Orpheus, by Domenika Marzione [team challenge]

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Orpheus
53000 words; genfic

Summary: In the annals of SGC history, it will forever be debated whether the decision to remove then-Major John Sheppard from the Atlantis expedition was an act of great folly or one of great fortune.

John knew that he didn't have time to be maudlin or nostalgic, but he wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to be doing right now. He knew Atlantis and Atlantis knew him, but things had changed in the time he'd been away and he felt unhappy and lost with the strangeness of what had once been so intimate. He couldn't direct traffic or otherwise contribute to the Great Putting-Away because he wasn't sure where everything went anymore. He felt underfoot and useless, out of step with the pace of the city and its residents. He hadn't realized how much he'd put into this return, how much he'd anticipated it being only a good thing under terrible circumstances, and how badly he'd forgotten that you really can't go home again.

With thanks to ileliberte and vonknibble for their assistance and to the mods for holding the door open long enough for me to slip through.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. The last section just about killed me. This is amazing. All of John's emotions come through very clearly, and Teyla and Rodney are both heartbreaking.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

[moonbeamsfanfic.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, I read a bunch of the reviews before reading the story so was a bit wary of the potential heartbreaking, bitter-sweet ending...

... and then I got there, and realised it wasn't actually either.

To me, the Rodney they rescued was not the same Rodney they'd lost. He was already broken, all that was left after the battle just a shadow of himself, a pale imitation. It was like his spirit was already dead, and his body just hadn't caught up yet. So for me, his sacrifice was not in the least bit unexpected. It was real.

In fact, "real" pretty much describes this story's tone completely. Real and gritty. In this world, everything has changed... perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse, but it's become more realistic either way. And I'd love it for that aspect alone, although of course, everything of yours has many more aspects to make them remarkable that there's really too many to name. :)

However, I'm pretty sure I'll be in the minority as a reader who walks away from this story kind of hoping that Sheppard does not stay in Atlantis. Because just like Rodney and Atlantis itself had been irrecoverably changed by the events, so too has John. He really doesn't seem to belong in Atlantis anymore -- he was called back to perform a duty and he succeeded, he's now superfluous to Atlantis' running. He's doesn't fit there anymore, so it's time for him to go back home and find a new place for himself.

But I am glad he got to go back, if only to properly close that chapter in his life.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't think it was a conscious decision to build a John here who was not as tied to Atlantis as my 'usual' John, but... that's sort of what I did. And it works. So while I think he'd be a little heartbroken to leave Teyla forever and he does have a vision for Atlantis (that's rather more explicit than my usual version), this is a John who is far less... not afraid, but... well, he knows he'll be okay wherever he lands. And the John from the 'main' universe is far less so.

Many thanks.

[vonknibble.livejournal.com]

I've said it before & I'll say it again - I loved this back when it was in it's infancy, I loved it more when it started to grow, and now...Even though i knew it was coming, it was still a sucker punch in so many ways, and I still love it, so thank you.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thank you in return -- for the words now and for the words back then, when an 'uh, you should maybe fix this and this and this..." would've sent me reeling.

Wow

[(Anonymous)]

Wow.
It certainly was worth the time you worked on it. It is strange to see your characters evolve differently, still be the same.

John seems to have learned a lot during his time on earth, have become more mature. His respect for Hammond dosn't surprise me, he can learn a lot from him. (Gunny Washinton made me laugh)

Teyla and Zelanka and (especially) Radner have evolved a long way from your official timeline. Actually I love what Radner became.
I'm just a little sad that Yoni, unable to go offworld with his team, is likely satisfied with his work.

I miss Lorne, too, and oh Reletti!

Thank you so much for all that, do you plan to make a sequel?

clmineith

Re: Wow

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

No sequel -- I think this is as done as it gets, at least from John's POV.

Thanks.

[ga-unicorn.livejournal.com]

We are in the Holiday Doldrums at the office (when I am reduced to emptying my drawers, dusting out the eraser crumbs and stray, single staples and tossing out hot sauce packets from a Chinese take-out that I haven't patronized in 3 years then you know there is absolutely nothing to do) so I was really, really excited when I hit your website (I was thinking of re-re-re-reading Entaillen) and discovered Orpheus. It was certainly worth all the teasers you have been throwing out.

You have an incredible ability to build worlds and fill them with interesting people and situations. I think that this AU definitely rivals your Qui Habitat universe, and I hope that you revisit it sometime. There were so many little plot points that I would love to see carried forward, not to mention being curious about Sheppard's position and who the new leader of the expedition will be. And McGuire lives!

There were so many places in the story that stuck out for me, but I'm not going to mention specifics. I'll just say it was a wonderful story, engrossing, the description of the action (which you seemed to worry about in previous posts) was well done, and the angst wasn't overblown. It was great, and will definitely be re-read again and again.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, I come after desk drawer lint... ;)

I joke about AUs being where I kill people, but, really, AUs are where I can let my worldbuilding kink run wild, where I can build an Atlantis that makes sense to me (or not), where I can go crazy correcting canon stupidity without worrying about getting jossed next week.

I'm glad you liked. :)

[helenorvana.livejournal.com]

Can I second (or third) the vote for a DVD commentary? And friend you?

Despite having watched the second season only a couple of weeks ago, it took me almost halfway through the story to realize this was Intruder gone sideways. *Is somewhat oblivious* I loved your OC cameos, though I was secretly hoping that just because you hadn't listed Lorne among the survivors didn't necessarily mean he wasn't rescued. Should know better by now...

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Uhm, no, Lorne is not among the survivors. It's actually the first time I've killed him off, albeit offscreen.

Friend away and thank you.

[lizbet0.livejournal.com]

This was fabulous! I love how your OCs showed up, and even how they were different from your canon stories due to what they'd been through (Yoni is certainly the most pointed instance.) You did a great job portraying Shephard's turfing, his recall, his reintegration with Atlantis, and his uncertain future even after the successful conclusion of the missions. It was lovely to see who survived, even while I mourned those who didn't. As the final paragraph said, though, their deaths came at the time they wanted, and they knew their actions had saved hundreds more.

Well, well done, and thank you so much for working so hard at it!

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

John's journey in a nutshell.

Thank you very much. :)

[shutthef-up.livejournal.com]

I finally got a chance to finish this story and I'm so glad I did!

Your storytelling is so rich and all of your characters have so much life to them that I completely forget that they're not part of canon. Your version of Atlantis is just as real to me (and sometimes more so because there's so much more depth) as the canon show.

Thanks so much. I love all of it!

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked. :)

YaY!

[(Anonymous)]

This is one I've been hoping you'd expand on. It was a great read. Continue please! Pretty please? *offers virtual cookie*

Re: YaY!

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

No sequels, sorry. :)

[l-blue.livejournal.com]

Another wonderful story! I'm in awe of your talent.

I loved this look at familiar characters in a might-have-been situation; they're the people we know and yet they're not, and it's interesting to see what changes and what didn't. Yoni is particularly interesting to me, to see how much more bitter he is without Beckett, Clayton, Lorne and the team. Of the new characters, I want to know more about Kate 'Hipcheck' Swinson.

I always love all the little references that pepper your stories: Routes Happy, Dopey and Sneezy, the hive ship as Diyu (that one I had to look up), Polito not being allowed to name things. I find it interesting that John's call sign (and the title of the piece) is Orpheus, who watched his wife die, rescued her from the Underworld, and lost her again due to a terrible mistake on his part. I can see how it somewhat fits, but what do you think is/was John's mistake?

I, too, would be very, very interested in a DVD commentary.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

I don't take the crux of Orpheus's story to be his 'terrible mistake', so I guess we're coming from slightly different angles. That John came close and then failed as Orpheus did is the takeaway point, not so much the how of it. They both improbably challenged death and the underworld to recover something loved and lost and then fared remarkably well considering, but ultimately, they did not get their happily ever after. John had a few Eurydikes here.

Thanks.

Orpheus

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my gosh, I was just re-reading what I'd marked as "Unnamed AU by Miss Porcupine" in my computer, and I'd made a note at the end "TBC but nothing since Aug. 2006" with a very sad emoticon. I went to your site today to see if perhaps I'd just missed something and THERE IT WAS! (Sorry about all caps, but sometimes mere words aren't enough.)

FYI, W.E.B. Griffin's The Corps series was what I used to go to when I needed good writing in this genre; now it's your Atlantis Marines series, which I've read at least three times (hope you're not feeling stalked). Thank you so much.

Re: Orpheus

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Timing is everything? :)

Thank you for the kind words.

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

Really liked this, very epic and the response of the characters to the events was very true.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thank you muchly.

[sgpr-fan.livejournal.com]

I finally found time to read this in its entirety.

This was painful yet so so wonderful. You actually managed to surprise me with Rodney's death even though I think I should have seen that coming. Yay for Carson being alive.

ANd the sad thing is, this is probably what would have happened anyway if the SGC and IOA hadn't kept John. Either this or worse.

reading this got me back into SGA, which I thank you for:)

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Good to hear. Thanks. :)

[cimmerdeux.livejournal.com]

Well I don't really think the decision is up for debate considering the mess Sheppard had to clean up for the SGC and the deaths of McKay and Weir. Caldwell was never a good choice for an outpost commander. Witness the fact that he's too darn good at running a ship. This was a sad story and an object lesson in what could have happened to the SGC if they had tried to run the operation like a regular military operation. The Stargate teams, the outposts, the entire command survive and thrive on thinking outside of the box as this story proves. Oh sure things could have worked out fine but they never would have worked out great. Thanks.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

I don't think Caldwell would've been a raging disaster; he's shown enough to indicate that he's willing to be flexible. Just because Sheppard is The Hero doesn't mean everyone else is unfit and incompetent. It just means that Sheppard is The Hero. ;)

Thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, my. That was great. Even with the sad ending that I almost cried through. It was like It's A Wonderful Life for John except with out the angel. Loved that Reletti showed up, stubborn as ever. I kept waiting for Lorne to be there and was hoping that he wasn't on the casualty list from the original fight on the Daedalus. I'm kind of glad it wasn't resolved that way. Thanks for the marvelous story. Keep up the good work.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. :)

[pansychubb.livejournal.com]

This was absolutely fantastic. I don’t even know where to start. It took me the better part of a week to read it, and then an equal length of time to digest it. I have to tell you some of the parts that stuck out to me and the reactions they elicited:

-O’Neill coming to Sheppard: I remember reading this snippet back when you first posted it. I’m so glad you continued!

-John in the Middle East: thanks so much for portraying Sheppard in a believable manner, as a competent military commander on Earth.

-Hammond in command: brilliant.

-Reunion with Teyla: made my heart ache.

-Ortilla on John’s temporary team: yay! Every time I saw one of your original characters make an appearance, I had a little squee session.

-Ford contacting Atlantis: so brilliant I had to tell my mom all about the story. I couldn’t contain my glee. She watches the show with me, so she understood. Mostly.

-Lieutenant Maguire: oh . . . one good thing about this AU – that he’s still alive.

-Ronon with Ford’s men: agh!!! I thought for sure Ronon wouldn’t make an appearance at all, but this makes so much sense! And I just ache for him in this AU.

-Polito’s geeky names: fantabulous. I had fun looking them all up.

-The first rescue: I thought for sure they would all be dead. I really did. That you wrote an actual rescue is just wonderful.

-Reletti: this was such a big squee moment I had to stop reading to take it in.

-Safir and Carson: I was very surprised by this outcome – Carson staying and Yoni leaving. I can understand Yoni’s desire to leave, but I would have thought Carson too shaken by his experience to continue in the Pegasus Galaxy.

-Rodney: I’m not sure if I can ever forgive you for bringing me such happiness in McKay’s rescue, and then allowing his resulting guilt complex to cause his death. You described the news as hitting Sheppard like a shockwave; it hit me like a shockwave, too, and I almost cried.

These moments, of course, were all tied together by your wonderful writing, and your little observations on military interactions. And they were just the tip of the iceberg. Thank you so much for a great read.

(And I hope you don’t mind the extra long comment.)

:-)
-Pansy Chubb (aka LilRicki)

P.S. Things I'd love to see more of (in an explanation or another story): Lorne's fate and Ronon's fate. *is hopeful*

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

For the record, there's never a need to apologize for long, detailed feedback. Like, never-ever. ;)

Lorne and Ronon... ended and will end badly. Lorne was one of the ones who did not get rescued. Ronon... there's really no way for his story to get a happy ending. Ford took the man we saw in The Runner and broke him in ways that even a rescue by Atlantis at some future point would not be able to undo.

As for Maguire... you'll note that all of the lieutenants on the first fact-finding mission are 'dead men walking' -- two lieutenants killed in canon and then mine.

Carson is a lot braver than he looks. He's capable of taking his captivity as an affront and reacting defiantly. He's also capable of looking at what his request did to Yoni and staying so that Yoni could go.

[gail19.livejournal.com]

I think I read a bit of this a long time ago - I seem to remember reading about O'Neill coming to visit John and asking him back. I found the completed version because of a note at ratcreature.net.

I finished the story surprised by the lack of tears - not that the story didn't deserve some but there weren't any. I mourned Atlantis and everyone there as lost to John before he went back, and again when the searches were fruitless. I was delighted when Rodney was rescued, disturbed when he kept himself isolated, and unsurprised when he chose to go out with a bang. I did not mourn at the end because I had already grieved and never really brought Rodney back into this new reality.

Having read a few of your other stories I was surprised at how upset Yoni's unhappiness made me. Hammond was excellently done, and his relationship with John wonderfully written.

There's a lot of military and bureaucratic realism in this story. Its palatable because its well written, something realism seldom is. You wore the shiny off in the best sort of way.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

The first part was indeed posted in the summer of 2006; it took me a while to finish the story.

I'm heartened by your reaction -- not only for feeling for the characters, but also for feeling that the story ran its natural course. It's a sign that everything flowed as it should have, that even if there were surprises, nothing came out of nowhere.

I feel bad that I didn't get to fully explain the inner workings of Rodney's transformation (I did subsequently, in a meme in my journal), but I couldn't give John that kind of insight and, for better and for worse, he was my narrator and I was reduced to his worldview.

Many thanks.

[asugar.livejournal.com]

I loved this and never left feedback back when I read it. I was sorry to see people giving you flack for the end. It was perfect and the redemption he craved. I don't think things could have gone any other way. I rec'd this over on stargateficrec. Hope that makes up for the lack of feedback.

http://community.livejournal.com/stargateficrec/1258505.html

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the rec. This is a story I'm tremendously proud of not only for being a WIP that I finished (with amazing alacrity), but also and more importantly for how.

Regarding the issue-taking, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill Off the Fandom Woobie Without Warning' would be the takeaway point here. (Still not sure I've learned it, but that's me.)

[shadadukal]

That was a very long and emotional read, one of those fics that stay with you (in a good way), and a brilliant thought-out AU.

Well done and thanks for sharing!

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. :)

[longtimegone]

This was a fascinating read! You pulled no punches and created a John Sheppard that had learned the hard way what he could live without. I was most impressed with his relationship with Hammond and totally convinced that this universe's John Sheppard would be able to leave Atlantis a second time and be okay.

The deaths of McKay and Weir were heartbreaking, but by the point we learned of them definitively I felt, as John noted, that through the course of the story we (and John) had done our mourning, and it was time to move on.

I always so enjoy your work for the realism you inject into it in regards to the military culture and extrapolation of that in the Pegasus Galaxy, and this fic is no exception.

Thanks again!

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

This was, I hope, very much about John the Survivor.

Thank you very much.

Orpheus

[manictater.livejournal.com]

What an amazing feat. This was incredible. I loved your portrayal of everything military and the plotline. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Re: Orpheus

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

You're welcome and thank you very much in return. :)

[filenotch.livejournal.com]

I'm about half way through this story, and will probably not come back to add fb later, so I wanted to say something now. I found it through ratcreature's AU recs, and resisted reading it, but I am so glad I did. I like how military it is, the Radar-like behavior of his gunnery sergeant clerk, they way Teyla is different, how you handled Ford. I like how you've brought in Hammond. From the comments I know it has a bitter-sweet ending. I'm a long way from there, yet. It's all just so damn real. It's an amazing AU. I'll be sorry to leave it when I get to the end.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Hey!

This was a story I didn't think I would finish, but I suddenly did. I'm really pleased with how it came out -- including the ending. ;)

I hope you find (found?) the rest of the story as entertaining as the first part.