Two Fan Fic Addicts

Delightful

2009-12-17T00:09:23Z

The inestimable tardis80 sent me a postcard back in *mid* September. I today – mid December – staggered into the house after a fairly naff day after being plagued by a headache and found this utterly delightful smile engendering missive:

Three months and it was worth the wait.

It’s much better in person. I don’t have a scanner so I took a photo of this in the bathroom (the light’s better there).

Hear me seethe

2009-11-05T08:42:00Z

My season four box set of Supernatural (for Region 2/UK) doesn't have the special features despite advertising them on the box (I'm currently holding in my little hands and glaring at).

I don't think that there is an UK listsibs on my flist (apart from Bluespirit_star) but has anyone spotted anything on comms or other flists having the same issue?

SGA fic: Torren’s middle name is John

2009-09-22T18:54:42Z

Fandom: SGA
Rating: gen/G
Characters: John and Rodney with Torren
Warnings: none necessary.

This is a wee, mini-fic, kindly beta’d by tovalentin -- thank you.

And a thank you to my flistees.

Torren’s middle name is John
By sealie

Torren’s middle name was John, and that apparently bestowed a certain amount of responsibility on his namesake. John wasn’t entirely sure of the specifics, but he knew the absolutes (protect Torren with his life). How babysitting came into the equation he wasn’t too sure of, though.

At one and a half Athosian years, Torren’s speaking skills were – as Rodney had said pithily – adequate, and his walking skills were improving exponentially every day.

“Juce!” Torren was succinct and to the point.

There was only beer in his fridge.

The bag which Teyla had left on his bed would likely hold everything needed for a mere three-hour baby sabbatical. He hoped.

“I’ll get you something.”

Satisfied, Torren wobbled around John’s tiny room, bowlegged, diaper hanging low. The horror of diaper-changing loomed largely in their future.

Sagging loosely on his narrow bed, John delved into Teyla’s bag. No juice, but a bottle of pinkish-tinted milk and one baggie of chopped fruit and another of raisins. Additionally, there were: a change of clothes (worrying); four diapers (more worrying); small cloths; baby lotion; talc; a ball of plastic bags; Bartley the Bear (inherited from Rodney); bright Duplo blocks (present from Rodney) and three soft picture books, including the ‘I can fly like a bird’ book (John’s favourite).

Was the milk supposed to be warmed? John tried to remember. Or was that just a tiny-baby baby thing? Flipping off the cap, he splashed a couple of drops onto his palm and licked it. It was sweeter than he expected.

“Mine,” Torren said, brows lowered.

“Just testing it.” John made a great production of flipping the protective cap back into place. “You want?”

“No,” Torren said mercurially and stomped off, back to his exploration of Casa Sheppard.

“I’ll put your funky milk back in your bag,” John informed the toddler.

“Ha!” Performing the perfect baby squat, Torren crouched, peering into the desk knee space.

John leaned back on his elbows and watched. That was his role: baby watching. Torren fell back on his padded ass, clutching John’s favourite skateboard. It was as big as him. The kid had his priorities straight.

Torren sort of flopped over onto his side, making the skateboard roll off him. Swivelling on his ass – in a move no one under the age of three could manage – he sat next to it.

“Pretty,” he breathed, running his fingers over the painted red and yellow flames.

“Skateboard,” John supplied, even though they had had this conversation before.

“Skatebod,” Torren echoed, pushing it back and forth on the floor. Who needed a bag of toys when they had a skateboard?

John rolled off his bed and onto the floor next to Torren. “Come here.”

Torren eagerly lifted his arms high, knowing what was coming next. If anyone (Rodney) saw them they would laugh. But Torren loved standing on the skateboard and John loved pushing him around on it.

“You just wait until you do your first ollie.” John crab-walked along, drawing Torren with him. His hands spanned Torren’s ribcage, holding him steady as his little knees bended and flexed.

“Ollie.”

“Sheppard!” the nasal voice from his comm. on the bedside table was unmistakably Rodney.

“Hey, kiddo, let me get that.” John set him safely on the floor and then shuffled on his knees over to the table.

“Sheppard, where are you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He hooked the earpiece on as he grabbed the base unit. “What is it, Rodney?”

“Where are you?” Rodney demanded.

“My room. I’m off duty.” John rolled his eyes.

The silence stretched as Rodney digested this statement, and then said, “Want to watch a DVD?”

John shrugged. Why not? “You’ll have to come to me. I’ve got Torren.”

The wail behind him could have shattered glass.

“Holy shit.” John dropped the communicator’s base unit as he span around.

Torren lay flat on his back and the skateboard was idling to a stop halfway across the floor. The kid had obviously tried to skateboard on his own.

“Hey, hey, hey. You’re all right.” John hoped. Teyla was going to kill him. Torren lay still on his back, tears a river, matting his hair at his temples. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

John scrambled across the floor. Torren continued to wail like an air raid siren. John could only hope that the volume meant that he had just got a fright and he hadn’t really hurt himself. He mapped the gentle curve of Torren’s skull with his fingers, smoothing the fine hair, looking for any bump.

“Come on, kiddo, it’s okay,” John said, and Torren latched onto him. “Oh.”

John fell back on his own ass, Torren in his arms. He hitched a wet sigh into John’s neck and sagged against him.

The door into John’s room retracted so fast the mechanism screeched. Rodney’s hair and eyes were wild; evidently he had run all the way.

“What happened? What happened?” Rodney demanded, dropping to his knees beside them.

“He fell off the skateboard. He’s all right.” John wasn’t too sure who he was trying to convince.

“Teyla’s going to kill you.” Rodney carefully rubbed Torren’s back.

“It was an accident!” John hissed.

“Yeah, right. You were trying to brainwash him. Come on.” Rodney caught him under his elbow and levered him to his feet.

John stood carefully, conscious of the weight in his arms, and let Rodney’s flailing hands guide him over to his bed. Torren’s sobs didn’t waver by a fraction even as they sat.

“Hey, hey, come on.” John chucked him under the chin.

“Should I call Jennifer or Carson?” Rodney sat next to them, cocking his head to the side to see Torren better.

“He’s okay,” John crooned. “Just a fright.”

“Hey, look.” Rodney picked up Bartley the Bear and waggled his arms from side to side, making him dance. “Hi, Torren,” he said in a high voice.

Torren peered at Rodney dubiously, but he’d stopped crying, so John counted that as a win.

“Hi, Torren,” Rodney repeated as he walked Bartley over the bedspread, up John’s thigh and into Torren’s arms.

“Bear,” Torren chimed and smiled.

John breathed a sigh of relief over Torren’s head. Rodney smiled his smug ”I’m a genius” smile.

“Easy come, easy go,” Rodney summarised. “So…DVD? Not Disney, please.”

“We’re babysitting Torren. He’s eighteen months old. A toddler,” John pointed out.

“And? We could watch Resident Evil. It would be just pretty colours on the screen. He can’t even count. How about Watchmen?”

John shook his head. Teyla would find out somehow.

“Handcock?” Rodney offered.

“Handcock?” That sounded like something that would make Teyla bring out the Bantos Rods of Über Disapproval.

“Will Smith is a superhero. He flies?” Rodney said vaguely. “It’s PG-something. It shouldn’t be too traumatising as he gums on Bartley.”

“Hancock,” John corrected. “Yeah, sure.”

“Whatever. I’ll go get it.” Rodney stomped out of John’s room.

“Bring snacks,” John called.

“No,” Rodney said, the rest of his words cut off by the closing door.

“So are you’re okay? Let’s get you cleaned up.” John suited actions to words, carrying Torren into his tiny bathroom so he could clean his face. Torren sniffled unhappily, long lashes clumped together and dusky rose tingeing his cheeks. “You’re not going to tell your mom, are you, big guy? I’m going to have to buy you a helmet.”

John propped Torren on the vanity cabinet, awkwardly holding him in place with one hand as he wetted and wrung out a facecloth. Torren kicked his heels rhythmically, enjoying the repetitive thumping against the cabinet.

“Facecloth,” John explained, before gently dabbling at his face. Torren’s expression crumpled. Oh, shit, John thought. “Hidey, hidey.” He held the cloth before Torren’s eyes and quickly pulled it away. “Boo!”

Startled, Torren didn’t cry. John smiled a little crazily. Bringing the cloth back up for a furtive clean, he said, “Hidey, hidey. Boo!”

This time Torren laughed.

“And again?” John asked. “Hidey, hidey. Boo!”

Finally, Torren joined in with, “Boo.”

Another game had been added to their repertoire. Outside, the door into his room opened and Rodney clomped in.

“I’ve got my big laptop and snacks,” he grumbled loudly, clattering around, setting them up.

“So, kiddo,” John said, poking Torren’s tummy. “Uncle Rodney’s a scientist and all. Used to assessing empirical information. I’m sure he’ll be able to determine if your diaper needs changing.”

“Astrophysist,” Rodney hollered. “Engineer. Intergalactic repairman, most of the time. Not babysitter.”

“But, Rodney,” John drawled, sharing a nod with Torren. “I’ll tell Teyla you helped.”

“Ha.” The chime of Windows booting up underscored his derision. “At no point in my long and detailed and impressive résumé does it say ‘nanny.’”

“You’re always looking to improve your skill set,” John tried.

“Buck up, soldier, you accepted the mission.” Rodney crunched a handful of chips loudly.

Bracing himself, John tentatively pulled at the elastic on the back of Torren’s pants and peered. Thank God, nothing. At least, not yet.

“Movie, now,” Rodney demanded with Torren-esque shortness.

“Come on, kiddo,” John said and Torren easily moved into his grip. They were getting better at this babysitting gig.

Rodney was sprawled out on John’s bed. The laptop was set on John’s computer chair before him and the repetitive chords of DVD-menu music were replaying. Bartley sat on his lap, perched as if watching the film.

“Snacks. Torren snacks.” Torren wriggled in John’s grip. Rodney clutched his bag of Funyuns to his chest.

“I’m sure that Uncle Rodney will give you a Funyun.”

“Too many additives and colourings,” Rodney riposted around a mouthful of fried onion goodness. “Fruit’s much better for him.”

John deposited Torren next to Rodney and sat down, keeping the toddler safely corralled between them. He rooted in Teyla’s bag, pulling out the baggie of fruit and the bottle of milk.

Rodney poked Torren in the tummy. “Are you all happy now? No more tears.”

Torren giggled around his finger. Grinning, Rodney dropped Bartley on him. Wrapping arms and legs around the bear, Torren hugged him tight. John pulled open the zip-lock bag of fruit and Torren reached out with a grasping fist.

“You want to start the DVD?” John asked, half concentrating on getting Torren sitting up straight, settling the bear and making sure he only tried to eat one piece of jerob at a time.

Rodney leaned over manipulating the laptop touch pad to move the cursor to play. A click, and the opening credits began.

“Huh, the milk’s separated a little. It was okay before. ” John held up the bottle. “Do you think that it needs to be warmed? Why is milk warmed?”

Rodney plucked the milk bottle from his hand. “I think when they’re brand new you’ve got to sterilise the milk, but not when they’re toddlers.”

“It tastes fine.”

“Tastes fine, eh?” Grinning, Rodney gently agitated the bottle, swirling the contents. “You do know what this is, don’t you?”

“Milk?”

Rodney’s glee was palpable. “Oh, yes, it’s milk all right but it’s… breast milk.”

“No – No way. It can’t be!” Groaning, John flopped back on his bed, hands over his face. Rodney was never going to forget this; the teasing was going to be epic. “Don’t tell Teyla. Don’t.”

“Hah! What’s it worth?” Rodney laughed.

fin

SGA fic: IDIC

2009-08-14T20:14:43Z

Fandom: SGA
Rating: gen
Characters: Team
Warnings: language; cultural faux pas; ignorance and use of humour to throw light on but not detract from the importance of the topic.

Acknowledgements: I threw down the first draft and sent it off to beth_green who has a rich background in cultural biodiversity. Subsequently, I wrestled with the story a little more and then roped in klostes to beta, help me with the blocking and add another viewpoint. Two mates who have experience in human resources gave me their two pennyworths. And finally -- the icing on the cake -- tovalentin went over the fic with a fine toothcomb and offered cogent advice.

All that being said: any errors and clangers are mine.

It is a matter of the Women of Athos.

IDIC.
By sealie

The concussive blast took John totally by surprise. The curl of the explosion sent him skywards, but gravity smacked him to earth, or rather, to be precise, to water. Flying without the benefit of wings sucked.

The switch from air to water was from chaos to silence. A rush of air bubbles surged around him as he plummeted, chunks of Atlantis brushing past him en route to the oceanic depths.

‘Oh,’ John thought distantly, ‘Rodney’s going to be pissed.’

It was getting darker. There was a twisting shape silhouetted against fractured sunlight above him.

‘Fish? Shark?’ he wondered absently, passing through the weight of water as if slipping under a blanket. His eyes slid closed; it was too easy to relax into near-sleep.

He forced his eyes open, and Teyla resolved into view. Grim with determination, she surged up against him. Her hands tangled in his vest straps, black fabric entwining around her fingers, wrists and arms and then they were rising, rising, rising. She was never going to let them go.

John tried to kick, to help them rise. The darkness was encroaching--

“Breathe, Major! Breathe!” a shrieking voice demanded like a nail driving into his temple. “His lips are blue!”

He opened his eyes. All he could see was black dotted with starlight. A comet dropped and splashed in his left eye. There was an impersonal sensation of a mouth over his lips. The urge to cough was irresistible. He curled into it. The fall of starlight backed away and harsh, crystal sunlight blinded him. Coughing and coughing, he rolled onto his side as his lungs awoke. He couldn’t draw in enough air.

“John, John! Try to control your breathing.”

A hand rubbed along his back vigorously.

John could only cough as his back spasmed. There was only one sensation: air and its demand. Giving into its command hurt, but it was the only thing in the world. Somehow, somewhere, there was finally enough air. John sagged against the cold deck plates for just a heartbeat--

Finally, he rolled onto his back. “Are you guys okay?” he croaked. “Ford?”

“Sir.” The lieutenant dropped to his knees at John’s side.

“I didn’t--” he coughed, “--see you. Sit rep?”

“It blew up, sir. It was awesome.”

“The entire installation collapsed in on itself. There was no sign that it was that unstable!” Rodney yelled, and then, like mercury rolling over an uneven surface, he switched track. “Are you okay?”

“The pier’s blocked,” Ford continued, “we won’t be getting out that way. They’ll have to send a puddlejumper.”

John struggled up onto one elbow and reached for his earpiece, but it was long gone. He checked his team again. High up on Rodney’s hairline was a cut, and blood trickled along his temple and down to his sideburn. Incredibly, he didn’t seem to have noticed. Ford was dusty from head to waist. His trousers were wet, probably from pulling him out of the water.

Rodney tapped at his earpiece. “Control? Tower?”

“They’re probably on their way,” John noted. Abdomen clamouring, he sat up straighter, feeling like he had been sidelined by a linebacker.

“A moment, please,” Teyla interjected, and John looked at her for the first time in what felt like ever.

She flushed a darker shade, bringing a hand up to her tightly curled, black ringlets. Water droplets caught in the strands sparkled in the Atlantean sun.

“Oh, is that your natural hair?” Rodney asked directly. “I’d wondered.”

John glanced at Rodney and back to Teyla and then back to Rodney, who had his head cocked to the side, scientist expression of catalogue and classify in place.

John looked fleetingly at the water, for, he realised, futilely, a wig. Huh?

“Please, it is not--” Teyla breathed out sharply, “--appropriate for my hair to be seen.”

“Really? It’s real pretty,” Ford said ingenuously.

“Thank you,” Teyla said through pursed lips. Shifting backwards a step, she moved into the broken shade cast by the destroyed building.

The distinctive whine of a puddlejumper’s engine filled the air.

“Your hat.” Rodney clicked his fingers at Ford. Click. Click-clicky click. “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.”

“What?” Ford asked.

“Hat!” Rodney plucked it from Ford’s head and tossed it at Teyla.

“Thank you.” She leaned over, knotting her hair into a loose bun on the top of her head and pulling the cap on. As she straightened, wispy black-brown hair escaped to curl at her nape.

The puddlejumper descended, turning on its axis to land on the pier. As the back ramp descended Carson was jumping out, massive med kit in hand and an assistant at his heels.

“Any injuries?” he asked, even as he beetled over to John’s side.

Half-heartedly, John realised that he was in for a lot of poking and prodding because he hadn’t made it to his feet.

“He almost drowned!” Rodney’s finger jabbed in his direction. “Teyla had to give him the kiss of life.”

“I’m fine.” John pushed Carson’s questing hands away. “Look at Rodney, he’s bleeding.”

“What? Bleeding?” Rodney quickly scanned the length of his body, checked the back of his hands and then the palms. “Where? Where?”

~*~

The infirmary floor was less than interesting, but it was easier to lie still on the padded mattress and surf the cocktail of anti-inflammatory painkillers and muscle relaxants that Carson had foisted on him. Tomorrow he was going to feel the burn, but not now. Medieval Carson had prescribed a rotating combination of ice and heat to make tomorrow slightly more tolerable. The impact with the water had both seriously winded him (which had meant that he had not inhaled any water, so that was a win) and bruised his back from shoulder blades to butt.

He was currently face down, head propped in a padded hole in the mattress so he could breathe and lie straight. Carson had the weirdest things in his infirmary. The heat was kind of nice, though.

“I don’t get it. I like your hair,” Ford was saying -- it broke John’s nascent doze.

Teeth gritted, he pushed up off the mattress rolling on to his side. Both younger team members were still damp, evidently having only just been released by the medics. Ford had his hands tucked deep in his BDU pockets, for once relaxed and at ease before his CO. Teyla still wore Ford’s cap pulled down low, covering her hair. A blanket was draped around her shoulders, folds bunching around her neck.

“How are you guys?” he asked.

“We are fine, Major,” Teyla returned soberly. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good.” John knew that his smile was loopy. “The meds are kicking in.”

“I wouldn’t talk to the major; look at that smile.” Rodney stalked up behind his team members. There was a butterfly stitch closing the cut on his head and dark bruising was discolouring his hair line.

“Ah, Dr. McKay, it is good to see that you are well,” Teyla said. “If you will excuse me, I need to go to my— to change. I will return your cap soon, Aiden.”

“No hurry--” Ford said, but it was to her retreating back.

John reached out with a wavering finger, trying to map the route of her darting exit. He could see an eddying track in the air. Painkillers had some funky side effects.

McKay huffed a laugh. “What has Carson given you? How badly did you hurt your back?”

“How’s the head?” John asked deflecting that question.

“Carson wouldn’t give me an fMRI.” Rodney scowled. “He doesn’t appreciate the vast resource--”

‘Vast resource?’ Ford mouthed.

“--that my intellect is to this expedition. I could be bleeding in my brain!”

“You’re no bleeding in your brain,” Carson hollered across the ward. “You needed one wee little stitch.”

“Hippocratic oath, my ass,” Rodney growled, scowling over his shoulder at the puttering doctor.

“I heard that.” Carson tossed a wad of soiled cotton wool in the biological materials waste bin. He turned and pointed at the door. “Now, you lot, get out of my infirmary and let the major rest. You can come back and torment him at tea time.”

“Tea time?” Rodney questioned.

“You know fine well what I’m talking about, Rodney McKay. Go and come back at dinner!”

His two team members chose discretion as the better part of valour and escaped. John hoped that they would return with jello.

~*~

“They’re keeping you overnight?” Rodney said over John’s head.

“You bring jello?” John asked the floor through the massage mattress headspace.

“It occurs to me that you can’t eat lying on your stomach.” There was the distinct slick-tear of an opening plastic lid.

“Hey, that’s mine.”

By the time he had managed to turn onto his side, Rodney was halfway through his tub of dessert.

“McKay,” John made a point of drawling out the ‘ay.’

Unrepentant, McKay happily licked the spoon. Tongue occupied, he mumbled, “overnight?”

“No, there another round of torture in a couple of hours, then Beckett says I can escape.” The switch between hot and cold was agonising, but only for a short time, and prevention was better than cure. Tomorrow might not be as bad as he had anticipated. “What triggered the blast?”

Rodney snorted. “Decayed sea monster thing. Somehow it swam its way into an energy manifold flue when Atlantis was underwater. It probably became caught in the conversion processor, decayed in a reduced-oxygen atmosphere, sulphide and hydrogen gas were released. We opened the door. Tech responded to our presence. Spark. Boom.”

“How much of that is speculation?” he asked, because that sounded rather wild.

“A bunch of your Marines have been crawling over the site with my scientists. Trying to find explosives or if the decaying thing was leaking C4.”

“Alien explosive shit?”

Rodney’s mobile mouth twisted in a smile. “Once the microbiologists joined in the speculation was rife -- mutant archaea bacteria. But I’ve been over the area with sensors and there’s no evidence of manufactured explosives and there’s evidence that the infrastructure was compromised, probably by the rising. It looks like ‘Major Sheppard was almost killed by a pile of noxious sludge’ is going into the report.”

John rubbed his forehead.

“It could be worse. They could have gone with the explosive shit angle,” Rodney said conversationally.

“How’s Teyla?”

“Teyla? Teyla’s fine. You were the one who opened the installation door. Teyla was on the other side of the pier.”

“I meant the--” John plucked at his own hair.

“The wig?” Rodney clarified.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“That she wears a wig? I’m a genius. How did you not know?”

“McKay, you don’t notice that kind of stuff.”

“Obviously, I do. Don’t:” Rodney extended one finger. “Ask fat women if they’re pregnant.” Another finger followed. “Ask women their age. Ask women why they wear veils, headdresses, frumpy mono-coloured dresses that do nothing for their figure.”

John choked on a laugh. “There’s a whole wealth of stories there.”

Amazingly, Rodney went inscrutable.

“McKay?” John said astounded.

“I have a sister. She told me the rules. Okay, around the delectable Samantha Carter, I kind of forg -- we’d make beautiful, intelligent babies. My genes should continue for the benefit of humanity. Those pert boo--”

“McKay.”

McKay cocked his head to the side, lost in fantasy.

“You’re a pig, McKay.”

“But a surprisingly observant one, unlike you,” McKay pointed out. “All men are pigs, according to most women I’ve tried to date.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“Teyla?”

“Teyla’s fine. Didn’t we have this conversation?”

“No, about the--” John pointed at his head again.

“Why?” Rodney asked, mystified.

Why indeed, John wondered, flopping back onto his stomach. Because Teyla had looked so… hurt. It must be the meds; he couldn’t believe he was thinking about this.

~*~

The train chugged down the hill, slowing as it approached Atlantis Station. Rodney was poking at the stop button, finger jabbing, alarm chiming, again and again. John opened his eyes, ringing interweaved in his dreams.

Automatically, he brushed at his ear -- no earpiece; he was off duty. It was his door chiming.

He tried to sit up and was sidelined by the violent protest of strained muscles.

“Oh, fuck.” He dropped back and could only breathe.

“Major?” His door swished open and Teyla’s voice was sharp with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Bleee,” John managed.

“Shall I call Dr. Beckett?” She leaned over him, scanning his face. The tassels of a long scarf carefully wrapped around her head batted his nose. Instinctively, his eyes tracked the sway of the wave of light blue tassels. She had to have something like three scarves wrapped around her head.

“No,” John said and it was embarrassingly squeaky. “Give me a minute. I just moved too quick.”

He knew the pain of strained and overextended muscles. A hot shower was the order of the day.

“May I?” Teyla was saying as she moved away. He didn’t have a clue what she was doing near his bedside unit, so he just let her get on with it. “I have the medication which Dr. Beckett prescribed. They are painkillers and muscle relaxants, I believe. Can you take them on an empty stomach?”

“Yeah,” John said concisely. He lifted his arm, keeping his elbow tucked against his side. It wasn’t a smooth move.

Eyebrow raised in disquiet, Teyla hesitated in passing over the tablets. “Perhaps I should call Dr. Beckett?”

“No,” Teeth gritted, he rolled onto his side, minimising the use of stomach and back muscles, and then used his elbow to lever himself upright.

The eyebrow rose higher. John looked at his bare, hairy knees and brought them closer together. Mutely, he held out his hand.

She dropped them on his palm. “I will get you a glass of water.”

As she swished over to his bathroom, John used the moment to curl up a little more, minimising necessary movement to get the tablets into his mouth. He crunched them dry and swallowed.

“I apologise for disturbing you, John. I thought that you would be awake and then when I heard you call out I had to investigate,” Teyla called from the bathroom.

“Hey, it’s okay.” John chased a fragment of something nasty-tasting around his teeth with his tongue. “I needed to get up anyway. Er, what can I do for you?”

Teyla padded back into the living area. It was the first time that she had been in his rooms. He pulled his t-shirt a little bit further over his lap. The excruciating agony of moving had killed any chance of morning wood, but sitting before Teyla in creased t-shirt and boxers with, no doubt, amazing bedhead, was a new, uncomfortable experience.

“I had hoped that you could ferry me over to the Athosian settlement this morning…” Holding the glass in her clenched hands she stood stock still, dead centre in his room, as near to the door as she was to him.

“Ah.” John swallowed dryly, the taste of the meds sharp. “I won’t be cleared by medical for at least twenty-four hours after my last dose.”

“That is understandable.”

John could see himself reflected in her liquid eyes, small and scrunched up. He leaned arthritically, reaching for his earpiece on his bedside table.

“Stackhouse and Markham can take you.”

“Would it,” Teyla said slowly, “be possible for Rodney to pilot me to the mainland?”

“Rodney?” John checked stupidly. “McKay? I guess. He needs more practise.”

Teyla took a measured sip from his glass of water.

John switched the comm. base unit to the private channel and tapped the mike open. “McKay?”

“What?” Rodney’s immediate response was waspish.

“Flight time, you need to practice.” He glanced at the clock beside his bed. “Meet us in the ‘jumper bay in two hours.”

“Us?” At the prospect of flying there was a fillip of eagerness in his voice.

“Yeah, Teyla’s coming with.”

“Fine. Leave me alone now; I’m busy.” Rodney clicked off.

John flashed a smile at Teyla. She inclined her head, “Thank you.”

“No problem. Um, okay. I need a shower now.” He glanced at the en suite. He didn’t actually want to try standing until Teyla had left, because he guessed that crawling, or at least Quasimodo lurching, was in his future.

Teyla read his mind. “I will leave you to your ablutions. The commissary will finish serving breakfast very soon. I will bring a tray to your room.”

“Coffee?” John said hopefully.

“A carafe,” Teyla said as a thank you.

He waited until she left before taking the Notre Dame route to the bathroom.

~*~

Standing in a shower under water hotter than Hades for over forty-five minutes had done a lot to improve John’s mobility. His t-shirt and shorts were now hanging over the shower head drying because he had spent the first twenty minutes simply leaning against the tiles under the spray. The thermos of coffee when he had emerged had been a godsend.

John managed a reasonable facsimile of his normal walk into the hanger. Rodney was all eager anticipation, rocking up and down on his heels outside ‘jumper three. The other bays were empty, their occupants out on missions, but Rodney had obviously thought ahead and requested John’s favourite, most responsive ‘jumper.

Ford, unlike Rodney, was prepped for duty: BDUs and tac vest. The young lieutenant cocked his head in a “what’s the mission, sir” question but didn’t ask.

“We’re just taking a little hop over to the mainland. Practise for Rodney. And Teyla wants to go,” John said.

“Well, where is she?” Rodney scanned the hanger, as if he could have missed her entrance.

“Coming.” John stroked a hand along the retracted drive pod as he moved around to the stern. ‘Hey baby, Rodney’s going to be piloting you today. You have to take him to the Athosians.’ By actively going out as a flight instructor under the influence of drugs he was not obeying the letter of the law, but the ‘jumper could fly itself to the settlement and back. It knew the route.

Teyla’s entrance was an Entrance. John scratched his head; she was all turquoise, shimmering blue and drapey from covered head to the tips of her toes. Vaguely, he realised that something was up. Bells at her wrists chimed as she crossed the hanger.

“Thank you for coming, Aiden.” She inclined her head.

Ford clutched his P90 to his chest.

“Oh, shit,” Rodney said inexplicably. “There’s going to be a ritual, isn’t there.”

~*~

The weird thing going through John’s head was that turquoise didn’t really suit Teyla. Orange, russet brown, red or even green would look better. John gritted his teeth and checked the HUD again. The puddlejumper was being more helpful than usual, and Rodney had managed a straight-ish line.

Perhaps when they got to the settlement, they could just kick Teyla out and make a run for it.

“I don’t get it,” Ford said. “Your real hair’s much prettier.”

Turning arthritically, putting his whole body into it, John spun the chair around to better see Teyla sitting directly behind him. She was as close to sighing as he had ever seen her. Ford, John got, was like a vinyl record and a stuck needle -- young and focused on one thing.

“Lieutenant,” John said, “you’ve had the cultural seminars from Dr. Jackson before coming to Pegasus. I know that marines get training before they’re deployed. Let it rest.”

“Come on, Ford, even in whatever backwater hamlet you grew up in you must have had television!” Rodney jabbed at the puddlejumper’s consol buttons. “Don't try and tell me you've never seen a turban when you were in Afghanistan.”

“Yeah, but it’s a wig. I didn’t know that Teyla wore a wig.” Ford sagged back in his seat, expression befuddled.

“Lots of people wear wigs.” Rodney snorted. “You know the scary thing here? It’s that I have the best grasp of the situation.”

“Really?” Teyla drew her legs up, the tails of her long tunic falling to the side. Her form fitting trousers were exactly the same shade as the coat. She curled her blue-wrapped toes over the edge of the seat as she clasped her knees against her chest. “Perhaps you would care to elaborate.”

Releasing the controls without a thought, Rodney spun his chair around. Mentally, John asked for the automatic pilot to engage. He was tempted to eat his entire bottle of pain meds. Anything to avoid this.

“Okay. One question, before I educate Ford.”

“McKay.” John shook his head. He knew Rodney’s questions; they could easily border on the obscene.

“Your question?” Teyla pursed her lips.

“Who can see your natural hair?”

Teyla’s chin came up as she contemplated Rodney.

He blushed under her regard. “Without causing you offence and embarrassment?”

“The person who I chose to spend my life with and, assuming that she was alive, my mother,” Teyla finally answered.

“Excellent.” Rodney jabbed his finger at Ford. “Do you have a sister? Someone that you think of as a sister?”

“My cousin,” he hazarded. “We grew up together.”

“So, hot summer day. Your cousin’s wearing a t-shirt and your best friend throws a bucket of water at her. You can see her tits--”

“McKay!” Sheppard yelped.

“What would you do, Ford? What would you do? He’s leering at her. Making comments.”

“I give her a towel and then beat the shit out of him.”

“Ha! See.” The puddlejumper made a ping indicating a course correction. Rodney turned back to the controls. John left the automatic pilot on as a matter of spite.

“But… but… Teyla,” Ford spluttered. “It’s hair.”

Rodney abandoned the (non-responsive) controls and spun the chair back to face his team mates. “You are without fail--”

“Allow me, Rodney,” Teyla said sharply, holding out a hand stopping Rodney’s rant dead. “Aiden, for you to accidentally see my hair is as if you glimpsed your cousin in the shower. For you to request to see and speculate on my hair is as if you deliberately strove to spy on your cousin in her shower.”

Ford’s mouth fell open and he flushed darker.

“Now do you get it?” Rodney said archly. “Hair, ankles, frilly underpants, all the same thing -- even if they don’t make sense. Are you going to release the controls, Major?”

John shuffled down in the seat. The HUD popped up, displaying the local schematic against the backdrop of clear, blue sky. “Hey, settlement. Almost there,” he said brightly.

~*~

Teyla was whisked away by a bevy of aged crones, leaving her team members standing forlornly in the centre square by the large communal cooking fire. A number of pots were slow-cooking as part of the midday meal. John glanced longingly at the ‘jumper, half sliding towards the lowered hatch. Rodney was dogging his heels.

“Ah, Major Sheppard.” Halling sauntered over a wide-bottomed bottle of ruus wine in one hand and four carved wooden goblets in the other.

‘Meds plus alcohol equals no pain,’ John thought. “Hi, Halling.”

“Major Sheppard.” Halling extended a goblet.

“Thank you.” John snatched.

“Yes, definitely.” Rodney held out his hand.

“Hey, you’re the designated driver,” John said with no amount of glee. “No ruus for you. Hey, that rhymes.”

Rodney glowered. “Excuse me.” He stalked off into the puddlejumper.

John held out the goblet and waggled it enticingly. “How’s the beer brewing going?”

Worriedly, Halling peered after Rodney even as he poured a generous dose of scarlet wine. “What is he doing?”

“I’m telling Elizabeth that we’re staying the night!” Rodney hollered.

“Oh!” Ford said. “I guess, I’m off duty then.”

“Awesome.” John gave Aiden his goblet and snagged another off Halling.

~*~

“Hey, it’s kind of sad that we need alcohol to cope with this,” John said loquaciously.

They had taken refuge by Halling’s tent, under the summer awning. The community puttered around them, wood smoke and appetizing scents of cooking food heralding the midday meal, which actually looked like it was spontaneously evolving into a midday-to-evening banquet extravaganza.

“Cultural differences?” Rodney leaned back in his pile of cushions. “I don’t believe I’m saying this: but I wish that Daniel Jackson was here.”

“I never knew Teyla wore a wig.” John looked for answers in his goblet, as if scrying.

Halling peered at them across the small wrought iron stove that provided both a centre point to his favourite sitting area and kept his tea warm and stewed.

“All of caste of the House of Emmagan cover their heads,” Halling said slowly, explaining, but also hunting for understanding in a sea of confusion.

“We didn’t know, though,” Ford blurted and then shifted on his floor cushion, embarrassed.

“Ah?” Halling cogitated, as two points of high colour bloomed on his cheeks. “It is a matter of the Women of Athos. Uhm…. It is not unusual.”

‘Hang on,’ John thought. ‘Why is it a problem? It’s not a problem? Huh….’

Rodney knocked back a mouthful of wine. “Teyla can probably explain it better.”

John nodded in agreement in the face of Halling’s confusion.

“Ankles,” Rodney didn’t explain. “It’s all about ankles and there’s nothing even remotely interesting about ankles.”

“Ankles?” Halling double checked.

“Ankles,” Rodney confirmed seriously.

“But we don’t… uhm…. want to… upset Teyla.” John circled the issue like a medevac chopper scoping out a landing site in uneven terrain.

“I think we did that already,” Ford said.

“Except McKay.” John shook his head.

“How are you so understanding?” Ford asked Rodney querulously. “I mean, you’re you.”

“I was brought up,” Rodney said sanctimoniously, “on Star Trek. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.”

“Yeah, but,” John grumbled, “even if you know the rules, you don’t understand the meaning.”

“Doesn’t invalidate the rule.” Rodney held out his mug for a refill.

“Man,” John said blearily, “why does Teyla put up with us?”

~*~

The Athosians were incredible hosts, with structured menus served to specific seasons. The move from spring into dry mid-spring (as predicted by the climatologists on Atlantis cribbing off the main AI computer mainframe) heralded dishes geared to the sweeter side of the palate.

John could hear Rodney humming contentedly under his breath as he tucked in to a dish which was reminiscent of korma curry. The complementing heavy breads filled with vine fruits were perfect with ruus wine. Somnolent, John sagged a little deeper in his back rest of piled cushions. This had to be the most comfortable way to surf past the aches and strains of being blown across a pier and almost drowned. Carson would probably have a cow.

Jinto and Wex rushed past Halling’s tent squealing as they kicked a football. John perked up, following the arc of the ball. Wex had a good foot; evidently he had been practicing with the ball that the Marines had left in the settlement. On any other day, John would have chased after them. Today he was content to relax and watch sunlit dust motes hang on the air.

“Hmmph!” The disapproving nasal stop disturbed their lolling about.

Charin, Teyla’s adoptive grandmother (John guessed), eyed them as she hobbled under the awning.

“Ma’am!” Ford was on his feet in an instant. “Can we help you?”

Charin used her staff to beat a couple of floor cushions into submission. “You can get me a mug of that wine.”

Halling obediently poured out a generous measure. The wise woman settled her arthritic bones onto the cushions with Ford’s careful help. Wincing in sympathy, John straightened up in his own nest.

“Still hurting?” Charin observed.

“Yes, ma’am.” John answered; evidently Teyla had been talking about him. He wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

Halling scuttled to her side, circling around the cooking fire, to present her with the over-filled goblet.

“Thank you, Halling.” She raised an imperious eyebrow.

“I’ll be checking on Jeub, see if he’s found that source of clay he was hunting for.” His escape was gauche, but for a tall, lanky man he could move surprisingly fast.

John set his plate aside wishing for a glass of water. Charin regarded him over the rim of her goblet as she sipped. This was, John realised, uncomfortably like being taken before his first headmistress at boarding school. Although alcohol hadn’t featured in those meetings -- he had only been six.

Someone had to break first.

“Is Teyla joining us?” he asked circumspectly.

“Is she okay?” Ford blurted.

Rodney stole a figgish roll from John’s plate.

“McKay!”

Rodney licked a dusting of sherbet off his fingers.

“Boys!” Charin tapped her staff sharply against the ironwork holding the tea pot over the fire.

They froze, waiting her to speak.

“So you can be polite, can you, hmmph? So you’re Teyla’s team.”

It wasn’t really a question. This experience was rapidly morphing into a re-enactment of his various meetings with his COs over his years spanning from zoomie to major.

“Yes, ma’am,” John confirmed when he realised that Ford had understandably yielded the floor to his commanding officer, and Rodney had stuffed his fat face with two figgish rolls.

“Children, more like,” Charin said. “So why are you here?”

“Teyla needed a ride,” John responded instantly.

Charin waited for him to continue, as impassive as the Sphinx.

John, thankfully, had an instant of insight. He glanced upwards at the heavens. “And she wanted her team to bring her.” That she had not wanted anyone else to see her went unsaid.

“McKay thought that there might be a ritual,” Ford volunteered quickly and then scrunched down on his cushions.

“So you stayed?” Charin pursued.

John hoped from the bottom of his heart that there was not going to be a ritual. Although, given the way that Teyla had been met and whisked away by the grandmothers of the Athosian settlement, he was leaning towards any rituals being male-free. Thankfully.

“Teyla needs a ride h—back to Atlantis.”

Charin set her goblet aside. “So you stayed to be here for your ‘team member.’ But do you know what you’ve done wrong?”

John opted to remain quiet, because to be honest he had no clue where this was going.

“You are embarrassed. Major--” Charin’s gnarly finger pointed him out, “--you never realised that Teyla covered her hair. So you are embarrassed about that because you have been unobservant and you have missed something that is very important to Teyla. Lieutenant, you are embarrassed because you have had your nose rubbed into the fact that you are a little boy. Doctor, you should be embarrassed, just because you consider that our customs are irrelevant does not mean that they’re unimportant.”

“What!” Rodney demanded, spraying crumbs. “I’ve been sensitive. I knew that Teyla was upset.”

“You have no respect,” Charin said cuttingly. “You think that our customs are foolish and pointless.”

“So,” John interrupted an argument which would never reach a compromise, “we need to do what?”

“You need to apologise,” Charin said.

“But I’ve been good,” Rodney whined. “I shouldn’t have to apologise.”

“Suck it up,” Ford muttered.

“I think that she means that we all apologise,” John told them.

“And be sincere in your apologies,” Charin commanded. Imperiously, she held out her hand. Ford was there in a heartbeat, lending a hand to help her to her to feet. “You are good boys; you are merely naïve and woefully arrogant in your immaturity. These problems can be overcome.” She smacked her staff against the ground, testing the firmness of the carpeted floor before hobbling away.

Rodney scowled at John. “Why did you let that old harridan talk to us like that?”

“Because she’s right.” John flopped back onto his cushions. He splayed his hand over his eyes blocking out the bright, spring light. Man, they had said nothing about this at officer training school.

“I need more ruus,” Rodney announced.

“I think we’ve had enough,” Ford said.

“You are probably right,” Teyla’s voice was bright and filled with laughter.

John quickly opened his eyes. Teyla had changed into her normal off-work combination of russet brown and beige figure-hugging top and loose trousers. He peeked quickly, checking that indeed she wore a wig. It was a new style, shorter, and it -- well, he guessed -- suited her.

She raised an eyebrow at his consideration.

His other team members were no help, struck mute; too afraid to say anything lest it be considered offensive. Of course, Rodney broke first.

“I like it. It will be better in combat. I mean, it’s shorter. It won’t get in the way,” his voice petered off.

“You look pretty,” Ford said and then closed his mouth firmly.

“It’s flattering,” John managed, feebly.

Rodney of all people shot him an incredulous look. John glared back, using all his powers for evil to think loudly, ‘you didn’t do much better!’

Smoothly, Teyla sank onto a large cushion. She composed her folded hands on her knees.

It was now or never, John realised. Teyla would let them off because she was infinitely tolerant and understanding of people’s foibles. And that wasn’t right.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t know that you wore a--” John plucked at the top of his head.

“We call it a ruqque.”

“I just don’t notice that sort of thing.” John shuffled on his cushion. Dredging the bottom of a barrel of personal embarrassment, he continued, “you’re just you: Teyla. Teyla who’s on my team. And now I don’t know if can or should mention that you wear a ruqque. Should I? Can I?”

“You can compliment my hair. I will not be discomfited. And I know that you will not strive to see nor contemplate the nature of my hair.”

“I guess it’s my turn,” Ford said with an infinitesimal edge of sullen. “I’m sorry, Teyla. I am. Really, I didn’t know. It’s just I don’t get it. No, I do get it, now. It’s personal and it’s about your people and it’s private. And I shouldn’t have kept asking to see your real hair. And I’m sorry, real sorry.”

“Well, I had my ass roundly handed to me by your Charin,” Rodney said. His entire face visibly twisted as he tried to follow up that sentence. Finally, his mouth dropped, and he uttered, Canadian soft, “sorry.”

Teyla’s smile was soft and compassionate. “Thank you, my friends, I accept your apologies. I, too, was very uncomfortable. I was very embarrassed that you had seen me without my ruqque. It made it difficult to talk, to explain.”

“So does that mean that we’re fine? Everything is copasetic?” Rodney asked as he rolled a ball of bread into grimy sphere between his fingers.

Teyla’s measured gaze did not shift an iota.

“Okay, okay.” Rodney flicked the ball of bread onto the grass beyond their lounging area. He held his hands high in the surrender position “I have to know. I have to ask why the wig? Okay, I can ask this, can’t I? I’m not trying to be obnoxious.”

“That comes naturally,” John inserted.

“So?” Intent, Rodney leaned forwards, ignoring John’s jibe.

“I am the hereditary leader of my people. My mother, Tagan, led the Athosians before me and my grandmother before her. Our line stretches back to the memory of the Ancestors when they walked among us. I lead my people. I am the voice of my people. I am the arbiter of my people. When they call, I answer. I serve.”

“What does that have to do with hair?” Ford asked plaintively.

Teyla pressed her palm over her heart. “My hair is my own. I do not share it except with those closest to my heart: my mother and my beloved-my betrothed.”

“So it’s not about sex?” Rodney asked.

“McKay!” John snapped.

“Major, I can and will answer your questions.” She raised an eyebrow. “It is a matter of intimacy, not simply sexual relationships. I would, however, recommend that you not ask Charin such bold questions, as she will answer them in great detail and then give you chores.”

Both Ford and Rodney nodded in fervent agreement.

“Questions are always good,” John blurted. “You know, because…”

“How can we learn if we do not question?” Teyla’s lip curled in the slightest of smiles. “I would hope also that if I misstep in matters of your cultures that we can talk and gain understanding?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ford said eagerly. “I guess we don’t have anything like that, though.”

John shut his eyes, not wanting to see Teyla go in for the kill -- sometimes learning was a painful process, but he didn’t have to watch.

“Can you,” Teyla said brightly, “explain why you are circumcised and Rodney is not?”

Fin

Inauspicious Part II

2009-07-29T15:00:53Z

Once more Brad Wright firmly puts SGA down. SGU’s budget per episode is $1 million more than SGA’s:

http://www.cinemaspy.com/article.php?id=2855

So does anyone think that there’s any chance of an SGA movie?

Inauspicious

2009-07-28T10:11:22Z

While I have been avoiding SGU, it is at times difficult when you’re in SGA fandom. Wright and Cooper’s actions have to a large degree turned me off the Stargate concept as a television franchise. Luckily there’s fandom.

SGU spoilery.

So apparently, Stargate Universe has an ‘Icarus Base.’ How’s that for an inauspicious name? I suspect that Brad -- I tossed a coin to see whether SGA would stay on our TVs -- is trying to be clever. But he has protagonists who are actually based on a station called Icarus (even if it is only temporarily). Would you go to a station called Icarus? Isn’t that a little like going on a sea cruise on a ship called ‘Titanic?’

It appears to be Wright and Cooper who are flying too near the sun; they seem to be determined to be cavalier and disrespectful of both the SGA cast and fans. It makes no sense, why keep alienating your potential viewers?

sga fic: Weary

2009-07-12T20:18:36Z

A very small tiny fic
Rating: gen
No spoilers
Warnings: deals with a tired and hurting John Sheppard.
Beta: lky gave it a quick looksee

Weary
By sealie

A bruise,

A scabby line.

A scrape, red raw.

Never a day, never a minute without an insult.

John scratched at a razor-thin cut which stretched along the length of his forearm. It twisted from knobbly wrist bone, up between the well of muscles to then slice deep into inflamed flesh. His raggy nail caught at the dry skin, the sound loud in his quiet room. Bloody flakes fell away. Yawning, he scrutinised his finger nails, blood and dirt. Part of him wanted his bed; to sleep until tomorrow. His skin felt too big for his bones. If he moved it would stay behind. There was a dull, dull ache in his lower back. He knew that sleep would never come until he showered; stood under a hot spray until muscles loosened.

Atlantis spoiled him. Luxury spoiled him.

Tire and sore, he stood, arthritically tugging off his black t-shirt, stepping out of his trousers and leaving his boxers on the floor. Lumbering, he made his way to his bathroom. Atlantis greeted him, steam welling from the wet room walls.

“No emergencies, please.”

Atlantis acquiesced as he leaned into the wall. The tiles were cold. A wince set an echoing slash of pain from hip to hip. John rocked into it, in that moment, solely gripped by that twang of distressed nerves. It was easier to stand stock still, waiting for pain to pass. Water – deliciously hot water – washed down between his shoulder blades, tracing down his spine.

John stood.

Fin

torchwood finale

2009-07-10T22:11:34Z

vague spoilers; nothing specific

0_o

As an overall observation, certainly this series hasn’t pulled any punches. Well, I’m seeing polar opinions on Torchwood’s finale from family and friends.

I hated every second of it.

I’m bloody glad I never got to fandom/fanfic level of investment for Torchwood. The intro of Date Rape Owen at the start meant that I never attained great empathy with the concept just general appreciation of a well written sci-fi series. I see that RTD was investigating the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” and “Milgrim-obeying-authority to the detriment of morality” in addition to social commentary but that was not entertainment (for me).

TS fic: Dzoonokwa Epilogue

2009-06-20T16:14:53Z

Warnings and story info are presented in Part I

Dzoonokwa Epilogue
By Sealie

The plastic sheeting twisted in the wind. The repetitive flapping was really annoying. Jim pulled the tarp a fraction tighter and used the nail gun to fix it in place. It was Arctic cold in the loft. They had finally got the emergency services to leave. Blair had spun a wild tale about amazing, small scale meteorological phenomenon lifting up entire trees and depositing them miles from where they had been ripped up. Blair didn’t have a clue what Jim’s insurance was going to make of the damage. Would the insurance pay for the mask he had acquired – basically stolen -- from Rainier? At this point he didn’t really care; he just wanted to go to bed.

Jim had waved his badge and scared off the uniforms that had responded to the call. His fellow Major Crimes detectives, Rafe and Henri, had been a little harder to convince to leave, but after a beer they had wandered off.

“That’s better,” Jim said satisfied stepping back from the repairs.

“What about John Winchester?” Blair blurted before he could censor his words.

Jim tossed the nail gun in the remains of the sink. The grinding of his teeth was audible. Blair winced. Jim shot him a frustrated glare. He yanked open the fridge, which had miraculously survived the kitchen carnage, and dug out a couple of bottles of beer.

“Chief, did you want me to stop him taking Dean and Sam? Yeah, I could have arrested him. And I was damn tempted. I still am. You saw what we saw.” Jim held out a beer. “A monster. And, apparently, putting them down is his job.”

“What about Dean? What about Sam? Dragged all over the country. A week here at school. A week there at school. Sam’s so bright and he doesn’t even have a book collection.” Annoyed, Blair twisted violently at his beer cap.

“Look what happens when they’re separated from their Dad,” Jim said. “Monsters crawl out of the woodwork. Would Child Protective Services be able to handle that? They’re not going to let Dean sleep with a silver knife under his pillow.”

Blair made a mental note to make sure one of the knives dotted around the loft migrated to his pillow before he went to bed.

“What if it’s not over?” The scorched mark on the wooden floor mocked his quiet question. Annoyingly, it looked like they were never going to find out why it had targeted Sam and Dean. “The appeasement ceremony would have been a better solution.”

“Look, I know letting the kids leave isn’t ideal,” Jim continued ignoring his soft complaint. “But what we’re we going to do? Adopt them?”

Blair snorted.

“Look at it this way.” Jim held up the post-it with the pastor’s name and number jotted down. He stuck it to Blair’s forehead with a pat. “Do you really think that I’m going to lose track of them?”

The end

TS fic: Dzoonokwa Part III

2009-06-20T16:13:08Z

Dzoonokwa
By Sealie

“Wow.”

Sam’s enthusiasm was endearing. The university museum was designed around their collection of towering totem poles. The ceiling was an arched glass homage to local art. Sam stood within a shaft of wintry sunlight as he turned in a slow circle, entranced.

Blair never got tired of museums and exhibitions, but seeing afresh the magic of finding new knowledge through someone as young as Sam, was special.

Sam drifted down the wide open hallway, mouth opened, towards the next chamber, which was well lit with floor to ceiling windows. The columns of totem poles were set between displays of artefacts. Stopping before, what Blair knew was a feasting table, Sam said,

“Is that a boat?”

“Actually, no. The carvings would make it difficult to use as a boat. The pictures of the salmon are ubiquitous in Native American art in this region, but here we think that they indicate the food which was placed for display in this table… vessel… which was used during important events.”

“Huh, it looks like a boat.” Sam screwed up his nose. “So where do we find the monsters?”

Blair grinned; you had to love his enthusiasm. “It’s not my field so we ask someone who might know.”

“Who?” Sam peered around. Outside of the tourist season they were alone in the great hall.

“I know the curator.”

“What’s a curator?” Sam trotted along at his heels.

“The person who looks after the museum.”

“Huh.” Sam pondered. “Like a librarian for stuff instead of books?”

“Pretty much.”

Passing through ‘staff only’ double doors took them to a new world. The stacks reached from floor to ceiling, shelf upon shelf of carefully catalogued artefacts. Sam walked chin raised, mouth open, a picture of awe and study. A set of drawers caught his eye and curiously he pulled one open to reveal a selection of fish hooks. Leaning forward his nose almost touched the protective glass casing.

“These are the storage units. Some of the artefacts rotate between here and the displays. Most of these are fairly robust; they just need a stable, constant environment.” Blair pointed to the air con unit hanging from the ceiling. “Others are held secure, under more protective conditions.”

“Like what?”

“Well--” Blair directed his charge down the aisle, “--it depends on the artefact. There’s a 17th Century warship in a museum in Sweden which is encased in wax.”

“Like a candle?” Sam’s nose scrunched up.

“Think of it more like a coating. It’s important to prevent the degradation of the collections. Cutting down light is important.”

“Is that why it’s so gloomy?”

“Partly.”

“Who does all this stuff belong to?” Sam turned in a circle, trying to take in the scope of the elongated warehouse.

Blair stopped dead. “The short answer is everyone. The complicated answer is everyone. The Devil is in the details. We have collections which have long and detailed provenances. There are items which are on loan from Native American communities. There are other items, even with long and detailed provenances, over which there’s dispute regarding ownership and even what defines ownership.”

Sam was peering at him under a fall of long floppy hair. “There’s a skull over there! That belongs to the person who was the… skull… when they were alive. I think?”

“Some people would dispute that, depending on the age of the skull. That’s one of the main bones--” Blair winced at his own inadvertent pun, “—of contention.”

“Dad burns skeletons to kill ghosts.”

“Kill ghosts?” Blair double checked. “‘Cos you know ghosts are dead.”

“Okay,” Sam huffed. “Move on.”

Blair could feel his eyebrows rise. “For real? You’ve seen it?”

Sam shrugged lopsidedly. “Yeah, they go poof in a swirl of white light or they’re sucked down into darkness – depends.”

“On what?” Blair couldn’t help but ask. Sam was genuinely telling him that ghosts existed, he had seen them and he had seen them move on. The ramifications were world altering, or more accurately, altering Blair’s world view.

“I guess if they’re good or bad.”

“Ah, Blair?” The interruption was welcome. “What are you doing here?”

Dr. Elliot was a small woman, doll-like in her frame and demeanour. She glanced brusquely at the unannounced stranger in her domain, even though Sam was a child. Catalogue, categorise and assess.

“Dr. Elliot, I’m glad you found us. This is my friend Sam. He’s interested in Native American myth and legends. He’s trying to pull together a project and he wants it to be special. I immediately thought to you.”

That garnered a fraction of a welcoming smile.

“It’s amazing,” Sam enthused. “I’ve never been anywhere like it. Dad’s not really into museums. When I’ve been with school trips we get to see the displays. But here is all the stuff, I mean, all the things. It must be really hard work.”

Blair marvelled; the little guy was a con artist.

“Mrs. Dee, my teacher, told us to make a project about myths which are about things which are interesting to us – kids, I mean. And, well, Bobby’s doing Saint Nicholas and Ibraham’s doing flight and Icarus – they’re all boring, well not boring but…?” He looked mutely at Blair.

“Well known?” Blair supplied.

“Yes, well known. Don’t you think it’s better to learn something new?” Sam said earnestly at Dr. Elliot.

“Yes,” she said decisively. “What are you interested in?”

“Masks,” Sam responded promptly.

The smile that curled her lips, transformed her from impassive to approachable. “You’ve come to the right place.”

“Blair said you were the person to see.”

“Come on. Come on,” Dr. Elliot chivvied, her high heels click-clicked against the tiled floor. She was already halfway down the aisle. “Tell me specifically what you’re interested in.”

Sam darted forward to keep up. Blair brought up the rear, backpack bouncing against his shoulder blades.

“Manitou. Shape-changers who use masks to shift.”

“Interesting. Why that specifically?”

Sam chanced a glance over his shoulder at Blair, who mouthed, “Go on.”

“Blair has lots of masks. And I was wondering why make masks? Are you pretending to be something you aren’t? Or honouring a… spirit by looking like them. Or can a mask make you something special?”

Wow, Blair thought, Sam was bright.

“Are there legends about people who wear masks to change into something else?” Sam continued.

“Oh, yes, indeed.”

^..^

Jim scowled at Blair’s locked office door. Where the Hell were they? Blair had promised to keep the kid in his office.

“Where’s my brother, Detective Ellison?” Dean growled, a flush of colour rising on his pale cheeks.

Jim held up a finger, even as he speed-dialled Blair. “Chief, where are you?”

“Geez, man. We’re in Dr. Elliot’s office.”

“I’ll come to you.” Jim snapped the phone shut. “They’re safe; they with Dr. Elliot.”

“Who’s he?”

“She is the curator of the Rainier Museum of Anthropology and Native Studies.”

“Cute?”

Jim pictured the diminutive woman, her obvious Native American heritage; her silver streaked black hair and hawkish nose, plus her – I can’t tolerate idiots – manner. The answer to Dean’s question was ‘yes,’ but she was also a good twenty years older than Dean.

“She’s married.”

“And?” Dean drawled.

“Married,” Jim said quellingly. He executed a parade turn, forcing the teen to scuttle backwards. “Let’s go get your brother and my partner.”

Their wayward younger brothers were completely oblivious to their entrance, pre-occupied, both caught up in reading. Dr. Elliot was obscured by the computer monitor, which was an effective barrier between the person at the computer and the door. No one could creep up on Dr. Elliot. There was a hiss as she raised her computer chair higher. She looked over the top of the monitor, dark eyes narrowing as she saw Jim and Dean. Sam was intent on a thin, black-backed moleskin book in his hands. Blair was leaning towards Dr. Elliot to better view the monitor as he manipulated the mouse on the desk.

“Gentlemen?” she asked.

“Oh?” Sam lifted his head. “Dean! Look!” He shuffled off the chair, scuttled around the enormous oak table and thrust the old notebook into Dean’s hand.

“Careful with the book!” both Dr. Elliot and Blair chastised; two voices in unison.

Small, neat black ink marched across the pale lines. Sentinel eyes easily read the text. At the bottom of the page was an ink sketched face -- long with baleful eyes and the full lipped mouth was open in a scream. The hair was a thatch of scribbly lines.

“Dzoonokwa?” Jim probably mispronounced. It was the thing in the alley.

As he also read, Dean intoned mockingly, “Ho, Ho, Ho.”

Dr. Elliot let out a discordant barking, “HO!”

The hair rose on the back of Jim’s neck at the call.

“It’s ‘Dzoonokwa,’” Sam said with authority. “Kwakwaka'wakw, figure of mythology of the North West Pacific tribes. A giant of the forests and wild woods. She kidnaps and eats lost children.”

“Lost children?” Jim said, looking at Sam in his mismatched, well-worn clothes.

“Forests, man?” Dean rolled his eyes.

“Sam’s chosen to do his project on Native American masks used in ceremonies and legend,” Blair said brightly.

“Have you got enough information--” Jim wrinkled his nose at the dusty office, “--for your report?”

Dr. Elliot shuffled off her chair and dropped to the floor. She bustled around her desk, scooping up a worn, foolscap-folio sized book, plastic bound and probably older than Sam. “Nice to see you again, Detective Ellison.”

“Dr. Elliot.” Jim nodded respectively.

“Samuel. I’m afraid that I can’t let you take the notebook, it’s an heirloom. This book--” she hefted the yellowing leaves and passed them over accepting the notebook in return, “--will provide you a great overview of many of the Native American myths along the Pacific coast. It’s a photocopy of lots of different chapters from lots of different books. When you’re finished with this, you need to give it back to Blair, so he can return it to me.”

Sam nodded seriously, hair bobbing in his eyes. “Is there anything about the Dzoonokwa in here?”

Dr. Elliot pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. “Yes,” she said with certainty. “Are you going to write about the Dzoonokwa?”

Sam nodded more vehemently.

“Hmmm, there is an actual mask in the School of Anthropology. There are displays in the foyer. One of them is examples of Tla-o-qui-aht and the Ahousaht First Nations artefacts and art from Canada.”

“Duh!” Blair slapped his forehead.

Dr. Elliot’s brow furrowed. “It’s not as if you knew that young Sam was going to study the Dzoonokwa?”

“True!” Blair smiled, toothily. “We’ll definitely have a look at that.”

Curious thoughts scrolled across Dr. Elliot’s face, weighing Blair’s over ebullience to a simple statement.

“I think that it’s time for lunch.” Jim said.

Dean’s stomach growled loudly. Shuffling embarrassed, he looked at the floor.

“Man, yeah. I’m starving!” Sam agreed.

“First, though.” Jim nodded at Dr. Elliot.

”Oh, yes. Thank you. Dr. Elliot you’ve been great.” Sam smiled directly at her; they were both the same height.

“I’ve enjoyed our morning too.”

“Would you like to come to lunch?” Blair asked.

“Tempting, but as much fun as this has been, I have a phone conference at two o’clock which I do need to do a little prep for.”

Dean was already shuffling towards the door. His pinched white face spoke of his need for food and pain pills. Sam hopped from foot to foot, effervescent. Blair moved quickly to his side.

“Thanks, Dr. E., you’ve been a star.”

Dr. Elliot waved absently, already settling on the computer chair. “Leave the door ajar, thanks.”

Jim shepherded the two kids to the door. Dean was standing tall in the corridor, glaring balefully at nothing.

“What do you want to eat?” Jim asked.

“Burgers,” Dean responded instantly.

“Something healthy, man,” Blair protested. “The noodle bar.”

~*~

In a line: Jim, the tallest; then rangy, skin and bones Dean; short and stocky Blair and, last but not least, Sam, stood before the glass cabinet in the Anthropology foyer. They had walked past a Dzoonokwa mask at least eight times throughout the day.

“Ugly bitch,” Dean summarised.

“Language,” Jim reprimanded.

Blair leaned forward, pushing his glasses up his nose as he peered at the printed card propped up against the mask.

“The Dzoonokwa is an archetypical monster-giant of North West coast. Eater of human flesh and stealer of children, she can also bestow power and wealth,” Blair read.

“Why the H—heck is she after us?” Dean demanded.

“Kidnaps and eats lost children,” Blair said, paraphrasing the notebook back in Dr. Elliot’s office.

“I’m not a kid, man. Sammy is,” Dean began easily, but his tone suddenly rose upwards and he turned to Jim. “Do you think it’s just after Sammy?”

“Over my dead body,” Jim said.

Sam shuffled a little closer to Blair. “Can we take the mask?”

Still leaning over, Blair craned his head round. “Yeah, my… you’re an ‘A’ student, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dean answered for Sam. “So we’re going to take the mask? Why?”

“It’s related to shamanism, by putting on the mask the wearer becomes that spirit, animal or creature. We’re maybe trying to find someone who’s wearing a mask or a Dzoonokwa. But the mask is power, holding the mask will imbue us with a power to possibly control --”

“We could burn it,” Dean said clinically.

“We can’t burn it, man!” Blair said horrified, “it’s an important artefact.”

“Whatever. If this thing is linked to the Dzoonokwa, burning it will hurt the Dzoonokwa.”

“I don’t think that the dzoony will be that bothered about us taking the mask out the back of the building and setting it on fire,” Jim said. “There must be hundreds of these things lying around.”

“So buried in the mundane.” Blair shook his head. “It’s about the power of contamination. You’re right, though, it’s only going to work if the Dzoonokwa sees or knows that we have the mask.”

“So we’re taking it? The box isn’t alarmed. It’ll take me less than a minute to pick the lock.” Dean grinned insouciantly. “Sorry, officer.”

There had been, surprisingly in Jim’s judgment, no record on Dean. A kid that lived between the slats of society like Dean usually had had some run ins with the law. Plus, apparently, he had lock-picking skills. Dean was wriggling the fingers on his undamaged hand limbering them up.

“I’ll go get the key from the porters’ office.” Blair stalked off.

Sighing theatrically, Dean stuffed his hand in his jean’s pocket.

Not giving Dean the satisfaction of rising to his teasing, Jim scoped out the foyer. “Have you come across these dzoony things before? Do you know why it came after you?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder. “Never heard of them. I guess it’s like a Wendigo. We didn’t even have a hunt here. The job’s in Seattle, where Dad is. The week before, Dad was down south in Kent. The motel was convenient. Dad left us to do the jobs. We were in school.”

Blair returned with the key. When he opened the cabinet, he passed the mask over to Jim and then started rearranging the display. It might be a day or two before anyone noticed it was missing. The mask in Jim’s hands was both flimsy and substantial. Curious, he rotated the long wooden face, trying to plumb its heft. It felt like a wing. The hollow eyes gazed at nothing and the red ringed mouth was painted in an open scream.

“Ho,” Jim breathed. It was just a mask. There was nothing remotely supernatural about a piece of plywood. The case defied belief.

“I hope we don’t have to burn it,” Blair grumbled. “It won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we took it.”

Jim checked his watch. “Okay, it’s 15:30. I’ll drop you guys at Prospect and go down to Major Crimes, find out if anything’s turned up about your dad and see if any kids have gone missing around that motel.”

Blair made grabby hands for the mask. Jim was happy to pass it over. A strand of straw from the hank of hair stuck to his jersey. He flicked it off on to the floor.

Sam crouched down and picked it up, rubbing it between his fingers curiously.

“Here.” Jim separated his lock box key from his key ring. “We stored the Winchesters’ guns and other things in the safety box under my bed.”

Dean made an abortive grab for the key. “I bet I know more about guns than Mr. Hippy-let’s-talk-to-the-monster.”

“‘Cos violence solves everything,” Blair retorted.

Dean pointed out, “A good salt and burn solves most of our problems.”

“Blair has the key,” Jim ended the argument. “Truck, now.”

~*~

It took Dean three seconds after Blair had locked the apartment door behind them to demand the key.

“We’re trained. It will be perfectly safe to leave them laying around and it will be a Hell of--”

“Language,” Blair couldn’t believe that he had said that.

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think if that thing comes through the skylight we’ll have time to get up to Detective Ellison’s room and open his safe box? Look, I bet Sam knows more about guns than you do.”

Sam only shrugged in agreement. “It moved real fast.”

“Detective Ellison unloaded the shotguns. We have to open the box and we’ve got to load the salt rounds.”

“Salt rounds?”

“Cartridges filled with rock salt. Works against ghosts,” Sam said helpfully.

Blair blew out a hard breath and Dean smiled.

“Okay, Sam, you come and help me. Dean, you sit on that sofa before you fall over.” It was a petty jab, but Dean simply smirked and dropped onto the sofa – the war had been won.

Sam traipsed up after Blair into Jim’s sanctum. Bowed with a heavy dose of reluctance, Blair dragged out the safe box. The lock took a couple of jiggles before it opened. Sam dropped onto Jim’s bed and scrunched up cross-legged.

“Holy--” The box was filled to capacity.

“Why does Detective Ellison have the box? There’s no one here who’s irresponsible?” Sam asked curiously.

Blair rocked back on his heels. “I guess it’s habit.” He poked a cardboard box filled with orange finger-length cylinders.

“They’re the shells. We should put one shotgun by your bedroom door. Another one by the kitchen table. There should be a silver knife down the side of the sofa – on the left side.” Sam leaned over Jim’s balcony. “The coffee table in the living area would be good.”

Blair sank a little further onto the floor. “How long have you been doing this?”

Sam turned away from his assessment and stared at him levelly, he didn’t answer.

“Okay,” Blair changed the subject. “The Dzoonokwa is a spirit of the forests, why would it be in Cascade, Washington, hunting you two? Have you had any run ins with a Native American? A case… a job with Native Americans?”

Sam shrugged, a sad rise and fall of his shoulders that just hurt to see. “I don’t know everything that Dad does. Dean might know.”

“Okay, we’ll ask Dean.”

“Ask me what?” Dean yelled. “Bring the shotguns down. We need to set them by the bedroom door and the kitchen table. Leave a silver knife under Detective Ellison’s pillow.”

Sam pushed back Jim’s mound of pillows. “There’s one already here. The galvanised silver one.”

Dean snorted. “Should have guessed.”

Giving into the inevitability of the situation, Blair handed a shotgun over to Sam who checked the double barrelled chamber and found it empty. Dipping into the box, Sam liberated the box of shells, slotting one into in each barrel. Clambering off the bed, he lifted out a leather belt holding four wicked-looking knives before scampering back down the stairs to the living room. Gingerly, Blair picked up the second shotgun with his finger tips before making his own way down.

“Yeah, that’s filling me with confidence,” Dean said dryly.

“I don’t like guns.”

“They’re tools – liking doesn’t come into it.”

Blair set the shotgun on the kitchen table, unloaded. Sam had already propped the other one by Blair’s bedroom door.

“What did you want to ask?” Dean sagged bonelessly into the sofa, back half on the seat cushion, long legs under the coffee table. A knife lay on his lap. The blue sling hung around his neck like a cowboy’s neckerchief. His broken arm sort of looked abandoned lying on the cushion beside him. His thin cotton jacket was still wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

Blair knelt by the wood stove, setting a lit match to the pyramid of kindling and paper, coaxing it to life. “Any ideas why a Dzoonokwa is after you?”

“Dad took his journal with him,” Dean said, somewhat nonsensically to Blair. “I haven’t been on any jobs with anything like this. There was a Wendigo but that was a couple of years back. But Dad might have riled up a Manitou or something. These Dzoony things are local, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Kwaguilth mythology.”

“Whatever. Dad could have offended a local spirit on one of the jobs he’s done in the last month. That might be…” Dean trailed off not voicing that their Dad was missing.

Sam’s bottom lip wobbled.

“We could have tweaked its interest, you know,” Dean added, thinking out loud, “It’s a hunter thing. After a while you learn to see ghosts and stuff. Could have reacted to something. Dunno what, though; been in school for the last month.”

“Manitou are part of the Omàmiwinini tradition, they’re not really part of the North West,” Sam volunteered blindly. His fingers rested on Dr. Elliot’s file on the coffee table.

“Geek.” Dean rolled his eyes.

“Research!” Sam retorted pointing at the mask beside Dr. Elliot’s file. “We didn’t pick this thing up last month or a year ago. It’s recent.”

Dean struggled upright, cradling his arm. “Okay, then, it has to be Dad. He was down in Kent. I don’t know what the job was. Something real nasty or I would have been there.”

“Kent? Okay, research time.” Blair pulled his laptop from his backpack.

“Great.” Dean swung his feet onto the sofa and thumped his head on the end pillow. He was snoring a second later.

“Broken bone,” Sam offered in explanation.

^..^

Blair, as he read, realised that Sam was right and wrong about his inference that the Manitou were restricted to the other side of the country. As a concept the Manitou were everywhere -- regardless of the name that a spirit might be referred to, even if it wasn’t exactly clear what constituted a spirit or a soul. The Dzoonokwa, however, was of the Pacific North West, so the hypothesis that her interest in the kids was a recent event still stood.

The City of Kent seemed an unlikely place for a spirit to decide to gain revenge on a man by taking his children. But, Blair didn’t have a clue what John Winchester, ex-Marine, might have been doing in Kent. Disturbing sacred ground seemed most likely, given Sam’s stories of the Winchesters’ main mode of operation: digging up bones and burning them to get rid of ghosts.

Sam was staring at him across the kitchen table.

“I think that we need to do an appeasement ceremony. Ask the spirits for forgiveness. We have to talk to someone who knows this stuff,” Blair said.

“Uncle Bobby would know. But Uncle Bobby’s not answering his phone.”

“Huh.” Blair had missed that furtive phone call. “Anyone else?”

Sam looked at him mutely.

Cult of secrecy, Blair mused inwardly. Sam would answer the question. Blair started silently counting.

“Pastor Jim does things like Catholic stuff, exorcisms. Nothing like this.”

Blair grabbed a post-it. “Do you know his number?”

“Blue Earth, Minnesota, 555--,” Sam began.

~*~

That had been one seriously interesting conversation, but unfortunately not specifically helpful. Pastor Jim had agreed that the silver knives and silver rounds (none were in the lock box) would probably be effective against the forest spirit. He had agreed to consult some fellow hunters and call Blair back as soon as humanly possible. If Blue Earth, Minnesota, had not been over a thousand miles away, Blair knew that James Murphy would have already been setting out immediately to help.

“He’ll call back,” Blair summarised.

“Is Pastor Jim coming?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if soon as he’s talked to some of his colleagues he’ll be investigating flights out here. One thing he did say was that if the Dzoonokwa had attacked your Dad it would have probably stopped there. It doesn’t do the family line revenge thing.”

“Oh.” Forlornly, Sam turned to the balcony windows, stopping before them to look at his distorted reflection on the rain drizzled panes. “Where is he, then?”

“What?” Dean started, awake. “Oh, man.” He curled up over his broken arm, cradling one in the other.

“Dean, you all right?” Sam turned.

“Yes, I’m fine!” Dean snapped, proving that he was anything but.

Blair looked at the kitchen clock. “It’s time for a Voltarol.”

“Where’s Detective Ellison?” Dean growled.

It was actually getting late; the winter sun had set and the drizzly, sleet based rain would force anyone home. Blair scooped up the bottle of Voltarol from the kitchen table and lobbed it over to Sam.

“Give them here,” Dean demanded.

Blair left them to fight over who actually opened the child-proof bottle. He gazed at the house phone on the wall by the front door, trying to judge whether or not it was time to call Jim at Major Crimes. Deciding to leave it, for the moment, he consulted the innards of the fridge. Hanging off the door, he glumly concluded that they were desperately in need of a grocery shop.

Sam pushed by him, taking a bottle of water from the fridge door. “Thanks.” He went back to Dean’s side.

“Pizza? How does pizza sound?” Blair offered faced with a box of eggs, a stick of celery and two six packs of beer and, weirdly, lots of milk.

“Ham and pineapple,” Sam piped up.

“Freak,” Dean said. “Pepperoni.”

He now had a good excuse to call Jim. He answered his cell almost immediately.

“We’re ordering pizza. What do you want?”

“Grand Salmi Primo. I’ll be home in thirty minutes.”

“Got anything?”

“No news is good news.” Jim clicked the phone off.

Blair had four phone numbers memorised: Jim’s cell and office; his own and Paglaicci’s Pizza. He added a small Hawaiian and medium spicy pepperoni to their standard order of verde primo and Jim’s heart attack pizza.

~*~

Jim pulled into his parking spot and let the engine idle. John Winchester was a ghost; he hadn’t turned up on any of Jim’s searches. Not a single John Doe in Seattle, Cascade, Tacoma, Kent or Auburn matched Winchester’s physical description. The man’s jacket was a mismatch of trespassing; small-time credit card fraud and three run ins with Child Services.

A motorbike pulled up beside Jim’s truck. An insulated box on the back proclaimed Paglaicci’s Pizza; their food had arrived.

“Hey.” Jim switched off the engine and clambered out.

“Oh, Detective Ellison, hi. You got visitors?” The kid pushed up his visor and grinned.

“Yeah. How much do I owe you?” he asked, reaching into his back pocket. The rain was taking on a nasty level of sleetiness. He wanted to get inside. The amount made him blink, but he guessed that they’d probably have enough pizza left over for breakfast.

“Thanks.” The kid pocketed the bill and his tip, and was screeching away.

Jim hurried towards his loft. He liked his pizzas warm. Pausing at the entrance, he listened, upstairs; he could hear Blair puttering, the television on and Dean talking lowly to Sam. The shop beneath the loft was quiet, only the hum of electrics powering the burglar alarm. Sleet now ricocheted off the sidewalk. It was turning into a nasty, wintery night. Jim squinted, scanning through the veil of rain. A man hunched against the driving sleet, walked down the hill. Jim couldn’t smell anything even remotely wolf-like. And the whole state of Washington smelled like wet trees. Enticingly, the scent of the pizzas wafted upwards. He stepped into the hall and closed the door.

“Man, it’s about time!” Blair called down the stairs. “Hurry up, we’re starving.”

Jim jogged up the stairs. The loft was a warm haven. Blair seized the boxes and set them on the kitchen table. They were ready and waiting, table set -- down to the bottle of beers and empty glasses. Sam was perched on his knees on a chair, eagerly reaching for the boxes, as Dean slouched next to him.

As he shrugged out of his wet jacket, Jim spotted the gun propped against the table leg. “What?”

“It’s safer,” Dean said, eyes flat. “If that thing gets in we won’t have time to open your box.” He snagged a triangle of pizza.

“That’s mine!” Sam protested.

“I’ve been around guns forever, Detective Ellison, so has Sam. If anyone else comes in, we’ll collect them up and lock them away. Blair said there’s never any little kids in here any rate.”

Jim let it go, partly because he suspected that Dean was right about his and Sam’s experience with weapons and, secondly, he had seen the speed of that thing in the alley.

“Have you heard anything from Dad?” Sam asked around a mouthful of pizza.

“He hasn’t turned up in any hospitals or been picked up by the police,” Jim reported.

“No news is good news,” Blair parroted from their earlier conversation.

Dean shook his head, angry, but only seethed. He didn’t speak. As soon as he felt a little better, Jim knew that Dean was going to go looking for their Dad. Sam hiked his chair a little closer to Dean’s.

“I think,” Blair continued as he leaned over and poured milk into Sam and Dean’s glasses, “that we should go to Kent tomorrow and see what we can find.”

“Kent? Why Kent?” Jim asked, he would have thought that they would have been angling for a trip to Seattle.

“We figure,” Blair encompassed both Sam and Dean in his statement, “that Mr. Winchester caught the interest of the Dzoonokwa when he was on his last job, which was in Kent.”

“And do what in Kent?” Jim munched on a slice of pepperoni.

“Pastor Jim’s going to call us back about that,” Sam added.

“Pastor Jim?”

“Colleague of Dad’s,” Dean added his two cents worth. “Blair figures we might be able to make amends or something to stop it coming after us.”

Jim leaned back in his chair. “You know where your Dad was working?”

“Somewhere north of Lake Meridian.”

“We go there. You talk to the local police, find out if there’s been any weird things going on and we check it out,” Blair summarised.

“So there’s a plan,” Jim said sardonically.

“It’s reasonable, based on the research we’ve done,” Sam said proudly. “We know it’s a local spirit. Before this we were in Nebraska.”

“We find this spirit and we might find where Dad is,” Dean said.

“But Dad’s in Seattle,” Sam said. “It hasn’t done anything to Dad. It goes after kids. Dad’s on a job and he’s got caught up. He’ll be back. We can’t get in touch with Uncle Bobby, ‘cos Uncle Bobby’s gone to help him.”

Dean nodded vehemently in agreement, mouth stuffed with pizza.

“Sounds reasonable,” Jim said. And without knowing Winchester he had to take the kids’ assessment even if it was unpalatable. Jim didn’t understand the man’s job and, he really didn’t get leaving a seventeen year old and a twelve year old to fend for themselves for a week. The big hole in Sam and Dean’s assessment was that they couldn’t contact their Dad.

“So Kent tomorrow, Mr—Detective Ellison?” Sam double checked.

“Kent tomorrow, Sam. We’ll set out early, 08:30,” Jim assured.

“K.” Sam gnawed on an edge of pizza crust, happy with a concrete plan.

Dean stared at Jim, he was trying for cocky, but he only looked young and tired, the splay of freckles dark against his pale skin. Jim took a swig from his bottle of beer. Dean suddenly smirked and reached for his glass of milk.

“Don’t forget to drink your milk, Sammy.”

~*~

“Okay.” Blair held up three VHS tapes. “Star Trek: Generations; Speed or Pulp Fiction?”

Jim rolled his eyes heavenward. He didn’t argue though. Movie night meant that there was real butter and salt on the popcorn that he was fighting with Sam over. Jim’s hands were bigger; he was getting the biggest handfuls.

“Pulp Fiction’s supposed to be good,” Sam pointed out.

“Speed,” Dean said with the voice of authority.

Jim nodded, Sam was too young for Pulp Fiction and Star Trek was boring.

“I also have a National Geographic docu--” Blair ducked as he was pelted with popcorn. “Speed, it is.”

~*~

The film, in Blair’s estimation, could have been better edited. The last twenty minutes were pretty pointless. Dean had fallen asleep about halfway through, inevitably slipping sideways against the cushions. His deep breathing had been a relaxing counterpoint to the action film. Sam was wide, wide awake, determined not to fall asleep, even if it meant that he had to sit bolt upright.

“Bed,” Jim announced as the credits rolled.

“Dean? Dean?” Sam shoved his brother. “Move, man. Bed.”

“What? Not again.” Blearily, he scrubbed at his face. “Yeah, bed. Come on, Geekboy.”

They sort of dragged each other up.

“Do you need a pill?” Sam asked.

“Nah.” He shifted his arm in the sling.

“It’s time for your dose. They’re anti-inflammatory, they’ll help,” Jim said as he moved to get the tablets.

“We need to check the salt lines,” Dean said around a yawn.

“I’ll do that,” Blair said. The bag of salt was in its new position by the front door next to their boots. The only one that might need touching would be the line by the front door. Blair contemplated actually doing a semi-circle so when the door opened it didn’t grind the salt into the floor. Jim was going to insist on refinishing the floors across the whole loft. He crouched down, there really wasn’t any point following the line of the door.

“Blair!” Jim said urgently, chin up as poised as a hunting dog.

The double barrelled shotgun blast blew the lock clean out the door. Wood splinters flew. A booted kick smashed the door off its frame. Blair just managed to roll out of the way as it crashed to the floor.

“Police, freeze!” Jim had the shotgun from the kitchen table.

“Dad!”

Fuck. Lying on the floor, the man looked enormous to Blair. The intruder was tall, black haired with a scruffy beard. Solid was the only description which came to mind.

“Don’t shoot!” Sam shrieked.

“Don’t!” Blair echoed, struggling to sit up.

“Above you!” Mr. Winchester said inexplicitly, he pivoted, aiming up to the ceiling just as the skylight exploded inwards.

The Dzoonokwa smashed down in a shower of glass and metal, destroying the kitchen units and taking down half the wall.

“Holy shit!” Something gnarled and massive crouched on all fours in the kitchen.

Jim swung around, pulling at the trigger and nothing happened. The shotgun wasn’t loaded. The Dzoonokwa lashed out with one spindly, tree-knotted arm and Jim went head over heels, smashed over the length of the kitchen table. Winchester stepped over Blair and let loose with both barrels. She jerked but made a slow step, inching forward, knuckles tapping the floor. Dean elbowed Sam into the flimsy protection of Blair’s room and grabbed the gun by the door. As she turned to the movement, her pendulous breasts swung.

“Ho!”

The hair rose on the back of Blair’s neck. One-handed, Dean fired going for the head. Wood splintered off her rigid mask-like face.

“Silver!” Winchester instructed, dropping the shotgun and coming up with an enormous gun. Each report was deafeningly loud. Blair flinched, hands over his ears. The Dzoonokwa howled. She crouched down, ready to jump, aiming at Dean. Extending clawed hands, she leaped.

Jim was suddenly in the way, barrelling into her. Engulfed in her encompassing breadth, he brought up a long silver knife into the open branches of her ribcage. They fell backwards, taking Dean with them. Her howl reverberated off the walls.

Winchester flung himself at the spirit-form, knife flashing in the air. Straddling her back, two-handed he drove the blade into her back. Violently, she arched, throwing Winchester off. In the wooden mask form the Dzoonokwa was invulnerable to their blades.

Blair was up and on his feet and hurdling over the television before he knew what he was doing. He snatched up the Dzoonokwa mask from the coffee table.

He held it above his head. “Dzoonokwa!”

She froze, clenched fist held high. Jim and Dean lay beneath her. Carefully, Blair took a step to the right, closer to the wood stove.

“I have you. I have your form. I take it and I make it mine!” Blair darted sideways and threw the mask into the fire. The straw hair went up like kindling.

She howled.

“Throw it at her. Throw it at her!” Sam yelled, penned in Blair’s room by the fighting.

“Yes!” Winchester reached past him into the fire.

Blair watched aghast, as the flames engulfed Winchester’s arm. The mask was a flaming torch. He didn’t throw it, he ran at the spirit. There was no hesitation, the man thrust the mask into the branched cradle of her ribcage. She clawed at her chest, nails scrabbling at the embedded mask. Blair could clearly see a knotted gall deep beneath her skeletal-tree frame that throbbed like a beating heart.

The flames sparked and she went up like a roman candle.

“Holy shit!”

She writhed, caught in the intensity of the conflagration.

Scrabbling across the floor, Jim dragged Dean out of the way by the scruff of his neck. Winchester ducked away from the Dzoonokwa rolling to the floor. Blair wasted a bare second, before grabbing a throw off the back of the sofa and falling on the man, beating out the flames running up his arm.

Lying across Winchester, Blair breathed heavily. It was astounding. The fires burned inwards, disintegrating the spirit. She howled a final, disconsolate ‘Ho’ and collapsed in on herself.

The smoke alarm in the kitchen suddenly let loose with an ear piercing shriek.

Sam laughed, then smacked his hand over his mouth. “I think it needs new batteries,” he mumbled.

Lying beneath Jim, Dean sniggered. “Man, that was awesome.”

“Move,” Winchester rumbled. He sat up, pushing Blair off. The heavy leather of his jacket was scorched. “Thanks.”

Jim clambered to his feet, hauling Dean with him. He skirted around the remains, dropping Dean, almost casually, onto the sofa. His next stop was the fire extinguisher from the kitchen. The hiss of the CO2 gas stamped out the final, guttering flame.

“Sammy,” Winchester said. Sam flung himself at his Dad. He caught him one-armed, clasping him against his side. “Good call.”

“Sir,” Dean said tiredly.

“How you doing, son?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“Good. Get your stuff.”

“What? No,” Jim stated.

“How are you going to stop me?” Winchester asked almost conversationally.

Jim only held a fire extinguisher. Winchester had his Colt, held anything but casually at his side. He released Sam, who moved straight to Dean. Insanely, Blair realised that both men were exactly the same height. Where Jim’s eyes were icy, Winchester’s were dark and impenetrable.

“You can’t take them,” Jim said resolutely. “I’m arresting you for child endangerment and abandonment.”

Winchester raised his weapon. “You’re going to shoot me with your fire extinguisher?”

“You going to shoot me with your Colt in front of your kids?”

“I don’t have to kill you. I just have to stop you. Dean, you have your orders.”

Without a word, Dean rushed to Blair’s room. The bags from the motel were still packed, just tossed on the floor.

“They’re in my custody,” Jim said.

“They’re my boys.”

Emergency sirens sounded in the distance. One of the neighbours must have called the police and the Fire Department. They hadn’t investigated the noise, they knew better.

Dean tossed Sam one of their bags. “Go, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam clasped it to his chest. He shot a fast glance between his father, Jim and Blair. “Thank you, Blair. It’s been… uhm…Man, I’m sorry about the kitchen. Thanks, Detective Ellison.”

“Sam, you dork.” Moving rapidly, Dean pushed him quickly to the door. He grimaced at the standoff. “Yeah, what Sam said, Detective.”

Then they were outside and clattering down the stairs.

“How are we going to do this?” Winchester asked. The reverberating shriek of the sirens was closer. “You can’t protect my boys from what’s out there. You can try, but you don’t know a tenth of what I know. I’m leaving now, if you come after me, I’m shooting you in the leg.”

Winchester backed up. Jim gritted his teeth. Winchester stepped out into the hall and then he was gone.

“What!” Blair shrieked. “You can’t let him go!”

Jim dropped the fire extinguisher with a clang. He looked around the devastated loft. “I just did, Chief. I just did.”

Epilogue

TS fic: Dzoonokwa Part II

2009-06-20T16:10:47Z

Dzoonokwa
By Sealie

Part Two
Blair sat cross-legged on the floor before his laptop, trying the define the parameters of his meta search. The swirling starfield of his screensaver mocked him.

'Tall. Leathery tree. Hair like straw. Fat, red lips.’ Inputted into Alta Vista had led him to a fishing website. And ‘Fat, red lips’ on its own had raised a sardonic eyebrow from Jim Ellison. Blair had turned the laptop away from the sofa where Sam slept, in a loose curl of adolescent exhaustion.

Logging onto the Cascade U Web of Science anthropological database had not yielded even a scrap of a clue.

“No luck, Chief?” Jim said from where he was baking (a sure sign that he was seriously upset – although his bread was to die for).

“Nah.”

Jim gestured with his mixing spoon at the salt line at the balcony doors. “Look up protective things, then. I don’t believe I said that.”

“Oooh.” Blair liked that idea. “I mean, I know some stuff. We could smudge the apartment with sage.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Hah ha.” Blair tapped at his laptop.

“Look,” Jim began as he pulled off his apron. “I’m going to go down to the department and see what I can find out.”

“About red lipped monsters? At the station?” Blair said incredulously.

“No.” Jim almost but didn’t quite roll his eyes. “Dean and Samuel Winchester. Dollars to donuts there’ll be something on Dean.”

“Jim--” Blair immediately reprimanded. His sentinel was in escape mode; escaping the impossibility that was an attack by a supernatural being.

Jim was halfway out the door. “Keep an eye on the kids, don’t let them leave.”

“I don’t think that that will be a problem,” Blair said to a closed door. Sam slept with his mouth open. The snuffly snore was kind of cute.

^..^

It took him an inordinate amount of time to remember to redo the salt line at the front door after Jim had scuffed it up. But in the meantime, he had found a blessing for Holy Water (he wasn’t too sure if since he was Jewish he could bless water, but if push came to shove he was going to try it) and hoards of information on sacred, silver athames and dhamas which were good weapons against the unclean and undead. The problem was to use a blade you had to get kind of close. That thing had had claws. And where did you buy a sliver dagger in Cascade? Well, there was that occult store on Teavish. Looked like he was going to give Hagen a visit.

On the sofa behind him, Sam smacked his lips and rolled onto his back, waking up.

Blair checked his watch. It was good timing; Dean was due a cognitive check.

“Hey?” he said softly, shutting the lid of his laptop, as Sam blinked at the ceiling.

Sam hummed under his breath, before stretching his skinny limbs like sticks in the over large t-shirt.

“I fell asleep,” he announced, surprised.

“You had a long night.”

“Dean?” Sam cast a confused glance at the fuzzy blanket draped over his legs.

“Still asleep, but it’s time to check on him.”

“Concussion check,” Sam said astutely, throwing off the blanket.

“Yeah,” Blair said slowly, “How old are you, Sam?”

Sam hunched cagily, but answered, “Twelve and a half.”

Ah, the ‘half’ issue, important when you were almost a teenager.

“And Dean?”

“Seventeen, a week ago.”

“You want to check on, Dean? Name, date, where--”

“I know the routine!” Sam said with typical kid waspishness. The thing was most kids didn’t know. Sam disappeared into Blair’s room. Consulting his watch, Blair realised that it was past time for lunch. It had been a fast morning. There was a disgruntled mumble, followed by a squeak of protest, from his room.

The phone rang, startling him. “Fuck, more jumpy than I thought.” Blair scrambled to his feet, running to the phone on the wall by the front door.

“Sandburg,” he announced.

“Chief? Everything okay on the Western Front?”

“Yeah, Sam just woke up. He’s checking on Dean.”

“I’m on the way back to the loft. I picked up gyros and soup. Should be there in about five minutes.”

Blair’s stomach rumbled. “Did you find out anything?”

“Tell you later.”

Dean stumbled out the bedroom, sling askew around his neck. He was pale and given the dark shadows under his eyes, the sleep hadn’t appeared to have helped. But then again he was due another painkiller. Sam stayed close, only a breath between them.

“Jim’s on his way in with food. Should be here in a couple of minutes. You want your pain pill now, or wait until you’ve had something to eat?”

“He needs it now,” Sam piped. “His freckles are out. You only see his freckles when he’s sick.”

“Shut up, dweeb.” Dean fiddled with the sling setting it and his arm more comfortably.

“It’s true!” Sam’s voice rose.

“Sit,” Blair directed.

Dean sat with a thud. “Coffee, man? I need a coffee. Black.”

That was the voice of an addict. Blair wasn’t going to deprive a fellow addict and he had been drinking it since he was thirteen. Caffeine was supposed to help with pain pills – synergism or something.

The drip coffee wasn’t that old. Dean accepted the cup with a heartfelt sigh. Blair shook out two of the painkillers from their container. Voltarol – not the strongest painkiller on the market, but pretty serious. If the doctors had prescribed these, Dean had to be feeling the burn.

Dean tossed the tablets back and drowned them in a scalding mouthful of coffee.

“Where’s--” Dean’s face puckered up, “--Detective Ellison?”

“He’s here,” Jim announced as he opened the door. He held two brown paper bags: one piled with groceries and the other with the distinctive logo of Zorba the Greek’s Restaurant (the owner Philip had a sense of humour). He sniffed. “Coffee?”

“Would you like one?” Blair said innocently.

“It stunts your growth. Ah, see that it has.”

Blair sniffed loudly at the crack, but Sam spoiled his attempt at being aloof by sniggering. Blair mock glared at the small kid, but judging from Dean’s obviously still growing, gangly height, Sam was probably also going to be tall.

Dean slurped at his coffee noisily. Jim shook his head, letting it go, and began to unpack the lunch bag. Sam pounced on a chicken monstrosity with a, “can I have this one, please. Can I?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Sam took a gianormous bite. “I’m starved.”

Dean snorted under his breath.

“I am,” Sam said out of the corner of his mouth. “I’m growing.”

“That you are, Bitch.”

“None of that language in our home,” Jim barked.

Dean dropped his gaze. “He is, though. He’s grown this winter.”

Sam nodded happily. “Uncle Bobby says that I’m probably gonna be taller than Dean and,” he said with relish, “Dad.”

“You need your vitamins.” Blair pushed a container of salad across the table.

Sam took a proactive bite of his sandwich, filling his mouth to capacity.

“So,” Jim said with a gravitas that stopped everyone mid chew, “do you have an emergency way to contact your dad?”

Sam closed his mouth, rabbit-like over his cheek-fulls. Dean froze, bread stuffed between his teeth.

“Your father, John Winchester. Corporal, Company Echo-2/1, ex-marine.”

“You been checking up on us?” Dean spat lettuce as he stood.

“Sit down, son.”

“I’m not your son!”

“Sit down, Dean,” Jim ordered. “It’s a reasonable question. He should be worried about you. If he’s been trying to contact you at your hotel and he got no answer, he’ll be very worried.”

Dean rocked onto the balls of his feet.

“Do you have any idea why he wouldn’t be answering his cell phone?” Jim took Dean’s phone from his own pocket and set it on the table.

“He’s on a job,” Dean said reluctantly, visibly stopping from snatching up the phone. “He doesn’t always have the time to check up on us.”

“Catching a doppelgänger?” Jim said dryly.

“Sam! You didn’t!” Dean rounded on his brother, indignant.

“Dean, sit,” Jim said solidly.

Dean sat, slumping in the hard wood chair.

“I don’t pretend to understand what your dad thinks he’s doing.” He held up his hand stopping Dean’s protest. “I’m talking. The manager at the hotel said that she hasn’t seen your father since you checked in a week ago. Have you had contact in that week?”

Dean glanced at Sam, before shaking his head.

“A week? Shall we make a missing person’s report?” Jim’s tone was neutral.

It was like watching an interrogation, Blair thought somewhat horrified. Jim had all the cards. He had evidently spent a productive morning at the department and had found a wealth of information on his temporary wards and their missing father.

Dean shook his head.

“If he’s gone a week, man. We should file the report,” Blair interjected.

“How often does your dad leave you and Sammy alone, Dean? And for how long?”

“It’s not like that! He’s got a job to do. He’s got a job that no one understands. But someone’s got to do it.”

“Hunting monsters?”

“You saw it. They’re real.” Dean shook his head in frustration. “No one believes. Even when they see them. They kill people. They killed --. It’s not the fuckin’ X-Files. They’re real and they’re out there. You saw that monster in the alley and you don’t believe it.”

Jim interlaced his fingers and set them on the table top. “Was that a doppelgänger?”

“No!” Dean said incredulously. “Doppelgängers are like banshees, they’re like ghosts that haunt you to death. That was a monster, like a werewolf or a Wendigo.”

Wendigo? Blair wondered. Native American monster, I think?

“So the attack was unrelated to your dad’s,” Jim hunted for the word, “job?”

“Are you a hunter?” Dean countered.

“I can be,” Jim answered.

Dean’s mouth fell open.

“Blair?” Jim said, and since he was using Blair’s given name, Blair sat up straighter. “What have you found out this morning?”

“I haven’t identified the being. But it was corporeal and bled, so I’m guessing that silver, especially if it’s blessed, might harm or kill it. We need a knife, man. I think that I can get one from Hagen.”

Sam took a forgotten bite of his sandwich and swallowed, trying to be discrete. Dean just sat watching.

“You haven’t answered the question, Dean. How long does your father normally leave you both alone?”

Dean shook himself. “Usually, it’s one or two nights max. Last year or so, he can stay away three-four.”

“Okay, I am going to make a missing persons report and make a few phone calls. We need to find your dad. If this thing was hunting you, it might be hunting him and he’s gone missing. At the very least he needs to know what has happened. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean breathed.

^..^

Dean and Sam were sacked out on the sofa watching a video of Godzilla. Jim nursed a beer on the balcony, even though it was early evening and the sun was just setting casting a wintery light. Fucking senses. Fucking sentinel stuff. If he didn’t believe the evidence of his senses, he might as well hand in his detective’s shield and move to the Funny Farm.

Monsters: Wendigos; Werewolves and Doppelgängers.

Perhaps the Funny Farm would be the best place to relocate to.

It was insane.

Inside the loft, Sam laughed at something on the television and Dean chuckled with him.

A familiar chug-chink heralded Blair’s junker of a car pulling into its parking space. The kid tumbled out of the car, big cardboard box in his arms. Jim cringed, wondering what sort of smelly crap Blair had got from Hagen’s Alternative Therapies store. Blair shut the side door with his butt and didn’t bother or forgot to lock it. He rarely bothered; trusting the residents of Prospect.

Jim upturned the bottle into the bare earth in one of the pots that Blair said he would plant organic herbs in come spring. They probably would taste a little better with a hint of beer. The bottle he tossed in the recycle bin set on the balcony for just that purpose. Living with a wannabe hippy could be a little irritating. He slipped back into the loft, only opening the door a fraction, keeping the heat inside. Slowly, he mentally, flicked his sense of touch dial in response to the warmth.

Blair barrelled into the loft shedding coat, scarf, hat and gloves. The two boys turned on the sofa and peered over the back as he started unpacking the box on the kitchen table. The contents seemed to be mainly books. Dean’s interest returned to the television. Sam clambered over the back of the sofa – Jim winced at the sneakers on his upholstery – and went over.

Blair jabbed a finger at a red hardcover book. “That’s a fascinating book. I don’t know if it’s going to be that helpful, though.”

Jim rolled his eyes. How the kid researched anything with the way that he got sidetracked was a mystery. He crossed the room, dialling up his sense of touch a fraction more, enjoying the indoor warmth. There was an intricately wrought knife on the table, the blade edged with three sides. Jim headed on over to check it out. It was badly balanced, not very good for throwing or for slashing. At best it would be a stabbing blade.

“It’s ceremonial, man. But it is silver.”

Jim flipped it, head over tail. The hilt was weighted. It made a satisfying smack in his hand. The hilt was shaped in what Jim charitably thought was an ugly man with sharp teeth or a monkey. He hefted it, to throw it against the main post holding up the ceiling.

“Don’t!” Blair snatched it from his hand. “You’ll probably damage the point.”

“What’s the use of it?”

“The support is hard. People are softer. Throw it at the sofa.”

Dean turned in his blanket nest and watched warily.

“I’m not throwing it at the sofa, I just got it re-covered.” Jim huffed. “Did you get anything of any use?”

Blair waved at the books with the blade. He tutted loudly and pulled out a satisfactorily long, jaggedly sharp knife.

“Silver?”

“Hagen said it was.”

Jim examined it minutely, which for him was pretty minutely.

“Galvanised,” Dean supplied, standing next to him. The kid moved very quietly and had got close before Jim had registered him. “Like good silverware.”

“Will it work?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder. “Should do. Dad’s got a couple.”

“You know we are assuming that this thing’s coming back,” Blair pointed out. “I mean it might not. It might not even be evil just hungry.”

In the face of both Jim and Dean’s stares, Blair raised his chin.

“If it’s a new species like a sasquatch, we could try reasoning with it.”

“It attacks children,” Jim said.

Sam bristled at that.

“You see that thing you don’t try to reason with it. We shoot first, throw knives and ask questions after,” Jim said implacably.

“I’m just saying--” Blair threw his hands in the air. “Fine.”

“I left a message at the motel, giving my cell phone number so if your Dad turns up he can contact us. I’ve also asked Henri – a detective in Major Crimes – to check the hospitals in and around Seattle for your father.”

Dean looked positively constipated.

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the motel,” Jim continued relentlessly, “and get your things and bring them back here.”

~*~

“Bye!” Sam waved at Dean and Jim pulling away in the Ford into the campus traffic.

Blair marvelled at Jim’s machinations; he had separated the boys, therefore Dean wouldn’t run away. Sam was utterly fascinated by the artefacts which Blair has collected from his trips to Central Africa. A casual promise to show Sam the artefacts in his office had evolved into a day trip with Blair, acting as assistant when they took the opportunity to hunt through the Rainier Library.

“I’ve never been to a University before.” Wide-eyed Sam took in the dreaming spires.

“This is my building.” Blair pointed at the grey, ornate façade. “It houses Anthropology, Social Studies and Psychology.”

He had to keep a hand wrapped around one of the straps of Sam’s backpack as he drew them to his office in the bowels of the building. Sam patted the strip of paper which declared that ‘Blair Sandburg’ was an occupant in the office.

“You’ve got so much stuff,” Sam marvelled, faced with the mess of an office.

Blair sort of half-grimaced, embarrassed. “It seems to breed. Books, man, food for the soul.”

“I like libraries.” Sam drifted into the office.

“What have you been reading?” Blair plonked down on his seat and force of habit led him to switch on his computer.

“School stuff.” Sam plucked a red, leather backed tome off a stacked shelf.

“What do you like to read?” Blair asked absently, as his email opened. There was nothing flagged up as requiring immediate attention.

“I like studying,” Sam said with a hint of defensiveness.

“Yeah, so do I.” Blair leaned back. He found a quiet moment to simple study the kid. The book hunger bled from every pore. Sam had a book in one hand even as he reached for another. “There is some order,” Blair offered.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Blair pointed at the shelf directly under his collection of handmade leather and sisal bags. “That’s my fiction collection – some of it – you might enjoy the Willard Price books. Amazon Adventure is the first one.”

“Where are the handbags from?” Sam raised an impish eyebrow.

“Kenya, Ghana and Uganda,” Blair answered evenly.

“So many books,” Sam said again, enviously.

“Knock yourself out. What we’re going to do today is think. We don’t know what that thing is, but someone, somewhere will have written about it. We know what it looked like. We will find it.”

“I’ve never done research before.”

“Well, then,” Blair said with a plumy British accent, “time to learn a new skill set.”

“So how are you going to start?” Sam moved around the table to Blair’s side.

“I’ve tried cross referencing its physical description on the on-line databases and I didn’t find anything. Dean said that it looked like a Wendigo, so I’m going to find out about those beings.”

“Okay, so how?”

“Well, this --” Blair clicked on an icon on his computer desktop, “--is the Rainier University Anthropological library database which links to the So-Sci network.” Another click and he opened Netscape. “I also find Alta Vista pretty useful.”

~*~

“Pack up your stuff,” Jim ordered, it shouldn’t take too long; it appeared that they had the contents to fill one or two bags each. “It’ll be safer at the loft.”

“Like Hell. How’s my Dad going find us when he comes back? Because he will come back!” Dean bristled from head to tail.

“I’ve given the motel owner twenty dollars, she will pass on the message,” Jim said evenly. There was a scent of gun oil and old metal. The metallic greasy scent tingled against his lips. There was an old gun, probably a shotgun secreted somewhere.

“Yeah, right.” Dean stood in the centre of their grimy motel-apartment.

“When your Dad does make contact, I’ll give her fifty. I’m good for it.”

“You made of money, man?”

“No,” Jim drawled, “that’s why I’m not paying for your motel room until the end of the week.”

~*~

“So,” Blair summarised, “A Wendigo is part of the traditional belief system of tribes the Ojibwa/Saulteaux, the Cree, and the Innu/Naskapi/Montagnais -- Algonquian-speaking. It’s cannibalistic, malevolent and supernatural. Do you think we’re dealing with a Native American Manitou?”

“You’re asking me?” Sam actually pointed at his chest.

“Yes,” Blair answered without hesitation. “You know more about this than me.”

“Dad kinda kept me out in the dark until I was ten. I only did my first ghost hunt a year ago.”

“You’re a bright kid. You saw it. What did you think when you saw it?”

“I thought it looked like it was made out of sticks, wood.” Sam drew his hand down his face. “Its face was fixed with fat, red lips until it changed and then Detective Ellison’s rounds hurt it.”

“Really?” Blair cocked his head to the side. “Sort of maybe like a mask?”

They both turned and looked at the collection of African masks on the wall opposite the handbags.

“Do you,” Sam hazarded, “have Indian masks?”

“Native American,” Blair corrected without rancour. “No, it’s not my field. But, there’s a whole museum devoted to the North West tribes two minutes walk from this office.”

“Come on, then.” Sam launched off the arm of Blair’s computer chair. “Let’s go.”

“Ha!” Blair echoed the glee of the chase. “Let’s go.”

~*~

“Put the shotgun on the bed, I’ll unload the shells from the gun,” Jim said absently as he cleaned out the bathroom.

Dean swore under his breath. In the privacy of the bathroom, Jim could grin outright. He wished that he’d been a sentinel when he had been training the new recruits in boot camp.

~*~
Part III

jimandblair @ 2009-06-20T17:04:00

2009-06-20T16:05:39Z

TS fic: Dzoonokwa

Fandom: Sentinel with guests from Supernatural.
Gen
PG-15
Warnings: horror elements (there’s a surprise).
Spoilers: none -- set pre season SPN and first season TS

briarwood and Cindy (Combs) were kind enough to beta this fic prior to me inflicting it on betagodess as part of the Scrapbook. lilguppee gave it a thorough going over before I posted it. Thank you.

I’ve made a few additional changes. Any errors are mine, all mine… \o/

Dzoonokwa
By Sealie

“What the hell is that smell?” Jim wrinkled his nose. He set his half-eaten burger on the dash board.

In the gloom of the car on a midnight stakeout, Blair’s raised eyebrow had to be obvious to the sentinel. “Why do you always ask me? I mean, it’s not like I have a super-nose.”

“It sort of smells like wet wolf, but not?” Jim shook his head.

“Wolf? We’re in the middle of Cascade.”

Jim popped open his door and unfurled his long legs. He stood, the line of his frame screaming of tension.

“Jim?”

Still sniffing, he stalked – definitely stalked – across the street to the gloomy lamppost which was the only source of illumination in the drizzly night. The hair rose on the back of Blair’s neck. Muscles bunched, head down, Jim was a heartbeat from sprinting.

Snap, he was away.

“Shit.” Blair abandoned his hoagie to the floor and scrabbled across the Ford’s bench seat and out on Jim’s side. Ahead of him, Jim made an abrupt left turn into an alley.

“Jim!” Blair hollered, scooting around a garbage can and pushing a filled shopping cart into a mound of cardboard. Someone yelped. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

He caught a drain pipe and used it to swing rapidly into the alley. Silence blanketed the grimy scene. Narrow and dark, Blair could barely make out the details. A single light above a strip-club back door did little to shed light on the goings on. Squinting, glasses smeary with drizzle, Blair crept forward. Shadows and darkness resolved into Jim standing, his back to Blair, feet shoulder width apart, arms raised.

“Police! Stop or I’ll shoot.”

“Shoot it! Shoot it!” A high pitched voice shrieked.

The report of the weapon reverberated through the alley. Jim stood stance picture-perfect for shooting. Each shot was shockingly loud. A tall stringy figure rocked back with each unforgiving impact. Then its head jerked back with a spray of glistening splat. The meagre light caught an elongated face, warped and out of sorts. The figure dropped, but twisted – impossibly stretched out – onto all fours. A blink and it was gone; bounding over a dumpster, leaping up to a tucked up fire escape, storeys high above their heads.

Blair let his backpack swing down from his shoulder. “What the Hell was that? That wasn’t…”

“Can it, Chief. Give me the first aid kit.”

“What?” Dismissing his question (for the moment), Blair pulled the compact first aid kit that Jim insisted that he drag hither and yon.

“What do you need?”

“Sterile trauma dressing.” Tucking his Sig in the back of his jeans, Jim dropped to his haunches. Blair had missed the sprawled form that Jim had stood over so protectively,

He scuttled over and slapped the dressing into Jim’s outstretched hand. “What was that?”

“Not now, Chief.” Without looking, Jim pointed behind, finger unerringly aiming at a wheeled dumpster piled high with life’s detritus. “There’s a kid, young by the sound of it, hiding under there.”

“Oh.” Blair bent over but couldn’t pierce the darkness. “Hello?” He was too far away. Left, right, he squinted, trying to see any movement. Girding himself, he left the sentinel’s side

“It’s gone, Chief. Can’t hear it. Can’t smell it.”

Hesitantly, Blair knelt on wet, slick tarmac. “It?” He glanced back.

Nostrils flaring, eyes dilated, Jim was focused on his patient. The teenager was a huddle of jeans and plaid shirts, lax in unconsciousness. Jim ran sentinel-sure fingers over the kid’s head and down this neck. The dressing was already firmly wrapped around the kid’s forearm. Finishing his assessment, Jim rolled the lanky teen into the recovery position carefully guiding his right arm.

The kid moaned with the movement, eyes flickering open. “Sam?” he asked.

“Don’t move,” Jim ordered. “You’ve got a broken arm. And probably a concussion.”

“Sammy!” The kid surged against Jim’s grip.

“Chief, the kid. Under the dumpster. See if he’s all right.”

“Oh.” Blair dropped lower as if doing a push up. Two big dark eyes met his.

“SAMMY!” the order was unmistakable.

Sam shot out from under the dumpster as if from a cannon.

“Whoops.” Blair grabbed a hank of wet shirt, stopping the kid from barrelling into the other boy.

“Dean! Dean!” He shrieked, flailing.

“It’s okay.” Blair yanked the squirming kid back, easily holding him against his chest. “It’s okay. He’s hurt his arm. Don’t jump on him.”

The older kid – Dean – sat up despite all Jim’s protests.

“Give him to me, now.” White, pinched with pain, arm cradled against his chest, his tone was resolute.

“Careful, careful!” Blair chided even as he released the child.

Sam reached across the distance and burrowed into Dean’s lap. Jim kept a hand on Dean’s back, helping him stay upright as he swayed. Jim flipped open his cell phone in his other hand.

“This is Ellison. I need a paramedic unit and CSI at Esterbrook and West in Downtown.”

^..^

The stretched out feeling that bespoke exhaustion from an all-nighter lay heavy on Blair as he sprawled in the emergency room chair. The hard, scooped chair did little to support his aching back and its cold plastic – easy to clean, Blair supposed – was an added misery. Sam huddled next to him drowning in the folds of Blair’s winter coat. Feet on the chair, knees tucked in tight, backpack clutched against his chest, he was a curiously familiar figure.

“He’s going to be okay,” Blair said, and kicked himself for the triteness.

Sam peered up at him disdainfully through long straggly bangs.

Blair tried again. “Jim thinks that he’s just broken one of the bones in his forearm.”

“Which one? Radius or ulna?” Sam asked.

“He didn’t tell me.” Blair brushed his own arm, remembering how Jim had handled the older kid. “Ulna, I guess.”

Sam brought his arm up in an instinctive blocking motion. “Makes sense, I guess.”

“Karate?” Blair hazarded.

Sam shuffled down in the chair and continued his unrelenting stare at the treatment room doors. His vigilance was rewarded and the electronic doors swung inwards. Jim was revealed with an upright Dean wobbling at his side. Only a deft hand at his elbow seemed to be keeping him on his feet. He weaved like a sapling beside Jim, the stalwart oak tree.

“Dean, Dean. Dean!”

Galvanised, Dean straightened, his uninjured arm coming out to offer a wing of succour for his younger brother. Sam fitted under like a piece in a jigsaw.

Blair picked up Sam’s backpack and ambled over.

“What did they say?”

“I couldn’t get in touch with Dean’s father.” Reaching into his pocket he pulled out an unfamiliar cell phone. “The slashes needed cleaning and stitches – which I convinced the attending needed to be addressed asap given the crap on that thing’s claws. I had to talk to Rae in social services, and got temporary custody so I could get Dean seen to. Luckily, the break’s not that serious, manipulation set the bone right.”

The fabric from the arm of Dean’s checked shirt had been cut off. The kid had a fancy brace but no cast – sensible; so that they could keep an eye on the lacerations.

“I don’t need your help,” Dean said angrily.

Jim shot a frustrated, quelling glare down at him. “I took responsibility for you. I could have easily handed you and your brother over to Child Services.”

Beneath Dean’s arm, Sam made a tiny bleat.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Dean reiterated.

Jim leaned forward and Blair could almost see a mantling eagle. “I guess you didn’t need my help with that thing either.”

“Are you--” Sam piped up, and squeaked as Dean squeezed him hard.

Dean glowered but kept his mouth shut. Jim ground his teeth.

“So,” Blair said brightly, rocking back on his heels. “Back to the loft.”

“I dunno, Chief, there’s always juvie.”

Sam made a loud, shocked intake of breath. Dean jerked back trying to free himself from Jim’s grip on the back of his shirt, but Sam clinging like a limpet prevented the escape.

“So, Dean, what is it? Our place or juvie? There’s no beds available at CS,” Jim said flatly.

“Jim? What? You can’t.”

“Can it, Chief. It’s Dean’s decision.”

Rock and a hard place had nothing on Jim and his authoritarian bullshit, Blair thought. Dean was white pale, his freckles in stark relief. The kid glared up at Jim, green eyes unwavering. Jim met the stare, unflinchingly.

“Dean?” Sam sniffed and the decision was made.

“Your place, man,” Dean said sullenly.

“Cool.” Blair clapped his hands together. The three jumped. “I think that that’s the best idea. Safer.”

Safer… safer from a weird-assed creepy thing that could leap over buildings in a single bound.

^..^

Jim guided a dead-on-his-feet Dean into the bathroom. Blair had the distinct feeling that shock and pain medication kept the younger man quiescent. Sam watched with trepidation as the bathroom door swung shut.

“Sit.” Blair pointed at the stool by the kitchen counter. “I’ll make some breakfast. Eggs?” He turned to the fridge, mentally assessing the supplies before he even opened the door. Bacon, pancakes and syrup would go down a treat.

Arms filled, he turned back to the counter. Sam sat, hunched, checking the closed bathroom door, balcony windows, skylight above the kitchen and back to the door. He kept up the constant scrutiny as Blair set out a frying pan and added a dash of olive oil.

“Jim’s a trained medic and a police officer; he knows what he’s doing.”

“Have you got any salt?” Sam blurted.

“Yesh.” Blair wrinkled his nose at the condiments as he cracked an egg into a mixing bowl. Rapidly, he cracked a half-dozen eggs, added a dash of milk and seasoned them with a twist of salt and pepper.

“No. A bag?”

“It’s not good for you, man. It’ll stunt your growth.” Blair carefully laid slices of bacon on the skillet.

Sam glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows leading to the balcony.

“Oh.” Realisation slowly dawned. Anal retentive, buy-in-bulk Jim had a big bag of salt. Blair retrieved it from the back of the cupboard and set it before the kid.

Sam’s roving study, inevitably moved back to the bathroom door. He didn’t touch the salt, even though his fingers twitched.

“Keep an eye on the bacon.” Blair snagged up the bag and crossed to the balcony windows. Laying salt lines was a known method of warding an area. Once, after a pretty spectacular week of nightmares, Blair had woken up in the middle of sleepwalking, pouring salt by the back door. Jim had been pretty phlegmatic in the face of the wavy lines and throughout Blair’s explanation that his mom, Naomi, sometimes liked to lay salt lines when vibes were bad.

Sam watched him pour a thick line across the threshold, his gaze old and worldly wise. The bacon popped and sizzled.

“You know about salt?” Sam gnawed at a finger nail.

“Yep, pretty standard.” Blair headed back over, handing off the salt to the kid, wanting to see what he would do. “You want to do the front door while I do the eggs?”

Plainly thinking so hard that he could barely walk in a straight line, Sam complied.

“Don’t forget the big door.” Blair pointed at the red door with the big number 4 painted on. How were they going to ward the skylight?

Sam knelt, shuffling along, placing a perfectly straight line of salt, he had done it before.

Salt for protection. A flash of memory -- spray of blood, impossibly long face. The jump had been impossible for anything human. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Jim; engrossed by Dean. Sam hadn’t batted an eyelash in the face of a monster. Monster? Holy cow. There had to be a rational explanation.

The bacon hissed and Blair jumped.

Sam finished by the door. “Any other entrances?”

“Room under the stairs. Fire escape and window.”

Sam trotted through.

“Ignore the floor,” Blair called.

Sam grinned back at him over his shoulder. Blair couldn’t help but respond. Cute kid.

Unfortunately, Blair could multitask, so the mundane task of preparing breakfast didn’t stop him thinking. They had to go back to the alley, get Jim to use his sentinel senses to figure out what they had really seen.

“What the Hell was that thing?” Blair asked the world at large.

“The creature in the alley?” Sam poked his head out of Blair’s room.

“Creature?” Blair echoed.

“I dunno. It was hunting us.” Sam gnawed on his lip. He ghosted into the living room, running his fingers along the back of the sofa. “We were just going to get something to eat from the diner and --. Are you a hunter?”

“A hunter?” The question was a mistake. Sam’s expression shuttered. “I’m a scientist, an anthropologist. I study. I don’t have an explanation for what we saw tonight. Yet. I will.”

Sam set the salt bag on the kitchen table without a word. The kid was a true believer and Blair had an open mind – so open that Jim had a tendency to say that Boeing 747s could fly through it. The kid believed that a creature had attacked them – he wasn’t disassembling or telling tales. He simply accepted that it had been a monster. The sane logical explanation was that it was a creep that got his kicks dressing up in Kevlar and a weird mask. Smack in the face of that – oh so, reasonable – explanation was a sentinel-focussed shot in its head followed by a jump that no human could do on the best day of his life.

“I’ve worked with a Shaman in Africa, studied the Tingali, -- there’s so much out there that we don’t understand. Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t help.” Blair always thought out loud.

“Shaman?” Sam questioned even as he pointed at the far wall. The carved African mask grinned at them.

“Spirit mask.” Blair supplied. “Wards off evil spirits. Scares them away.”

Sam drifted over to study it better.

“There’s a book on them there.” Blair pointed at a scatter of books on the shelf with the stones that he had collected from Tanzania.

“You a researcher? Like Uncle Bobby?”

“I’m a researcher. I don’t know if that makes me like your Uncle Bobby.”

“Probably not, if you don’t hunt,” Sam said dismissively as he was drawn to the books.

Blair rolled his eyes. “Knowledge is important, man.”

The bathroom door opened and Jim shepherded out the weary teenager. He steered him over to the dining table.

“Just stay awake long enough to get some food into you. Then you can take some antibiotics.”

Dean slumped. Caught between the call of books and his brother, Sam froze. Dean won. Sam took the chair at his side. Dean wore one of Jim’s grey t-shirts and a pair of sweat pants. The t-shirt and pants enveloped him. The knobbly prominence of his collar bones looked like the frame of a tent beneath the soft, over-washed t-shirt. The rangy length of Dean’s bones emphasised that he was still growing.

Clean and dry, the kid’s hair was a sort of burnished gold, coupled with pouty, sulky lips and long lashes, made a combination that Blair knew that girls would gush over. Teachers would probably let him get away with murder, too. It was good camouflage. But Blair had seen the fire in his eyes when he had demanded Blair release his brother.

“Here.” Jim set down two glasses of chocolate milk.

“Coffee?” Dean said lowly.

Jim simply raised an eyebrow. Sam latched onto the milk and started glugging.

“Not too fast, you’ll make yourself sick,” Jim rebuked.

Sam immediately slowed. Jim moved around Blair getting plates and cutlery, stopping a moment to turn the bacon as Blair poured the pancake mix onto the griddle. Together they had the meal put together in half the time. The portions that Jim set out were minuscule. Blair kept his mouth shut even as he put the extra bacon and pancakes in the oven to keep warm.

Sam dove in like he was starving.

“Slow.” Jim settled opposite, working methodologically through his own small portion.

One-handed, Dean dug a fork in the fluffy eggs. “Is there more?”

“Yeah.” Jim nodded. “When you clean that plate. No hurry. It’s not going anywhere.”

Oh fuck, Blair knew where this was coming from. Jim set the pace, both Sam and Dean matching him. Suddenly, Blair wasn’t hungry anymore. When their plates were clear, Jim poured them a second slug of chocolate milk.

“Seconds?” He stood taking their plates. Sam nodded enthusiastically, Dean, however, was weaving in his chair. “Dean? More eggs?”

Dean blinked. “Yes, sir.”

Blair got up behind Jim, but beat him to the oven. “They’re--”

“Wanting seconds, Chief.”

Knowing that now wasn’t the time for discussion, Blair doled out the seconds. On returning to the table, Jim twisted open the child-proof cap of the bottle of antibiotics and carefully shook the container until two caps dropped, one after another, onto the side of Dean’s plate.

“Antibiotics. You need them.” Jim held the container up so Dean could read the label.

“You don’t want those slashes to get infected, Dean,” Sam said, chewed on his bottom lip.

“I know.” Dean washed them down with the final mouthful of chocolate milk. The yawn which followed was purely unintentional.

“Come on.” Jim was on the other side of the table and reaching for his elbow before Dean finished.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Time to get your head down.”

“What, man?” He blinked owlishly. “I’m not sleeping here. We’ve got to get back to our place.”

“You’ll pass out before you’re on the sidewalk.” Jim easily levered him to his feet and frogmarched a stumbling Dean into Blair’s room under the stairs.

Great, Blair grumbled inwardly. He hadn’t even had a chance to clean up. God knew what was under his bed.

Sam was watching with those big, hazel eyes. Solemnly, he ferried the last spoonful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Dean won’t touch anything unless they’re girlie mags in there.”

“No, there isn’t.”

Sam nodded wisely. He set his fork down. “So what happens now?”

“Now?” Blair abandoned his own meal. “I guess it depends. That thing, do you know what it was? Will it come back?” He looked to the salt lines.

“Might. I dunno what it was. It was fast. Long hands with claws.” Sam slashed at the air with his fingers. “It was skinny. Its legs were backwards. Dad’s not hunting a monster. He’s hunting a doppelgänger in Seattle. We were just walking to the diner.”

“Doppelgänger hunting?” Blair double checked. Okay, the day had got officially more surreal.

“Out like a light,” Jim quietly closed the door into Blair’s room. “We’ll have to wake him every hour or two; concussion.”

“I hope you put fresh sheets on the bed.”

“Yeah, your ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ ones.” Jim ruffled Sam’s hair as he passed and then dropped a pile of clothes on Dean’s empty chair. “You want to grab a shower, kiddo?

“Is that an order?”

“I can make it one,” Jim said easily.

Sam slid off his chair, scooping up the clothes. An old, washed and shrunk sweatshirt belonging to Blair and a pair a swimming trucks that could double as shorts.

Jim wiped his hand on his slacks and sat. Blair kept mum until Sam had shut the bathroom door.

“What the fuck happened tonight!” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe it. It was a thing!”

Jim rubbed his temple. “You’re not kidding, Chief.”

“What… Fuck… Man... What was that thing!”

“I dunno.” Jim sagged back in the kitchen chair and his finger trailed over his eyebrow to rub tiredly at the bridge of his nose. “I know what I saw. And I know what I smelled.”

“And?”

“Dog, wolf, canine – but sweeter. Rotten wood?”

“It stood on two legs.”

“Not after I put six rounds into it.”

“Geez.” Blair pushed a scrap of cold pancake across his plate. “I don’t suppose you smelled LSD?”

Jim chuffed a snort of a laugh. “Both of us? It could be something. Hmmm,” he mused, halfway convinced.

In the space of a heartbeat, he was off down a route where there hadn’t been anything weird in the alley. That it was a joint hallucination. Blair knew his sentinel. Knew despite his phenomenal abilities that the mundane ruled his life.

“Sam said that his dad is hunting a doppelgänger in Seattle,” Blair dropped his bombshell.

“What the Hell’s a doppelgänger?”

“A spirit. A death omen.”

“How do you hunt a ‘death omen’?”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

Jim turned in his seat, attention on two boys behind closed doors. “Sammy said it was stalking them?”

Blair reviewed their conversation, knowing that Jim had been listening as he helped Dean. “Not in so many words. He said that they were going to the diner. I guess it attacked them. That could be a lie; they’re hungry.”

“They’re underfed and borderline malnourished, but they’re not starved. They smell like too much fried food and not enough vegetables. They could have been going to a diner. I don’t think that they were going to buy much, maybe a couple of burgers or scavenge out the back.”

“Gross, man.”

“When you’re hungry,” Jim said pragmatically.

Blair drummed his fingernails against the table – rattatat-- drawing Jim’s concentration to him. “What,” he said with gravitas, “Did. You. See?”

The shrug was half-hearted.

Thy name is denial, Jim Ellison.

“Come on, Big Guy, you remember everything, especially when you’re in hunt mode. You were engaged: full on sentinel senses.” Blair perched on the edge of his seat. They were on a cusp. This was important.

Again, Jim rubbed at his temple. “Tall. It reminded me of a leathery tree. Hair like straw. Fat, red lips.”

“Red lips?”

“You asked, Chief.” His hand moved down his face drawing a long plane. “Elongated face.”

“And,” Blair prompted.

“It wasn’t human.”

There. The words stood before them, bald, brave and naked. It wasn’t human.

“What the hell do we do now?”

Jim’s gaze was unerringly drawn to the two boys that he had brought into their home. “Protect them.”

^..^
Part II

jimandblair @ 2009-04-05T23:49:00

2009-05-05T22:49:27Z

Create your own visitor map!

mini sga fic “Reversals.”

2009-02-05T00:13:32Z

I wrote this for one of the sga flashfic challenges but I didn’t post it.
Gen
Short
ETA: Thank you to springwoof who made very useful comments on the fic. I forgot to mention this late last night when I posted. Sorry.

Reversals
By Sealie

“We have found it. We have found it,” Teyla Emmagan, leader of the Athosian Federation, breathed reverently.

“Indeed we have,” Ronon said, clutching the parchment map to his chest. His heavy set glasses slipped down his nose.

~*~

“Ladon.” Teyla approached the Genii scientist, who stood before his newly designed submarine. “Have you made any progress?”

“The submersible should allow us to reach The City.” He patted the grey hull, shiny in the morning sunlight. “I have based it on the designs the Traveller Larrin supplied us.”

Teyla could allow herself to scowl before her scientist. The Traveller was becoming annoying in her preening that without the Travellers this expedition would not have been mounted let alone become a success. This would be another string of ammunition that she would be planning to use in her future coup to take over Athosian Federation.

“If only My People would concentrate on the extermination of the threat that overhangs us rather than petty, malicious jealousy.” Teyla shook her head.

Ronon rose from his crouch beside Ladon. “The myths of the Ancestors say that The City will rise from the depths when the True Son sets foot upon it.”

“I think you’ll find that the Potentia will have more to do with that.” Ladon rubbed at his full beard.

“The Potentia is a rare artefact.” Ronon laid a possessive hand over the ceremonial casket that was to travel with them to The City.

“Legends and myths of the Ancestors have brought us to this stage,” Teyla pointed out. “We will continue. When will the submersible be ready, Ladon Radim?”

“This afternoon, Mistress.”

~*~

“The Potentia is in place. The City lives, yet many of the--” Ladon gestured at the array of indescribable around them, “--devices lie dormant.”

“The Line of Halling holds the blood of the Ancestors. His son, Apprentice Jinto, wields it. I will ask that the Pontiff releases him from his studies to join us.” Teyla’s eyes hardened. “They will acquiesce: We have found The City.”

“Perhaps,” her ever present shadow with his knowledge of Myths and Legends spoke, “he is the True Son?”

“I do not believe so, Ronon. Otherwise he would have joined us on this expedition.”

~*~

“Take her away. She does not even deserve the honour of a trial. Her deceit and machinations are pathetic.” Teyla threw the knife at Larrin’s feet. “You attempted to take the defeat of the Wraith from us.”

“The Wraith sleep at the moment. Every day you stand in The City -- playing -- brings the Wraith closer to us,” Larrin spat. “You said that we would find The City and take what we could scavenge. Not stay. We can live out our lives free of the Wraith.”

“And what of our children or our children’s children? Take her away.” Teyla waved her hand, casting her to justice. “I will not back down from this course of action. The Wraith merely sleep. They will return.”

~*~

“Mistress!” Hair wild and grimy, Ladon scuttled into the office that Teyla had taken for her own. Smiling smugly, the scholar followed. His eyes gleamed behind his thick rimmed glasses.

“Yes, Ladon?”

“Ronon has solved the cipher. Ronon has solved the cipher!” Ladon danced in a circle around her table. “We can find the Ancestors!”

~*~

Ronon had the honour of keying in the pattern to take them to the Ancestors. They would go and petition the Ancestors directly. And if the Ancestors would or could not help she would take her People through the Portal to safety.

All her People.

A whoosh and blue, comforting light illuminated the amber hall.

“Mistress.” Ladon bounced up and down on his toes. “The Ancestors’ Home.”

Ronon picked up his knapsack of books and parchments slinging it over his skinny shoulders. “Are we going?”

“Not so eager,” Teyla rebuked gently. “There is no doubt that the Ancestors have protected their home as they do The City. Ladon?”

Quivering, Ladon pressed the button which allowed communication across through the Ancestors’ portals. He nodded.

Teyla stepped forward, chin high. “This is Teyla Emmagan, Leader of the Athosian Federation. Ruler of Athos and Gen, Belkan, Belsa and Dagaan. Guardian, I would speak to the Ancestors.”

The water within the portal rippled gently.

“Hello?” The voice was tentative. “This is Stargate Command.”

Fin

mini sga fic “Nestled.”

2009-01-15T17:17:42Z

Nestled

“W-- Fu--?” Abruptly awake, John sat up. The tiny glade that they were resting in was quiet. Dense succulent foliage muted the sounds around them to mere whispers. It was cool, thankfully. The world’s harsh sunlight was mitigated by the arching branches overhead, reaching to span the gap left in the wake of a fallen tree.

Ronon, slouched on the log, raised his bristly chin. His blaster rested on his knees, ready and waiting as he kept watch.

John leaned back on his elbows and took a deep breath. The dream, whatever it was about, was fading. Teyla, curled in her habitual, tight little ball, slept in the deeper shade cast by the log. Her expression was smooth and relaxed. Not even a pinprick of perspiration beaded her brow. Both Teyla and Ronon were handling the heat better than he and, especially, Rodney. Soon the primary sun would set, and they would be able to make their way back to the Stargate by the light of the single remaining star.

A pink-faced, sun-blushed Rodney slept on his side by John’s shoulder. Mouth open, fingers curled by his face and little pinky touching his bottom lip, he was a picture of repose. John dropped limply back onto the bed of fallen succulent leaves.

“Go back to sleep, Sheppard,” Ronon rumbled, “I’ve got the watch.”

Rodney huffed and pushed his forehead up against John’s shoulder, letting out a sleepy, content mumble. John stared up at the dappled sunlight over head, until the cadence of Rodney’s steady breathing drew him into sleep.

fin

written, tweaked and posted because I am having a superlatively bad day, on top of a bad day of a badbad day. Awesomesauce.

Kinki Robots

2009-01-09T00:00:37Z

Art for tardis80 because she's lovely.

Peanut satay and Chickpea Soup

2009-01-04T16:58:47Z

When I was a student, I got into the habit of cooking a big pan of soup on Sundays which stretched over the rest of the week. I restarted this tradition recently.

I just make them up with whatever’s lurking in cupboards. Today’s experiment worked:

Peanut satay and Chickpea Soup

Ingredients:
Two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (i.e. a glug)
One chopped onion (big or small depends on whether you like onions)
Two chopped cloves of garlic (or more if you so desire)
Can of chopped tomatoes
Can of chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans)
Vegetable stock cube
Water (amount depending on whether you like soup watery or more robust)
Lime juice (generous dash).
Ready made peanut satay sauce (I used this one)

Method:

Fry the onions and the garlic in the olive oil in a big pan until translucent. Chuck in the tomatoes. Add the stock cube. Add water. Read the instructions on the can of chickpeas cook them separately. Add cooked chickpeas. Stir in peanut satay sauce. Taste. Add lime juice. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Let the soup cool a wee bit and then liquidise until smooth.

Tasty, serves 3-4, quick to make and cheap.

LMFA thank you.

2008-12-31T11:37:46Z

I’d like to thank everyone who was kind enough to nominate and vote for my story, “What Are Friends For?”, in the Sentinel fandom LMFA awards.

It was a lovely surprise to get the announcement.

Speech Matters (SGA/Traders xo) no 15

2008-12-30T11:20:15Z

Author: Sealie jimandblair
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis/Traders xo [Atlantis: sur la mer segment]
Series spoilers: none
Beta: L’s help was invaluable. I have made changes in response to her edits. Any errors are solely mine… mine

Warning/story spoilers

Speech matters.
by Sealie

John -- free from Rodney grouching over his choices at breakfast -- absently peeled an orange. Teyla raised an eyebrow at his choice.

John shrugged. “Rodney’s not going to come to breakfast. He’s got a personal assistant.”

Teyla followed his gaze to where Grant doggedly made his way along the length of the canteen breakfast table. Nothing was touched until his choice was made, then rattlesnake fast Grant snatched banana or box of cereal and piled it on his tray. Miko beside him pointed out a small carton of milk.

John shook his head and returned to his fresh fruit.

“I do not understand the--” Teyla tapped the carton of semi-skimmed milk on her tray, the one-person sized cardboard box which had contained muesli, the empty sachet of sugar, “--waste.”

“Honestly?” John said. “Never gave it much thought. There’s recycling at h-- on Earth. But when you’re on base or deployed this stuff can be easily transported. The Daedalus brought it. Actually, bulk would probably…” John licked his lips. He hadn’t lied; he hadn’t given it much thought. “I’m sure that Rodney can design a particle whatsis that can recycle it.”

Selections made, tray a pyramid of food, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, Grant wended his way out of the commissary. Once Grant had turned into the corridor, John leaned back into his chair returning to his conversation.

Teyla sat primly, hands folded on her lap, expression inscrutable.

“Sorry, distracted,” John apologised. “Er, recycling. We’re wasteful. Too many material goods; it’s cheaper to make new instead of re-using. Not everyone but in the West. Although, Scottish people are known…”

“Aye, can it, Cliché Boy.” Carson set his breakfast tray on their table with a thump. “Some folk say that the Scots are tight. Like all rampant generalities they’re wrong. We’re lovely, generous people.”

“No porridge?” John pointed an orange coated finger at Carson’s toast and cereal.

“I don’t like porridge, unless my mam makes it. And even then not often. Bacon, now. A bacon sandwich with tomato sauce.” Carson sighed lustily as he sat opposite John beside Teyla.

“Tomato sauce?”

“Ketchup,” Carson translated. “Bloody Americans. I could go for a sausage sandwich with fried onions.”

“There is bacon,” Teyla noted, pointing at the hot plate at the end of the long table. “It is very good.”

“Oh, it is. But I try, Luv, to only have bacon butties on the weekend. Moderation in all things,” he said piously.

“But there is no porridge?” Teyla half questioned.

Carson heaved out a sigh. “The colonel is just being facetious. The cooks give us oatmeal, but it’s not proper porridge. It’s too weak and watery and sweet. Proper porridge like my mam makes is made out of pinhead oatmeal; it sticks to the ribs.”

“It is a great pity that the Daedalus could not bring food from your home?” Teyla said.

Carson pointed his spoon threateningly at John before he could say the word ‘haggis’ – it hovered unspoken on his lips. “Yes, it is a great pity. But I bet Radek’s thinking the same thing and Miko, ‘cos not everyone likes burgers, meat loaf, chips and fried chicken. Actually, the first thing that I had once I was home was a first class Indian. I had the best tandoori chicken makhani with saag aloo and peas pilau rice ever. I almost cried.”

“American cuisine isn’t just about fried chicken,” John pointed out.

“Tell that to the cooks in the canteen,” Carson said dryly. “This food reminds me horribly of school dinners.”

“School dinners?” Teyla questioned obediently.

“When I was at school: stodgy, over cooked, salty crap. I kept my dinner money, scarpered over the wall to the newsagent and got pop, mars bar and a packet of crisps or went to the chippie.” Carson eyed John in question.

“My school was too far away from stores. You ate what you were given or starved.”

“You what, eh?” Carson cocked his head to the side as he cogitated. “Couldn’t pick up snacks on the way to school? Ha, you went to boarding school or something in the middle of nowhere.”

John leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest.

“You so did!” Carson said gleefully.

“And why is this an issue?” Teyla questioned carefully. “What is a boarding school?”

“It’s a school where the kids stay -- board -- for a period of study. They only visit their parents for vacations,” John supplied pointedly not looking at Carson.

“Aye,” Carson said solidly. “We have lots of different schools. I went to an inner city comprehensive, which means that there were lots of kids, thousands in the school. There were forty-five in my registration class and six classes in the year. Miko told me once that she went to a girls only school.”

Teyla spent a long moment looking at John, before taking the opening that Carson offered.

“You segregate your children in schools by gender?”

“Not all schools. My school wasn’t…” Out of the corner of his eye, John spied Grant reversing into the commissary. He held the tray of food high. One of the Marines spun deftly out of his way as he shuffled backwards. Rodney turned the corner and stalked into the canteen.

Eyes rolling, Rodney spun his finger in the air, directing Grant to face the right way.

“Come on.” Rodney strode straight over and plonked down next to Carson. Grant slid in opposite, setting the tray between them. Rodney latched onto the coffee as if deprived, getting that mouthful before even attempting the solid food.

“Morning,” John leaned back in this chair.

Rodney grunted.

“Good morning,” Grant chirped around the rim of his own coffee cup.

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Carson waved, encompassing Rodney and Grant’s presence at their table.

“First full day back on duty,” Rodney non-answered.

“Aw, you missed us,” John interpreted.

Teyla froze and then cocked her head to the side, finger going to the comm. hooked over her ear.

“Yes, of course, Elizabeth.” She stood.

John waited a heartbeat for his own call, but his comm. remained silent.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Teyla’s nod took them all in. She inclined her head, “Grant.”

“Oh, what is your problem?” Rodney snapped waspishly.

“Rodney?” Carson questioned looking between Teyla and Rodney, perplexed.

“The freezing. The singling out. Why?” Rodney demanded.

Grant shuffled down in his seat, concentrating on his mug of coffee.

“I--” Teyla shuffled uncomfortably.

“Grant’s probably the nicest person in this entire galaxy,” Rodney continued loudly. “You cannot have a problem with him just because he can’t access the gate translation programme.”

The silence blanketing the table was stifling.

“Or can you?” Rodney said slowly.

“Teyla?” John asked, disbelieving.

The sigh that escaped was heartfelt. Moving almost arthritically, she clasped her hands together. Her gaze was fixed on her entwined fingers.

“Luv?” Carson prodded.

“It is only… Not ‘only’ -- that is the wrong word,” Teyla said quietly. “Those such as Grant are not favoured by the Ancestors. It is a shame which is not borne well.”

“I don’t believe it,” Rodney’s pitch rose. “Just because he thinks differently you’re prejudiced.”

“McKay!” John snapped.

“Teyla will barely even look at Grant. How do think that makes him feel?”

Grant was a hunched little ball, perched on the very edge of his seat.

“There’s nothing wrong with Grant,” Rodney shouted. Silence fell in the words wake. Heads turned.

Grant scrunched a little lower.

“Well, there isn’t,” Rodney continued mulishly.

Even Grant appeared a little surprised at that assertion. “I think Dr. Beckett, Dr. Firth, Dr. Hannah, Professor Hyde. Professor Jacks, Mr. Jefferson, Dr. O’Connor and Dr. Sommers would disagree with you.”

“There’s wrong and wrong. They’re two entirely different things,” Rodney responded acerbically. “Not favoured by the Ancestors, my ass.”

“Well, when you think about it,” Carson said apologetically, “it’s not as if we see a lot of mentally ill people in Pegasus.”

“I always thought that Kolya came across as a little psychotic,” John noted.

Teyla’s comm. chirruped loudly. “I apologise. There is a sensitive issue that I have to mediate. Dr. McKay -- Rodney -- Grant, we will talk further on this matter. I will attempt to explain.” She pursed her lips over other words and with a curt nod took her leave.

“Way to go, McKay.” John said as soon as she exited the commissary.

“What? I just called her on something which is blatantly obvious to even me.”

“It’s Teyla, McKay, she doesn’t have a nasty bone in her body.”

“I think that I’ve ran hundreds clinics in Pegasus,” Carson said inserting his words into the conversation like a scalpel blade. “I’ve seen one child with Down’s syndrome – no adults, no schizophrenics, no sufferers with biopolar affective disorder. I’ve seen depression and post traumatic stress disorders. I’ve seen no deaf adults. Two blind adults.”

“What are you saying, Carson?” John asked.

“I’m saying that the people in Pegasus don’t generally have access to a lot of technologically advanced medical care, but have a low incidence of chronic disease and disability.”

“So they’re lucky?” Rodney hedged. “Generally, healthy?”

“You’re saying something really horrible, Carson.” John shuffled back in his seat.

“Aye.” Carson pushed his tray away. “Aye, indeed. But we saw similar statistics in the Milky Way under Goa’uld regime. Different drivers in the Milky Way but similar outcome. It even occurs on Earth.”

“You’re saying that ill people are fed to the Wraith?” Rodney seemed to disbelieve his own words.

“Makes sense when you think about it logically,” Carson said dispassionately, but couldn’t hold the objectivity for a second and his bottom lip trembled. “I figure some people are easier to catch than others. And perhaps some people, both victim and relatives, think it’s a… a… an acceptable trade.”

“Geez,” John set his mangled orange peel on his tray. He tapped an orange coated finger against his comm.. “Really, okay. Yeah, sure.” He stood abruptly. “I gotta go, guys. We’ll talk later. Give Teyla some time, McKay, I’m sure that she’ll explain….”

As he ran from the hall, he could hear Rodney grumbling,

“Okay, yeah, blame it all on me.”

~*~

“I think that you’re simplifying a complex subject, John,” Elizabeth said so diplomatically that he grated his teeth together. “I can understand the stigma associated with not being able to use the translation programme--”

“‘Not favoured by the Ancestors.’”

“It would single you out in a galaxy where the majority can communicate easily and efficiently. And coupled with other behaviours -- hearing voices, perseveration -- you’re suddenly possessed, demon-spawn. It is easy to imagine.” Elizabeth set her folded hands on her desk. “And the other aspect, related but distinct. The Wraith are predators and humans their prey. While I can’t, actually, say what the Wraith eat and whether quality or quantity is important, Grant would be easier to catch than say, you.”

John slumped in his chair, a cold, hard lump under his breast bone.

“This really upsets you, doesn’t it, John?”

“Of course it does.” He straightened defensively. “Just – think about it. All those hundreds of thousands of people over the time, considered--”

There were not words to encapsulate it all.

“It is unfair,” Elizabeth supplied. “Yet that is not just a problem confined to Pegasus.”

“Is that supposed to make it better?”

“No, but perhaps it gives you perspective?” Elizabeth hazarded.

John didn’t have any response to that, there was so many things wrong with the sentence he didn’t know where to begin.

“What of Rodney and Teyla? How will this affect your team?” Elizabeth continued doggedly. “Teyla was very upset during our meeting with Lill of the Athosians.”

“Teyla’s the most well-adjusted person I’ve met. Okay, Grant creeps her out a little. But it didn’t stop her spending time and naming things for him in Athosian. Neither Rodney or Teyla are going to let it fester; can you imagine Rodney letting it go?” John scratched at his hair. Rodney had learned his lesson well; when Grant had first been diagnosed Rodney had admitted to being scared and ignoring Grant. Eventually realising that, Rodney had become the staunchest of defenders.

“Incoming wormhole.”

“Oh, that must be Lorne and his team on P3M-736.” Elizabeth stood.

“The radiation planet with all the plant life that had the botanists drooling?” John followed her out onto the concourse.

~*~

John stamped down the puddlejumper ramp, his team and Lorne’s team around him. The light of P3M-736 was a sickly beige-orange lending an oppressive cast. The high end electro-magnetic radiation might be dangerous to humans, but the detrimental effects on their scanners made it the perfect place for Ford to hide.

Rodney followed lathering on his homemade sun-block cream. He glared at all and sundry.

We’ll sort out the team stuff when we’re back on Atlantis. Get Ford home first.

“Teyla, you’re with me. Coughlin, take Billick. Reed, you and Sherman cover the ‘gate. And major, you’ve got McKay.”

“Oh, lucky me,” Lorne drawled.

~*~

Grant perched on the articulated walkway over looking the arena where the Marines housed their exercise equipment and indoor track. There was a new wave of thoughts and emotions clattering through Atlantis. At its epicentre stood a giant of a man -- this Ronon Dex –- who was destroying a punching bag with bloody fists. He was a glowing red volcano of barely banked fury as he strove to demolish the hanging pad. The Marines seemed oblivious to his need to destroy. Suddenly he stopped, his hair whipping around as he jerked his head up to look directly at Grant.

With a bleat, Grant scurried away.

~*~

The corridor was clear. Grant stayed where he was, tucked up against the transparent column filled with bubbling water. Waiting, watching and wondering.

Grant was infernally curious about the man that Flyboy had described as the Lion to Dr. Beckett’s Androcles. Curiosity was, however, well known for killing the cat. Grant liked cats. And killing couldn’t even enter into the equation. There was a red miasma slowly dissipating in the air that whispered of violence. The air rocked with the passage of Mr. Dex. Grant knew people did not believe him when he spoke of auras and when he had taken his haloperidol sometimes they seemed a little bit beyond marvellous.

There was a lot to contemplate on; the whole of Atlantis was complicated.

Flyboy wanted Mr. Dex to join his team.

Question was: should Mr. Dex be on Atlantis? Dr. Elizabeth Marjorie Weir was very leery about having Mr. Dex running free through Atlantis. But Mr. Dex would be safe here and he would be able to heal.

“Grant?”

The scientists in the main science laboratory had had an intense discussion about ‘Caveman’ Dex. The name didn’t make any sense, because the MALP scans of the planet had shown a technologically advanced society and according to Flyboy his military designation was ‘Specialist’. Yet he ate his mashed potatoes with his fingers. Actually, Grant could get behind that; he liked the way that the mash squished between his fingers. But that was not the ‘right way to do things.'

“Grant!” Rodney snapped. “What are you doing?”

Grant spun on his toes.

Rodney’s arms were crossed over his chest and his chin was up.

Grant scrunched down a fraction.

“What are you doing, Grant?” Rodney leaned to the side to better peer down the corridor. “Why are you hanging around outside the grunts’ gym?”

Grant shifted from side to side, making little squeaks with his white tennis shoes.

“Miko said that you were… Well, to be honest it just sounded like you were being... you. Are you going to tell me what’s happening or what?” Rodney’s tone rose, meaning that he was tired, cranky and wanted answers as soon as humanly possible. So nothing unusual there.

Grant waved his hand, sketching an angry aura complete with spiky bits, words sometime just didn’t cut it.

“Are you going to tell me or are you going to do sock puppets next?”

Grant gnashed his teeth in frustration. “I don’t know until I know. The variables are complex and there are conflicting arrays of data.”

“Hey, docs,” Major Lorne said affably.

Grant got behind Rodney faster than the speed of light even if that was impossible. Major Evan Lorne and Mr. Specialist Ronon Dex had been in the gym. They were sweaty and more than a bit smelly.

“Major.” Rodney let Grant stay where he was, safe and sound. “Dex. Hmmm, Ronon. Or um Dex?”

Mr. Ronon Dex said a bundle of gobbledygook and Grant sagged; realising here was another language that he had to learn. Mr. Dex peered down at them. He shrugged resting a hand on his hip, near his shiny blaster. He had been allowed to keep his blaster. Grant added that data point to his personal threat assessment matrix.

“This is Dr. Grant Jansky, Dr. McKay’s brother,” Lorne explained, somewhat inaccurately.

Curiously, Rodney did not correct the major.

Grant kept his gaze on the gleaming weapon at Mr. Dex’s hip. “Did you make it? Did your people on Sateda, make it?”

“Sateda?” Mr. Dex growled, one world recognisable in a mess of gibberish.

“Hmm, good question.” Rodney bent over a fraction to peer at the holstered blaster.

“Dr. McKay,” Major Lorne said patiently, “Dr. Weir is expecting us; I’m afraid that we have to get to the showers.”

“Yes,” Rodney said fastidiously, raking them both with a disgruntled glare. “Go shower. Come on, Grant.”

Obediently, Grant let Rodney tug him along. He counted, wagering a jelly bean against a cup of hot chocolate that Rodney would speak as soon as he guessed that they were out of earshot from the other men.

The chocolate was a sure win.

“Did you understand Dex?” he asked he was towed onto a sea-side balcony.

Mutely, Grant shook his head.

“Damn, I was hoping that it was just Athosian. But that would have made no sense, whatsoever.”

“I don’t mind. I know I’m not a demon.”

“I know that you’re not a demon. It’s just biochemistry. You’re lacking some kind of neurological transmitter or you don’t have enough of it or something.”

“I don’t like that Ms. Vit e’ Emm-gen doesn’t like me because of it.”

“Vitty?”

“Vit e’ Emm,” Grant said, emphasising the ‘Mms’. “I think that it denotes her position in Athosian society. Like, princess?”

“Princess Teyla?”

Grant shrugged. “Lady?” he offered. “Head? Head might be better.”

“Hmmm. See it can be kind of an advantage being a little different, sometimes.” Rodney looked smug.

“I’ve always thought so,” Grant concurred.

~*~

The habit of their team lunches had eroded following the combination of Ford’s getaway, a trip back to Earth for debrief and then the pneumonia from hell. When Rodney’s comm. had pinged fifteen minutes before the commissary-scheduled lunch time, Rodney knew that Sheppard was trying to start the lunch dates again. His automatic grunt to Sheppard’s softly drawled question had been met with a ‘Come on, Rodney.' Reluctantly, he found himself agreeing, even though he had a thousand and one things to do. But he hadn’t had it out with Teyla and he had never been one to leave things festering.

It was a little different this time, because it wasn’t about solid, logical, demonstrable proofs. It was about thoughts and beliefs and people weren’t sensible when they got into the realm of beliefs.

He tagged Grant on his way to the commissary, cajoling him out of his sea view, computer and hard drive filled lab with a crooked finger and a, "Now, Grant!”

The commissary staff supplied hot food at every meal from breakfast to supper. It was a good plan; Rodney always worked better when the mundane tasks of life were fulfilled by someone else. If only if he could get a cleaner. But Elizabeth refused to sign off on his android plans.

They were early so the line for the hot trays was short (scientists were invariably late, because that last minute before going anywhere just had to be used to its utmost). Sheppard was ahead of them, pointing out dishes to Dex, who trailed in his wake.

Absently, Rodney pushed Grant ahead of him, focused on the serving dishes on the right --the marked food: no dairy; no nuts; no lemon; no fish/shellfish; no wheat and combinations thereof.

Grant squeaked and backed away from Dex almost as if he had been transported. The Runner canted his head, staring at them both.

“What?” Rodney said belligerently. He caught Grant’s sleeve, and Grant used him as a fulcrum swinging around until he cowered behind him. “What’s the matter?”

Grant’s finger came over Rodney’s shoulder. “There’s a bug. A bug in his hair.”

Sheppard was suddenly on the other side of the room. Rodney thought it hilarious.

Ronon shook his mane and Rodney saw the black, iridescent, little finger-nailed sized, stubbly legged bug spinning down to the floor.

“Didn’t anyone DEET you?” Rodney demanded, grabbing a glass from the rack above the hot trays and upending it over the insect.

“Deet?” he rumbled.

“You. You’re a biologist.” Rodney pointed at the blonde pony-tail (cute) who was already pushing back from a canteen table. “Alien bug for you.”

“Oh, Excellent.” She squatted to better see it, so Rodney stepped right over her, intent on getting food while it was hot.

Grant scuttled around her, giving her the widest berth possible, until that put him into Dex’s orbit. With mathematical precision, Grant selected the correct trajectory to avoid them, score what looked like the juiciest burger and then scarper to Sheppard’s table.

“How do you wash that hair? You do wash it, don’t you?” Rodney demanded.

“Yes, McKay. I wash my hair,” Dex said, face impassive.

“Really? How.”

“With soap and water.” He rolled his eyes. “You telling me that you’ve never had a feithid in your hair.”

Rodney automatically scrabbled a hand through his hair. “Of course not. Okay, yes, maybe. A money spider once or twice.”

Point made, Dex turned back to the hot trays selecting a mound of chilli con carne. Suitably galvanised, Rodney focussed on grabbing his own lunch.

Elizabeth was at their table, a meagre salad portion constituting her meal.

“You big, fat girl,” Rodney said mocking Sheppard’s escape from the dangerous, infinitesimally tiny bug.

Elizabeth’s bristle was totally predictable.

“Bet you wouldn’t have said that if Teyla was here,” Sheppard said around a forkful of salad leaves.

“Speaking of Teyla, where is she?” And Rodney looked, no Teyla hiding anywhere. “She’s avoiding us, isn’t she?”

“She’s on the mainland, dealing with Lill of the Athosians,” Elizabeth said calmly.

Sheppard twirled his fork. “She does have responsibilities outside of the team.”

“What is all that Lill stuff about?” Rodney sat with a thump.

“I’m afraid that it’s deeply personal,” Elizabeth answered.

“And?” Rodney said. “What’s it about?”

“And private,” Elizabeth said with finality.

Rodney tutted loudly and applied himself to his bowl of chilli. “I did want to talk to Teyla.”

“To or at?” Sheppard said pointedly.

~*~

“I need you to translate,” Teyla said interrupting John’s concentration.

“What?” He automatically hit control-S on his laptop.

Teyla stood in the entrance to his main office, hovering, which was somewhat out of character. “I am disturbing you. Sergeant Campbell implied that you were not busy.”

“Just catching up.” He couldn’t help himself hitting the save combination of buttons again. He didn’t want to lose the carefully crafted letter of reprimand. “When did you get back? Everything okay?”

“The matter is under control. I now have other issues to -- how do you say it? -- sort out.”

“That’s more of a Beckett saying. But… you and Grant?”

“Grant and I, indeed.” Teyla inclined her head.

John was so not looking forward to this and unfortunately Teyla was between him and the door.

~*~

“Hey, Grant, you got a second?”

Grant spun in a complete revolution in his computer chair before coming to a stop. His mobile face lit up in an open grin. It shut down just as fast when Teyla stepped into the computer lab behind John. He ducked his head in a shy welcome.

“Grant?” John said softly. “Teyla has something that she’d like to say, but I need to translate. That okay?”

Grant nodded fervently.

John took as deep breath. “Over to you, Teyla.”

Composing herself, Teyla settled her hands over her abdomen as if preparing to sing, and began.

“I owe you apologies and I have no excuses,” John echoed. “It is such in our society, some more than others, that we follow the guidance of the Ancestors. It comes as a hard pill to swallow when what we are taught is so unpalatable.”

At that so obvious and clunky Non-Athosian saying, John could almost hear a guttural rising and falling cadence under Teyla’s words that bore no resemblance to any tongue heard on Earth.

“I have always strove to rise above this dictate of the Elders. I know, personally, that it is…” Teyla looked at John, for once mute.

Grant hunched on his computer chair, surrounded by banks of computers, all idling into swirly fractals. Eyes wide with trapped horror, he gnawed on his thumbnail.

“Complex,” he mumbled around his thumb.

“Complex?” John said unnecessarily.

Teyla nodded. “Complex.”

“Grant.” Teyla moved so that she stood before him, instead of partly angled to include John. “I stand at the forefront as we face the Wraith, as I should due to my own nature. I did not intend to judge you and strove not too. Nor did I wish to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Grant said, again around his thumb, “jl’fd hdfd gddh.” He hunted for the next word in Athosian, nose scrunching as he failed to find it.

“English, Grant. Teyla appreciates the effort. But I haven’t got a clue what you trying to say. And I think your pronunciation is…” John winced at Teyla’s constipated expression, “awful.”

“You’ve never been nasty, Ms. Emmagan.” His thumb popped free. “I know that *I* made you uncomfortable. But you still came and patiently named things for me. We’re taught things in our heads and we understand them in our hearts. But what we’re taught isn’t always the truth that we know in our hearts.” Grant ducked his head blushing.

“Nice, Squirrel,” John added as he finished echoing the words.

“You see,” Grant said earnestly, talking to his lap, “you’re allowed to struggle. Struggling’s good. It’s when your head’s been taught wrong and your heart doesn’t know, then it’s bad.”

“Okay,” John inserted brightly and loudly. He went for a hearty tone, so both would know that it was his turn. “So we’re happy now? All friends?”

Teyla blinked. “We are working towards it?” she offered.

“Excellent.” John clapped his hands together once. “Right, I’ll get back to my really interesting paper work.”

His escape could only be described as gauche. Maybe they would have another Athosian-English language session. He didn’t really care. The corridor outside Grant’s nepotism-sized office was thankfully empty. He set off at a brisk pace, knowing that it would take him into Rodney’s orbit, mainly because he was heading to his suite of laboratories.

Rodney was hunched over the dissected innards of what looked like an autobot. The man was going to have serious back problems when he got older. His science-hunch when he was concentrating, intrigued, or scared was begging for sciatica.

“Android?” John picked up an articulated appendage, twisting it around.

“No.” Rodney sulked. “It’s a remote manipulator, part of the foreign atmosphere clean room.”

John cocked his head to the side, remembering what had been first identified as a hazardous materials lab, complete with a wall of different types of remote control attachments. Mounted on shelves, each manipulator was controlled by one of three control units housed in the windowed room overlooking the lab. A third of the array of robot arms had been inactive. Simple math indicated that one of the control units was not functioning.

“What have you been up to?” Rodney asked as he pried off a decorative covering to reveal a blank, protective sleeve.

“Been talking with Teyla and Grant.”

“What?”

“She apologised to Grant for being distant.”

“Hmm,” Rodney grumbled, and the black sleeve sproinged off out of the appendage and across the room. He was left holding a Phillip’s screwdriver.

“Hey, they’ve made up. Grant was happy. So what’s the problem?”

“Like you don’t know,” Rodney snapped “I expected better of Teyla. I mean: God, told her to hate Grant. That type of hidebound thinking keeps people in the Dark Ages.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“It isn’t. It all about interpretation and not thinking. Look at the Bible, it’s inconsistent,” he said sounding mortally offended. “Corinthians states that there is one God and then later on, states that Satan is the God of Earth. Let’s see one plus one -– hmmm, equals two. Basic Math.”

“It was translated by people; there has to be some interpretation.”

“Oh, interpretation,” Rodney said darkly. “Okay, classic example. I should stone you if you don’t rotate your crops or if you’re an adulterer. I haven’t seen that happen recently, have you?” Rodney finished belligerently.

“It isn’t--”

“It is. Religion is just an excuse not to think for yourself and put decisions in the hands of someone else. It’s sugar-coated by saying that if you obey you’ll go to Heaven.” He slashed at his words with his screwdriver.

Sheppard huffed an ironic sigh. He couldn’t disagree. Aptly, he had faced that old adage that there were no atheists in foxholes. But equally in the cold light of day, seeing atrocities and then, since Pegasus, the evidence that the Ascended Ancients were omnipresent, omniscient, un-acting deities made any religion a bitter pill to swallow.

The defensive cast ebbed from Rodney’s very being.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “You agree?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know.” He held up his hand forestalling Rodney’s automatic objection. “I know that condemning Grant as cannon fodder is because he’s bipolar – or whatever the Hell he is… is… wrong. I mean that whole--”

“God Thing,” Rodney interrupted going down the garden path and out the door. “There’s no empirical evidence that God exists.”

“Isn’t that the point of faith?”

Rodney ignored him. “In fact every miracle in any religion can be easily explained by Ascended Ancients getting off their High Horses. Jesus was probably an Ancient with poor impulse control.” Rodney raised a finger emphasising his point in jerky taps. “There is no evidence in any of the cultures that we’ve found on any of the associated worlds in the Milky Way or Pegasus Galaxy having anything remotely like organised religion apart from Goa’uld manipulated Religions. Those cultures which were not touched by the Goa’uld or Wraith or Ancients for that matter – should get on well without it.”

Oooh, that was in need of dispute; John thought rapidly. “Didn’t SG:1 find some totalitarian regime split down the middle over a Ring religion and where the Stargate was on their continent.”

“One: it was based on the Stargate and hence linked to the Ancients and, subsequently, Goa’uld.”

“Okay, without the Stargate how are we supposed to find these,” Sheppard made mocking speech quotes, “uncontaminated cultures?”

“And two,” Rodney continued, “it didn’t improve things did it? Just an excuse for war, terrorism, atrocities and hatred of those that don’t agree or are different.”

“Geez,” John bit down. Rodney was almost spitting his vehemence. “It brings a lot of people comfort.”

“And?” he snapped. “It’s built on false premises. It’s a placebo.”

“Placebos work.”

Rodney tapped at his temple. “Because it’s all in your head. You might as well believe in Fairy Moonbeam.”

“I believe that now is not a good time,” Teyla observed from the doorway.

“I think that it is marvellous timing.” Rodney spun on his chair, eyes bright.

“Rodney,” John said quellingly.

Rodney stood, wheeled chair spinning away and stalked out into the open area of his lab where he liked to lie on the floor when really stuck on the solution to a problem.

Teyla slid forwards, balancing lightly on her toes.

“Guys?” John raised his hand.

“Here to convert me to the Cult of the Ancestors?” Rodney said bitingly.

“I would not do that, Rodney.”

“Why isn’t that the goal of a true religion? Convert followers and non-believers to the true path.” Frustrated, he jabbed the screwdriver angrily, each jerk an emphasis. “Or kill. Sacrifice those that don’t believe or are unclean.”

“Rodney,” Teyla said with her unerring calm. “You do not believe that of me.”

“Guys, don’t fight,” John said simultaneously.

“Fight?” Rodney froze, stabbing screwdriver brandished. “Fight? Fight Teyla? I just want her to realise that she’s putting her faith in absolutely nothing. Yeah, let’s worship sparkly squids or old men with long beards.”

Teyla folded her hands together. “That is not the issue. And you are being deliberately offensive. The issue is Grant.”

“And? What about Grant? He’s not leaving Atlantis. He’s not defacing it by his presence.”

“Rodney!” Teyla interrupted sharply. “I do not wish him to leave. Nor do I fear Grant. I will admit to jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” John checked.

“Yes, of his ease of acceptance within Atlantis. I had thought that that was true of your home planet. I know now from Miko-san that on Earth those like Grant are feared and ostracised. It is that his family makes him welcome. Your interpretation is simplistic, Rodney.”

He bristled, predictably.

“If I was a burden on my family and I could stand between them and the Wraith, I would. I cannot step away from that. That is my choice. That is the way that I have been taught. We cannot carry burdens and survive.”

“Grant is not a burden.”

“Within Atlantis, he is not a burden.”

“But outside?” Rodney said poisonously.

“I have spent time learning to talk to him and I do not think so. Grant would step between you and a Wraith.”

Rodney blanched white. “That will never happen.”

Teyla inclined her head. “That is a good decision.”

Rodney turned a bewildered glance on John.

“Yeah, well.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “We said from the start that Grant wasn’t going to be on a team or anything. Keep him safe. He’s a non-combatant, like Miko. We protect them. Now… Kavanaugh.”

Teyla shot him a dismayed look. “You are both very cruel to Dr. Kavanaugh.”

“He wouldn’t step between me and a Wraith.” Rodney grumbled.

“He’ll be cowering in a cupboard, so he’s not going to get in the way either,” John said clinically.

“That is not fair,” Teyla said.

“Fair, eh?” Rodney pounced. “I wasn’t aware that fair was allowed.”

“I understand that you--”

“Nah-ah. Tell me, how do you dictate fair. Magic fairy dust. Spin of the bottle? Life is not fair.”

“I am fully aware of that!” Teyla shouted.

John jerked a step back.

“You are spoilt and protected. You are favoured and protected. Until you came to Pegasus you knew that tomorrow would come and that there would be food on the table.” Teyla rose onto the balls of her feet, left leg braced behind, torso curved and weight evenly distributed.

“I--” John began.

“Do not tell me that that is not true.” Teyla’s hand sliced through the air. “I know that what I say is a generalisation. I have seen your television programmes on your audio visual displays of your Third World. But, John, Rodney, it is an abstract concept for you – you were not born to threat and privation. You know privilege and you only barely understand need.”

“And what,” Rodney said pithily, “does that have to do with hating Grant.”

“I do not hate Grant!” Teyla said, offended to the point of gasping.

“But you’d sacrifice him to the Wraith, eh? And the justification would be that the Ancestors don’t favour him?”

Teyla snapped, “You are deliberately being very offensive, Rodney.”

“No, I’m just not sugar-coating it.”

“Time out,” John yelled. “Back off, the pair of you.” He stepped between them, hands out stretched. “I’m damn sure that Teyla’s never given anyone to the Wraith.”

“But it happens,” Rodney said mulishly.

“You need to apologise to Teyla, McKay, now!”

“Okay.” Rodney rolled his eyes. “I apologise.”

“Properly.”

“Teyla. I know you wouldn’t. But it happens, right?” he couldn’t help insert.

Teyla sighed wetly, she dropped her defensive posture. “Yes.”

“Really?” John blurted. “The Wraith come in and just take the…”

“The Wraith rarely negotiate,” Teyla said. “Those that cannot receive the gift of the Ancestors can be wrong in many ways, twisted and cruel. A council can decide to make it easy for the Wraith to take them. Or those that cannot hear may choose to stand and delay the Wraith when they come for their families.”

“With a little bit of persuasion from said friends and family,” Rodney said sarcastically.

“As always you strive to break down an argument into its simplest components.”

“Because that way you understand exactly what is happening. Break it down and build it back up,” Rodney retorted.

“This is not your physics.” Teyla deliberately placed her hand over her heart. “What do you hear when I speak?”

“English,” Rodney answered, smartly.

“Ah,” John breathed. “Whoa...”

“What? What? What did I miss?” Rodney asked.

Teyla’s smile was heart sore. “John, would you care to explain?”

“Teyla speaks perfect English. No contractions. Measured, even tone and carefully constructed sentences,” John said. “What do you hear when I speak, Teyla?”

“And?” Rodney spluttered. “So Teyla’s polite…oh… No way? Really?”

“When you speak, Colonel, I hear a mismatch of so many words and the sense behind them that it is both a blessing and a curse. When I speak I have to chose my words carefully Perhaps it is the Wraith within me that make me a poor recipient of the Ancestors Gift.”

“But you’re a diplomat and negotiator,” Rodney pointed out. “The Vitty thing for your people.”

“I am also the Daughter of Tegan, a poor cook, a warrior, a musician and one who stands before her people in the face of the Wraith. I am many things.”

“So, you actually find it difficult to talk. Did that mean that your people treated you badly?” Rodney said with his customary bluntness.

“Some, not all. I have, of course, no problem speaking with my fellow Athosians from within my clan. It took me many years to fully understand what many travellers were saying when they spoke, when presented with so much information. It is, as I said, a blessing and a curse.”

Rodney cast his screwdriver into its tool box. “So you’re cannon fodder. You’re expected to do what you do?”

“McKay.” John rubbed at his face, tiredly. “I think what Teyla’s trying to say is that it’s not cut and dried. There’s a spectrum thing. It sounds like some people who can’t use the Babelfish might be psychopaths, and giving them to the Wraith is a little like reverse-pest control. You know, so if you can’t do the translating stuff, you’ve sort of got a black mark against you.”

“Sucky way of controlling mental illness or stigmatising someone because of a biochemical glitch.”

“Never said it wasn’t, McKay. I don’t agree with it. I’m sure Teyla doesn’t. But the real cause of this is the Wraith.”

“Wraith? The Wraith are just means to the end. It’s the way it’s justified – wrapping it in religion.” Shoulders rounded, Rodney stomped over to his desk. “This has been going on for ten thousand years. So when was the last time you met someone as deficient as Grant, Teyla?”

Teyla crossed her arms, fingers clenching into her biceps. “To have no words is rare. And they are normally dangerous to those around them.”

“Ten thousand years of eugenics.”

John blinked. “What do you mean?”

Rodney sat at this lab table, automatically reaching to fiddle. “Many illnesses have genetic components. You show the symptoms, you get sacrificed to the Wraith and you’re out of the gene pool. The rate of attrition on genetic illnesses, mental or physical, won’t be absolute -- some schizophrenics don’t manifest until in their twenties. But I bet the genotype of any population in Pegasus is -- damn, Carson should be here -- less messy?”

“Hullo,” Grant said meekly. He scuttled along the wall coming further into the lab. “You should stop fighting.”

“We’re not fighting,” Rodney snapped.

Grant glanced sideways at him. “Yes, you are.” He quickly looked away. “You’re yelling.” Grant made the dash across the expanse of the room to the intriguing nuts and bolts scattered across Rodney’s table. “Yelling isn’t going to solve anything.”

“I’m not yelling!”

“You can yell until the stars go out but you won’t solve anything until you listen to each other,” Grant said.

John started edging towards the door. Grant’s gaze flicked sideways at him, before returning, ostentatiously, to scrutinise the equipment on the table. John froze.

Deftly, Grant began sizing all the screws. “Maybe your ancestors are right.”

“No, you--” Rodney interrupted.

“But I don’t think that the Ancients set up the gate network to identify people with--” Grant flashed Rodney a grin, “--biochemical disorders, because I don’t think the Ancients care about the Tau’ri on that level. They’re more concerned with populations or whole civilisations. Vit e’ Emm-gen’s real ancestors are the people who survived when the Ancients abandoned Pegasus. ‘Destroying burdens’ makes sense when you think about it, when you’re fighting for your lives every minute of every day.”

“You’re not a burden, Grant,” John was impelled to protest.

“I know,” Grant confirmed, emphasising his words with a head twitch. “I’m not, when I’m here or when I was at Gardner Ross. I’m a magician. A magician with numbers. But if I was in a village growing things, or I had to man a palisade against Wraith, I wouldn’t be very good at that. I know what I am.” Grant snuck another glance around the room.

John shifted from side to side, but didn’t bolt. Teyla was watching Grant closely, waiting for him to continue. Rodney was simply scowling, arms crossed and chin up.

“Ooooh,” Grant picked up a black diamond headed screw and held it out to Rodney.

Rodney sighed heavily, and unfurled enough to snatch the screw.

“Thing is,” Grant continued, “what might have been true ten thousand years ago, isn’t true now. People change, if they don’t forget. If you forget you just keep repeating the same mistakes. So you just have to make sure to tell people that condemning me to death or people like me to death is wrong, because you know better.” He finished brightly and smiled at them all.

Great, John thought uncomfortably, as silence stretched after Grant’s words. He guessed that he should say something, but there was a large gap inside of him where there were no words.

“Easier said than done,” Rodney said waspishly.

“It’s a matter of conscience.” Grant waved his hand. “Teyla doesn’t like it, Flyboy doesn’t like it and you hate it. I bet there are mums and dads out there who don’t like it. Some people would listen.”

Rodney coughed into his hand. “And the fundamentalists would chase us off with flaming torches.”

“And that is different, to eighty percent of our missions, how?” John couldn’t help but smirk.

Rodney wrinkled his nose.

Teyla said sedately, “Perhaps Carson may advise those afflicted or their families when he runs his clinics.”

“Exterminating the Wraith would solve the problem,” John pointed out.

“It wouldn’t really, because you’ve still got the brainless ‘Not Favoured By the Ancestors” idiocy going on.” Rodney raised a triumphant finger. “I could look at the Stargate Babel framework. Tweak the parameters.”

“I think--” John began to interject. That was large scale modification that Elizabeth would insist on a committee assessing before it got the go-ahead.

A technical solution made Rodney glow like a newborn sun. “Grant, you will help. In fact you would be invaluable as the control. Hah, that would be a kick in the face of the Ancestors, using you to ultimately destroy the basis of such an idiotic rule. Come on. Operations, Grant. Now!”

Rodney gathered up his laptop and tool kit in one swoop and ran for the door. Grant spared them one glance, before he set off in hot pursuit.

John tapped his ear piece. “Hi, Elizabeth. Yeah. No, I’m not in my office. Rodney’s on his way up to Operations. You might want to intercept him or redirect him? No, no, no. I’d just say, advocate that he collates some data and then he and Grant can hole up in a lab and run some simulations -- before upgrading the Babelfish. Yeah, sure, I’ll be along soon.”

John flicked off his communicator. He supposed that they’d identified a problem and proposed a solution but there was weight, unaccountably, like an anvil pressing on his chest. They hadn’t actually solved anything. It would be arrogant to assume that they had.

Teyla canted her head to the side.

John rolled his shoulders. “Wanna go spar for a while?”

“Yes, that would be acceptable.”

He bowed extravagantly, letting Teyla take the lead. John kinda thought that Teyla might take it easy on him

Or perhaps not.

Just another day in Pegasus.

Fin

tiny purple writing on black

2008-12-03T09:30:36Z

It’s curious, I’ve noticed an increasing preponderance of LJ entries that format wise are impossible to read. I’ve also come across loads of multi-entry stories which aren’t tagged/linked so finding the parts is a nightmare.

Nine times out of ten, I bale – I hit the back button. Not because of content but format/design issues.

I get the occasional urge to be sparkly, but tiny purple writing on black is a bitch to read.

I guess, I’m indulging in early morning burbling. I have on one occasion mentioned to a friend that I just physically can’t look at her journal. She modified it. But during surfing to find fic and art, I can’t bring myself to introduce myself and follow it with: “by the way, I can’t read/find your stuff”. It’s a politeness thing.

Does anyone else find this? Or is it back to the opticians, for help with the sparkly issue? The non-tagging/listing stuff, I guess, will just continue to be frustrating.

opinion: Watchmen Graphic novel

2008-11-25T18:33:39Z

My godson, though my machinations, has got into Manga and I happily support his drawing habit. He's thanked me more than once for introducing him to Akira.

It's A's birthday tomorrow -- no' 17 -- and I thought, let's get a Western drawn Graphic novel. I dithered over Maus by Art Spiegelman and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Omnibus (I had a peek and I saw some strips I hadn't seen before, it's going on *my* Christmas list) but decided against them.

On my travels through comics and graphic novels, I haven't read Moore and Gibbon's "Watchmen" (yes. I know). Knowing it's a Hugo winner and roundly praised, I purchased it. I've had a quick look at it. I don't have time to read it, so I'm canvassing opinions:

If you've read Watchmen do you think it's suitable for a 17 year old?

jimandblair @ 2008-11-09T09:36:00

2008-11-09T09:44:04Z

The story "There was something in the air" (SGA/Traders xo) future fic appears to have the combination of words which attracts spammers/anon comments with such interesting topics as *&%^ and @^4£* with a soupçon of __________. This has happened previously to fics (e.g WHATISIT), but never with SGA/traders and the only solution that I have found, in the face of being inundated by very annoying spam LJ comments, is to lockdown the fic.

ETA -- I didn’t want to do a blanket comment setting forbidding anonymous comments since I have a few who offer constructive advice.

But this lunch time, I found a tool in the ‘comments settings’ that creates a "Human Test" (interesting name) which is supposed to curtail spammage by anon commenters. I'm giving it a whirl.

"There was something in the air" (SGA/Traders xo) future fic is now unlocked*

*By which I mean that it’s free for anyone to read. I don’t post stories in friends-only mode. If it’s not immediately apparent on this LJ, it’s simply not available.

SGA: The Prodigal

2008-11-08T13:28:43Z

I haven’t read anyone else’s thoughts, yet. I thoroughly enjoyed this. I was yelling at the telly.

It had everything that I want in an episode: plot; character interaction; humour; seriousness; a rocket ride of action and all the elements coming together in a logical whole. It felt like a film rather a forty three minute episode. I don’t know who wrote it, but it was definitely not M&M material.

Okay, the pile of blankets masquerading as Torren required some suspension of disbelief but even our intrepid heroes made mention that he had been incredibly well behaved *g* It was a pity that they gave C. Trineer’s name as a guest star (I’d managed to avoid spoilers). I remember in some of the SG-1 eps they had some of the guest stars listed at the end so that viewers wouldn’t be spoiled. But they are minor quibbles.

Things that I liked…

John and Rodney playing on the east pier. The nod to the actually size of Atlantis; perspiring Rodney and his magically drying t-shirt. Michael and Teyla interactions – so delightfully complex.

Okay, if I was about to run an assault on the tower, my immediate back up would not be Rodney with a little pistol, it would be Lorne... But don’t mind that observation. Lorne got stunned and fainted so cutely (I bet he wishes that he had a Rodney on his team – botanists just don’t cut it).

The nod to the ongoing naming jibes:
Stun Bubble/Force shield
Stun Bubble/Force shield
Stun Bubble/Force shield
Stun Bubble/Force shield

How utterly brilliant was Amelia Banks (right name?) -- second to wake up, intelligent; technologically useful and good at kickboxing. Ronon was awfully impressed. She should be on a gate-team.

When Teyla hid in the ~~Jefferies Tube~~..in the… uhm… ookay….Jefferies Tube and Michael was trying to get her to come out offering not to destroy Atlantis. It would have been a complete trope for that storyline to play out. But she didn’t, she trusted her team to rescue them. She tried to delay Michael. Honestly, death would be preferable to going with Mengele Michael. As an aside, did Michael’s hybrid know that she was there and let her escape?

I spent so much of this episode yelling “Don’t kidnap the baby. Don’t make this another series arc of we-need-to-find-the-baby!”

John has such a death wish. Our heroes have lost count of the number of suicide missions he’s engaged on. Good character action. A hug, I think, would have been overboard. Rodney wanted, needed that hand shake, John so didn’t (very characterological). And finally, a logical, sensible plan – destroy the puddlejumper with a wormhole engaging/timed assault.

Cliff-hanger action. Fighting on the tip of the city (how many nods to films is that?). Teyla to the rescue.

And then Teyla slowly, with premeditated intent kicks Michael into the abyss. John does not stop her nor voices any objection. I can understand Teyla’s motivation: Michael has abused her and is a real and credible threat to her child

You have to feel sorry for Michael; the crew on Atlantis have treated him like utter crap. I don’t blame his actions. I don’t agree with them, but hey lots of provocation. Michael makes such a good bad guy. Ultimately, he defeated himself; he could have just left with Teyla and Torren twenty minutes into the mission – but revenge ruled him. While Teyla did kill Michael, I give odds that there’s a clone (or the original) in the wainscoting.

For me the episode delivered.

There was something in the air (SGA/Traders xo) future fic

2008-11-06T20:31:57Z

I am ridiculously happy over the fact that I wrote fic. It’s been too long since I felt the urge. But today, during lunch, I was hit behind the knees by a giant plot bunny, fell, picked myself up and ran straight to the computer. My lunch time was spent very productively.

Thanks to bluespirit_star for the beta and losyark for answering the very important pudding question.

I now present a SGA/Traders future fic:
rating: G
spoilers: none

There was something in the air
by Sealie

There was something in the air; everyone was very excited. Grant was not too sure what was happening. It was all very strange and electrifying; there had even been chocolate jello pudding cups served in the mess. He had tried to listen, but he had been integrating the general additive function into a recruitment array with variable extrinsic drivers as explanatory factors and suddenly the coding patterns had made sense. He had been stuck forever. Before he knew it, the light fantastic of R<- source [ref point 1,2] took him back to his lab to solve this world’s mysteries of the atmosphere-ocean interaction.

The patterns of random chaos were generating a thousand and one different possibilities on his screen.

“And these are the computer laboratories,” Mr. Woolsey’s nasal voice drifted through Grant’s open door.

“There’s nothing much in there, sir,” an unfamiliar voice noted.

Curious, Grant lifted his head and peered over the top of his computer. He knew everyone in Atlantis. His memory was phenomenal. Someone, too quickly to get a sense other than sunglasses, high-tech hardware stuck in his ear and very tall, was stepping aside to make space for another man.

An Armani suited man stood in the doorway of Grant’s lab. He had a nice smile. Grant grinned back.

“Dr. McKay?” There was a question in the man’s tone.

Grant pricked up higher. Most people automatically assumed that he was Rodney, but this visitor guessed that he was not his cousin.

“This is Dr. Grant Jansky’s lab. Dr. Jansky is our data modeller. And Dr. McKay’s cousin.” John said from somewhere outside in the corridor.

“Do you want to see?” Grant asked brightly. “I figured it out.”

“What did you figure out?”

“Sir, we don’t have time….” The person who had spoken first murmured deferentially.

“It’s okay.” In one easy glance, the man took in all of Grant’s beloved hard drives and computers. Grant pulled his spare wheelie chair over so his new friend could see the computer screen. A host of other people started to fill up Grant’s room. Grant tuned them out; he had someone who was interested in his model!

“So what have you figured out?”

“This world’s just like Earth. If we lived in the Star Trek universe this would be a class M planet. But!” Grant waved excitedly. “We haven’t ever lived here until we came. The Ancients didn’t seed any humans on this planet. BUT! They did seed plants and animals. And they seeded the oceans. I’ve created a model based on pristine, baseline, real data from the marine ecologists and oceanographers and the atmospheric scientists to map how climate variability affects marine populations and communities without anthropogenic input.” Grant wriggled happily in his chair.

“So this will be of benefit to climate change research on Earth?” the man said insightfully. He glanced up from Grant’s computer screen to a portly woman, who -- to Grant’s eyes -- had an insipid olive aura, and raised an eyebrow.

Grant patted his hard drive. “Indubitably.”

“So Atlantis is, indeed, a valuable research base?”

Grant cocked his head to the side; there was a whole host of undercurrents in that sentence that weren’t limited to just a simple question. Grant wasn’t entirely sure what to say. His guest waited patiently for him to capture his thoughts and wrap them into one complete whole.

“Grant?” John prodded, and Grant knew that he had been staring a little bit too long

Wow, John was in full flyboy array, wearing a blue uniform with pinpricks of brightness at the collar and flashes of colour above his left breast pocket.

“You’ve combed your hair,” Grant observed.

“Yes, Grant.” The tips of John’s ears turned a little pink.

His new friend laughed. “Do you like working on Atlantis, Dr. Jansky?”

“Grant.” Grant patted his chest. “Call me Grant. Yes, I like working on Atlantis. It can be a little scary. But do you know what’s special about it?”

“No, why don’t you tell me, Grant?”

“It’s the only place in the Universe where we can do what we do and help lots of people.”

“That’s good to know, Grant. It’s been an absolute pleasure meeting you.” He stood and held out his hand.

“It’s been lovely meeting you…?” Oooh, he had forgotten – but had they been introduced? Grant didn’t think that they had.

“Barack.”

“Hi, Barack.” Grant grinned as he shook Barack’s hand. “Do you like Atlantis?”

“Yes. I think it and the people who live in it are amazing.”

Fin

Because spn: “Yellow Fever” needs a comment tag.

2008-10-25T12:24:55Z

Utterly pointless reading this unless you’ve seen “Yellow Fever’ (Supernatural 4: 06). Spoilery.

unbetaed and gennish -- consider this more of an observation

Scared

“You know, Sam, that solution kinda sucked.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“This dude was, like, a victim of a hate crime. He was trapped in an echo. We’ve broke ghosts out of echoes before.”

Sam looked away to face the dilapidated wood mill. Dean couldn’t see any residual yellow flare in Sam’s demon eyes.

That had to be a hallucination, didn’t it?

“Man, you could have napalmed the whole lot. Burnt every part of the sucker. It’s not like Bobby doesn’t have a bucket load of gasoline laying around.”

“There wasn’t time. You had two hours before you died.” The ‘again’ went unspoken.

There had been time. Time to get the giant guy’s brother and get him to talk the ghost out of his loop. There had been time to try.

“So how come you didn’t get infected?” Dean asked. “You used ‘fear as a weapon’ and you can so be a dick.”

He didn’t get infected because he’s immune to this demon crap, because he’s a demon.

“Dean.” Sam turned away from the forbidding lot. He rubbed his hand over his face tiredly.

“Man, I just thought you were….”

“Dean,” Sam repeated, this time earnestly. “Me and Bobby thought it was the best way. It was the best way… to make sure you were ‘cured’.”

He came up with a’ easy solution, a solution to save me, but not the innocent victim.

Oh, shit we’re so doomed.

fin
_________________________