{I am writing an AU of "The Return". This is not that AU.}

*

It begins with something about stories from John’s childhood, specifically the story of the Alterans allowing the wraith mess to happen and abandoning the galaxy to be the wraiths’ all-you-can-eat buffet bar. And the indictment against the Alterans that they might have saved everyone, had they acted sooner, harder, slyer—had they gone to the ground and stuck it out instead of running once it became obvious that the advantage wasn’t theirs.

( That's the one sin John's mother refused to forgive them. )

My dear, I hope you are well.

Such a lot has happened since last I wrote you, I scarcely know where to start.

Perhaps with the most obvious: the upper story of the house is currently flooded with sardines. They clutter the corners and fill the doorways, and each night have to chase them all out of my room and plug the gap under the door if I'm to get any sleep--a chore that can take upwards of 20 minutes! We haven't yet discovered the cause for them being here; Rupert blames the weather, while I suspect a prank gotten entirely out of hand. If we're lucky they'll migrate come fall, but the summer will be rather overwhelming, I'm afraid.

Yours, as ever,

G.E.

{a season 6 coda to once (and many) times upon a midnight clear}


*

The Doctor has no chance, in that strange, frozen world of ruined time, to look for Bethlehem and babe, angels (real angels) frightening shepherds. Scarcely manages to even think of doing so, what with the smashing of all existence. Just as well, perhaps—too many distractions and slights-of-hand as is.

But once again he wonders, when he’s safely “dead”, wonders just a little about the tenacity of was and is and is to come, a narrative not even he fully knows. Wonders what would have happened if Amy and River hadn’t remembered, won through. (Wonders if there’s a reason they did.)

{Another ficlet due back in June, this time for Therese: Sherlock, Watson, and Tea, though I'm afraid this shows my inability to write the first two.}

*

John puts up with the body parts in the fridge, the odd (disgusting) concoctions that show up in the sink when the drain stops working, the violin at 3 AM, the WC being occupied and locked for hours on end (forcing him to run downstairs to Mrs. Hudson’s flat), the interrupted dates, the remorseless and repeated appropriation of his laptop, and all the rest of it. But after his twelfth spoiled cup of tea (contaminated mug, contaminated tea kettle, no tea leaves, contaminated tea leaves, timer reset, dragged off before tea finished steeping, dragged off just after tea finished steeping, etc.) in under a week, he’s had enough. ( And says so. )

[for kensieg, who asked for more corbel & squinch back in june. took longer than a week, but it's also quite a bit more than a hundred words.]

*

Ian sneezed, and the pile—wall—of clippings running along the back of the desk finally gave in to gravity, avalanching down onto the floor with a reproachful hiss. After holding his breath for a moment to make sure none of the room’s other, similarly precarious piles would follow suit, he groaned, laying his head down on the desk with gentleness born of ever-growing despair. That was most of the afternoon’s work spoiled, and he was already more than a week behind—almost five, actually, now that Professor Gerhall seemed to have gone on an unofficial sabbatical, leaving the entire backlogged project in Ian’s over-full hands.

...Didn’t he have an essay due sometime next week? Maybe no one would notice if he just turned in a copy of the article on Colonel Bramwell Mulligan Oakley IV. If he finished it on schedule.

( If he didn't have a nervous breakdown. )

[if three times is true, what's thirty? or three hundred?]

*

Every now and then, my aunt tells me a story. The same story, always, although she never seems to remember having done so before. Same story, each time, but over the years it's grown and grown, sprouting new details, reasonings for formerly inexplicable actions. And as it grows it creeps, edging closer to fact than fiction, solidifying with the retellings until I suspect that the next time it will be true.

I don't know whether to hope for or dread this.

Once, when I was young and stupid, I asked my aunt where the story came from, and she couldn't answer me. Literally. The question seemed to simply drop straight out of her head before she could even begin to think of what to say. Creepiest thing I've ever seen. Since then, I've kept notes on every iteration of the story, in hope that there might be clues about what's going on, though that hope has all but died by now.

After much discussion, they settled on the beach as a destination, agreeing that it had become a cliche for very good reason: namely, fewer biting insects, at least when the wind blew from the sea, as was usual. What they had forgotten while making the decision, however, was that the beach had other attractions, such as sun and surf, and that the consequence (or perhaps cause) of being a cliche was its popularity as a destination during the summer vacation.

The turtle and the little dude stood side by side at the edge of the beach, beach umbrella and blow-up ball in hand, and stared in horrified silence at the thousands of bodies strewn down the shore, stretching into the distant horizon.

And then they went home again. Perhaps they'd return in October. Perhaps, next time, they'd just stay home in the first place.

{story started for sga_flashfic lo these many years ago, and never finished because there wasn't any plot and i didn't know what it was about. same continuity as wild nest, no prison, which means the military stuff sounds wrong but actually isn't}

*

Rodney wasn’t in the mess hall when Katie got there, but that was no surprise.

[...]

“Do you love him the way he is? And I don’t mean accepting every little idiosyncrasy, because there’s always room for improvement. I mean him, who and what he is. Can you accept the way he views the world, and how his work will quite often win out over you? Because if you can’t, I’m asking you to please not string him along any farther.”

Katie found herself edging away from the colonel, almost frightened by the hard edges hidden behind the words. Sheppard had never been anything more to her than a lazy smile and easy slouch—she knew what he’d done over the years, to keep the city safe, but somehow she’d never really connected the various stories with the man who made Rodney watch bad sci-fi movies on the weekends.

“Why are you asking me this?” He froze at the question, which came out sounding more panicked than she’d meant. She wasn’t actually afraid of him.

“I—It’s not common knowledge—at least I think it isn’t—and I’m asking you to keep it that way, but—” He swiped a hand down his face, like he was removing a mask, and she suddenly noticed how tired he looked. “Look, I was married once, for a while. Got married in college, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but—” he shrugged. “Anyway, I loved her very much, and she loved me very much—or seemed to—and she knew that I was going into the military. I made certain of that. And she was fine with it, or at least told me so. And things were fine. I shipped out, got to fly for a while, then go home to her for a little bit, and it seemed like I had the best of all possible worlds: flying and the woman I loved.”

“So what happened?” She wanted to ask why he was telling her this, but she could see he was having enough trouble getting it into words. He could take his time; she wasn’t in any rush.

“I crashed. Equipment failure—not my fault, but the ground doesn’t care about details. Anyway, I was sent home to recover, with the option of a discharge, if I wanted it.”

“But you didn’t,” she guessed. “And she did.”

“More or less. I would have, but it wasn’t the military she had a problem with. It was the flying.”

“Oh,” she said, and began to see where this was going.

“Yeah, ‘oh’. Turns out she’d been less than okay with me being a pilot for a very long time—she just never had the guts to tell me. And when I told her I couldn’t—not wouldn’t, but couldn’t quit flying, no more than a fish can just leave the water—she left. Or rather kicked me out of the apartment.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, although it seemed rather inadequate. You still love her, she thought, but didn’t say.

“Don’t do the same to Rodney.”

“We don’t share an apartment,” was the only response she could come up with.

{written for the 2011 reverse bang round at originalbigbang, inspired by this splendiferous picture by reapertownusa, beta'd by me lovely mum}

*

At the age of eleven years and ten months, twenty-four days, Joy decided all she really wanted for her birthday was a Fliek’s dragon (“I’m too old for dolls and silly games anymore, Plen!”) and she wasn’t going to let Plen give her anything else, even if she had to make up all the reasons for why it wasn’t a crazy idea (“You could use it to carry stuff into town for Uncle Increase to sell, instead of having to make Faraji do it!”).

( Plen didn't buy any of her reasons. )

{has been posted in pieces here, there, and everywhere}



“It’s a cupcake, Ronon.” John had given up on not sounding exasperated, because really. “Not enough icing and probably tastes like Styrofoam because they keep sending us the crappy box mixes. A cupcake, that’s all.”

Ronon continued to peer dubiously at the object in question. “Dunno. Still looks like a rabid, facing-eating spindly-drome to me.”

John sighed and moved the cupcake another six inches further away from Ronon. “Y’know, I used to think you were a badass.”

( but wait, there's more! )

“How long have you been a child?” my father asked, the very model of disinterested inquiry.

“Does she have to be here?” the boy whined instead of answering. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t particularly want to be there either. Dealing with Masks is weird enough. Shrink them down to ten years old, and I’m officially freaked out. Kids are not my strong suit.

“Yes,” my father said in that tone he has that somehow conveys You will stop arguing and do as I tell you. Now. It’s something I’ve been working on developing whenever I’m alone in my room, but I have a long way to go before I reach his level. He once managed to stop a riot all by himself.

“Fine,” the boy huffed, and kicked the table leg petulantly. “Twenty-six hours and three minutes. Approximately.” Freaky. Definitely freaky.

“Hm.” My father scribbled down something that looked like ‘don’t forget eggs on fourth’. Or maybe ‘disturbed elephants cry.’ The only person who can decipher his handwriting anymore is his secretary, Ms. Heartshorn, and she’s been with him since he first opened the practice in ‘73. “Why did you wait so long to come to me?”

The boy scrunched his face even further into a frown, which was adorable—disturbingly so, what with the mask and all—and kicked the table leg again. “Sandy thought we should wait to see if it wore off on its own.” Sandy—? Oh, the woman in the waiting room wearing sunglasses and an obvious wig. “You can fix me, right?” he added, perfect I’m-not-going-to-let-you-know-I-want-to-cry wobble in his voice.

My father’s expression suggested that he thought the boy had brain damage, but he bruskly said “Yes, of course,” and scrawled a few more notes. “But you really should have called me immediately. If the spell—or whatever it is—has set, undoing it may prove . . . complicated.” Which was his way of saying ‘nothing doing’.

“You went patrolling in a sweater?” Héloise repeated incredulously for the fourth time.

“Do you want me to go hypothermic?” James was well past defensive and barreling toward suicidal bullheadedness. “It’s dark, it’s warm, and no one was out tonight anyway, so it’s not like anyone saw me in it.”

“I haven’t seen Mr. George or Mr. Featherweight wearing sweaters on their patrols, have you?”

“Oh, come on! Bob’s inhuman that way, and Elliott’s a walking space heater. No fair making that comparison.” He fisted his hands in the ends of his sleeves with an expression that could be described only as ‘mulish’.

“A walking space heater, am I?” Elliot said thoughtfully, not looking up from his cards. “And how would you know this?” There was a long, considering silence while Héloise and Becky stared at a slowly-reddening James.

“. . . I fell asleep on you two weeks ago, after I busted the Dreadnaughts, remember?” He crossed his arms and glared at Elliott, who was still studying his cards with diligence. “And you drew smiley faces on all my fingernails before I woke up. I didn’t notice until I was halfway home—and I can’t imagine how I would have explained it to Clarice. She’s already suspicious of the whole martial-arts/over-time/Uncle F needed an extra hand excuse.”

“Maybe you should just tell her,” Becky said, then kicked Elliott under the table. “Come on, man, pick a card already. You’re enough in the hole that it won’t matter.”

“Mm.” Elliott laid down the queen of hearts with delicacy. “That evens things a bit, I believe.”

{kissing rodney wasn’t the stupidest thing john had done, but it fell pretty high up on the list}

( five interations of a conversation )

Um. Thingy for trishkafibble.

*

He didn’t go to see the angels, this time. Too many of him there as is, and besides, his ninth self had gone just to prove to himself that some things remained the same; his tenth self had gone to prove that he remained the same, although he hadn’t thought to ask “the same as what?” This self skipped all that because he’s remembering now the power of stories, especially those that might be true, and the angels weren’t the story. This is, the exhausted new mother, the baby whimpering unhappily, the smell of straw and manure and sweat, the father who both is and isn’t.

This story, which managed to happen unchanged, even when all the stars had gone out and the universe was shredding itself to nothing. (He hadn't stayed long, that time, just enough to see yes, angels, and yes, baby, and maybe it had been the TARDIS keeping Earth alive and maybe it had been something else, but he won't speculate because this event has never made any sense, not matter how many times he comes back to it.)

He doesn't go in, not this time. Maybe next time. There's another side to the stable, and if he tried, maybe he'd be able to feel his future self there. If he looked, maybe he'd see himself falling in behind the bewildered shepherds just beginning to straggle up the road. Maybe. Right now, though, he should probably go see whether Amy and Rory need rescuing from their honeymoon yet. That's his story, and he knows it's real, true, even the parts he wishes weren't.

for trishkafibble, more of that thing where Ronon makes balloon animals. Falls between this one and this one.

*

At first, Ronon finds himself to be all thumbs in the wrong place, his fingers having forgotten the knack of the twist, the fold, the knot. The first fistful of drellas take five or more tries each to inflate, or go spinning around the room after escaping his clumsy grasp. He can’t picture properly what shapes he wants to make, or how to make them, can’t remember why he wanted to do this in the first place.

The drellas dig deep grooves around his knuckles when he tries to tie them shut. A couple of them explode, too much air inside too small a space, too rigid to bend as required. The sudden bang makes him flinch every time, despite the safety of his room, the knowledge that someone else stands watch for the night and he truly has nothing to fear.

(He never flinches at the sound of gun-fire.)

Eventually, though, he begins to remember the feel of it, the way the drellas flex and bend, the trick for getting them to curl and loop around on themselves. Heads and bodies become recognizable as such, and flowers and hats and all the rest of it. For a while, he hums an old tune from his childhood, learned so young that he doesn’t know its title or half the words, though the sound is drowned out by the squeak and moan of the drellas as they're inflated and knotted. His creations grow more and more elaborate, and when the sky finally begins to turn grey, he’s run out of drellas and breath. The floor of his room has filled with brilliantly-colored sculptures, the corners heaped, his bed half-buried.

Sheppard shows up to go running soon after that, while Ronon’s still sucking on his abused fingers and trying to decide whether there’s any point in going to bed—and what he’s going to do with his night’s work. His whole face lights up when he sees the current state of Ronon’s room.

“Cool,” he says, and it’s his idea to scatter the drellas across the city, in front of doors and on workbenches and inside transporters. He commandeers a couple of Marines coming off guard-duty to help with the distribution, and the four of them finish just as the sun balances on the horizon.

They eat breakfast in silence together, Sheppard pulling rank to get them food before the kitchen officially opens. It reminds Ronon a little of being with his squad in the Specialist corps after running a successful all-night mission, everyone drained and quiet but satisfied. Although he’s not sure what Sheppard has to be satisfied about.

Walther and Goodman, the two Marines, trudge off as soon as they’ve finished gulping down their meals, but Ronon and Sheppard sit together for a while, watching people stumble in and notice the drella sculptures on the tables. For every blank look, there’s at least two smiles, and despite his lack of sleep and still-sore fingers, Ronon finds himself smiling just a little bit too.

for gen_drabble challenge 24: treachery
Atlantis won’t obey. Atlantis won’t obey.

*

In shocked disbelief, Helia runs the command again to lock access to Alterans only, and again nothing happens.

It’s not possible.

She begins the sequence a third time, but now a message appears: “Insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result.” With that, her shock turns to anger, even fury, because Atlantis can’t not obey—there’s nothing in the programming to allow that to happen—which means the humans must have done something, for all their hasty assurances that they haven’t.

When she looks up, just one of them meets her accusing stare, and his eyes hold only challenge.

“I do not understand,” Teyla says, brow furrowed in obvious bafflement. “You told me the Wraith had never visited your world, and yet you called Sergeant Tanner a Runner. Do your people do this to each other?”

“No, no—” John blurts, horrified by the thought, by Teyla having this thought. “He’s a runner, not a Runner.” This clearly makes no difference to her. “Um. He runs for fun.” In the hot, hot sun, his Seuss-warped brain supplies, but repeating that aloud would likely only add to the confusion. “Just runs. No one chases him.”

“Oh.”

“Aren’t there any races around here?”

“Oh,” she says again, and then, mouth quirking into the subtlest of smiles, “Yes, but usually the contestants are called ‘idiots who don’t know when to come in under the shade to lie down’.”

It takes a moment for John to process that, the language still new and strange and sharp-edged in his head, but then he starts laughing—more out of relief than at the joke. At least their new allies have a sense of humor, though it looks to be a very odd one.

originally written and posted for book 23 of imaginarybeasts. part of the same huge story as needs must.

( The fox appeared after she had run the soles off her dancing shoes and the skin off her feet and had crumpled at the side of the road like a discarded flower, all lace and fine silk and utter despair. )

Which completes what was begun here and here (both f-locked) in November 2007, for NaNoWriMo, but stalled out at 3,000 words.

( Original Fiction Big Bang notes )

( Which contains: Unicorns eating other peoples’ tomatoes and reaping the consequences, a mystery, conversation concerning the validity of elopement as a wedding option, a flying camera, the testing of a friendship, poachers, more reaping of consequences, and what I trust is a satisfactory ending. )