Left Behind Challenge: Cold by Brighid
Mar. 13th, 2006 05:24 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sga_flashficChallenge: Left Behind
Title: Cold
Spoilers: None, really
Rating: PG
Author: Brighid
Summary: Her hands are cold on his shoulders, biting through his Spiderman T-shirt, right down to the bone.
Note: This is a return to fairy tales, but only in a roundabout way. For Salieri, and Z.
Cold
Cold
John never says so, but he remembers the fights. His early childhood was stretched out over long silences of absence and sudden winds of fury: his father's voice, a low rumble, like jets overhead, yet still little more than a muted counterpoint to the angry howl of his mother's loneliness. The last fight he remembers clearest of all: He is eight years old, and he hides under his covers and thinks, stop. Stop. Please stop.
Two days later he is standing in the front hall of the house and his mother is carrying two green garbage bags down the stairs. Her face is white, like winter frost, and her lips are an angry red slash. She goes back up the stairs, her heels tip-tapping on the old wood, and when she returns she has a suitcase. He watches her, silent, because sometimes saying the wrong thing means the back of her hand, or even worse, her tears.
She leans in and clutches him hard, and her hands are cold on his shoulders, biting through his Spiderman T-shirt, right down to the bone. She kisses him once, on the cheek, and then she says, "Be good."
She slams the door so hard on the way out that the mirror on the wall crashes down, shatters into maybe a million pieces. He tries to sweep it up, but he cuts himself, bad enough to feel sick to his stomach at all the blood. He wraps it up as best he can in a dishtowel, and walks over to the neighbours' house in his sock feet, because he can't do up his laces with one hand.
When his father comes to get him from the hospital he touches the four stitches in his palm, the smear of red lipstick on his cheek, and he doesn't say a word the whole drive home.
)0(
Cold clarity ran through him, bright blue and perfectly still, like a winter sky. She had been waiting for him, ever since the cold went into his bones, had known he would come and be just perfect, just perfect, because she, too, was cold and distant and left behind.
John closed his eyes and sank into her as deeply as he could, letting his breathing and his pulse slow down into synch with hers, waiting until they were perfectly matched, and then he reached out, touched her, knew her. Loved her. Just as she had been waiting, so had he.
His fingers clenched on the armrest of the chair and he let her take him, completely.
)0(
John has three girlfriends throughout high school. They are pretty, uncomplicated, and heartbroken when he eventually drifts away. He falls in love, once, in his last year. He finds himself spending all his spare time with a boy in his French class who is funny and wry and maybe just as in love with John, or at least, the possibility of John. He kisses John, once, when they are sitting too close while working through irregular verbs. John kisses him back, drawn to the heat and sweetness of the boy.
The next week John switches into another section of French, and does not talk to the boy ever again except in passing. He applies for an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Eventually he falls in love again, for what he thinks will be the last time: the sky is wide and blue and still and cool and it welcomes him, holds him, belongs to him completely.
Right until he falls out of it.
)0(
She knew him when he first arrived; she came alive as he moved through her, as he touched her. She welcomed him home. Now she was open to him completely, naked and pale and perfect, like nothing in his life had ever been, not even math, not even flying. She was ... everything.
He said, please, give me this. Let me have this, he whispered, reaching into the blue-white lines of system memory and base six mathematics that told how to line up the drones, how to let them fly out in perfect, blazing arcs.
She said, what will you offer in return?
Everything, he said. Oh, god, everything.
)0(
Antarctica is ... beautiful. Sometimes the sky is so sharp and blue it makes his breath catch in his throat. When he flies it surrounds him, holds him in cold, cold hands that make his skin burn, make his bones ache with longing.
Even on the ground he can see the echo of blue, so he feels like he's still walking in the sky.
And then he almost gets shot down, again, and he goes down the rabbit hole with some General and he sits in a chair and there's an echo of something in the back of his head, something that he's never even known he was missing until now.
He looks up through the stars that spin overhead, and he catches the pale gaze of one of the scientists. He's thick-bodied with flushed cheeks and John can feel the heat of his watching. John closes his eyes and traces backwards to try and find the ghost in the machine, but it remains elusive.
)0(
He knew the sky above them was in flames, debris from the hive ships raining down in blazing meteors. He kept the guns firing, until they were all gone from orbit and still she held him as he strained to push hard, harder, to drive them finally, forever away. His body bowed and arched and he felt small bones crack and snap even as she pulled him deeper in to her, so deep he knew that he could never go back.
You promised, she said, you promised and her mouth was cold and her breath was freezing in his lungs and the blood in his body stilled, cooled, stopped and then she was screaming, clutching as he was tugged away, pulled from her pale fingers and he ...
opened his eyes to blue and Rodney was breathing into his mouth, cursing breathlessly. He could feel cracked ribs and it hurt to breathe but he did, anyway, once, twice, and then he said, "Let me go back...damn it, Rodney, let me go back!"
And Rodney said, "Not a chance in hell, John; we'll find another way, we'll find another way," and he was crying, hard and ugly. The tears landed hot and salty on John's cracked mouth and he swallowed, convulsively. They felt like fire, all the way down to his belly.
"Okay," he said finally and reached up, pulled Rodney in tight against him. "Okay, we'll find another way."
)0(
When John wakes up in the infirmary, Rodney is conked out in the chair beside him. He's showered at some point, but there are bruises under his eyes and scorch marks all over his forearms. John watches him sleep until he gets drowsy again himself. He says, "Hey," and Rodney stirs, reaches out and takes his hand, tracing his broad, callused thumb against the pale silver scar in John's left palm.
Rodney's hand is warm and solid and real.
John falls asleep.
)0(
Title: Cold
Spoilers: None, really
Rating: PG
Author: Brighid
Summary: Her hands are cold on his shoulders, biting through his Spiderman T-shirt, right down to the bone.
Note: This is a return to fairy tales, but only in a roundabout way. For Salieri, and Z.
Cold
Cold
John never says so, but he remembers the fights. His early childhood was stretched out over long silences of absence and sudden winds of fury: his father's voice, a low rumble, like jets overhead, yet still little more than a muted counterpoint to the angry howl of his mother's loneliness. The last fight he remembers clearest of all: He is eight years old, and he hides under his covers and thinks, stop. Stop. Please stop.
Two days later he is standing in the front hall of the house and his mother is carrying two green garbage bags down the stairs. Her face is white, like winter frost, and her lips are an angry red slash. She goes back up the stairs, her heels tip-tapping on the old wood, and when she returns she has a suitcase. He watches her, silent, because sometimes saying the wrong thing means the back of her hand, or even worse, her tears.
She leans in and clutches him hard, and her hands are cold on his shoulders, biting through his Spiderman T-shirt, right down to the bone. She kisses him once, on the cheek, and then she says, "Be good."
She slams the door so hard on the way out that the mirror on the wall crashes down, shatters into maybe a million pieces. He tries to sweep it up, but he cuts himself, bad enough to feel sick to his stomach at all the blood. He wraps it up as best he can in a dishtowel, and walks over to the neighbours' house in his sock feet, because he can't do up his laces with one hand.
When his father comes to get him from the hospital he touches the four stitches in his palm, the smear of red lipstick on his cheek, and he doesn't say a word the whole drive home.
)0(
Cold clarity ran through him, bright blue and perfectly still, like a winter sky. She had been waiting for him, ever since the cold went into his bones, had known he would come and be just perfect, just perfect, because she, too, was cold and distant and left behind.
John closed his eyes and sank into her as deeply as he could, letting his breathing and his pulse slow down into synch with hers, waiting until they were perfectly matched, and then he reached out, touched her, knew her. Loved her. Just as she had been waiting, so had he.
His fingers clenched on the armrest of the chair and he let her take him, completely.
)0(
John has three girlfriends throughout high school. They are pretty, uncomplicated, and heartbroken when he eventually drifts away. He falls in love, once, in his last year. He finds himself spending all his spare time with a boy in his French class who is funny and wry and maybe just as in love with John, or at least, the possibility of John. He kisses John, once, when they are sitting too close while working through irregular verbs. John kisses him back, drawn to the heat and sweetness of the boy.
The next week John switches into another section of French, and does not talk to the boy ever again except in passing. He applies for an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Eventually he falls in love again, for what he thinks will be the last time: the sky is wide and blue and still and cool and it welcomes him, holds him, belongs to him completely.
Right until he falls out of it.
)0(
She knew him when he first arrived; she came alive as he moved through her, as he touched her. She welcomed him home. Now she was open to him completely, naked and pale and perfect, like nothing in his life had ever been, not even math, not even flying. She was ... everything.
He said, please, give me this. Let me have this, he whispered, reaching into the blue-white lines of system memory and base six mathematics that told how to line up the drones, how to let them fly out in perfect, blazing arcs.
She said, what will you offer in return?
Everything, he said. Oh, god, everything.
)0(
Antarctica is ... beautiful. Sometimes the sky is so sharp and blue it makes his breath catch in his throat. When he flies it surrounds him, holds him in cold, cold hands that make his skin burn, make his bones ache with longing.
Even on the ground he can see the echo of blue, so he feels like he's still walking in the sky.
And then he almost gets shot down, again, and he goes down the rabbit hole with some General and he sits in a chair and there's an echo of something in the back of his head, something that he's never even known he was missing until now.
He looks up through the stars that spin overhead, and he catches the pale gaze of one of the scientists. He's thick-bodied with flushed cheeks and John can feel the heat of his watching. John closes his eyes and traces backwards to try and find the ghost in the machine, but it remains elusive.
)0(
He knew the sky above them was in flames, debris from the hive ships raining down in blazing meteors. He kept the guns firing, until they were all gone from orbit and still she held him as he strained to push hard, harder, to drive them finally, forever away. His body bowed and arched and he felt small bones crack and snap even as she pulled him deeper in to her, so deep he knew that he could never go back.
You promised, she said, you promised and her mouth was cold and her breath was freezing in his lungs and the blood in his body stilled, cooled, stopped and then she was screaming, clutching as he was tugged away, pulled from her pale fingers and he ...
opened his eyes to blue and Rodney was breathing into his mouth, cursing breathlessly. He could feel cracked ribs and it hurt to breathe but he did, anyway, once, twice, and then he said, "Let me go back...damn it, Rodney, let me go back!"
And Rodney said, "Not a chance in hell, John; we'll find another way, we'll find another way," and he was crying, hard and ugly. The tears landed hot and salty on John's cracked mouth and he swallowed, convulsively. They felt like fire, all the way down to his belly.
"Okay," he said finally and reached up, pulled Rodney in tight against him. "Okay, we'll find another way."
)0(
When John wakes up in the infirmary, Rodney is conked out in the chair beside him. He's showered at some point, but there are bruises under his eyes and scorch marks all over his forearms. John watches him sleep until he gets drowsy again himself. He says, "Hey," and Rodney stirs, reaches out and takes his hand, tracing his broad, callused thumb against the pale silver scar in John's left palm.
Rodney's hand is warm and solid and real.
John falls asleep.
)0(
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:56 am (UTC)the chair and the sky are so evocative, and the rest of it such very powerful glimpses of mystery and consequences. an exquisite ending so full of the degree of their regard for each other. *hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 03:18 am (UTC)wonderful fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 03:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 03:25 am (UTC)Thankfully, Rodney was there to save him. Whew!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 05:22 am (UTC)This is my true Atlantis OTP.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 05:24 am (UTC)Thank you for sharing this!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 05:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 07:07 am (UTC)Awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 07:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 12:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 06:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 07:41 pm (UTC)thank you!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 09:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 03:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 05:17 am (UTC)This is lovely, and lyrical, and poignant and sweet, and I think I fell a little more in love with John than I already was while reading it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 05:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 05:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 07:21 am (UTC)This is cold and yet warm, painful and wonderful and so very much John.
No coherent feedback, I'm afraid. Just pure adoration for something so very polished in its prose and perfectly, painfully in character.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 11:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-25 03:42 am (UTC)