerbic first-encounter façade.
“Hello,” she began gamely and then grimaced inwardly, knowing just by the way John slouched back and tilted his head that she had fumbled her opening gambit and it would now be a case of gaining back ground with him before he would actually listen to anything she had to say.
“I suppose asking for my weapon back isn’t going to get me anywhere, huh?” John asked, raising an eyebrow and it threw Elizabeth a little how familiar and yet new he was. Every line of his body was recognisable, but he was missing the lines and scars that leant character to his face.
“I’m afraid we can’t. Not until we know you a little better anyway.”
“Really? Because it seems some of your people know me already. They’re looking at me like they’re seeing a ghost.”
Elizabeth stilled. She had forgotten just how observant John tended to be and it astounded her that Ronon knowing his name wasn’t the only clue he’d gotten. “There’s definitely a lot to explain but we’re going to wait until your friends are all settled and Major Lorne is given the all…” Elizabeth realised what she’d done as soon as it was said. John’s whole body tensed and he slid off them infirmary bed, eyes narrowed.
“Major Lorne?” he prompted. Colour had drained from John’s face and Elizabeth realised that the first time John had shown even an inkling of fear was when Lorne was seemingly under threat.
“As I said, as soon as-“
“Look Lady, I want to know what the hell is going on here. Why does it feel like I’ve been in this place before? Why do you all know my and my brother’s names and why are you so goddamn familiar that I feel like your name is on the very tip of my tongue, like I should know you?”
“I have some questions meself,” a voice issued from the doorway and Elizabeth turned relieved eyes on Carson, who was looking harried but determined.
“Who are you? I know you.” John scrubbed hands through his hair.
“Aye, look, it’s a bit complicated,” Carson offered and Elizabeth watched John relax and fought the urge to smile. She and John had clashed more often than not but she had always been a little envious of the way Carson seemed to go around all of his defences and just handle him, much the same way Rodney did. He was looking the perfect mix of professional but sympathetic and even though the intervening fifteen years had turned his dark hair grey, Carson hadn’t lost that essential quality that automatically put people at ease.
“Look, I’m going to have to do some tests-“
“I’ve been manhandled enough,” John growled, leaning a shoulder against the nearest wall.
Carson flapped a dismissive hand. “If you want to know what’s going on, you’re going to have to put up with just a wee bit more indignity I’m afraid. Basically, you shouldn’t be…you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” John asked, echoing Elizabeth’s thought.
“The kind of damage that happened when you reverted… it shouldn’t have been reversible.”
John held up his hands, looking mystified. “Reverted? What are you talking about?”
“You,” Carson sighed, tapping a finger to John’s temple. “Should have stayed five.”
The Past Always Finds You - Part Five
Author:
kellifer_ficCharacters: Team
Rating: PG13
Note: Prologue - the sga_flashfic entry Minor In Action
Spoilers: None.
*Thanks to my beta superfox*
Link to Part One
Summary: If John was as skilled as he had been when serving at Atlantis, they had a potentially dangerous man currently cooling his heels in a city that would respond to his every whim unlike anyone else there.
Eckles was a childhood ailment that saw children of Graneve in bed for a few days with a fever and a general lack of energy, but it was something no one feared because it had always been seen as minor.
Both Lorne and Sheppard were admitted into the hospital in the nearest city when neither boy showed any signs of improvement after five days.
“Could we have seen this coming?” Chikara asked, his eyes circled with dark smudges. They had watched their first son die slowly and he wasn’t sure he could live through it again, with both boys no less.
Their family physician, a kindly man named Brevair, shook his head slowly. “We took precautions. Something like this was bound to happen so we guarded against it as much as possible. They’re strong boys. They’ll see the other side of this.” Brevair knew of the unusual way Chikara and Karei came to have their second boys. He had been confided in as a matter of course for just such an occasion.
“They look so small,” Karei sighed, moving to first Sheppard’s bedside and then Lorne’s, smoothing back their hair from sweat soaked brows. They had turned thirteen just that past dry season and had both seemed to shoot up overnight, Sheppard getting tall and lanky and Lorne broader. Now, huddled in their beds and suffering through their sickness, they looked barely bigger than the first time Chikara had swept them both into his arms.
The Eckles had left both boys pale, weak and housebound, a source of great consternation to them both. They had taken to arguing and being sullen; two things neither had ever done with the other. Finally, desperate for some time to himself, Sheppard crawled into the attic of their Taku. It was hot and dusty, but Sheppard pulled free some old clothes from a box and lay down, breathing deeply.
Something was scratching his arm, irritating the skin so he arched up and retrieved it, pulling it out from under his back. It was a small jacket with a patch on the sleeve and numerous pockets. He turned it over in his hands, wondering if perhaps it had belonged to the brother he and Lorne had never met. Lorne appeared through the trapdoor in the floor and rolled his eyes. “There you are,” he sighed, crawling over to Sheppard and flopping down on the pile of clothes next to him.
“I came up here to get away from you,” Sheppard grumbled, but he was secretly glad Lorne had sought him out. He fingered the patch on the sleeve, running fingertips along the lines of red and white and then circling the stars against the blue background with his thumb.
“What’s that?” Lorne asked, propping himself up on one elbow. He’d lost weight through his illness and his cheeks were hollow as a result, his eyes shadowed.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve seen this before, but I don’t know where,” Sheppard answered, frowning. He pulled the patch free of the small jacket with a tiny rip and rubbed it with his fingers again. “Does it look familiar to you?”
Lorne accepted the patch handed over and pressed it between his palms. “I…yes. Maybe these were ours when we were little,” he offered, picking the jacket up and gesturing with it.
“I don’t think so. This is so annoying,” Sheppard growled, rolling up to his knees and taking the patch back, balling it into his fist. “I keep seeing things that look familiar but aren’t or shouldn’t be. We get hospitalised from Eckles, our names don’t mean anything and mum keeps telling us that we’re special and a gift from the gods. It stinks. Everything about it stinks!”
Lorne, looking troubled, huffed. “I heard Mum and Dad talking to the Doctor when we were sicker when they thought we were asleep. They said something about knowing this would happen, that we’d get sick this way.”
“How could they know that?”
“Remember Boondah used to say that he thought we were from through the Ring of the Ancestors because we were so different.”
“That’s stupid,” Sheppard sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Maybe it’s not.” Lorne said slowly. “We are different.”
“From another world? That’s pretty different.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt like I fit, you know? I mean, I fit with you… but nowhere else.”
“Sometimes I catch mum looking at me and she’s got the strangest expression, like she’s trying to figure something out, or like I’m confusing her when I’m not even doing anything.” Sheppard said, lowering back to his haunches and suddenly feeling very tired.
“What do you think it means?”
Sheppard looked at Lorne, his green eyes unreadable in the dying light.
“I think it’s time for the truth.”
“It’s just… surreal,” Elizabeth murmured, standing at the observation window overlooking one of the isolation rooms in the infirmary at the figure of John Sheppard, barely past twenty years old, sitting across the bed like he always did, legs on either side.
“There are so many things about him that are familiar. He moves the same, same gestures. He just looks… smaller.”
Elizabeth looked at Rodney and noted that some of the lines had disappeared from his face. Over the last few years she had only seen him very sporadically and he had always looked more and more haggard. Seeing John and Lorne step through the gate seemed to have invigorated him to such an extent that he looked more like the Rodney she had first met than he had in almost fifteen years. He turned to face her, a grin on his face. “But we always knew he’d come home.”
Elizabeth smiled gently, hiding her concern about the situation. If John was as skilled as he had been when serving at Atlantis, they had a potentially dangerous man currently cooling his heels in a city that would respond to his every whim unlike anyone else there. Elizabeth wanted to be happy to have her boys home, but the word stranger still tolled through her mind, sending out dark ripples of worry.
She also didn’t want to see Ronon, Teyla and especially Rodney hurt.
They had all waited so long.
The Doctor, the small tyrannical woman that had terrorised Rodney only too recently, shrugged.
“He doesn’t have one.”
“How can he not have one?” Rodney demanded, pacing. “He was with a bunch of people that did. You’re missing it.”
The woman blew her fringe out of her face with an exasperated sigh. “I’ve scanned him from head to toe. Unless he’s got a different tracking device that defies Ancient technology, he doesn’t one.”
“What did he say when you told him he doesn’t?” Elizabeth asked, putting a gentle but restraining hand on Rodney’s elbow.
“He said that he already told us he didn’t have one.”
Rodney crossed to the observation window and looked down at John, who had laid back on the infirmary bed, propped up on one elbow and legs crossed at the ankle. Anyone would think he was relaxing but Rodney could see the way his fists were loosely clenched and the way his head was canted, listening for anyone approaching.
“I do not understand. Why would Colonel Sheppard put himself in harm’s way like that when it was not necessary?” Teyla pondered.
Rodney crossed back over to the window overlooking Lorne’s room and watched as the nurse carefully patched the place on his back where a device had been removed. “To stay with Lorne,” Rodney said, his voice barely above a whisper.
It didn’t take much convincing for Elizabeth to be the one to first interview John. Daniel looked relieved when she put herself forward, chary of stepping on his authority but also knowing that either she or one of the other Heritage Atlanteans would be best to gauge whether John was the man they once knew or someone completely different.
John watched her enter the room, green eyes appearing mild but Elizabeth knew she would be weighed and measured and John’s very first impression of her would affect the way he dealt with her from then on. She was hoping to get the serious and gentle John Sheppard but was more likely to encounter his acerbic first-encounter façade.
“Hello,” she began gamely and then grimaced inwardly, knowing just by the way John slouched back and tilted his head that she had fumbled her opening gambit and it would now be a case of gaining back ground with him before he would actually listen to anything she had to say.
“I suppose asking for my weapon back isn’t going to get me anywhere, huh?” John asked, raising an eyebrow and it threw Elizabeth a little how familiar and yet new he was. Every line of his body was recognisable, but he was missing the lines and scars that leant character to his face.
“I’m afraid we can’t. Not until we know you a little better anyway.”
“Really? Because it seems some of your people know me already. They’re looking at me like they’re seeing a ghost.”
Elizabeth stilled. She had forgotten just how observant John tended to be and it astounded her that Ronon knowing his name wasn’t the only clue he’d gotten. “There’s definitely a lot to explain but we’re going to wait until your friends are all settled and Major Lorne is given the all…” Elizabeth realised what she’d done as soon as it was said. John’s whole body tensed and he slid off them infirmary bed, eyes narrowed.
“Major Lorne?” he prompted. Colour had drained from John’s face and Elizabeth realised that the first time John had shown even an inkling of fear was when Lorne was seemingly under threat.
“As I said, as soon as-“
“Look Lady, I want to know what the hell is going on here. Why does it feel like I’ve been in this place before? Why do you all know my and my brother’s names and why are you so goddamn familiar that I feel like your name is on the very tip of my tongue, like I should know you?”
“I have some questions meself,” a voice issued from the doorway and Elizabeth turned relieved eyes on Carson, who was looking harried but determined.
“Who are you? I know you.” John scrubbed hands through his hair.
“Aye, look, it’s a bit complicated,” Carson offered and Elizabeth watched John relax and fought the urge to smile. She and John had clashed more often than not but she had always been a little envious of the way Carson seemed to go around all of his defences and just handle him, much the same way Rodney did. He was looking the perfect mix of professional but sympathetic and even though the intervening fifteen years had turned his dark hair grey, Carson hadn’t lost that essential quality that automatically put people at ease.
“Look, I’m going to have to do some tests-“
“I’ve been manhandled enough,” John growled, leaning a shoulder against the nearest wall.
Carson flapped a dismissive hand. “If you want to know what’s going on, you’re going to have to put up with just a wee bit more indignity I’m afraid. Basically, you shouldn’t be…you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” John asked, echoing Elizabeth’s thought.
“The kind of damage that happened when you reverted… it shouldn’t have been reversible.”
John held up his hands, looking mystified. “Reverted? What are you talking about?”
“You,” Carson sighed, tapping a finger to John’s temple. “Should have stayed five.”
The Past Always Finds You - Part Five