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sga_flashfic-title- Guises in Four Seasons: Winter
-author- Sophonisba (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Some strong language. Takes place in the asymptotic-to-canon AU I've written in a few times before.
-spoilers- Through "Epiphany."
-characters- John, Rodney
-disclaimer- I own no part of Stargate: Atlantis. Somehow or another a fair bit of Manly Wade Wellman crept into this story here and there; I'm not him, either, although I could probably e.mail copies of the pass-it-on version Baen Books made of his "John" short stories to anyone who wants one.
-word count- 1466
-summary- "Tell superficial truths to the people you know superficially; tell simple truths to the people you know better."
Guises in Four Seasons: Winter
"I don't believe you!" Rodney declaims to the vaulting ceiling, stalking back and forth, stomping feet and thrashing arms and shaking head all bearing witness to the fact that yes, John's well and truly put his foot in it this time. (Again.)
"I didn't do anything," John is compelled to point out. "She threw herself at me."
"Yes. I've noticed. They do that." Rodney stops and whirls back toward him. "And have you ever, even once, thrown them back and gone on?"
"Yes."
Rodney folds his arms and glares at him, puffed up with too much indignation to even squeeze the word "Elaborate!" from his throat.
John shrugs and does so anyway. "Before I joined the Air Force, I spent some time tramping over half the Southeast." He doesn't want to explain what sent him there, really doesn't want to get into exactly how old he is, and hurries into the next sentence. "There were, you know, girls, in the farms and the villages, and some of them were nice and some of them were interested."
Rodney rolls his eyes. "It would have been more surprising if there weren't."
"Oh, you know what I meant. My point was, there was just me and I knew how to talk to them, so I knew how to say 'Thank you, but no thank you' and keep saying it until they listened. Or to leave when the nice ones wouldn't."
"And the not-nice ones?"
"I didn't particularly care about them." John thinks for a while. "Oh, and one of them sort of died, and another one wasn't a girl in the first place."
"I like the way you say it so casually." Rodney flings up his arms on the last word.
"Well, you know, these things happen."
"Yes, yes, but my point is -- was -- anyway, if you used to walk off and leave them to get on with their lives, what changed?"
"One of them followed me." He hasn't realized he was ready to talk about it, even obliquely; and yet there the words are, coming as surely as the memory of looking back down the last hill and seeing the small woman trudging up it, hair plastered to her face and shoes tattered on her feet, running on adrenaline fumes and pure undiluted willpower.
"And?" Rodney's voice is impatient.
"And I married her."
Simple words, simple phrase -- Reader, I married him, Eyre/Brontë had written, and summed up a lifetime in four words -- and that said everything and nothing about his wife. His wife, though he'd been married other times: just as, no matter how many sisters he had (and probably more after he'd lost touch), his sister always meant his twin sister, his elder sister, whose name he was barely able to remember without pain, and the woman meant Irene Adler Norton to Holmes and all his followers, his wife always to him meant the small woman with the sunbright hair and a way of standing tall and mild in her own skin that some would have killed to possess.
There are times when Teyla reminds John of his wife so fiercely that he could scarcely breathe, and he'd held her at a distance until he'd learned to know her for herself; Teyla, of all people, deserves better than to be seen through the lens of a woman long gone.
"And then what, she divorced you?" Rodney's voice breaks into the familiar spiral of his thoughts, warm and alive and blessedly human.
"No, that was Deb," John corrects absently. "My first wife died. I think maybe she took the part of me that knew how to say no with her."
The words hang there, filling the hall, truer maybe than he'd thought they were -- he can count on the fingers of one hand the relationships he's had in the last twenty years that can't be summed up as In retrospect, what the hell was I thinking?, and that includes the weird codependent carried-along-by-expectations thing he'd drifted into with Teer. Which wasn't all that different from the thing he'd drifted into with Deb, what with the parts where she waited for him to make the first moves and he made them on autopilot, right on schedule.
Rodney sits down, not too near John, something not quite as self-centered as chagrin on his face.
"How did she die?"
"Saving kids." John can't quite work up the energy for a snarl, although he does manage something dry and dead that might -- in Bizarro World, in a Dali landscape -- pass for wry laughter at the end.
Rodney winces. "Do you, uh, do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
Each second of the silence comes to weigh like years.
"So, uh, you used to wander around in, like, Kentucky and Georgia and stuff?"
"And stuff," John agrees gratefully. "I did chores and played the guitar and collected stories -- there were lots of stories about things built by 'Ancients,' but the Ancients in those stories didn't sound like Alterans." He thinks for a moment. "They didn't even sound like people. Well, maybe Fearlingas. If they'd gone all feral and shit."
"Feh-ar-whichwhat? Hey. You should tell some of those stories to Jinto and his friends next time Teyla invites herself and us over to the mainland."
"I don't know," John says. "Most of them are kind of scary."
Rodney snorts. "Who was telling them the entire Friday the Thirteenth oeuvre?"
"That's different. Jason and so forth aren't scary scary -- they're scary, but it's cartoon scary, it's not real, everyone watches them for the blood anyway. Well, that and the breasts."
"Usually juxtaposed so as to give you all sorts of interesting complexes later in life."
"But the point is, it's safe scary. Like a roller coaster -- nobody rides a roller coaster thinking that there's an actual chance they could die, unless they spend their time counting out the lethal possibilities of everything." John shoots Rodney a pointed glance. "If they wanted something with a statistically significant risk, they'd learn to fly or take up surfing."
"Or like a Ferris wheel?" Rodney majestically ignores the dig.
"Oh, come on. Who gets scared of a Ferris wheel? Ferris wheels are for hey, I can see my house from here without the ambient noise of rotary wings."
"That's what observation decks are for."
"Yeah, but they don't even move. They're really pretty boring once you've looked once."
"Something like your stories -- seriously, Colonel, these are the kids who were running up and down the halls at night jumping out at each other wearing homemade Wraith masks. Expecting them to get a kick out of slasher movies -- out of retellings of slasher movies -- is like, like, like expecting even the social scientists to get nervous when they're in a room full of people wearing guns."
"But don't -- " John begins. Stops. Thinks about it.
"Yes. See? Exactly."
"Maybe I will tell one or two the next time we go over." He looks up, brightening. "Maybe I'll bring Helva and sing them the songs -- some of them should go into Gatespeech without too much strain."
"Hel -- oh, right, your guitar. And sing? You?"
"My voice isn't that bad."
"I've heard worse. On occasion." Rodney makes one of the backward leaps in conversation that match the way his brain charges off in all directions at once and confuse any mere mortals attempting to follow his train of thought. "Have you even ever been on a Ferris wheel?"
"What?! I -- of course I have, plenty of times, I like Ferris wheels. Were you not paying attention all three hundred times I said so?"
"It's such a pat little introductory script. Hit the right point in the conversation, drop it in, smile and watch the other person nod -- you've had it down to an art, haven't you?"
"Doesn't mean it isn't true," John huffs. "I wouldn't lie about something so easy to check."
"That's reasonable," Rodney says thoughtfully, peering at John with his puzzle-solving expression. "You probably wouldn't, would you."
Of course he wouldn't. The more lies you tell, the more lies you have to keep track of; it was the first principle he'd been taught in Advanced Rhetoric, and only known to be truer since then.
Tell superficial truths to the people you know superficially; tell simple truths to the people you know better, and they will see truth under truth and assume turtles all the way down without ever seeing to the heart of things. He doesn't tell Rodney this, but the man must know on some level, after all.
For John's good -- he knows he's good -- but most of the people who deal with Dr. McKay don't even suspect there's a beneath the underneath the underneath.
I'm not sure if Wellman made up the Appalachian Ancients or whether they're genuine folklore, but I first encountered them in his short story "Shiver in the Pines."
The first Mrs. Sheppard kept trying to turn into Evadare until finally I flung my metaphorical hands up and said "All right, fine, she's Evadare, just not officially Evadare."
-author- Sophonisba (
saphanibaal)-warnings- Gen. Some strong language. Takes place in the asymptotic-to-canon AU I've written in a few times before.
-spoilers- Through "Epiphany."
-characters- John, Rodney
-disclaimer- I own no part of Stargate: Atlantis. Somehow or another a fair bit of Manly Wade Wellman crept into this story here and there; I'm not him, either, although I could probably e.mail copies of the pass-it-on version Baen Books made of his "John" short stories to anyone who wants one.
-word count- 1466
-summary- "Tell superficial truths to the people you know superficially; tell simple truths to the people you know better."
Guises in Four Seasons: Winter
"I don't believe you!" Rodney declaims to the vaulting ceiling, stalking back and forth, stomping feet and thrashing arms and shaking head all bearing witness to the fact that yes, John's well and truly put his foot in it this time. (Again.)
"I didn't do anything," John is compelled to point out. "She threw herself at me."
"Yes. I've noticed. They do that." Rodney stops and whirls back toward him. "And have you ever, even once, thrown them back and gone on?"
"Yes."
Rodney folds his arms and glares at him, puffed up with too much indignation to even squeeze the word "Elaborate!" from his throat.
John shrugs and does so anyway. "Before I joined the Air Force, I spent some time tramping over half the Southeast." He doesn't want to explain what sent him there, really doesn't want to get into exactly how old he is, and hurries into the next sentence. "There were, you know, girls, in the farms and the villages, and some of them were nice and some of them were interested."
Rodney rolls his eyes. "It would have been more surprising if there weren't."
"Oh, you know what I meant. My point was, there was just me and I knew how to talk to them, so I knew how to say 'Thank you, but no thank you' and keep saying it until they listened. Or to leave when the nice ones wouldn't."
"And the not-nice ones?"
"I didn't particularly care about them." John thinks for a while. "Oh, and one of them sort of died, and another one wasn't a girl in the first place."
"I like the way you say it so casually." Rodney flings up his arms on the last word.
"Well, you know, these things happen."
"Yes, yes, but my point is -- was -- anyway, if you used to walk off and leave them to get on with their lives, what changed?"
"One of them followed me." He hasn't realized he was ready to talk about it, even obliquely; and yet there the words are, coming as surely as the memory of looking back down the last hill and seeing the small woman trudging up it, hair plastered to her face and shoes tattered on her feet, running on adrenaline fumes and pure undiluted willpower.
"And?" Rodney's voice is impatient.
"And I married her."
Simple words, simple phrase -- Reader, I married him, Eyre/Brontë had written, and summed up a lifetime in four words -- and that said everything and nothing about his wife. His wife, though he'd been married other times: just as, no matter how many sisters he had (and probably more after he'd lost touch), his sister always meant his twin sister, his elder sister, whose name he was barely able to remember without pain, and the woman meant Irene Adler Norton to Holmes and all his followers, his wife always to him meant the small woman with the sunbright hair and a way of standing tall and mild in her own skin that some would have killed to possess.
There are times when Teyla reminds John of his wife so fiercely that he could scarcely breathe, and he'd held her at a distance until he'd learned to know her for herself; Teyla, of all people, deserves better than to be seen through the lens of a woman long gone.
"And then what, she divorced you?" Rodney's voice breaks into the familiar spiral of his thoughts, warm and alive and blessedly human.
"No, that was Deb," John corrects absently. "My first wife died. I think maybe she took the part of me that knew how to say no with her."
The words hang there, filling the hall, truer maybe than he'd thought they were -- he can count on the fingers of one hand the relationships he's had in the last twenty years that can't be summed up as In retrospect, what the hell was I thinking?, and that includes the weird codependent carried-along-by-expectations thing he'd drifted into with Teer. Which wasn't all that different from the thing he'd drifted into with Deb, what with the parts where she waited for him to make the first moves and he made them on autopilot, right on schedule.
Rodney sits down, not too near John, something not quite as self-centered as chagrin on his face.
"How did she die?"
"Saving kids." John can't quite work up the energy for a snarl, although he does manage something dry and dead that might -- in Bizarro World, in a Dali landscape -- pass for wry laughter at the end.
Rodney winces. "Do you, uh, do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
Each second of the silence comes to weigh like years.
"So, uh, you used to wander around in, like, Kentucky and Georgia and stuff?"
"And stuff," John agrees gratefully. "I did chores and played the guitar and collected stories -- there were lots of stories about things built by 'Ancients,' but the Ancients in those stories didn't sound like Alterans." He thinks for a moment. "They didn't even sound like people. Well, maybe Fearlingas. If they'd gone all feral and shit."
"Feh-ar-whichwhat? Hey. You should tell some of those stories to Jinto and his friends next time Teyla invites herself and us over to the mainland."
"I don't know," John says. "Most of them are kind of scary."
Rodney snorts. "Who was telling them the entire Friday the Thirteenth oeuvre?"
"That's different. Jason and so forth aren't scary scary -- they're scary, but it's cartoon scary, it's not real, everyone watches them for the blood anyway. Well, that and the breasts."
"Usually juxtaposed so as to give you all sorts of interesting complexes later in life."
"But the point is, it's safe scary. Like a roller coaster -- nobody rides a roller coaster thinking that there's an actual chance they could die, unless they spend their time counting out the lethal possibilities of everything." John shoots Rodney a pointed glance. "If they wanted something with a statistically significant risk, they'd learn to fly or take up surfing."
"Or like a Ferris wheel?" Rodney majestically ignores the dig.
"Oh, come on. Who gets scared of a Ferris wheel? Ferris wheels are for hey, I can see my house from here without the ambient noise of rotary wings."
"That's what observation decks are for."
"Yeah, but they don't even move. They're really pretty boring once you've looked once."
"Something like your stories -- seriously, Colonel, these are the kids who were running up and down the halls at night jumping out at each other wearing homemade Wraith masks. Expecting them to get a kick out of slasher movies -- out of retellings of slasher movies -- is like, like, like expecting even the social scientists to get nervous when they're in a room full of people wearing guns."
"But don't -- " John begins. Stops. Thinks about it.
"Yes. See? Exactly."
"Maybe I will tell one or two the next time we go over." He looks up, brightening. "Maybe I'll bring Helva and sing them the songs -- some of them should go into Gatespeech without too much strain."
"Hel -- oh, right, your guitar. And sing? You?"
"My voice isn't that bad."
"I've heard worse. On occasion." Rodney makes one of the backward leaps in conversation that match the way his brain charges off in all directions at once and confuse any mere mortals attempting to follow his train of thought. "Have you even ever been on a Ferris wheel?"
"What?! I -- of course I have, plenty of times, I like Ferris wheels. Were you not paying attention all three hundred times I said so?"
"It's such a pat little introductory script. Hit the right point in the conversation, drop it in, smile and watch the other person nod -- you've had it down to an art, haven't you?"
"Doesn't mean it isn't true," John huffs. "I wouldn't lie about something so easy to check."
"That's reasonable," Rodney says thoughtfully, peering at John with his puzzle-solving expression. "You probably wouldn't, would you."
Of course he wouldn't. The more lies you tell, the more lies you have to keep track of; it was the first principle he'd been taught in Advanced Rhetoric, and only known to be truer since then.
Tell superficial truths to the people you know superficially; tell simple truths to the people you know better, and they will see truth under truth and assume turtles all the way down without ever seeing to the heart of things. He doesn't tell Rodney this, but the man must know on some level, after all.
For John's good -- he knows he's good -- but most of the people who deal with Dr. McKay don't even suspect there's a beneath the underneath the underneath.
I'm not sure if Wellman made up the Appalachian Ancients or whether they're genuine folklore, but I first encountered them in his short story "Shiver in the Pines."
The first Mrs. Sheppard kept trying to turn into Evadare until finally I flung my metaphorical hands up and said "All right, fine, she's Evadare, just not officially Evadare."