Super - by with_apostrophe (Secret Superpower Challenge)

[with-apostrophe.livejournal.com]

Title: Super
Author: with_apostrophe
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1400
Spoilers: Various episodes up to and including 'The Siege 3'

Summary: The evolution of Super Ford

Comments (especially concrit) would be appreciated as I'm brand new to posting SGA fic.

Aiden Ford had always considered himself to be average. At school there was no doubt that he was smart but he never really excelled at anything. Academically he did enough to be accepted into the Marines, not as a non-com but as officer material, and graduated military school with what he jokingly called ‘an average average’.

 

He hung out with the jocks and was liked by everybody, apart from the few geeks he helped to beat up. He played football and ran track and even won some races at the county meets, but he never broke any records or caught a scout’s eye. He did ok with girls, but never had the reputation of a lady’s man, unlike some of his friends. With a sunny disposition and a buoyant nature, it normally didn’t get to him, but sometimes he would wonder whether people were secretly looking at him and thinking ‘average’, and occasionally it would keep him up at nights.

 

As a Marine, Lieutenant Aiden Ford knew he was better than average, but was never quite at the top. So Ford thought it was the best day of his life when he was called into his C.O.’s office and informed that he had been chosen to try out for a place in a program so classified that until recently even POTUS hadn’t known about it. He soon discovered he had thought wrong.

 

The best day of his life was when he was accepted into said classified program and learnt that interstellar travel, aliens, and blasters were all real, and that this new realm of possibilities was now an integral part of his life. The day he got to travel through the Stargate as back up for the program’s premiere team and bona fide heroes was the second best day of his life. If he lay awake at all after those days it wasn’t because he felt average, but because he finally felt he’d somehow bust through his glass ceiling of mediocrity.

 

Another milestone came when Dr Elizabeth Weir singled out himself and a few other Marines to be stationed in Antarctica, to help protect the Ancient outpost there. She had spoken to each one personally, telling them that they’d been chosen for their proven ability to work well with scientists - something he knew few Marines had the time or patience for. Already knowing a little about the chief scientist his was to be stationed with, that definitely pegged him as more than average.

 

The best day to beat all best days was when he became one of the chosen few to step through the Stargate to another galaxy. The sheer exhilaration of standing by that event horizon as he teased the flyboy Major, before jumping through backwards was so palpably strong he almost felt he could have flown to Atlantis under his own steam. Here was an expedition of some of the finest minds of Earth travelling to the lost city of Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy, and he, little Aiden Ford, was deemed worthy to come too.

 

He was riding a high that not even the discovery of life-sucking vampire aliens or being attacked by a semi-sentient cloud of darkness could quench. He was chosen to be on the expeditions first contact team. He saved Major Sheppard from being drained by Wraith. His finest hour was very nearly being sucked out of the back of a Puddle Jumper that had been exposed to space in order to save five others, including his CO, from certain death.

 

And yet-

 

And yet his ‘average’ paranoia came creeping back into his life. It wasn’t any one incident, not any one thing anybody said or did, but the familiar sensation of being ordinary in the face of extraordinary gradually seeped back in. He began to feel like the fifth wheel in Sheppard’s four person team. He was frequently left to guard the Puddle Jumper or a hole in the ground, whilst his team infiltrated a Wraith Hive Ship or investigated a secret underground chamber. The Scottish doctor was difficult and at times condescending about his leadership during the storm and Genii invasion that nearly destroyed the city. He began to feel he was being passed over, that the others were finally beginning to realise the secret of his underlying mediocrity.

 

It was getting to him. When he couldn’t keep up with McKay and Zelenka’s game of ‘Prime, Not Prime’ and was gently mocked for being a statistical improbability he lost his rag and yelled at them. When Dr Beckett questioned his lead he got snappy, and whilst he told himself he said what he did in order to get the job done, he knew deep inside that it was partly his insecurity raising its ugly head. Whilst Aiden’s team were off spying on the Wraith or writing data compression algorithms for intel about the Wraith that Earth needed, he was assigned the job of cameraman for the expedition’s messages home. He didn’t object to the assignment, and it was for the most part an enjoyable one, but he couldn’t help but notice that in the scheme of things it wasn’t vital to anyone’s continued existence.

 

It didn’t eat away at him. He didn’t sit up long into the watches of the night mulling it over and brooding. He got on with things, as he always did, just with that faint buzz of ‘average’ always present somewhere in the nether regions of his mind.

 

Ford forgot about being ‘average’ entirely when reinforcements arrived from Earth and the Wraith attacked. There was too much to do. Personal agendas and insecurities had to be pushed aside, for there was a job that had to be done lest they die there and risk the Wraith reaching the rich feeding grounds of Earth.

 

And yet-

 

And yet no one could have predicted or prevented what happened to Lieutenant Aiden Ford that day. No one could have kept the Wraith from beaming right into Ford’s position. Nothing was going to stop the Wraith from attempting to feed on him. Who knew that a heavy dose of enzyme the Wraith was pumping into him to keep him strong during the feeding process would be the one thing that would maintain his life through a grenade explosion and over an hour face down in freezing cold water?

 

Who knew that when he awoke everything would be amplified - his strength, his sight, his hearing? Who knew that this would not be the best day of Ford’s life, but the beginning of what he considered to be the best thing that ever happened to him?

 

He was faster and his reflexes were like lightning. Well-being flooded his system and he felt almost invulnerable, like nothing could touch him or stop him.

 

And yet -

 

And yet why couldn’t they see it? Beckett, Weir, Teyla, Sheppard- none of them trusted him, none of them could appreciate the true worth of who and what he’d become, so they tried to shut him away, make him average again, except he wasn’t going to stand for it anymore.

 

Little did he realise that the enzyme also amplified his insecurities and paranoia. When Beckett demanded he return to the infirmary instead of fighting he held the doctor a foot above the floor using only one hand. He could sense their fear of what he had become, and that if he did nothing sooner or later they would be abandoning him to death - unable to feed his addiction to the Wraith enzyme any longer. And so he chose to leave, refusing to listen to Sheppard any more, being hunted by his C.O. through the corridors of Atlantis. He was not going to let them change them back. This was it. This was the answer they were looking for, the advantage that could aid them in destroying the Wraith forever. Why would he want to change that?

 

The Major said he wanted to help, but Aiden knew better. Aiden was better, better than any of them could ever hope to be. So he stole a Puddle Jumper, disobeying Sheppard’s direct order, refusing to be the average Marine any longer and escaping through the Stargate.

 

And so began his life as a secret super hero.

 

And yet-

 

And yet why, deep inside, in those secret places, did he not feel that super?

Comments

[sor-bet.livejournal.com]

Man, I just feel so sorry for Ford. You've done a really good job with his backstory, so we understand why he's so loath to give up the enzyme, even if it weren't messing with his head. And now I feel even more sorry for him. Nicely done.

(I don't have cable and have seen only through Season 3, so if he showed up in season 4, don't tell me! :-D)

[hajimebassaidai.livejournal.com]

Poor Ford, he always tried so hard, expected himself to be one of a handful of officers yet found himself 2IC against a brand new enemy.

A feeling of always having to try and be the best would help explain his desperation to cling to his new "abilities".