"Minor In Action" by Kellifer_fic
Apr. 17th, 2006 08:50 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kellifer-fic.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sga_flashficTitle: Minor In Action
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Characters: Team
Rating: PG13
Challenge: This is not happening challenge
Spoilers: None.
*Thanks to my beta superfox*
Summary: “Sir?” A voice too high pitched but he’d know that accent anywhere.
“Yeah, Lorne?”
“Sometimes I hate this place.”
“Me too, Lorne.”
Open your eyes…
He rolls to his back and rubs a hand over his face and it feels wrong somehow. In the dim light of the stuffy room he is in he holds the hand up in front of him, curling the fingers just to make sure it really is his and then groans.
“Sir?” A voice too high pitched but he’d know that accent anywhere.
“Yeah, Lorne?”
“Sometimes I fucking hate this place.”
“Me too, Lorne.”
***
What makes this all real is the way Elizabeth has to lean down to look him in the eye and he can see that she it just simply itching to reach out and ruffle a hand through his hair. She goes so far as to bring the hand up and then tucks it in her pocket, knowing that he will just simply lose it if she does anything like that.
Lorne elbows him in the side, a sharp and painfully tiny jab and he looks sideways to see that one of the nurses couldn’t resist and has her fingers buried in the mop of Lorne’s hair and has frozen, remembering that she is doing this to a Major.
The blush starts at her neckline.
“Sorry, Sir,” she mumbles, backing away and Lorne sighs and rolls his eyes, a gesture so him and yet miniaturized, that John can’t help it.
He starts laughing and the sound becomes a little hysterical and by the time the tears begin, Elizabeth has forgone her reticence and enveloped him in her arms and has even managed to drag his small frame into her lap. It’s horrible and comforting at the same time but what’s worse is when Carson bustles into the room and says, “So who are these wee lads then?” before noticing the tiny Atlantis uniforms and saying, “Oh dear, oh no.”
John wants to scream for him to shutup but knows it will probably just sound like he’s having a tantrum and really, hasn’t he been humiliated enough for one day?
***
“You’re kidding me!” Rodney virtually screams when he finally sees John.
John winces and turns away from the door. He’s just thankful that Rodney didn’t have to see him lift up onto his toes to palm the door control. One of the marines had asked if he wanted a box when he’d seen him struggling outside the room and John had wished desperately for his sidearm.
“But you’re still you, right?”
“Yes, McKay, I’m still me,” he sighs heavily and pulls himself up onto his bed. His feet don’t touch the floor and he swings them back and forth until he notices that doing so mesmerizes Rodney and he stops, cocking his head and trying a reassuring smile. That seems to freak Rodney out more so he settles for a scowl.
“I saw Lorne already,” Rodney says, pulling the chair on wheels out from John’s desk and settling into it. “He looks like a doll.”
And I don’t, John thinks tiredly, but knows Rodney is just trying to be helpful. “Elizabeth took my sidearm. She says it’s just to be on the safe side.”
“She’s right. You probably couldn’t handle it properly.” Rodney flushes when John looks at him sharply, but then the embarrassment is washed aside in the light of curiosity, Rodney’s scientific mind working overtime. “Do you find yourself wanting to do kid things or are you just you but… smaller?”
John shrugs, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms about them. “Inside I still feel the same, it’s just everything is harder. It feels like the world has giganticised instead of me getting smaller.”
“Well, you haven’t just shrunk, you look about six,” Rodney rests his chin on one hand and contemplates the small boy before him. “Maybe five.”
“Carson thinks five, yeah, but apparently the brain’s the same.” John taps his temple.
“Well, thank goodness for small mercies. You could’ve become a kid in everyway,” Rodney sighs.
“Yeah I know. I just… I think I want to hide out here until Carson comes up with something. How are people going to take me seriously after this?”
Rodney smiles. “Same as before,” he grins and John picks up a pillow and throws it. The pitch is way off and it lands on the floor between then bed and the chair.
“Yeah, shutup,” John groans, flopping back on the bed with a small arm over his eyes.
***
The first sign that something is really wrong occurs the next day.
Teyla comes to let him know that Carson is waiting for him and Lorne to conduct more tests. John automatically lifts his arms out toward her and without thinking; Teyla bends and scoops him up, settling him on her hip.
They look at each other for a moment and then John bites his lip.
“Ah… okay,” he sighs.
***
Ronon, never tactful, openly stares.
When he gets bored of staring, he reaches out a large hand and pinches Lorne on the cheek. Lorne slaps his hand away with an irritated growl. “I’m not telling you again, quit that!” he snaps.
Ronon manages to resist for all of about thirty seconds before his hand hovers over Lorne’s head and then strays down to tug on a tiny ear. With a cry of startled rage, Lorne launches himself at Ronon, latching onto his forearm with tiny teeth. Ronon pulls the struggling Lorne free and dumps him back on the infirmary bed, looking at the impressive half circle of teeth marks indented into his skin. Lorne is back on his feet, tiny fists balled and ready to launch himself again when he realizes that he just bit someone.
He sinks down onto the infirmary bed, head in his hands. “What’s happening?” he groans as Teyla enters the infirmary, John walking a sedate few paces behind her.
“You too, huh?” John asks, taking in Lorne’s defeated posture.
“He bit me,” Ronon says, surprise in his tone.
“You probably deserved it,” Teyla comments absently, her eyes flicking between the two small boys, worry creasing her brow.
***
“It’s like brain damage, but not really like anything I’ve seen before,” Carson says, tapping the brain scans he has on his light board. Elizabeth and Teyla are standing before him with Rodney just behind, hopping from foot to foot.
“What’s actually happening to them?” Elizabeth asks, drifting over to one of the observation windows. Her brow furrows when she sees that Lorne and John have begun a rather enthusiastic wrestling match.
“Basically, in layman’s terms, parts of the brain look to be shutting down. Memory centers are going dark, pathways and synapses that would have been built over years. I wouldn’t be able to tell even this much if it weren’t for the Atlantean technology.”
“What does that all mean?” Rodney demands, looking pale and grim and worried, basically reflecting what they are all feeling.
“It looks like they’re devolving,” Carson says. “Retreating mentally until, I’m assuming, they match their physical age.”
“Is there a way we can stop it?” Teyla asks the question for all of them.
“Frankly, I don’t see how,” Carson says, looking sick.
***
Lorne and John are sitting quietly, shoulder to shoulder, looking grim, tiny legs swinging when the others join them again. John looks at them all, his green eyes serious and still thankfully, intrinsically John.
“We can feel it,” he says, looking at Lorne who nods. “Everything’s slipping away, faster and faster.”
“Aye,” Carson agrees. “Perhaps it’s time for you boys to-“
“No,” Rodney says, his voice choked, “We can’t be there yet,”
“It’s alright,” Lorne has a firm set to his mouth, a completely alien expression on a too-small face. “We both need paper, pens and a little time. Please.”
Carson nods, going to his desk for the requested items. Ronon slips in behind them all and approaches John, holding out a hand. “It’s been an honour,” he says, enveloping a tiny hand with his own.
“For me, too,” John agrees. He finds Elizabeth’s eyes and locks their gazes. “I have a favour to ask you,” he says and she nods, indicating the others should leave the room.
***
When she dials Earth, she asks for General O’Neill because John says he trusts the man.
“He’ll know what to do,” John had said. “He won’t report it.”
Landry had demanded to know what Elizabeth wanted, but she’d held firm and two hours later, O’Neill’s voice was on the line.
When she finished telling him what happened, he simply said, “That’s a damn shame. Two fine soldiers lost. They’ll be classed as M.I.A but I guess we don’t hold out much hope.”
“No, General,” Elizabeth had said, “Thankyou, Sir.”
“No problem. If the situation changes, let me know. But for now, I think it’s best we don’t discuss this further. I’ll take care of it.”
Don’t send them back here, I’ll take care of it, is what he wanted to say and hopes Elizabeth got the message.
She does.
***
They go downhill, fast.
John would be talking animatedly one moment and then would drift off, a far-away look on his face. He’d shake it off and get back to what he was talking about, but it would happen more often.
On the third week, Rodney enters John’s quarters and finds the small Colonel sitting on his bed, staring at his feet, looking at his achingly tiny boots with the laces dragging on the floor. John looks at Rodney with large, shining eyes. “I don’t remember how. God, Rodney, I don’t remember how,” he says, leaning over and tugging at one lace dejectedly.
Without a word, Rodney goes to one knee and picks up the two trailing laces of the right boot.
“Two bunny ears,” he begins.
***
A fortnight later, Teyla stands at the bottom of the ramp, one tiny hand of each boy in each of her own. The whole of Atlantis has turned out, including Rodney and Ronon who stand to the side, both looking pale and bleak. As the gate begins to spin, Elizabeth comes to stand on the balcony, Carson joining her.
“You want to go down there?” he prompts gently and Elizabeth shakes her head, her eyes shining. “Look, maybe we should’ve gotten the Athosians to-“
“No,” Elizabeth says firmly. “Having them on the mainland, it would just be… too hard.” She says, gripping the handrail before her so tightly that the knuckles turn white. “It would be unfair on them.”
A moment later, a man and woman step through.
”I know of a couple who could not conceive,” Teyla says. “They live on Graeneve,”
“The industrialized world? They have a shield on their gate like ours.”
“Yes. They are also on the very tip of Pegasus. The Wraith have not touched their world in many generations.”
“That may change with the awakening,” Elizabeth replies grimly.
“It may, but it’s too dangerous for them here, no matter what we may want to believe.”
“I agree. I just… I wish there were another way.”
“There may be, someday. For now, we should try to give them a normal life.”
“Carson will keep working on it,” Elizabeth says.
“I do not doubt it.”
The man goes to one knee so he is eye level with the boys and holds out his arms. They both look at Teyla for a moment, who smiles and in an amazing moment of strength, lets go of the two tiny hands. Both Lorne and John step forward and are gathered in, swept aloft by the man who beams, his wife coming forward and first running a hand through John’s tousled hair, before running a finger down Lorne’s cheek.
The gate begins to dial once more and the woman holds up a small black box when the event horizon establishes, sending a signal through to their homeworld to allow them access. Just before they step through the shimmering wormhole, John holds out a tiny hand and waves.
When the rest of Atlantis has melted away, there are three people that stand on the ramp leading up to the gate.
Above them, her shadow cast over the floor, is Elizabeth.
“I will find a way to get them back,” Carson quietly promised before he had retreated.
They’ll be classed as M.I.A but I guess we don’t hold out much hope…
“Just think, in fifteen years or so, Sheppard is going to run rings around our wrinkly old asses,” Elizabeth hears Ronon say quietly.
Teyla puts a hand on Ronon’s shoulder and slings her other arm over Rodney’s neck. She turns her head just enough that she catches Elizabeth’s eye.
There is a letter on Elizabeth’s desk in a looping, childish hand. There is one on Teyla’s bed, on Rodney’s desk and in Ronon’s room.
None of them will open their letters anytime soon.
Not when there’s hope left.
Author:
kellifer_ficCharacters: Team
Rating: PG13
Challenge: This is not happening challenge
Spoilers: None.
*Thanks to my beta superfox*
Summary: “Sir?” A voice too high pitched but he’d know that accent anywhere.
“Yeah, Lorne?”
“Sometimes I hate this place.”
“Me too, Lorne.”
Open your eyes…
He rolls to his back and rubs a hand over his face and it feels wrong somehow. In the dim light of the stuffy room he is in he holds the hand up in front of him, curling the fingers just to make sure it really is his and then groans.
“Sir?” A voice too high pitched but he’d know that accent anywhere.
“Yeah, Lorne?”
“Sometimes I fucking hate this place.”
“Me too, Lorne.”
What makes this all real is the way Elizabeth has to lean down to look him in the eye and he can see that she it just simply itching to reach out and ruffle a hand through his hair. She goes so far as to bring the hand up and then tucks it in her pocket, knowing that he will just simply lose it if she does anything like that.
Lorne elbows him in the side, a sharp and painfully tiny jab and he looks sideways to see that one of the nurses couldn’t resist and has her fingers buried in the mop of Lorne’s hair and has frozen, remembering that she is doing this to a Major.
The blush starts at her neckline.
“Sorry, Sir,” she mumbles, backing away and Lorne sighs and rolls his eyes, a gesture so him and yet miniaturized, that John can’t help it.
He starts laughing and the sound becomes a little hysterical and by the time the tears begin, Elizabeth has forgone her reticence and enveloped him in her arms and has even managed to drag his small frame into her lap. It’s horrible and comforting at the same time but what’s worse is when Carson bustles into the room and says, “So who are these wee lads then?” before noticing the tiny Atlantis uniforms and saying, “Oh dear, oh no.”
John wants to scream for him to shutup but knows it will probably just sound like he’s having a tantrum and really, hasn’t he been humiliated enough for one day?
“You’re kidding me!” Rodney virtually screams when he finally sees John.
John winces and turns away from the door. He’s just thankful that Rodney didn’t have to see him lift up onto his toes to palm the door control. One of the marines had asked if he wanted a box when he’d seen him struggling outside the room and John had wished desperately for his sidearm.
“But you’re still you, right?”
“Yes, McKay, I’m still me,” he sighs heavily and pulls himself up onto his bed. His feet don’t touch the floor and he swings them back and forth until he notices that doing so mesmerizes Rodney and he stops, cocking his head and trying a reassuring smile. That seems to freak Rodney out more so he settles for a scowl.
“I saw Lorne already,” Rodney says, pulling the chair on wheels out from John’s desk and settling into it. “He looks like a doll.”
And I don’t, John thinks tiredly, but knows Rodney is just trying to be helpful. “Elizabeth took my sidearm. She says it’s just to be on the safe side.”
“She’s right. You probably couldn’t handle it properly.” Rodney flushes when John looks at him sharply, but then the embarrassment is washed aside in the light of curiosity, Rodney’s scientific mind working overtime. “Do you find yourself wanting to do kid things or are you just you but… smaller?”
John shrugs, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms about them. “Inside I still feel the same, it’s just everything is harder. It feels like the world has giganticised instead of me getting smaller.”
“Well, you haven’t just shrunk, you look about six,” Rodney rests his chin on one hand and contemplates the small boy before him. “Maybe five.”
“Carson thinks five, yeah, but apparently the brain’s the same.” John taps his temple.
“Well, thank goodness for small mercies. You could’ve become a kid in everyway,” Rodney sighs.
“Yeah I know. I just… I think I want to hide out here until Carson comes up with something. How are people going to take me seriously after this?”
Rodney smiles. “Same as before,” he grins and John picks up a pillow and throws it. The pitch is way off and it lands on the floor between then bed and the chair.
“Yeah, shutup,” John groans, flopping back on the bed with a small arm over his eyes.
The first sign that something is really wrong occurs the next day.
Teyla comes to let him know that Carson is waiting for him and Lorne to conduct more tests. John automatically lifts his arms out toward her and without thinking; Teyla bends and scoops him up, settling him on her hip.
They look at each other for a moment and then John bites his lip.
“Ah… okay,” he sighs.
Ronon, never tactful, openly stares.
When he gets bored of staring, he reaches out a large hand and pinches Lorne on the cheek. Lorne slaps his hand away with an irritated growl. “I’m not telling you again, quit that!” he snaps.
Ronon manages to resist for all of about thirty seconds before his hand hovers over Lorne’s head and then strays down to tug on a tiny ear. With a cry of startled rage, Lorne launches himself at Ronon, latching onto his forearm with tiny teeth. Ronon pulls the struggling Lorne free and dumps him back on the infirmary bed, looking at the impressive half circle of teeth marks indented into his skin. Lorne is back on his feet, tiny fists balled and ready to launch himself again when he realizes that he just bit someone.
He sinks down onto the infirmary bed, head in his hands. “What’s happening?” he groans as Teyla enters the infirmary, John walking a sedate few paces behind her.
“You too, huh?” John asks, taking in Lorne’s defeated posture.
“He bit me,” Ronon says, surprise in his tone.
“You probably deserved it,” Teyla comments absently, her eyes flicking between the two small boys, worry creasing her brow.
“It’s like brain damage, but not really like anything I’ve seen before,” Carson says, tapping the brain scans he has on his light board. Elizabeth and Teyla are standing before him with Rodney just behind, hopping from foot to foot.
“What’s actually happening to them?” Elizabeth asks, drifting over to one of the observation windows. Her brow furrows when she sees that Lorne and John have begun a rather enthusiastic wrestling match.
“Basically, in layman’s terms, parts of the brain look to be shutting down. Memory centers are going dark, pathways and synapses that would have been built over years. I wouldn’t be able to tell even this much if it weren’t for the Atlantean technology.”
“What does that all mean?” Rodney demands, looking pale and grim and worried, basically reflecting what they are all feeling.
“It looks like they’re devolving,” Carson says. “Retreating mentally until, I’m assuming, they match their physical age.”
“Is there a way we can stop it?” Teyla asks the question for all of them.
“Frankly, I don’t see how,” Carson says, looking sick.
Lorne and John are sitting quietly, shoulder to shoulder, looking grim, tiny legs swinging when the others join them again. John looks at them all, his green eyes serious and still thankfully, intrinsically John.
“We can feel it,” he says, looking at Lorne who nods. “Everything’s slipping away, faster and faster.”
“Aye,” Carson agrees. “Perhaps it’s time for you boys to-“
“No,” Rodney says, his voice choked, “We can’t be there yet,”
“It’s alright,” Lorne has a firm set to his mouth, a completely alien expression on a too-small face. “We both need paper, pens and a little time. Please.”
Carson nods, going to his desk for the requested items. Ronon slips in behind them all and approaches John, holding out a hand. “It’s been an honour,” he says, enveloping a tiny hand with his own.
“For me, too,” John agrees. He finds Elizabeth’s eyes and locks their gazes. “I have a favour to ask you,” he says and she nods, indicating the others should leave the room.
When she dials Earth, she asks for General O’Neill because John says he trusts the man.
“He’ll know what to do,” John had said. “He won’t report it.”
Landry had demanded to know what Elizabeth wanted, but she’d held firm and two hours later, O’Neill’s voice was on the line.
When she finished telling him what happened, he simply said, “That’s a damn shame. Two fine soldiers lost. They’ll be classed as M.I.A but I guess we don’t hold out much hope.”
“No, General,” Elizabeth had said, “Thankyou, Sir.”
“No problem. If the situation changes, let me know. But for now, I think it’s best we don’t discuss this further. I’ll take care of it.”
Don’t send them back here, I’ll take care of it, is what he wanted to say and hopes Elizabeth got the message.
She does.
They go downhill, fast.
John would be talking animatedly one moment and then would drift off, a far-away look on his face. He’d shake it off and get back to what he was talking about, but it would happen more often.
On the third week, Rodney enters John’s quarters and finds the small Colonel sitting on his bed, staring at his feet, looking at his achingly tiny boots with the laces dragging on the floor. John looks at Rodney with large, shining eyes. “I don’t remember how. God, Rodney, I don’t remember how,” he says, leaning over and tugging at one lace dejectedly.
Without a word, Rodney goes to one knee and picks up the two trailing laces of the right boot.
“Two bunny ears,” he begins.
A fortnight later, Teyla stands at the bottom of the ramp, one tiny hand of each boy in each of her own. The whole of Atlantis has turned out, including Rodney and Ronon who stand to the side, both looking pale and bleak. As the gate begins to spin, Elizabeth comes to stand on the balcony, Carson joining her.
“You want to go down there?” he prompts gently and Elizabeth shakes her head, her eyes shining. “Look, maybe we should’ve gotten the Athosians to-“
“No,” Elizabeth says firmly. “Having them on the mainland, it would just be… too hard.” She says, gripping the handrail before her so tightly that the knuckles turn white. “It would be unfair on them.”
A moment later, a man and woman step through.
”I know of a couple who could not conceive,” Teyla says. “They live on Graeneve,”
“The industrialized world? They have a shield on their gate like ours.”
“Yes. They are also on the very tip of Pegasus. The Wraith have not touched their world in many generations.”
“That may change with the awakening,” Elizabeth replies grimly.
“It may, but it’s too dangerous for them here, no matter what we may want to believe.”
“I agree. I just… I wish there were another way.”
“There may be, someday. For now, we should try to give them a normal life.”
“Carson will keep working on it,” Elizabeth says.
“I do not doubt it.”
The man goes to one knee so he is eye level with the boys and holds out his arms. They both look at Teyla for a moment, who smiles and in an amazing moment of strength, lets go of the two tiny hands. Both Lorne and John step forward and are gathered in, swept aloft by the man who beams, his wife coming forward and first running a hand through John’s tousled hair, before running a finger down Lorne’s cheek.
The gate begins to dial once more and the woman holds up a small black box when the event horizon establishes, sending a signal through to their homeworld to allow them access. Just before they step through the shimmering wormhole, John holds out a tiny hand and waves.
When the rest of Atlantis has melted away, there are three people that stand on the ramp leading up to the gate.
Above them, her shadow cast over the floor, is Elizabeth.
“I will find a way to get them back,” Carson quietly promised before he had retreated.
They’ll be classed as M.I.A but I guess we don’t hold out much hope…
“Just think, in fifteen years or so, Sheppard is going to run rings around our wrinkly old asses,” Elizabeth hears Ronon say quietly.
Teyla puts a hand on Ronon’s shoulder and slings her other arm over Rodney’s neck. She turns her head just enough that she catches Elizabeth’s eye.
There is a letter on Elizabeth’s desk in a looping, childish hand. There is one on Teyla’s bed, on Rodney’s desk and in Ronon’s room.
None of them will open their letters anytime soon.
Not when there’s hope left.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-17 12:21 pm (UTC)