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sga_flashficRating: PG-13
Pairing: Sheppard/Ronon implied
Words: ~3000
Summary: A mission report from an unlikely source discloses more than it intends to
'Dr McKay does not like tree-houses because of he is allergic to lemons and oranges and radiation and polyester and Andrewloydweber (whatever that is) and so being outside makes him cranky.
He also does not like kids very much. Or adults.'
Dear Dr Weir,
I would be very grateful indeed and sincerely if you would let us (the mainland kids) build a tree-house on the mainland in the big tree by the tent that sells ploughs. Ronon told us he knows how to build a tree-house if you say it’s OK and Colonel Sheppard says it’s OK. Colonel Sheppard already said it was but when I told Gregon (who is the biggest boy and thinks he is the boss of everyone) that we could tell you that he said ‘You don’t have any proof Jeannie. You could just be making it up.’
So I guess I’ll have to tell you the whole thing to prove he did say it. I asked my teacher if there’s a word for that and she said it is called ‘context’, so this is my context.
To start off with I got to go on the mission to the planet with all the kids on it which is called M7G-677. Firstly it is a very cool planet because it is mostly kids and not many older people and so they are allowed to have fires and knives and stuff. Colonel Sheppard’s team went there two years ago and they knew who we were and gave us garlands and things when we got there.
Colonel Sheppard said when we were walking to the village that I was an ambassador because I showed another way of being a kid besides living in a tree-house and hunting and wearing war paint all the time and not having to wash. I guessed this was a good opportunity and pointed out that it’s not really fair that those kids are getting help to be more like me and I’m not getting a tree-house. Colonel Sheppard said “I’m not sure about that.” Then he said “Ronon can I talk to you for a moment?” and they went into the back of the shuttle so I bet they were planning it all already.
Dr McKay does not like tree-houses because of he is allergic to lemons and oranges and radiation and polyester and Andrewloydweber (whatever that is) and so being outside makes him cranky.
He also does not like kids very much. Or adults. This was good because he gave me all his chocolate power bars and told me to go away and use them to get the other kids away from the cool thing with lights in his tent. Then he said he had a sugar-crash and he was so scary the other adults gave him all their power bars and then he had to give half to me again because the kids kept coming back to try and braid his hair. Colonel Sheppard said this was karma but I think it was bunchies.
They set up the tents and stuff and I met some girls my age and we played Wraiths and Humans for ages. That is a really cool game we made up on the mainland where five people are Wraiths and chase everyone else and suck them and when you are sucked you have to scream real loud then lie down and count to thirty and if the Wraith get everyone lying down at once they win and if they get you three times you have to be a Wraith and they get to be a human. It is really fun.
We were enjoying it but then Ronon ran up. He yelled at us to stop and it was horrible because he never yells at kids EVER. Not even when he comes to the mainland to help us fish or make go-karts or something and we put crabs in his hair. I was scared because he grabbed me and I could see that he was really angry but also he was almost crying.
Then Colonel Sheppard ran over to us and pulled back Ronon’s arms. He said “Ronon, Ronon, it’s ok, easy” but he whispered it right close to his ear instead of just yelling like everyone else. Ronon let go of me and saw we were all crying and bit his hand. Then he tripped or something and kind of fell and Colonel Sheppard caught him and they stood really still for a moment and then Ronon pulled away really fast and angry and dragged Colonel Sheppard away towards the trees and started yelling at him. Colonel Sheppard said something and Ronon yelled “Tell me this is an order from you! Tell me you would order this!” really loudly.
Teyla called me away to help make dinner. We had MRE food which is really icky and Dr McKay asked why there weren’t any power bars for dessert. Then he asked whether Ronon had any left because he bet Ronon hadn’t given them all up and Teyla said “I think it would be prudent to leave them be at present” and Dr McKay said “Oh God, now? Why now? They’ve repressed themselves into manly distance for eighteen months; can’t they keep it in their pants until we return to civilisation?” I told him pants are a stupid place to put chocolate power bars because they melt and make your legs all sticky.
He didn’t look at me but he said “Seriously does she have to be here?” Teyla glared at him and he said “Well duh obviously here-on-the-planet-here but why in this tent?”
Teyla said “Eat your stew. You too Jeannie.” He sulked.
“Anyway” she said, “the Colonel and Ronon are only talking.”
He picked up the blue flashing-lights thing and said “Yes well with their vocabulary range that won’t last long.”
She said “You do not believe this situation warrants further discussion?”
He said “For God’s sake, the Genii have us pinned; Elizabeth says we have to, and it’s only been, what, eight, nine, ten months old? It looks like it’s normal but it isn’t. It isn’t what it looks like.”
She said: “Please not talk in this manner here.”
Then Ronon and Colonel Sheppard came in for their dinner which was mostly cold and also partly in Dr McKay. Teyla told me to go and play some more and gave me a power bar she’d saved in her top. I wanted to hug her like I’ve seen the girls at school hug their mothers but I was afraid I’d do it wrong so I touched her hand the way Athosians do when they’re pleased.
I played outside for a long time and then it was bedtime and Dr McKay suddenly let me play with the blue flashing lights thing and when I touched it it went red and he was really excited because he can’t make it do that. Teyla told him to stop singing. She took the flashing thing away from me and put it up on a shelf.
I was still awake when they all left the tent and went to the woods to talk. Even when it got dark they were still there and I could hear that they were talking but not what they were saying if you know what I mean. I was lonely in the tent (but not scared of the dark because I’m never scared of the dark) and so I went to find them.
They were in a little circle and Colonel Sheppard was saying “…God knows we’ve all done stuff we’re not proud of, but we’re not naïve. Think of the lives we’ll be saving.” He didn’t sound happy. He had one hand over his face.
Teyla crossed her arms and said “It is not worth it.”
Dr McKay said “We have to follow up on our side of the bargain. Do I really need to remind you that unless we get this done the Genii will never release the Wraith command code jamming data?”
“You’ve never let yourself talk to her” Colonel Sheppard said to him, “it’s like she’s not there, like she’s a test tube or something.”
And Dr McKay went kind of white and starting talking in this weird calm way and said “Oh yeah? And what about Ronon, promising to build a tree-house? Oh yes, yes, that’s a highly responsible attitude. You can’t have it both ways – she’s worth something or nothing.”
I’m not exactly sure what an attitude is but I was worried so I asked was there not going to be a tree-house after all and they all yelped and stared at me and then looked at each other and I got really worried because they looked that way adults do when they don’t want to tell you something but they know they have to.
I said ‘It doesn’t have to be a big tree-house, just a little platform would do. We want to be able to see Atlantis. I bet it would be educational.’
Ronon looked at the others again, slowly from one to the other, and said “Ultimately Teyla and I are powerless. We all pretend the two of us are important but we aren’t from your world and we cannot command anything or anyone. All our power lies with how we influence you and you know what we think. This is your call.” He was looking directly at Colonel Sheppard all the time he spoke.
He picked me up and carried me back to the tent which was nice because the ground was cold and kind of damp. He tucked me in and sang me a song about a star in the sky where the Ancestors watch over us. I liked it very much.
He said ‘I used to know another little girl that liked to hear that song’. Then he left and I heard the others come back and they didn’t talk to each other and I was scared again even though they were there.
Teyla woke me up really early in the morning before it was properly light and gave me hot cocoa in a packet which is like chocolate but a drink and she brushed my hair.
We walked to the ruins which is a really really long way. Everyone was really quiet which I think was probably because they were over-tired because they didn’t sleep eight hours and my teacher says unless you sleep eight hours you get over-tired. The ruins were kind of boring and Dr McKay was taking ages and ages and ages with the blue flashing thing and the rocks and all these things with buttons. Eventually the others left us in the cave which he didn’t even seem to notice. I said did he want half a chocolate power bar because I saved some from the one Teyla gave me and – like I told him - I didn’t want him to sugar-crash again. He said ‘Yes, yes, hand it over’ but then he stopped moving and looked at me and instead of eating the bar he looked at it in his hand.
He said slowly ‘What’s the earliest thing you remember?’
That’s a weird question. I live on the mainland and I sleep in the school and I go to school and play Wraiths and Humans and eat my dinners in the canteen and on weekends Dr Beckett gives me my check-ups and sometimes Ronon comes and in the evenings I read books from Earth. My favourite book ever is ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’
I said all this and he didn’t stop looking at me and he said some weird stuff I didn’t understand. He said:
‘Due to the incompetence of the majority of this command team they had to set you up in the corner of my lab for observation. The Genii had us between a rock and a hard place, you know. They said we had to develop their weapon and they never specified anything beforehand.’
He always talks like this. I piled up rocks to make a doll house and he carried on talking. He said:
‘For weeks you looked like raspberry jello, then like a baked bean, then a shrimp. I was working late, well, I always work late because my staff are idiots, but that night I was alone and I saw a dark blue patch near the top end and I realised you were growing a brain. I told them, well, I always have to tell them don’t I? Always me to figure it all out. Anyway I said, seriously, this will bite us in the ass and they were all like ‘Oh, oh let’s see how it goes, probably won’t talk’ and fair enough the Genii had Elizabeth and were breathing down our necks – seriously, the bloody Genii – and I was like, right, it’s not going in my lab any more because I saw ‘Fly Away Home’ even if no one else did and like an idiot I already named the bloody thing and it’s caught on. Then the genius flyboy suggests the mainland and that Conan the Barbarian can do the check-ups because he’s all practical and uninvolved and…’
‘Rodney!’ Colonel Sheppard yelled from the entrance to the cave.
Dr McKay spun around in his chair. I was laughing because Rodney is such a funny name. Colonel Sheppard wasn’t laughing. He walked into the room with big steps and just folded his arms.
‘John, she isn’t even listening. She won’t remember a word.’
That was wrong because I remember everything people ever say and do and all the words on signs and how the houses are laid out and the numbers for the gates and everything – I’m not stupid!
I repeated everything he just said and both of them started talking at once.
Colonel Sheppard said: ‘Fucking Genii! What the hell IS this? There is no way they fucking engineered her from scratch!’
Dr McKay knelt down so his face was level with mine. He said:
‘Given the number of Ancient research outposts we’ve found, chances are they’d get to one sooner or later.’
‘Rodney, the Ancients wouldn’t...’
‘Are we talking about the same people who killed three of my staff with their damn nanovirus? I think engineering individuals who can feed thousands of Wraith at a time just to keep the Wraith off their own precious Ancient backs is just the sort of thing they would do.’
He was looking straight at me. It was creepy, it was like he could see into my head or behind my eyes.
His voice went soft: ‘And on some horrible, logical level, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps if I’d never named the test-tube…’ Then he blinked and looked at the ground and got up and walked over to Colonel Sheppard.
He said: ‘I’ve run the tests and it would work. It would all work perfectly – the signal would bounce out from the ZPM, the children under the shield would be well protected and I’d say it would take less than hour for her to be keeping one whole hive ship busy and satisfied for a good many years.’
Then he picked up the blue flashing thing and held it a moment. Then, suddenly, he threw it at the wall and it smashed with a blue light and a huge noise.
‘Unfortunately,’ he said, looking straight at Colonel Sheppard like he’d not just seen exactly what happened, ‘we have some unforeseen equipment problems.’
Colonel Sheppard said ‘That’s too bad. Those freak rockslides, huh?’ And then he took his hand from behind his back and he had an orange sort of tube thing in it and he said ‘and some power-supply problems too.’
They shook hands really tightly and smiled like they were talking to each other silently and liking what they heard.
And they both laughed, which proves adults are just weird.
Outside the cave it was sunny. Teyla and Ronon were standing there. When we came out Teyla came and hugged me and it was like chocolate but all around and inside you and it felt safe and like the opposite of being alone in the dark.
I turned around just in time to see Ronon and Colonel Sheppard smiling, smiling, smiling and then they kissed and hugged their arms round each other at the same time.
Ronon was saying: “I knew. I knew you were different. I knew. I knew.” over and over.
Dr McKay said ‘Oh great. I could have lived without that particular Kodak moment, thank-you. May I remind you all we are going to be minus a set of Wraith command-code jammers? Some of us have to get back and do some serious work, you know.’
They stopped it and giggled and stepped a little apart but not far. Colonel Sheppard turned and said ‘Serious work. Like a three-storey tree-house someone’s been promised.’
And then we basically all went home except when I got back Teyla said I wasn’t living in the School any more and Gregon’s parents are going to be my parents too now and actually Gregon isn’t so bad once you get to know him – we play a new game we invented called ‘Away Mission.’ He also has this idea for putting a rope in the tree-house with a basket on it so we can lower it and get secret messages.
Anyway, hopefully this is enough context to prove Colonel Sheppard really did say yes and so did Ronon so please Dr Weir, can we have the tree-house?
Yours sincerely, Jeannie
P.S. I enclose a chocolate power bar. It is not a bribe just that I thought it’s unfair that you don’t get to go on away missions and have them, they are great.
P.P.S. Do you know the address for where my actual parents are? Because I would love to write them about all this stuff.
Pairing: Sheppard/Ronon implied
Words: ~3000
Summary: A mission report from an unlikely source discloses more than it intends to
'Dr McKay does not like tree-houses because of he is allergic to lemons and oranges and radiation and polyester and Andrewloydweber (whatever that is) and so being outside makes him cranky.
He also does not like kids very much. Or adults.'
Dear Dr Weir,
I would be very grateful indeed and sincerely if you would let us (the mainland kids) build a tree-house on the mainland in the big tree by the tent that sells ploughs. Ronon told us he knows how to build a tree-house if you say it’s OK and Colonel Sheppard says it’s OK. Colonel Sheppard already said it was but when I told Gregon (who is the biggest boy and thinks he is the boss of everyone) that we could tell you that he said ‘You don’t have any proof Jeannie. You could just be making it up.’
So I guess I’ll have to tell you the whole thing to prove he did say it. I asked my teacher if there’s a word for that and she said it is called ‘context’, so this is my context.
To start off with I got to go on the mission to the planet with all the kids on it which is called M7G-677. Firstly it is a very cool planet because it is mostly kids and not many older people and so they are allowed to have fires and knives and stuff. Colonel Sheppard’s team went there two years ago and they knew who we were and gave us garlands and things when we got there.
Colonel Sheppard said when we were walking to the village that I was an ambassador because I showed another way of being a kid besides living in a tree-house and hunting and wearing war paint all the time and not having to wash. I guessed this was a good opportunity and pointed out that it’s not really fair that those kids are getting help to be more like me and I’m not getting a tree-house. Colonel Sheppard said “I’m not sure about that.” Then he said “Ronon can I talk to you for a moment?” and they went into the back of the shuttle so I bet they were planning it all already.
Dr McKay does not like tree-houses because of he is allergic to lemons and oranges and radiation and polyester and Andrewloydweber (whatever that is) and so being outside makes him cranky.
He also does not like kids very much. Or adults. This was good because he gave me all his chocolate power bars and told me to go away and use them to get the other kids away from the cool thing with lights in his tent. Then he said he had a sugar-crash and he was so scary the other adults gave him all their power bars and then he had to give half to me again because the kids kept coming back to try and braid his hair. Colonel Sheppard said this was karma but I think it was bunchies.
They set up the tents and stuff and I met some girls my age and we played Wraiths and Humans for ages. That is a really cool game we made up on the mainland where five people are Wraiths and chase everyone else and suck them and when you are sucked you have to scream real loud then lie down and count to thirty and if the Wraith get everyone lying down at once they win and if they get you three times you have to be a Wraith and they get to be a human. It is really fun.
We were enjoying it but then Ronon ran up. He yelled at us to stop and it was horrible because he never yells at kids EVER. Not even when he comes to the mainland to help us fish or make go-karts or something and we put crabs in his hair. I was scared because he grabbed me and I could see that he was really angry but also he was almost crying.
Then Colonel Sheppard ran over to us and pulled back Ronon’s arms. He said “Ronon, Ronon, it’s ok, easy” but he whispered it right close to his ear instead of just yelling like everyone else. Ronon let go of me and saw we were all crying and bit his hand. Then he tripped or something and kind of fell and Colonel Sheppard caught him and they stood really still for a moment and then Ronon pulled away really fast and angry and dragged Colonel Sheppard away towards the trees and started yelling at him. Colonel Sheppard said something and Ronon yelled “Tell me this is an order from you! Tell me you would order this!” really loudly.
Teyla called me away to help make dinner. We had MRE food which is really icky and Dr McKay asked why there weren’t any power bars for dessert. Then he asked whether Ronon had any left because he bet Ronon hadn’t given them all up and Teyla said “I think it would be prudent to leave them be at present” and Dr McKay said “Oh God, now? Why now? They’ve repressed themselves into manly distance for eighteen months; can’t they keep it in their pants until we return to civilisation?” I told him pants are a stupid place to put chocolate power bars because they melt and make your legs all sticky.
He didn’t look at me but he said “Seriously does she have to be here?” Teyla glared at him and he said “Well duh obviously here-on-the-planet-here but why in this tent?”
Teyla said “Eat your stew. You too Jeannie.” He sulked.
“Anyway” she said, “the Colonel and Ronon are only talking.”
He picked up the blue flashing-lights thing and said “Yes well with their vocabulary range that won’t last long.”
She said “You do not believe this situation warrants further discussion?”
He said “For God’s sake, the Genii have us pinned; Elizabeth says we have to, and it’s only been, what, eight, nine, ten months old? It looks like it’s normal but it isn’t. It isn’t what it looks like.”
She said: “Please not talk in this manner here.”
Then Ronon and Colonel Sheppard came in for their dinner which was mostly cold and also partly in Dr McKay. Teyla told me to go and play some more and gave me a power bar she’d saved in her top. I wanted to hug her like I’ve seen the girls at school hug their mothers but I was afraid I’d do it wrong so I touched her hand the way Athosians do when they’re pleased.
I played outside for a long time and then it was bedtime and Dr McKay suddenly let me play with the blue flashing lights thing and when I touched it it went red and he was really excited because he can’t make it do that. Teyla told him to stop singing. She took the flashing thing away from me and put it up on a shelf.
I was still awake when they all left the tent and went to the woods to talk. Even when it got dark they were still there and I could hear that they were talking but not what they were saying if you know what I mean. I was lonely in the tent (but not scared of the dark because I’m never scared of the dark) and so I went to find them.
They were in a little circle and Colonel Sheppard was saying “…God knows we’ve all done stuff we’re not proud of, but we’re not naïve. Think of the lives we’ll be saving.” He didn’t sound happy. He had one hand over his face.
Teyla crossed her arms and said “It is not worth it.”
Dr McKay said “We have to follow up on our side of the bargain. Do I really need to remind you that unless we get this done the Genii will never release the Wraith command code jamming data?”
“You’ve never let yourself talk to her” Colonel Sheppard said to him, “it’s like she’s not there, like she’s a test tube or something.”
And Dr McKay went kind of white and starting talking in this weird calm way and said “Oh yeah? And what about Ronon, promising to build a tree-house? Oh yes, yes, that’s a highly responsible attitude. You can’t have it both ways – she’s worth something or nothing.”
I’m not exactly sure what an attitude is but I was worried so I asked was there not going to be a tree-house after all and they all yelped and stared at me and then looked at each other and I got really worried because they looked that way adults do when they don’t want to tell you something but they know they have to.
I said ‘It doesn’t have to be a big tree-house, just a little platform would do. We want to be able to see Atlantis. I bet it would be educational.’
Ronon looked at the others again, slowly from one to the other, and said “Ultimately Teyla and I are powerless. We all pretend the two of us are important but we aren’t from your world and we cannot command anything or anyone. All our power lies with how we influence you and you know what we think. This is your call.” He was looking directly at Colonel Sheppard all the time he spoke.
He picked me up and carried me back to the tent which was nice because the ground was cold and kind of damp. He tucked me in and sang me a song about a star in the sky where the Ancestors watch over us. I liked it very much.
He said ‘I used to know another little girl that liked to hear that song’. Then he left and I heard the others come back and they didn’t talk to each other and I was scared again even though they were there.
Teyla woke me up really early in the morning before it was properly light and gave me hot cocoa in a packet which is like chocolate but a drink and she brushed my hair.
We walked to the ruins which is a really really long way. Everyone was really quiet which I think was probably because they were over-tired because they didn’t sleep eight hours and my teacher says unless you sleep eight hours you get over-tired. The ruins were kind of boring and Dr McKay was taking ages and ages and ages with the blue flashing thing and the rocks and all these things with buttons. Eventually the others left us in the cave which he didn’t even seem to notice. I said did he want half a chocolate power bar because I saved some from the one Teyla gave me and – like I told him - I didn’t want him to sugar-crash again. He said ‘Yes, yes, hand it over’ but then he stopped moving and looked at me and instead of eating the bar he looked at it in his hand.
He said slowly ‘What’s the earliest thing you remember?’
That’s a weird question. I live on the mainland and I sleep in the school and I go to school and play Wraiths and Humans and eat my dinners in the canteen and on weekends Dr Beckett gives me my check-ups and sometimes Ronon comes and in the evenings I read books from Earth. My favourite book ever is ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’
I said all this and he didn’t stop looking at me and he said some weird stuff I didn’t understand. He said:
‘Due to the incompetence of the majority of this command team they had to set you up in the corner of my lab for observation. The Genii had us between a rock and a hard place, you know. They said we had to develop their weapon and they never specified anything beforehand.’
He always talks like this. I piled up rocks to make a doll house and he carried on talking. He said:
‘For weeks you looked like raspberry jello, then like a baked bean, then a shrimp. I was working late, well, I always work late because my staff are idiots, but that night I was alone and I saw a dark blue patch near the top end and I realised you were growing a brain. I told them, well, I always have to tell them don’t I? Always me to figure it all out. Anyway I said, seriously, this will bite us in the ass and they were all like ‘Oh, oh let’s see how it goes, probably won’t talk’ and fair enough the Genii had Elizabeth and were breathing down our necks – seriously, the bloody Genii – and I was like, right, it’s not going in my lab any more because I saw ‘Fly Away Home’ even if no one else did and like an idiot I already named the bloody thing and it’s caught on. Then the genius flyboy suggests the mainland and that Conan the Barbarian can do the check-ups because he’s all practical and uninvolved and…’
‘Rodney!’ Colonel Sheppard yelled from the entrance to the cave.
Dr McKay spun around in his chair. I was laughing because Rodney is such a funny name. Colonel Sheppard wasn’t laughing. He walked into the room with big steps and just folded his arms.
‘John, she isn’t even listening. She won’t remember a word.’
That was wrong because I remember everything people ever say and do and all the words on signs and how the houses are laid out and the numbers for the gates and everything – I’m not stupid!
I repeated everything he just said and both of them started talking at once.
Colonel Sheppard said: ‘Fucking Genii! What the hell IS this? There is no way they fucking engineered her from scratch!’
Dr McKay knelt down so his face was level with mine. He said:
‘Given the number of Ancient research outposts we’ve found, chances are they’d get to one sooner or later.’
‘Rodney, the Ancients wouldn’t...’
‘Are we talking about the same people who killed three of my staff with their damn nanovirus? I think engineering individuals who can feed thousands of Wraith at a time just to keep the Wraith off their own precious Ancient backs is just the sort of thing they would do.’
He was looking straight at me. It was creepy, it was like he could see into my head or behind my eyes.
His voice went soft: ‘And on some horrible, logical level, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps if I’d never named the test-tube…’ Then he blinked and looked at the ground and got up and walked over to Colonel Sheppard.
He said: ‘I’ve run the tests and it would work. It would all work perfectly – the signal would bounce out from the ZPM, the children under the shield would be well protected and I’d say it would take less than hour for her to be keeping one whole hive ship busy and satisfied for a good many years.’
Then he picked up the blue flashing thing and held it a moment. Then, suddenly, he threw it at the wall and it smashed with a blue light and a huge noise.
‘Unfortunately,’ he said, looking straight at Colonel Sheppard like he’d not just seen exactly what happened, ‘we have some unforeseen equipment problems.’
Colonel Sheppard said ‘That’s too bad. Those freak rockslides, huh?’ And then he took his hand from behind his back and he had an orange sort of tube thing in it and he said ‘and some power-supply problems too.’
They shook hands really tightly and smiled like they were talking to each other silently and liking what they heard.
And they both laughed, which proves adults are just weird.
Outside the cave it was sunny. Teyla and Ronon were standing there. When we came out Teyla came and hugged me and it was like chocolate but all around and inside you and it felt safe and like the opposite of being alone in the dark.
I turned around just in time to see Ronon and Colonel Sheppard smiling, smiling, smiling and then they kissed and hugged their arms round each other at the same time.
Ronon was saying: “I knew. I knew you were different. I knew. I knew.” over and over.
Dr McKay said ‘Oh great. I could have lived without that particular Kodak moment, thank-you. May I remind you all we are going to be minus a set of Wraith command-code jammers? Some of us have to get back and do some serious work, you know.’
They stopped it and giggled and stepped a little apart but not far. Colonel Sheppard turned and said ‘Serious work. Like a three-storey tree-house someone’s been promised.’
And then we basically all went home except when I got back Teyla said I wasn’t living in the School any more and Gregon’s parents are going to be my parents too now and actually Gregon isn’t so bad once you get to know him – we play a new game we invented called ‘Away Mission.’ He also has this idea for putting a rope in the tree-house with a basket on it so we can lower it and get secret messages.
Anyway, hopefully this is enough context to prove Colonel Sheppard really did say yes and so did Ronon so please Dr Weir, can we have the tree-house?
Yours sincerely, Jeannie
P.S. I enclose a chocolate power bar. It is not a bribe just that I thought it’s unfair that you don’t get to go on away missions and have them, they are great.
P.P.S. Do you know the address for where my actual parents are? Because I would love to write them about all this stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 12:43 pm (UTC)Okay, I have to explain that the whole time I was reading this, my daughter was grabbing my arm and my husband was hovering over me, and I was pushing them away with one hand while I scrolled down with the other. I *had* to know what was going to happen.
I love the way we gradually figure out something is weird and what's weird and what's going on. And the ending is perfect! (I would also like to thank you for putting in an explanation of why she repeats their dialogue exactly. Most people wouldn't have thought of that, and it would have bugged me!)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 11:28 pm (UTC)I tried to make it a real document as far as possible. In other words a story can be told from first person POV but since this is the 'mission report' challenge I felt it had to be a specific item of documentation and so all the words had to be plausible (hence my certain grammar sacrifices).
(no subject)
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Date: 2006-09-03 01:27 pm (UTC)Brilliant title, brilliant pacing, brilliant ending.
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Date: 2006-09-03 11:38 pm (UTC)Indeed! (and Rodney is such a kid magnet, you're right!)
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Date: 2006-09-03 01:53 pm (UTC)Well done.
P.S. Love the Ronon as Superman icon
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 11:40 pm (UTC)Yeah, I made that for the story I never finished for the 'Secret Superpowers' challenge and then I thought, hell, it'll do for now as well!
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Date: 2006-09-03 02:46 pm (UTC)WP
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Date: 2006-09-03 03:19 pm (UTC)Ronon's an interesting choice for "Clytemnestra." If they had gone ahead with their original plan, would he have just cursed John or the entire expedition command staff? Because in this situation I don't think Artemis would have come at the last minute to spirit Jeannie away.
Great story!
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Date: 2006-09-05 11:33 pm (UTC)In writing I never deliberately intended the parallel to extend beyond Iphigenia (and that link was only something I thought of 'after the fact' so to speak) but I think Ronon fits the Clytemnestra role surprisingly well. He's a single-minded, highly principled but deeply prejudiced person and I really don't like to think where it would have gone if Sheppard and McKay (as Agammemnon and Menelaus if you like) had 'sacrificed' Jeannie...
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Date: 2006-09-03 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-03 04:40 pm (UTC)I don't know the legend it's apparently based on, but my thought was that Jeannie was an appropriate name... sort of a Jeannie in a Bottle.
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Date: 2006-09-05 11:46 pm (UTC)Because there simply is not, in any sense, a less straight posture than John's in that scene...
...wow
Date: 2006-09-04 01:24 pm (UTC)Look I don't read stories with kids in. At all. They are one of my squicks. Only this story just proved the exception to the rule. It made me laugh and shiver all at the same time. Absolutely fantastic writing with just the right undercurrent of horror.
Best paragraph I've read for a while: Colonel Sheppard said when we were walking to the village that I was an ambassador because I showed another way of being a kid besides living in a tree-house and hunting and wearing war paint all the time and not having to wash. I guessed this was a good opportunity and pointed out that it’s not really fair that those kids are getting help to be more like me and I’m not getting a tree-house. Colonel Sheppard said “I’m not sure about that.” Then he said “Ronon can I talk to you for a moment?” and they went into the back of the shuttle so I bet they were planning it all already
I lub you and have recced this in my LJ.
Re: ...wow
Date: 2006-09-05 11:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, I don't like kid!fic either. What I'm a junkie for is POV shift, like that old, old ST:TNG episode told from the position of minor crew-members or the Buffy ep all from Xander's POV, aside from the 'main' storyline. Children are very good for literary POV shift, I think, because they trust what they see and don't try and analyse or excuse it. My aim writing this story was to tell a story *despite* not because of the narrator and since everyone seems at least to have got what was going on hopefully I mostly achieved that!
Thank-you so much! I feel very flattered! :-)
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