Fibrosis (PG) by Miriel

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Title: Fibrosis
Author: miriel
Beta: wychwood
Universe: Bridges
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: While this is within the Bridges universe, you don't have to read the main pieces of that universe to follow this (The Glimpse about Kate will fill in a gap or two, but it's certainly not needed to enjoy this). The title, Fibrosis, is the technical term for the tougher, thicker epithelium commonly known as scar tissue.

Summary: When Kate Heightmeyer was six, she fell off her bike and ripped up the skin on her right knee...

---

When Kate Heightmeyer was six, she fell off her bike and ripped up the skin on her right knee so badly she couldn't wear pants for three weeks. It made her the coolest kid in first grade when school started, and the cool points lasted until Jimmy Cantelli broke his nose during recess by running into one of the poles on the swing set.

* * *

When Kate was nine, she hit her head on the goalpost during a soccer match and needed 11 stitches. In doing so, she made the winning save, so it was totally worth it. When the stitches came out, she was left with a scar that disappeared into the hairline over her left eye - it was her favorite conversation piece for years.

* * *

When Kate was twenty-four, she had an ectopic pregnancy and needed emergency surgery. After she recovered, her husband left her because the doctors said she'd never have children.

It was the first scar she didn't talk about.

* * *

When Kate was twenty-seven, she had an accident while doing a dissection in her anatomy lab class, and needed six stitches on her left hand. It was a small price to pay for getting her MD. For years afterward, she would rub at the scar when she was nervous, reminding herself that she had accomplished something with her life, and that no one could take it away.

* * *

When Kate was thirty-two, she won a research grant to work in Antarctica studying closed-societies. A month after she arrived, she took a hard fall and scraped up both of her hands. They didn't need stitches, but she checked in with the base doctor just to make sure since they were deep scrapes. While she was there, she noticed a knick-knack sitting on one of the desks, and picked it up.

It glowed bright blue, and the nurse went running out of the room in a panic. Kate set it down (it promptly turned off again), and leaned back in her chair to wait for the arrival of whomever the nurse had gone to find. It was a long afternoon.

* * *

After a year in Atlantis, Kate stopped keeping track of her scars. What was the point? Everyone had them, and everyone knew what had happened to you.

There was the time that she had accidentally triggered the Ancient shaving device in her bathroom - the one with the broken sensor that had taken a chunk out of her arm before she'd made it out of the room and called for help.

There was the time that she'd called a "girls' day off" and gone swimming in that beautiful lake on the mainland, only to discover when they left the water that Lantea had leeches the size of hot dogs.

There was the time that the environmental controls had shorted out, and the city had sucked all of the atmosphere out of her office before the window had broken. She had walked away from that, unlike Doctor Michaels in the room next door whose window hadn't blown. Kate's back had never been the same, though; it was criss-crossed with lacerations from the shards of glass, some of them up to eight inches long. It had taken five months to fully heal, and the mass of scar tissue meant that she wasn't as flexible as she had once been.

There was the time that Doctor Parrish had been late for his appointment and she'd gone down to drag him away from the greenhouse. She'd ended up wrapped in a thorny vine for four hours, and had come away with over a dozen inch-long lacerations that had festered for weeks.

Then there was the brand that the Athosians had given her when she had been made an honorary member of their camp - a sign of trust, which opened doors and allowed her to help them in the ways she knew best. The brand was more of an artistic dotting with a hot needle than a single pressing, and was placed just above her left breast. Sometimes, she would catch sight of it in the mirror as she left the shower, and trace it to remind herself that she belonged.

By the end of the first year, everyone had a few burn scars from Ancient crystals shorting out on them - not just the natural scientists. They were mostly on the hands or arms, but every once in a while you saw them on the torso, too. You learned to hot-wire your own quarters and lab space, because it could be a long wait for one of the maintenance teams to get there and let you in.

All of the scars, every last one, were just the cost of living in Atlantis. Nothing special, and nothing to brag about.

* * *

When Kate was thirty-six, she was transferred back to Earth. Seven weeks into her return, she met a man in a bar in California who stopped her from giving herself alcohol poisoning after quitting her job. The morning after, he asked her about the scars on her back.

That was the moment when it truly registered that was she back on Earth for good, that this wasn't some sick dream. No matter how many times she had dreamt of "home" while in Atlantis, no matter whom she had invented, they had never asked about her scars. She didn't think about them; whenever possible, she blocked them from her conscious mind. There was never the time to dwell on what-ifs and might-have-beens - you lived in the moment or you died, it was that simple. Scars were about the past, and were something you couldn't change. They didn't matter, not like the ability to use a weapon or save a life.

The root of the problem was that in all the confusion of the sudden recall, Kate had made a basic, if understandable, mistake. In taking care of the rest of the expedition, she had forgotten herself - that she was a stranger to Earth, too. She had been given two weeks in which to adapt a group of five hundred to a world that was no longer home; it shouldn't have been as hard as it turned out to be. Earth was, after all, where they had all come from; familiar in all the ways that didn't matter, and none of the ways that did. Her rational mind could accept that, and in time she knew she would adapt as she had told her colleagues they would.

She just hadn't remembered that Earth was so superficial.

~ Finis ~

Comments

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Very ouch. *wants to drag Kate and that guy back to Atlantis*

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

I seem to be on a depressing fic kick or something. *Shrugs* At least things should start getting more upbeat soon.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Also? That guy? Is Brendan Elliot, whom you accidentally read a bit-let about, and who will probably still be dating Kate when Paintball 2009 comes around. He's one of the few people who might actually understand what she's been through.

[shara50.livejournal.com]

Poor Kate, she needs a hug.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

I think the unfortunate truth is that anyone who takes part in an intergalactic company-sponsored move needs a hug. It's like getting transferred from Atlanta to Cleveland to Seattle to Seoul in the course of a year and a half because you work for some label-making firm that's trying to go global.

[khriskin]

O_O *loves* I hadn't ever though about that part of the transition back to 'normal life'. All those scientists who hadn't ever had to deal with the reminders of dangerous living, and how to explain them away to people who'd never lived through the same thing.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Yes. And it's not even the psych issues in terms of living in a dangerous environment that really throw them, but the reactions of people to whom having a laundry list of scars isn't normal. Glad you liked this ^_^ I love looking at the little things.

[slybrarian.livejournal.com]

Poor Kate. The transition from 'normal' to Lantea was slow and drawn out, so she didn't even realize there was a difference until suddenly thrust back into Earth life. Sure, she probably understood it intellectually, especially from helping newcomers adjust, but that doesn't mean real understanding. Life in Pegasus and Atlantis is just so different from Earth life in so many ways.

Can you imagine what it must be like for some social scientist (or natural science, but especially social) to get back to some university and be confronted with some of the vehement pacifists that lurk in academia? Not the Lantean kind of pacifist who says, "Talk nicely, try to negotiate first, and avoid slaughtering low-tech natives if possible but keep your gun ready regardless," (or Carson, but Carson's a bit weird about his ethics) but the kind that says that all violence is evil and starts mouthing off about the military.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

You're completely right about the intellectual vs. real understanding. Kate knew that she'd have adaptation issues coming back to Earth; she prepared reams of paperwork about the topic for the reintegration of the other Atlantis Vets. She just forgot that she was an Atlantis Vet, too.

You make me weep for the poor, poor sociologists and anthropologists. Weep, I say. (And yes, Carson totally wins for sketchiest ethics in Pegasus. At least the Hoffans and the Genii are honest about their adherence to the Pegasus Moral Code). Dude, or the poor activist who thinks they'll find a sympathetic anti-military ally and starts blathering on about how the military are responsible for all the problems in America and the defense department's budget is such a money-sink and really, why can't everyone just put down their guns and sing Kum-Ba-Ya? And Sociologist is trying not to have a hernia, b/c dude. Put down your guns and the Wraith eat you.

Or, to quote, "If the Wraith had been at the Geneva Convention, they would have tried to feed on everyone there."

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:g: extending this, there needs to be more fic about what happens when all the scientists go to earth-side conventions. Along the lines of 'er, where did you get so fit, when did you start *not* reacting to the presence of security ('what? they're not actually holding a gun in my face'), security alert and you race to help?', and so on.

Daniel Jackson is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this kind of thing.

I really hate that line in its original context.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

//"If the Wraith had been at the Geneva Convention, they would have tried to feed on everyone there."//

I have this old edition of Suspension of Disbelief that goes wonky on areas I actually know something about.

Walk through wormholes to the other side of the universe? Goody!

Minivan-sized spaceships that float around with no clearly explained reason? Hey, must be neutralization of inertia, glad to see somebody respects the classics.

Monsters that suck the life out of you, leaving you looking aged rather than like the eighth day of a week-long bender? Um, okay, I'm sure I can handwave an explanation somewhere.

Six loci to determine a point in space, one point of origin, and one... other point? Well, if you actually look at how a long-distance number works...

ATA gene therapy? Neat!

During a tense scene where the military commander and trained civilian leader and negotiator are arguing, he, instead of a reasoned argument to support his point, uses a, a, whatever that rhetorical device is called where you bung in a clearly true statement that actually does nothing to support or contradict the subject under discussion (!), and the negotiator, rather than calling him on it (?!), responds to it as if it had been a reasonable and persuasive argument --
-- I squawk as if goosed and sit straight up, because I did not just see that.

Seriously. That's the kind of shit you pull when you're trying to make bricks without straw, not when you actually have sound reasons that will now be forgotten as your opponents gleefully mow down the straw man you so obligingly provided; and when the obvious, obvious answer to a misstep like that is "Well, duh. And your point is?", if someone who ought to be trained to pounce on any hint of a crack and winkle one's opponent out of their shell misses such a clear opportunity, and that gun is never taken down and fired, it's not only just sloppy but spits in the face of what should be one of the show's bigger selling points.


And Sociologist, depending on temperament, would either be trying not to have a hernia or laughing until they cried, because they and their comrades have been busting their butts so that people like this will never have to know that there are things out there that won't listen to their arguments, and such clear proof that they and their absent comrades still fighting the good fight have been successful so far shouldn't be so irritating.

[tassosss.livejournal.com]

The last line makes the story. I really liked this, well done.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Thanks for reading, and for taking the time to comment. This is actually what I'd originally wanted for the Miko piece I did for this challenge, and that one evolved and left the concept behind so I felt obliged to try it again (hey, I'm sick, my brain is kind of spinning in circles). This is closer to my original idea, at least.

I just really think that given the inherent dangers for even the city-dwellers, scars would become just another fact of life. There's nothing extraordinary about having scars, and you sure don't comment on other peoples; you never know when a scar might have come from attempting (and failing) to save a teammate's life.

I mean seriously. Atlantis = Giant Floating Deathtrap. It's pretty, but so is a poison tree frog.

Of course, now I've started noodling around with a piece about Kate and the ex-Ranger she picked up/who picked her up in that bar (it started as part of this, but the tone wasn't right so it ended up its own little thing, and keeps growing. It'll probably end up the fic that looks at the creation of the underground Pegasus Survivors Network in Bridges. Apparently, I can't stop world-building to save my life).

[tassosss.livejournal.com]

Apparently, I can't stop world-building to save my life

I hope you don't stop because you do such a wonderful job of it. Your stories are always so fun to read.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

This? fantastic. (also loving the comments discussion too) - and my god it's true about situational scarring. Certain jobs it's impossible not to have scars and it's expected within that group, but try and explain that outside the group.

Heh. and yeah, the soft sciences and archaeologists, genetecists and plant biologists will definitely be having fun explaining those scars. 'Hi, I'm a theoretical physicist and I have bullet wounds'

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world - the comments for my fics are often at least as interesting as the fics themselves, for a variety of reasons (dossier got me to write like 4 paragraphs of fic in the comments for The Questioning of John Sheppard, and ladyholder and I will consistently go on discussion sprees that run close to a hundred comments about various elements of SGA or why X or Y works and the justifications behind it).

Yes! So Yes! about the situational scarring. I've worked in a couple of bakeries, and the bakers always have stripes of burn running up their arms from the ovens, so it's normal. But they look hideous to someone not familiar with it (and, to be honest, not really something I'd want, either).

I can just see the first time someone pops into the campus clinic for a flu shot or something, and gets one of the medical students on mandatory rotation. "Roll up your sleeve please."

"Okay."

"Dude, is that a bullet scar? I mean, we've read about these, but I've never seen one."

"Oh, that? Yeah. It's a couple years old, though. Healed pretty well."

"You have any others?"

"Yess..."

"Can I see? Please? We never get anything this interesting when I'm in the ER!"

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the archaeologists might be able to explain some of them in very general ways -- I still remember waiting for a class and hearing some of my classmates talk about how they one day route to their dig passed next to a minefield, which wasn't even fenced off -- but the people who work indoors? Not so much.

[ms-moon21.livejournal.com]

I just love these glimpses of these lives of the returned. For those coming back to earth after Atlantis it is not so much as a return "home" because earth is a different galaxy that they do not understand anymore. They have chaged so much it is difficult for them to reconcile themselves to earth norms since they are refugees of the war in the Pegasus Galaxy who just so happen to be in the Milky Way.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Interesting way of putting it, but rather accurate now that I think about it. You could definitely argue that the AE vets are a population displaced by the war between the Wraith and Ancients, in the sense that the Ancients showed up and evicted them without so much as a by-your-leave. And, I hate to break it to the Ancients, but they abandoned Atlantis 10,000 years ago.

Intergalactic Salvage Law has to kick in at some point.

[(Anonymous)]

I love insights into the characters like these. They hardly get any screen time, and when they do we just don't know enough about them. Like Chuck - he was the Canadian Chevron Guy On Atlantis for how long until TPTB actually named him! Brava for such a insightful vignette on the resident psychologist - God knows Kate looks into enough people's heads that you just wonder what the hell's going on in hers.

And speaking of whom, I feel as though I must mention this: Kate is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. (This coming from a fourth-year psychology student at an accredited university.) Similar words, similar jobs, but the biggest difference being that Kate, as a psychologist, does NOT have a medical degree. She is not a doctor, as one could see in 'Echoes' when she recommended that Elizabeth and Teyla get Carson to prescribe them with painkillers. Were Kate indeed a psychiatrist, she could have prescribed the drugs herself instead of getting Carson to do so. Yes, I realise she mentioned attending medical school in one early episode, but the writers evidently didn't realise their all-too-common mistake.

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for reading and commenting! I will admit to having a strong personal love of what I call "secondary" characters, and I'm always thrilled when someone else enjoys my work.

Thanks for the head's up on Kate; I come from a medical family, and am actually very aware of the differences. I hadn't realized she'd been formally introduced as a psychologist (when the comment about medical school was made, I'd made the logic-jump and presumed she was a psychiatrist); I figured if they were only bringing one psych, they'd bring one they could multi-purpose into the ER if need be. But then, I presume a certain level of practicality in the planning of the expedition which TPTB apparently lacked.

I had taken the comment in "Echoes" to be more in reference to "see the guy who's working at the drugstore" as opposed to legal authority to prescribe (partially because a lot of things are available w/out prescription anyway on military bases in combat zones which are restricted other places - Valium being the prime example)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't get what the fuss is about. Don't people these days have scars? Kate seems very, um, peculiar to make such a big deal out of them. Are you trying to establish a deep irony that it's actually Kate the psychiatrist who is superficial?

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

It's not the scars that she's making the deal about, so much as the commenting on them. People in Atlantis, at least as implied in this piece, scar more much frequently than, say, your average Earther - especially in the higher-end white collar jobs that a lot of the Atlantis population had been prior to shipping out, and were expected to take up again afterwards.

In my experience, scars often turn into conversation pieces - asking about a scar is a way about getting someone to talk about themselves, or talking about a scar is a way of relating an interesting story from the past. Similar to discussing what sport you played in high school or what interesting injuries you've accrued.

The difference is that in Atlantis, people consciously don't discuss the scars - both because they're so prevalent due to the common accidents around the city as they're learning their way, and because in Atlantis you never know when a scar is from a mission gone bad that meant a dead friend. After three years that becomes the norm, and the striking thing to Kate is that someone would comment on them - as if they had any relevance to anything, which to her, they don't.

The initial concept for the piece was the contrast between when you're a child, and scars are something to brag about, and how after Atlantis scars are like the skeletons in the closet - always there, and always a reminder, but never commented on or invited to the party.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well; if not, I apologize.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever read anything by you that I disliked. And this is...

...this and your Miko one are part of a theme that resonates fiercely -- partly, I'm almost embarrassed to admit, because it reminds me of a story I wanted to write four years ago and gave up because I didn't think I could do it justice.

(It was for a fandom about girls who got sucked into a magical land, had adventures, and came back before most of anyone knew they'd been away. I knew that they wouldn't fit back into the world they'd left, and that almost nobody would understand why, but I wasn't able at the time to reason out where they'd have problems and why.)

And in so many ways, it wouldn't be the big things, because the big things you can plan for. It would be the little things. Light switches. Rooms without planned exits. Scars.

All of which is as much as to say, "this was excellent; will there perhaps be more?"

[mardahin.livejournal.com]

Well I'm glad that I have a consistent quality level, if nothing else ^_^

One of the things about SGA that really appeals to me, personally, is these subtle theme of belonging. You have characters who go on a one way mission, who were chosen because there aren't many/any people behind who will miss them if they don't return. In Atlantis, it's the first place that many of them are accepted for who they are; it's a powerful attractant, and I have to believe that having tasted that kind of belonging once, it's also a powerful motivator to return to Atlantis even despite of the dangers.

I'll admit to being fascinated by acclimation stories, particularly Atlantis to Earth. After three years in Atlantis, fighting a war that no one on Earth can understand except possibly the Jews (and even then, there are few still alive who lived through the horrors of WW2; hearing second hand is not understanding so much as empathizing), how do you return to who you were? The simple answer is that you don't, but what if you have no choice?

There are survival mechanisms that would have been adapted during the tour in Atlantis that have no place on Earth, but things like heavy duty self-defense training isn't something you just switch off; on the contrary, if taught correctly you don't think until a situation is over. By then, you've injured two of your fellow scientists and a security guard because you misinterpreted something on a basic level. A fear of wide open, flat spaces are sensible in Pegasus, because the Wraith come from above and Atlantis is full of towers so even the piers have tall structures visible in the periphery. Paranoia is sensible in Pegasus, because no one is ever entirely who they appear. A high comfort level with firearms, and indeed a preference to carry one when outside a protected 'base' is something that has probably been drilled hard into the civilians, because it can easily be the thing that saves their lives.

You're completely right about it being the little things that cause the moments of serious disconnect. In-wall power outlets. Doors with knobs (you totally know that all the Atlantis vets go out and buy those lamps that are touch as opposed to switch operated, just because it's at least a bit familiar). Not to say that all elements of Earth are gone from Atlantis - we saw an ordinary desk lamp on Sheppard's desk, for example - but those things are the ones you don't remember, when you're back on Earth.

Hmm. Well, I'm not sure exactly what's around the bend (I have a "to do" list that's really scarily long, and never seems to get smaller), but I think I'm definitely going to do a story or two revolving around the APSC - Annual Pegasus Survivors Conference - and I'll be completing Gone, but not Forgotten, the stories of those left behind on Earth, for certain. I already have a piece about the start of the PSN - Pegasus Survivors Network - in the works, delving deeper into that encounter Kate had in California, and the man who eventually becomes rather more enmeshed in the "Atlantis Situation" than he ever intended when he talked her out of that fourth scotch.

Anything you'd like to see? I'm always open to requests ^_^