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sga_flashficTitle: Delivered
Author: Epicycles
Rating: Gen, G
Spoilers: Letters from Pegasus
Summary: Every letter gets opened eventually...
*waves to community from lurker shadows* Hullo!
Once, when she was in sixth grade, she'd asked him for help. He'd been looking after her while their parents were out somewhere, like he always did. Usually that meant a locked door and a shouted 'No!'. But that one afternoon, he put away his books and sat down with her at the kitchen table.
One look at the open textbook and then he was shoving it aside, unworthy of attention.
"Do you want to see something cool?"
"You mean you actually know something cool?" she'd said, half-meaning it.
"Shut up. You're in what, seventh grade? You have to know algebra by now. Here." He spins her paper around and steals her pencil. Then he shows her calculus.
Nothing fancy. Nothing that would frustrate her into giving up. Just simple polynomials. Just enough to make her want to learn more of what her brother knows.
She never did finish that homework assignment. They spent the whole afternoon together, bent over the scuffed and stained wooden table, differentiating and integrating and differentiating again. He'd been smiling in that eyebrows-raised way that meant he was bursting with knowledge and needed to share it.
He would have been a good teacher.
Provided no one asked any stupid questions.
******
She's a teacher now at the local college. After the divorce, all she really remembered was piano. And, strangely, the clockwork rules of calculus. So she teaches them both, usually to students who are hoping for scholarships to better schools.
She teaches evening classes, which is why she is still at home when the man in uniform knocks on the door.
The thrill of fear is involuntary. She doesn't have any loved ones in the military. But officers knocking on doors always deliver bad new, at least in the movies.
"Mrs. Jean Labradoccio?" he asked, standing unnaturally straight.
No one calls her that any more. "Can I help you?"
"Do you know a Dr. Rodney McKay?"
It takes her a moment to remember his face.
"My brother." She remembers men in suits knocking at the door after one particular science fair. "If you're looking for him, I don't know where he is."
"That's not why I'm here, ma'am." He holds out an envelope with a disc shining through the clear cover. "I'm supposed to deliver this."
***********
"--my sister. Ford, if you cut everything else, just, just keep this part, okay?"
***********
She watches it alone.
He looks different. Thinner, more tired, less hair. More...something. He looks at the camera like he's meeting her eyes, instead of sliding off to stare just over her left shoulder.
He sounds different.
It's funny, but she thought he was dead. Years with no contact could do that. He didn't even know she was divorced. She's not sure how he even knew she was married. Has he never seen his nephew? How did they let so much time go by?
He doesn't seem to know either.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
He thinks he's going to die. He says he's contemplating his own demise, but she knows that's been almost a hobby of his since infancy. Lemons, bee stings, hypoglycemia. But that was just his way. It wasn't *real*. The look in his eyes now is real.
But she knows that it's already over. Whatever he's afraid of has already happened. Military mail is slow and adding all those censoring blurs must have taken time. There's no point in her worrying about it. He either lived or he died. Maybe in two or three weeks she'll get a letter in a black-bordered envelope. Maybe he'll show up on her doorstep wanting to make up for lost time.
Maybe this is all she'll ever get. One thirty-second video telling her she still has a brother, but not for long.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
Why did he send it to her? Why now? Why is this the one part he told "Ford" to save?
He vanished when he left home, but she stayed right here. He could have found her if he'd really wanted. If he'd ever tried. He could have spent the last ten years being 'Uncle Rodney' and giving Joshua chemistry sets for Christmas.
But what would this have been like then? To get a letter like this? Maybe it's better this way. Maybe it would have been better to never get it at all, just to receive a notice that her brother had died and she'd inherited his toaster oven. She could have cried a little and gone on with her life, not really remembering what he looked like.
She wouldn't have to sit here thinking of him for the first time in years, wishing she could see him again just because she knows she can't.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
He really doesn't seem at all like she remembered. She hopes he does survive, if only so she can find out why.
She stops the video.
It pauses, frozen on an image of the self-deprecating smile, what seems like the only piece of him that's still the same.
She thinks about how much things can change in ten years. She thinks about letters not written, phone calls not made, graduations not attended. About impromptu calculus lessons and the light in his eyes when she understood.
She thinks about her son, and the man she never realized he resembled.
******
"..and I'm sorry we weren't closer. Perhaps um,...if by chance I make it out of this, perhaps one day we can be. And I would like that."
******
"Hey, Mom. What are you watching?"
"It's a letter from your Uncle Rodney."
"I have an Uncle Rodney?"
"..."
"Mom?"
"...Do you want to see something cool?"
Author: Epicycles
Rating: Gen, G
Spoilers: Letters from Pegasus
Summary: Every letter gets opened eventually...
*waves to community from lurker shadows* Hullo!
Once, when she was in sixth grade, she'd asked him for help. He'd been looking after her while their parents were out somewhere, like he always did. Usually that meant a locked door and a shouted 'No!'. But that one afternoon, he put away his books and sat down with her at the kitchen table.
One look at the open textbook and then he was shoving it aside, unworthy of attention.
"Do you want to see something cool?"
"You mean you actually know something cool?" she'd said, half-meaning it.
"Shut up. You're in what, seventh grade? You have to know algebra by now. Here." He spins her paper around and steals her pencil. Then he shows her calculus.
Nothing fancy. Nothing that would frustrate her into giving up. Just simple polynomials. Just enough to make her want to learn more of what her brother knows.
She never did finish that homework assignment. They spent the whole afternoon together, bent over the scuffed and stained wooden table, differentiating and integrating and differentiating again. He'd been smiling in that eyebrows-raised way that meant he was bursting with knowledge and needed to share it.
He would have been a good teacher.
Provided no one asked any stupid questions.
******
She's a teacher now at the local college. After the divorce, all she really remembered was piano. And, strangely, the clockwork rules of calculus. So she teaches them both, usually to students who are hoping for scholarships to better schools.
She teaches evening classes, which is why she is still at home when the man in uniform knocks on the door.
The thrill of fear is involuntary. She doesn't have any loved ones in the military. But officers knocking on doors always deliver bad new, at least in the movies.
"Mrs. Jean Labradoccio?" he asked, standing unnaturally straight.
No one calls her that any more. "Can I help you?"
"Do you know a Dr. Rodney McKay?"
It takes her a moment to remember his face.
"My brother." She remembers men in suits knocking at the door after one particular science fair. "If you're looking for him, I don't know where he is."
"That's not why I'm here, ma'am." He holds out an envelope with a disc shining through the clear cover. "I'm supposed to deliver this."
***********
"--my sister. Ford, if you cut everything else, just, just keep this part, okay?"
***********
She watches it alone.
He looks different. Thinner, more tired, less hair. More...something. He looks at the camera like he's meeting her eyes, instead of sliding off to stare just over her left shoulder.
He sounds different.
It's funny, but she thought he was dead. Years with no contact could do that. He didn't even know she was divorced. She's not sure how he even knew she was married. Has he never seen his nephew? How did they let so much time go by?
He doesn't seem to know either.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
He thinks he's going to die. He says he's contemplating his own demise, but she knows that's been almost a hobby of his since infancy. Lemons, bee stings, hypoglycemia. But that was just his way. It wasn't *real*. The look in his eyes now is real.
But she knows that it's already over. Whatever he's afraid of has already happened. Military mail is slow and adding all those censoring blurs must have taken time. There's no point in her worrying about it. He either lived or he died. Maybe in two or three weeks she'll get a letter in a black-bordered envelope. Maybe he'll show up on her doorstep wanting to make up for lost time.
Maybe this is all she'll ever get. One thirty-second video telling her she still has a brother, but not for long.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
Why did he send it to her? Why now? Why is this the one part he told "Ford" to save?
He vanished when he left home, but she stayed right here. He could have found her if he'd really wanted. If he'd ever tried. He could have spent the last ten years being 'Uncle Rodney' and giving Joshua chemistry sets for Christmas.
But what would this have been like then? To get a letter like this? Maybe it's better this way. Maybe it would have been better to never get it at all, just to receive a notice that her brother had died and she'd inherited his toaster oven. She could have cried a little and gone on with her life, not really remembering what he looked like.
She wouldn't have to sit here thinking of him for the first time in years, wishing she could see him again just because she knows she can't.
She rewinds it, and plays it again.
He really doesn't seem at all like she remembered. She hopes he does survive, if only so she can find out why.
She stops the video.
It pauses, frozen on an image of the self-deprecating smile, what seems like the only piece of him that's still the same.
She thinks about how much things can change in ten years. She thinks about letters not written, phone calls not made, graduations not attended. About impromptu calculus lessons and the light in his eyes when she understood.
She thinks about her son, and the man she never realized he resembled.
******
"..and I'm sorry we weren't closer. Perhaps um,...if by chance I make it out of this, perhaps one day we can be. And I would like that."
******
"Hey, Mom. What are you watching?"
"It's a letter from your Uncle Rodney."
"I have an Uncle Rodney?"
"..."
"Mom?"
"...Do you want to see something cool?"