Anthropormorfic

SGA: Riding the Gyre (or, The Little Merboy)

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:36:04 GMT

pentapus? This is all your fault.

Title: Riding the Gyre (or, The Little Merboy)
Author: rokeon
Rating: G
Summary: Mermaid AU. John was the Sea King’s youngest son
Notes: Art! merboy!John, by pentapus

The sea is eternal. All-encompassing water, comfortable and familiar, is supported by the impenetrable bedrock and in turn supports the insubstantial air. The reefs flourish, as they always have, just as the tides have always turned and the fish have always schooled. There has never been a year in which the kelp failed to grow or the currents ceased to flow. Even the merfolk, unusual as they may be, are as much a part of the forever-sea as the plankton and the salt. It’s only natural that they hold such a fear of change.

The great city was static for years, for centuries, for longer than any concept that the merfolk have of time. Still they shunned it, because fragments of legends and echoes of myths told of a time when the city was vibrant and living and different. Haunted by the dead, they called it nervously, cursed to lie on the ocean floor but never feel the touch of the sea. They diligently avoided its quiet grave and flipped their tales to avert evil whenever they were reminded of its presence. They did not speak its name.

John was different. The youngest son of the Sea King, clever and bold and too curious by half, he loved to hear the stories of an era before time. He had them from his grandmother, who had them from her grandmother, who had them in turn from a long line of mermatrons stretching back farther than memory. They were fantastic tales: stories of a time when the skies above the ocean were as populous as the waters below and of a strange people who inhabited the magnificent city before it died its terrible death. While it still lived, though, while it still lived! The city was like a gull, she told him, webbed hands stretched wide to describe an impossible wingspan, a great crystal bird that could alight on the waves to rest and then take flight again as easy as it pleased.

“Flight” was a strange concept to John. He imagined that it must be like swimming, just with wings instead of fins, but he could not understand how birds swam through the sky when there was nothing there to swim in.

His brothers teased him endlessly for listening to their grandmother’s stories. He was three years past swimming the gyre, they pointed out, too old for silly children’s fancies. They would have spoken differently if they had known the truth, known that John had braved the city’s whispered ghosts two full years before he had challenged the gyre. No one else ever ventured close but he had swum among the spires, looked for those rumored spirits, and felt the unbreakable surface tension of the inexplicable force that held back the sea.

It was a perfect place to go when he wanted to be alone. So John was the only witness when the city lit up, shook itself, and woke; sleeping, not dead. He saw the sudden rush of tension breaking and water moving in as the affronted ocean tried furiously to force it back into submission. For one fleeting moment he even pressed his face to one of the glowing crystal panes and saw the figments of his grandmother’s tales brought to life: strange beings, half merfolk and half not, their speech faintly audible but completely incomprehensible.

He stayed as long as he dared before swimming back to the colony. It was in an uproar when he returned, and at first he thought he was caught, but then he learned that the rumbling tremor of the city’s ascension had been felt for a very great distance. It was fear that had agitated them, not anger. John ducked past his brothers, swam away from the thunderous voice of his father, and went searching for the one person he could count on to be sensible. He went to find his grandmother.

***

Explaining everything that had happened took time, and afterwards John and his grandmother both agreed that it would be best to lie low until the others could calm down. They retold the ancient stories while they waited, his grandmother dredging her memory for more old shards and John making up new ones to patch them together. Eventually the shouting quieted, order was restored, and they heeded the Sea King’s booming call for all of the folk to gather.

They swam to the meeting place and John went up to his place at the end of the line of his brothers. He listened as his father explained what had happened, bit his tongue and tried not to laugh at the absurdity of some of the panicky comments he could hear being whispered in the crowd. Then he bit his tongue and tried not to protest as he heard his father declared a ban on all of the waters near the city. Anyone who endangered them all by breaking his order would be banished to the farthest reach of the merfolk’s territory, forced to live out their days in the freezing water beneath the massive icecap to the distant south. The king’s gaze caught John’s eye as he spoke, just for a moment, and John felt his blood go cold with the knowledge that being a prince of the ocean would not save him from the same horrible fate.

He behaved. He stayed away from the city, bowed to the pressures of his brothers, and told no one else what he had seen. He grew quiet and withdrawn and took to spending more time with the great flagisalis whales than with his kin or age-mates. They had always loved the attention of the merfolk and John found that he preferred their company to the presence of his own kind as well.

The Sea King did not approve of his youngest child’s newest isolation, but he let it pass unchallenged. John had caused less mischief in the last season than he had in any season since he had learned to swim a straight line. And the whales had long memories, even longer than he knew, but their song was a foreign language John had not yet learned and no one had ever gotten in trouble simply by swimming with them.

He might have reconsidered his opinion if he considered how often John was unlike the other merfolk. He certainly would have if he had known that the young flagisalis John had befriended was particularly attracted to shiny metal objects.

SGA: Mnemonic (One Man Army Mix)

Tue, 01 May 2007 04:34:29 GMT

Title: Mnemonic (One Man Army Mix)
Author: rokeon
Summary: Three things that never happened to Sojourner.
Notes: Written for Remix Redux V; the original story was Mnemonic, or Four Ways John Sheppard Didn't Lose His Mind, part 1, by cupidsbow

***

Mnemonic (One Man Army Mix)

1. Augmentation

The facility was built late in the war with the Wraith; its safety measures are phenomenal, and their state of repair after lying dormant for so long is even more impressive. The security recording systems, in particular, are detailed enough to show a complete reconstruction of the chain of events that his own memory has been unable to provide.

He entered the facility first. The sensors registered him as Alteran/human, an unfamiliar combination but not something that the computers were programmed to respond to by activating the interior defenses. The next two sensor readings were human/Alteran and pure human, still no cause for alarm. The fourth was human/Wraith.

The shield generator that automatically attempted to contain the threat was the only part of the network that malfunctioned. The explosion, even viewed through a camera lens focused in the wrong direction, was spectacular. The flying dive he could see himself taking in the corner of the frame – headfirst into a cascade of falling rubble – was equally impressive.

It's no wonder that he can't actually remember any of the things he's seen on the screens.

His teammates, only a few steps inside the entrance when the explosion occurred, were thrown clear and their way back in was blocked by the same pile of debris that had half-buried him on the other side. The sensors were precise enough to provide medical data: he had a concussion, a cracked skull, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a compound leg fracture. Even if the others had been able to dig him out he would have died long before they could carry him to the Stargate.

For all its sophistication, the automated security network paled next to the automated medical systems. After all, the facility had originally been built to create a biologically enhanced fighter capable of standing up to the Wraith. Its workmanship was phenomenal.

2. Adoption

The Fenaiens gifted him his name after he rescued two of their hunting parties from a culling and refused any more recompense than a seat at the impromptu feast that followed their return. They offered him much more – practically everything short of the chieftain's daughter, and he's not entirely sure that she would have been exempt if she'd still been unmarried – but he managed to decline it without being too insulting. (He's very grateful that the girl was married.) Instead they threw the most heartfelt party he's ever seen and gave him a name: Sojourner.

No one had invoked it in living memory, but going on sojourn was a custom that the Fenaiens had recognized for generations. Half spirit quest, half suicide attempt, it was usually practiced by the survivors of the old-style cullings that decimated the population and left just enough to rebuild: people who had lost everything, including their will to live, but weren't quite able to just lie down and die. Instead they left their home world and went searching for either a new sense of purpose or a quick death, whichever came first.

Granting the title to an outsider was breaking with tradition; so was granting it to someone whose self-endangering behaviors weren't actually prompted by a genuine death wish. But the chieftain's youngest son had been a member of one of those hunting parties. And the people were willing to accept that a man with no family or home, only a self-imposed mission that managed to combine both a strong sense of purpose and a high probability of death, was certainly close enough to be granted a little slack.

3. Amnesia

He's being hunted.

Gossip travels both ways; they're following the increasingly exaggerated rumors of Sojourner and he's picking up the increasingly obvious stories of a group of people that carry conspicuously advanced weapons, travel in packs, and wear matching uniforms. It's not exactly subtle. They're not shooting at him or offering rewards for his head, though, and these days he's willing to count that as low key. All they've done so far is spread the same message across a dozen worlds: his physical description, a request for information, and a contact address that he recognizes as one of the rejected alpha sites. Everything necessary to track down poor brain-damaged John who doesn't know his way home; they could just as easily have tacked "lost dog" posters up on the Stargates.

Atlantis thinks he's lost his memory.

The details of the mission he and his team were on are gone, as well as the memory of the explosion and its aftermath, but everything else is intact. So the time and effort theyvre wasting in the search is gratifying, and it even makes him a little proud, but he's not going back. He can't go back. He's known that ever since he woke up in the lab and understood what had happened; they learned the lessons Ford taught them all too well. Never mind that the changes the machines made were deliberate, not some freak accident. Never mind that he's done more on his own in eight weeks than Ford and his junkie militia could have done in eight years. The scanners would start going off before Carson could get within arm's reach; he'd be stunned, secured, and sedated without ever having a chance to argue. He designed the new security protocols himself; they wouldn't let him wake up until he was cured. Fixed. Neutered. Worthless.

It's a shame he can't substitute a psychological exam in place of the physical one. Heightmeyer would be so proud of his word association skills.

If he was still on Atlantis he would have been hard-pressed to rationalize (legitimate) a rescue mission for people like the Fenaiens. Their world has no valuable no trade goods or natural resources, no hidden ZPMs. On Atlantis, safely tucked away in the most fortified base in the entire galaxy, he never even would have known that they'd been taken. He certainly wouldn't have known that the Fenaiens use their hunting parties as their own version of Outward Bound: each group consists of two adult leaders and half a dozen teenage kids. The youngest he saved in his snatch and grab from the destroyer was 14.

He misses the city. But the people outside it need Sojourner.

TW: Passion Play

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:01:41 GMT

Title: Passion Play
Author: rokeon
Rating: PG
Notes: It's Lent. I wrote this. I'm going to the special hell.
Summary: It's all terribly biblical. Spoilers for End of Days.

Jack has never been a very religious person. He did spend eight months in a Sirusan Neo-Orthodox revival cult when he was sixteen, granted, but that was less about faith than it was about the ritual sex. (Sirusan Neo-Orthodoxy had a revival when everyone was sixteen; the cycle was driven by each new generation's sudden discovery of the wonders of temple prostitution. And eight months was fairly typical: just long enough for the hormones to fade and the worshippers to realize that there were easier ways to get laid than following the arbitrary and illogical edicts of a belief system as inherently contradictory as Neo-Orthodoxy. It had been widely accepted as the adolescent experiment of choice ever since a nasty schism over alloys broke the Church of the Tin Vagabond in 4792.) So he doesn't have anything against religion, and he actually remembers his brief fling with spirituality quite fondly, but he never received anything that could be described as formal religious education.

Jack does not count his academy crash course on Ancient Religions 101: How Not to Be Sainted, Scourged, or Sacrificed as formal religious education.

Still, taking the slow road through the 20th century has made it hard to miss the high points of Christianity and he's learned enough to recognize that recent events, Abaddon and the Rift and the whole unholy mess, are all terribly biblical. Denounced and betrayed by his disciples, check. Sacrificed himself to save humanity, check. Dead for three days before coming back to life, check. It's almost enough to make him wonder if he didn't slip a couple thousand years farther back while he wasn't paying attention. It's certainly enough for him to start making plans for when the team gets back with the coffee; maybe telling them that they can address him as Jesus from now on will knock that half-awed look out of their eyes.

But Jesus jokes are going to have to wait. He's forgotten the most important part; the dinner and drinks come before the death and the resurrection, not after. The last scene of the passion play is the ascension into heaven: leaving the Earth behind and finally going home. The right hand of the Lord is calling.

crossovers100 Table

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 05:42:54 GMT

Prompt table for John Sheppard, Stargate Atlantis

001.	Beginnings. Harry Potter	002.	Middles.	003.	Ends.	004.	Insides.	005.	Outsides.
006.	Hours.	007.	Days.	008.	Weeks.	009.	Months.	010.	Years.
011.	Red.	012.	Orange.	013.	Yellow.	014.	Green.	015.	Blue.
016.	Purple.	017.	Brown.	018.	Black.	019.	White.	020.	Colourless.
021.	Friends.	022.	Enemies.	023.	Lovers.	024.	Family.	025.	Strangers. Firefly
026.	Teammates.	027.	Parents.	028.	Children.	029.	Birth.	030.	Death. Sandman
031.	Sunrise.	032.	Sunset.	033.	Too Much.	034.	Not Enough.	035.	Sixth Sense.
036.	Smell.	037.	Sound.	038.	Touch.	039.	Taste.	040.	Sight.
041.	Shapes.	042.	Triangle.	043.	Square.	044.	Circle.	045.	Moon.
046.	Star.	047.	Heart.	048.	Diamond.	049.	Club.	050.	Spade.
051.	Water.	052.	Fire.	053.	Earth.	054.	Air.	055.	Spirit.
056.	Breakfast.	057.	Lunch.	058.	Dinner.	059.	Food.	060.	Drink.
061.	Winter.	062.	Spring.	063.	Summer.	064.	Fall.	065.	Passing.
066.	Rain.	067.	Snow.	068.	Lightening.	069.	Thunder.	070.	Storm.
071.	Broken.	072.	Fixed.	073.	Light.	074.	Dark.	075.	Shade.
076.	Sun.	077.	Trees.	078.	Sea.	079.	Desert.	080.	Island. Lost
081.	Mountain.	082.	Cave.	083.	Wet.	084.	Dry.	085.	Hot.
086.	Cold.	087.	Choice.	088.	He.	089.	She.	090.	Home. Firefly
091.	Birthday.	092.	Christmas.	093.	Thanksgiving.	094.	Independence.	095.	New Year.
096.	Writer's Choice.	097.	Writer's Choice.	098.	Writer's Choice.	099.	Writer's Choice.	100.	Writer's Choice.

HP/SGA: Different Kinds of Magic

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 05:29:56 GMT

Title: Different Kinds of Magic
Prompt: 01.Beginnings
Claim: John Sheppard, Stargate Atlantis
Fandoms: Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter
Words: 747
Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to someone else.

This story has been remixed: Different Kinds of Magic (alla Clark's Third), by zvi_likes_tv

Cover by liviapenn

John knows he's not much of a wizard. Hell, he doesn't even own a wand; his mother taught him how to use a pocketknife as an athame if he needed to cast spells, but she refused to buy something so obviously magical. A purchase like that, she told him, was exactly the way to get noticed. And Emily Sheppard did not want to be noticed.

She never told him the whole story, but John managed to piece a lot of it together. Most of her family got themselves killed fighting some evil overlord during World War Two, and she starting hearing rumors of another one just after she graduated from magic school. Within six months she'd met, married, and moved in with James Sheppard, an Air Force officer stationed in Germany. (John's always half-wondered if there was a love potion involved, but he was never stupid enough to ask.) When he was reassigned to California ten weeks later, she was thrilled.

John never went to magic school. The day before his eleventh birthday he got to drink some foul potion and sit very still while his mother did a lot of chanting: he spent the next two weeks reminding his teachers that he wasn't really absent, winning every game of dodgeball by default, and listening to his father complain about engine intakes being damaged by stupid birds that weren't even supposed to be flying during the day. Eventually it wore off, though, and that was when the lessons began.

Whatever a normal magical education is, John's pretty sure he didn't get one. He doesn't know anything about wizarding history or culture, but he does know seven different ways to alter someone's memory. He knows every potion that can be brewed in a Muggle kitchen, but he wouldn't recognize a flobberworm if it jumped up and bit him. He knows all about the Unforgivables, knows the moral issues and practical applications, but he's never heard the term "Dark Arts" in his life.

In eighth grade he spent every free moment he had buried in transfiguration books. Eventually he realized that, A, there was no way to guarantee his animagus form would have wings and, B, he was crap at transfiguration anyway. When he confronted his mother about the waste of time she pointed out (correctly) that he would have kept trying even if she had told him it wouldn't work. This way, at least, he had some supervision when he accidentally turned his hair into feathers.

The next day she patted him on the head (it never quite went back to the way it was before) and handed him a new book. Arithmancy, she suggested, might work out a little better.

He stopped using magic after high school. The Air Force Academy kept him too busy, and even if he'd wanted to there was never enough privacy. He got out of the habit, the same way he lost touch with his old classmates, and casting spells just faded into one more thing he didn't really think about all that much.

Which wasn't to say that he never did anything. There were a couple truly spectacular pranks at the academy that were never solved, and a good warming charm went a long way toward helping him appreciate Antarctica. But for the most part he was living a perfectly normal life, and magic was something that he just didn't need.

Then one day while he's on chauffeur duty there's this chair, and thinking about where he is in the universe is like remembering the first time he flew and the solar systems appears like a kestrel coalescing from silver light. When they arrive in Atlantis he's got no time to think about any of it, not with power failures and cullings and rescues and Wraith. But then all that's over, the party's winding down, and suddenly the thoughts are overwhelming. He's just inherited military command of the entire expedition, adopted a tribe of natives, and woken the most fearsome enemy in two galaxies. It's not exactly what he was expecting to have to handle.

There's salt in the MRE condiment packs, oil in his gun cleaning kit, and Teyla won't mind loaning him a couple candles. It's been a while since his mother walked him through the ritual enchantment of his old Swiss Army knife, but he's pretty sure he remembers enough to give his SGC-issue KaBar a whole new definition of "multipurpose." He'll take any advantage he can get.

WK: The Ultimate Self-Made Man

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:28:36 GMT

Title: The Ultimate Self-Made Man
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: All of it belongs to someone else.
Notes: Um, it's weird.
Summary: The origin of Schuldig: Composition, Order, Balance, Design, Harmony.

Mad world! mad kings, mad composition!
- Shakespeare, "King John"

Of all the gifts Estet has recorded, telepathy is the one most likely to destroy the gifted. The strongest die when they are literally burned out, their overloaded neurons unable to handle so many overlapping and conflicting impulses, but even the weakest can be irrevocably cracked by the constant whisper of voices not their own. Telepaths at Schuldig's level of strength fall somewhere between those fates; to a man, the emergence of their abilities has developed in every one of them a severe and very unstable case of dissociative identity disorder. Recovery is less than uncommon, with perhaps one in a thousand of those so afflicted able to make themselves useful enough to avoid being put down as a waste of resources.

When they first found him, the boy was so far gone that two- thirds of the three man team sent to retrieve him from the asylum voted he be killed on the spot. According to his files, the boy had not existed before his appearance in a shelter for the homeless six months before. He seemed to be fairly well fed and uninjured, the shelter director had reported, though his ragged clothes and tangled hair indicated that he had been neglected for at least the last several days. The hair had to be cut off; the boy looked older after it was finally cropped down to spiky fuzz, though the director guessed that he was about twelve. Most disturbing was the total amnesia he claimed to be experiencing: he was a blank slate, with no idea about anything from his own identity to how he had ended up at his current location.

The rest of the file read like a textbook case of an emerging high-level telepath. Police were contacted, but the boy abruptly became belligerent and uncooperative when he was taken back to the station. The real fun began after he was delivered to the hospital for an evaluation of his condition: at that point he began manifesting the symptoms of twenty-eight separate psychiatric disorders as he channeled every patient in the ward as well as any strong personality that wandered into his range, which appeared to be quite extensive. He was restrained, sedated, and, after an inconclusive search for any family, locked in a padded cell to rot.

He was still there six months later when the retrieval team came. Kingsley, the team's pyrokinetic, took one look at the shape huddled in a corner and wrote him off. Marcoen was a psychometrist, and he took the time to actually make contact and reach out with his gift before declaring the boy "catatonic, with a mind somewhere between scrambled eggs and total vegetation." Two votes for termination.

The team leader was a telepath. A relatively weak one, especially compared to the mind she could feel reaching out even underneath heavy sedation, but one strong enough to be well versed with madness and what Estet could do with it. She overruled them.

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the
mastery of a subject- the actual enemy is the unknown.
- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

The evaluation upon reaching Rosenkreuz classified the boy as a level three telepath. Level ones were the burn-outs; level twos lost their hold on any trace of self and became nothing but empty shells. Level threes were the strongest with any hope of retaining a consciousness, and it was a slim chance indeed, but the sheer potential strength that distorted their minds made recovery attempts worthwhile. After shielding to block outside influences, his handlers began sifting through a psychic mess even more tangled than his hair had been all those months ago. The nameless boy was found to have seventeen core personalities that, while hardly able to be called stable, were at least solidly rooted in his psyche. Third levels were always difficult to work with: their gifts imprinted on the strongest minds they were exposed to, meaning most of the boy's identities were going to be strong-willed and likely older than he actually was. Rather than trying to discover which was the original (assuming it still existed, and had not been washed away in the flood of the awakening gift) his handlers searched for the one that could best be molded to serve Estet's needs.

The most easily identified and discarded were the strongest, the personalities copied whole from the minds of others. Philip and Ellen were the boy's middle-class parents, completely unsuitable. Johannes was the psychiatrist who had been chiefly responsible for treating him, and Felix was the paranoid schizophrenic from the next cell over. A war veteran, possibly an older relative or a teacher, Wolfgang was prone to offering tidbits of advice and long, rambling stories. Erik was the weakest of the duplicates, a sort of older brother/best friend whose rejection of authority would make him unnecessarily difficult.

After the clones came the amalgams, the dreams and archetypes that had been collected and condensed from multiple sources. Peter was instantly ruled out, the purified Eau de Lunacy rendered down from all those unable to make as lasting an impression as Felix. Similarly, Taylor was the distilled essence of prostitution, neither male nor female and open to absolutely anything for the right price. Completely opposite was Sebastian, an innocent and a child unaware of the existence in the world of suffering and wrong. Amadeus was a pathological liar, a con artist, and a pickpocket who refused to trust or believe anyone. All of the boy's acquired knowledge was concentrated in Aaron, the scholar, while Francis could inexplicably operate every form of heavy construction equipment the handlers could name. Kai was an artist, a singer, a musician, and a dancer. Magnus adored cooking and sports, though he could barely boil water or catch a ball; his real skill lied in his ability to keep track of and monitor absolutely everything in his environment. The last two came as a matched set: Hannah and Seth, sadism and masochism, pure pleasure derived from inflicting and receiving physical and emotional pain.

This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE;
God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and
art found wanting.
PERED; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the
Medes and Persians.
- The Book of Daniel 5:26-28

In the end, having interviewed and tested all sixteen of the identified personalities, they judged them all unfit and selected the seventeenth, the little lost child without memories who was most likely the only remnant of whatever the boy had been before his gift wiped it all away. A comment became a reference became a nickname, and soon Rasa began his education as a telepath. His trainers took over the barriers that guarded him from the world, adding more layers inside the outer walls to keep down the echoing press of his many conflicting natures as they taught him to be what Estet wanted.

Third level telepaths were worth the effort required to stabilize their minds and deal with their various states because of a mental fluke Rasa's instructors called a "greenroom." It held the dormant personalities like a mental waiting room, and its creation was an instinctual reaction. In practice, a lower level telepath could piggyback on another person's thoughts and ride along as a hidden observer, maybe adding an additional nudge or compulsion before having to withdrawal. A level three could box those thoughts up, set them aside, and take total control.

They knew what he could do, but they did not understand. A stronger telepath could always shatter a weaker one's shielding through pure brute force, and they watched for that, but they did not appreciate or guard against subtlety. They had shut the door of the greenroom. They had forgotten it was not soundproof, and that a telepath could alter his own mind even easier than he could someone else's. They had also underestimated the survival drive of someone without a body.

He was always Rasa, they saw to that, so they passed off his quirks of behavior as the actions of an amnesiac trying to build an identity. When they taught him the best ways to manipulate the human mind they saw a fast learner, not Johannes' years of schooling. When they taught strategy they forgot Wolfgang's experience and Magnus' calculations, and when they taught him to torture and kill they missed Hannah's fierce love of the hunt. In the more standard classrooms it was Aaron's intelligence that came to the fore. Even when he was disciplined, courtesy of Erik's insubordination, they mistook Seth's cries as pleas for mercy.

Rasa was a very good student, he was simply learning a great deal more than Estet realized they were teaching.

Total grandeur of a total edifice,
Chosen by an inquisitor of structures
For himself. He stops upon this threshold
As if the design of all his words takes form
And frame from thinking and is realized.
- Wallace Stevens, "To an Old Philosopher in Rome"

As much as they might wish it, sending out a trained telepath with a sealed dissociative disorder was a little too much like assigning one of the field teams a ticking bomb instead of an agent. So at fifteen, when they believed Rasa had developed a strong enough sense of self to hold his own, he was taken to the infirmary and fixed to a bed with four-point restraints and an additional strap to keep his head in place. Then they unlocked the greenroom.

Past experience told them to expect several days of external struggling, possibly even grand mal seizures, as the internal fight for dominance continued. Eventually the victor, hopefully Rasa, would be left with a position something like the alpha in a pack of wolves. At best the winner would even be able to keep the others suppressed, but that was rare. If the ultimate outcome was one Estet deemed unacceptable, either by the results of the fight or if the boy's mind fragmented further, he would be put down like a rabid dog.

They were not expecting Rasa's first actions after the drop of the shields to be a series of meditative breathing exercises that eventually tapered off into a trance state so deep it bordered on a coma. He spent over two weeks unconscious, whatever activity that may have been going on in the greenroom beyond the reach of his trainers. They had begun to suggest that he may have gone the way of the level twos, burying or erasing his mind completely, when he woke up.

He had spent three years planning for this. He had, among other things, an artist's creativity, a psychologist's knowledge, a con man's persuasion, a worker's practicality, and a killer's arrogance. He could have told them it would work out the way he wanted.

Harmony in discord.
- Horace, "Epistles"

Whatever else they may have missed, they knew immediately that he was not Rasa. What they did not know was what to make of the figure that smiled pleasantly and asked for his restraints to be removed. The smile was pure Amadeus, a mockery of Sebastian's innocence that pretended to be reassuring while failing to cover the knife-edged smirk full of Hannah's promises. The motions as he shrugged and spread his hands were made with the effortless grace of Kai, the unshakable confidence of Francis, and the careless seduction of Taylor. Even the shields blocking the telepaths as they tried to scan him were blended, built with Ellen's protective instincts and backed with the threat implicit in a taste of Peter's insanity.

The greenroom was empty. The young man that left Rosenkreuz for his assigned team three months later was alone in his head, his only company the continuous background hum of outside thoughts. He could no longer leave his own body, not with no one left behind to mind the store, but he had the handpicked skills of seventeen individuals who had been, if nothing else, paragons of their particular talents. Seventeen individuals that had been completely assimilated, spun down to threads and woven into their own design on the loom Estet had thought it was preparing for its own use.

He knew what he was, knew he had been the only possible outcome that hadn't included chaining parts of himself or becoming a mindless drone. But someone had obviously had a strong sense of morals, if a rather skewed one, because he blamed himself for those seventeen deaths even as he ignored those who died beneath his gun and his will. For those murders, though, he judged himself.

He was Schuldig.

FF/SGA: Drabbles

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:07:31 GMT

For serenity_gate.

Lorne led the search- had to, even though he felt dirty doing it- and Serenity was obviously a home as well as a working ship. He hadn't learned their names but it was easy to identify their bunks: this shared space was the married couple, this gun collection was the tough guy, this pink monstrosity was the little engineer.

They found a basketball in the cargo bay, origami cranes in the vents, a truly absurd number of weapons hidden everywhere. He's sure they missed some smuggling compartments, but anyone with a still in their engine can't be all that bad.

----

"Carson claims it meets all basic nutritional guidelines," John said, but he didn't look like he really believed it. He also looked like he half expected the innocuous plastic package on the table to jump at his throat and start sucking his life. "So you can live off it indefinitely as long as you don't mind the fact that it tastes like wallpaper paste. No wonder they like the mess hall so much."

Rodney was licking off his fingers. "It's not that bad," he disagreed. "I mean, it's not as good as MREs, but you could get used to it."

----

They're not sure how the Ancient gene turned up in a dimension without Ancients, but the Tam siblings have it. It's stronger in River than Simon, something the doctor laughingly confessed was pretty much exactly what he expected from his meimei.

If the stories about her behavior aren't exaggerated, she's improved enormously; hugging walls and communing with Atlantis is mildly creepy, but it's a lot better than flipping out and slashing people. Simon is taking longer, but more and more often people are finding him stopped and staring at nothing as he remembers again that they don't need to run.

----

Zoe was looking at him like she couldn't decide whether his brain damage was amusing or pitiful, but John was pretty sure he saw some gratitude under there. They still hadn't synthesized a working fuel for Serenity, Caldwell wasn't about to loan out his 303s, and only the Tams had turned out to have the ATA gene; Wash wasn't handling his involuntary grounding very well.

"You mean to say there's a whole planet..."

"We only saw the one before we ran," he admitted, "but there's got to be a breeding population. And that many T-Rexes have to be eating something."

----

John hung around in Elizabeth's office until everyone else at the staff meeting had left. "I was thinking I could take Wash out in a jumper," he suggested brightly.

Elizabeth didn't look up from her computer. "To the mainland?"

He fidgeted a little. "There's no reason we couldn't go through the gate, is there? Not if it was a world we knew didn't have any people?"

That got her attention. "Did you have somewhere specific in mind?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe M1M-316?"

She didn't recognize it immediately, he could see her mentally paging through the mission reports. "M1M... John!"

FF/SGA: Parallel

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:05:42 GMT

For serenity_gate.

Atlantis is nothing like Serenity and exactly the same.

Serenity she could talk to, could be, but Atlantis talks back with whispers that are crystal windchimes in her brain as it tells her secrets like fairy tales like memories. Tells her about the girl in a box who stayed frozen until she was an old woman, about the monsters with evil hands that never come in just twos, about the simple farmers from a simple world who steal her people away to hurt them with lies and threats from poison lips. There's medicine for Simon to learn and practice and teach, stubborn determination like Mal never surrendered, loyalty that could make Zoe cry. Beauty for Kaylee, faith for Book, guns for Jayne, a pretty-polite-hygienic-educated-veryverystresssed-woman-in-charge for Inara. There's math so intricate it's like filigree fractals and there's family like she never dreamed existed outside a Firefly's hull.

It's not all sea breeze and fresh food, she knows. There's a war, good people fighting and dying for freedom from an alliance of reavers. But they're big damn heroes to the bone, every one of them, and they'll never give up just because they're outnumbered.

She realizes she's dancing to the chimes, celebrating a 'verse that had places for them all. She wonders what the others will do when they figure it all out and if there's a way Atlantis can make sure she's there when Wash finds out about the planet full of dinosaurs.

SGA: Ignorance is Bliss

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:03:53 GMT

Title: Ignorance is Bliss
Author: rokeon
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers for "Letters from Pegasus." z_rayne suggested the title.
Summary: It's strange, recording everyone's last words.

Dr. Beckett's mother grows petunias. Lieutenant Murphy speaks to his cousin with sign language. Sergeant Bates and his little brother root for the Lakers. Ford never expected to know any of these things.

Dr. Weir was right, giving everyone the opportunity to send a message home has been great for morale. Being the cameraman, though, was unsettling. There are seventy-one members of the expedition team left. Dr. Kavanagh, Dr. McKay, and Major Sheppard aside; that's sixty-eight times he got to watch through the viewfinder as people said "I love you," "I miss you," and "Goodbye." Ford's heard last words before, even ones spoken with dying breaths. But he never had to interrupt people to remind them which parts of their tearful farewells were classified, never had to ask them to hold the thought while he got a new battery. This was the first time just listening felt like an invasion of privacy.

Dr. Metevier isn't sure her ex-husband will let their kids watch the tape. Dr. Weir doesn't want her boyfriend to wait for her to come back. Major Sheppard doesn't have anyone waiting at all.

He has no business knowing any of these things.

SGA: Fluid Circulation

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:03:12 GMT

Title: Fluid Circulation
Author: rokeon
Rating: G
Notes: It needs to be editied again, or possibly just taken out and shot. But- deadline. *glares at sentence structure*
Summary: It's like a puppy with a ticking clock

I got remixed! Nothing to Fear (The Guardian Remix), by ljmckay

John knows some of the others have been having trouble sleeping. Not many- the scientists tend to work until they drop, and basic training taught the military contingent to crash at any opportunity. But Dr. Beckett mentioned a few people that needed sleeping pills, their circadian rhythms disrupted by the length of the days or the stress of being so far from home. He honestly expected to be one of them; Antarctica had his internal clock screwed up for weeks after he reported for duty and found out that the sun had already set for the winter.

Whatever his expectations, though, insomnia hasn't been a problem here. More like the opposite, because once he gets back to his quarters at night he's been falling asleep before he gets past one page of War and Peace. It's playing havoc with his reading schedule.

He thinks he might know why. Sometimes, when he's lying in bed and everything else is silent, John thinks the city has a heartbeat. It's a soft, steady pulse on the edge of his awareness, something just as much felt as heard, but it's so faint that he's not entirely sure it's more than his imagination.

He asked McKay during the first week and got a very concise explanation about fluid circulation, power conduits, and how if he couldn't find anything to shoot there were still any number of things to do with himself that would be more productive than wasting the time of the only person in Pegasus and possibly the rest of the universe who possessed the intelligence required to comprehend the Ancient technology on which all of their lives were depending. Tempting as it was to hang around and be annoying, especially after an invitation like that, he took the hint and decided to check in with the security teams. Three hours later he'd cleared another hall of rooms for living quarters, inadvertently activated something with a lot of flashing lights that they'd eventually decided was medical equipment and therefore Beckett's problem, given the okay on their future mess hall, and promised a couple of the Athosian kids two extra bedtime stories if they'd run a fresh pot of coffee down to the cranky man in the big lab. All of which was an excellent distraction, so he forgot about whatever it was for the rest of the day.

It started creeping back into his mind as he changed out of his uniform that night, the same quiet rhythm as before. A hum and a pause, a hum and a pause. McKay's probably right; he probably just lucked into Atlantis' version of the room next to the ice machine. But part of him doesn't think so, and it's the same part that felt more at home the first moment he sat in a jumper than it had in any cockpit back on Earth.

Atlantis was built by the Ancients, and it was more than just a city: it was their ship, their sanctuary, and their lifeboat to a new galaxy. It's the most advanced technology the SGC has even found a suggestion of in all their years of exploring. Not only is John pretty sure that it has good soundproofing, he's pretty sure it has something else.

Fluid circulation and power conduits. Heartbeats. McKay was talking about drinking water and electricity, but John can't help thinking about blood. Atlantis is more than just a city, after all, and the part of him that knows it is the same part that translates one beat into trust, the next into safe, and the one after that into home.

SGA: Adaptation

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:01:49 GMT

Title: Adaptation
Author: rokeon
Notes: The second of two possible futures- 'darkness' sort of turned into darkfic, here.
Summary: It should hurt, but it doesn't. He's gotten used to it.

It should hurt, he thinks.

The palmprint on his chest is pale and cold. It should hurt, but it doesn't. The Wraith are careful with the things they can't replace- they take just enough to weaken him, just enough to keep him compliant, never enough to give him more than a few new wrinkles and gray hairs. There's a permanent ache in his chest, like cracked ribs that never fully heal, but he doesn't care. He's gotten used to it.

They keep him in Steve's cage, and he wonders if they understand the irony. If they understand irony at all. They feed him food he recognizes from old supply reports, give him clothes with patches he tries not to recognize at all. Every two or three days they take another taste off his life, every two or three weeks they put him in the chair and drain him until all he can think of is how much he wants to go home. Atlantis makes the course corrections automatically. Energy conservation keeps their speed to a minimum, but progress is steady.

It should hurt, but it doesn't. The ache in his chest is permanent, like a knife in his heart, but he doesn't care. He's gotten used to it.

SGA: An Informed Opinion

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:01:02 GMT

Title: An Informed Opinion
Author: rokeon
Notes: The first of two possible futures- this is the good one. My first non-Sheppard POV.
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Elizabeth knows a lot of things.

It's like a twisted, funhouse mirror distortion of the aftermath of the Wraith siege: bodies littering the balconies and piers, the city itself eerily empty. The only thing wrong with the picture is the lack of sweaty, bloody BDUs; dress for the day is swimsuits and sunscreen.

There's just a skeleton crew still on duty, every one of them champing at the bit for their own turn outside. A few minutes ago she caught John doing a double-take as he finally noticed the strap of the bright green halter top Lieutenant Davis is wearing under her uniform jacket. It may be hot now, but she's obviously not planning on wasting time to change after her shift ends.

John's wearing his jacket, too. He muttered something she didn't quite catch when she asked him about it, but she thinks she knows the reason anyway. He's going for concealment, the same as the lieutenant, and he's succeeding about as well. There are some sins military issue clothing just isn't meant to hide.

Elizabeth wouldn't call herself an expert, but she has some experience with hickeys. Since this expedition began she's also gotten an unwanted but comprehensive education in the way John Sheppard bruises, so it's her informed opinion that the bite on his neck is about three days old. That puts it on the day they finally pinned down the weather forecast, or more likely the night after the day that everyone spent celebrating the imminent end of the rainy season that had swept out of nowhere a month before.

She thought Rodney seemed uncharacteristically relaxed during their last meeting.

Last week the teams finished their initial sweep of the city, establishing if nothing else that at least there aren't any more plagues lurking behind unopened doors. Next on the to-do list is a more thorough survey, hopefully one that can begin to identify rooms and inventory their contents. Once they get an idea of what's out there she knows she'll get to listen to every single scientist in the city argue over whose project is most important and whose unidentified device needs to be examined first. She can hardly wait.

One of the teams reported something that caught her attention, though, a small structure on one of the more distant piers that at first glance appeared uncannily like a jacuzzi. She'll mention it to John toward the end of the shift, confess that she's looking for a place she can get some private time for herself and ask him to do her the favor of checking it out. She'll apologize for asking him to give up his own time off, he'll insist that she works too hard and it's the least he can do. He'll even drag Rodney along to make sure there's nothing dangerous. They'll want to be thorough, of course, so the inspection will probably take several hours.

She's not sure how they've convinced themselves of it, but they really do think she doesn't know.

SGA: As Time Goes By

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:00:11 GMT

Title: As Time Goes By
Author: rokeon
Notes: Takes place shortly after The Siege II, with the obvious spoilers. I kind of glossed over what happened in between since I couldn't work out anything plausible in time. Went over the 38 minute limit editing it into something that wasn't totally gibberish.
Summary: Power restored, higher functions online (hello, stream of consciousness)

The Mark-II is a jumble of metal and wires and potential high explosives shoved into an out of the way corner of the chair room as John comes in at a dead run. One hiveship destroyed by the satellite (thank you, Peter), one destroyed by the nuke (the nervous breakdown over how close that one had been was being postponed until after the current catastrophe, but it was going to be a really spectacular one), one left to go (the last enemy in a dogfight is always the best pilot, the one who's survived long enough to learn your tricks). There was another wave of darts inbound, more than they could possibly handle with their losses (the only people he knows are still alive are the ones he passed as he ran, none of which were Teyla or Ford or Weir or McKay, four more things he can't afford to think about at the moment), but Daedalus is here, the cavalry sweeping in fashionably late with trumpet fare and weapons' fire that still isn't enough to turn the tide on its own, and all he can think about right now is getting his ass in that chair by the time they plug in the ZPM.

He makes it, beats them to it, has two incredibly long seconds (one, Mis-si-ssi-ppi, one. two, Mis-si-ssi-ppi, two) to come up with a million things that could have gone wrong because they should be there by now. Then the lights come on, the chair reclines, and Atlantis is happy to see him.

*Power restored, higher functions online,* she tells him. She supplies him quicker than instantly with the fact (that both Earth's scientists and its science fiction writers are amusingly far off track in their conception of Artificial Intelligence) that his brain is handling her data feed (a combination of the Ancient database, her current sensor data, and the stored logs of everything since their arrival that she's been unable to properly process before this point) by directing the most important streams of information straight into his memory while her lower-priority communications are interpreted as speech. So he already knows that the shield is up and capable of lasting for 1,794.359 years at current energy consumption levels, that she has a lovely array of both defensive and offensive options available for him to choose from, and that a crosspatch of her internal sensors with his visual cortex has pinpointed the locations of Teyla (vital signs elevated but within tolerable ranges) and Ford (hit by a Wraith stunner, no immediate danger) and Weir (speaking with the Daedalus over her radio, would he like to listen in?) and McKay (moving very rapidly along the shortest path from the ZPM to the chair room).

She sincerely apologizes for her inability to provide a turkey sandwich at this time (and the absolutely merciless sarcasm in her mental voice is the final proof that the Ancients truly were a higher form of life, and one more thing he knows already is that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship).

SGA: Much Too Far Out

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:59:21 GMT

Title: Much Too Far Out
Author: Rokeon
Rating: PG, gen
Challenge: Swimming
Notes: First SG fic of any kind, be gentle. No beta. Spoilers for Before I Sleep.

Summary: John wonders when he stopped pretending to be a commanding officer and actually started becoming one.

I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
- Stevie [Margaret Florence] Smith

John wonders when he stopped pretending to be a commanding officer and actually started becoming one.

He never expected to be in charge of anything but a chopper, never wanted to be responsible for anyone but himself. Getting sent to McMurdo after Afghanistan pretty much guaranteed that he was never going to be promoted again, and he was okay with that. They were still letting him fly.

But the three soaked Marines currently dripping all over his nice clean puddlejumper don't look like they're expecting him to get the joke; they look like they're expecting him to tear some strips off. Slowly, and with great precision.

He hasn't actually given an order to stay out of the ocean. Neither has Elizabeth. So far basic survival instincts have been enough to keep them all dry: no one really know anything about the water that surrounds them. The oceanographers have been working nonstop for months, but they've still barely begun, and they certainly can't predict things like riptides and undertows. The xeno-biologists have been so completely focused on the Wraith that the only source of information they have on potential marine life is Dr. Kahne's (almost completely discredited) sighting of the Loch Ness monster. What they do know is that the original expedition timeline saw almost every one of them killed as the shield collapsed and the city flooded. Until now, that's been enough.

It obviously won't be anymore.

Right now he can see himself in the three of them: bracing for impact as his CO works up a good rage is something he's done too many times not to recognize it in others. They don't know he got filled in as he flew the jumper out to pick them up: Jensen and some others were playing basketball a little too close to one of the balconies, Cortez and Harris got their Baywatch on after he went over the edge. None of which is surprising since he already knew that Jensen turns into a klutz once he's off duty, Harris was a lifeguard before he enlisted, and Cortez was the star of her school diving team. Those two just confirmed their places on the team he's been assembling in the back of his head, the one he thought might be a good idea to have around on the floating city they still don't totally understand.

He never pictured himself as the type who spends hours going through personnel records in search of just the right time on the 100 meter backstroke. He's always been the type who's first to suggest the ballgame in the corridors to begin with- maybe not the type who ends up dunking himself along with the ball, but certainly the type who chases it to the rail and shouts "Wilsoooonnn!!"

He's not supposed to be that person. He hadn't realized they already saw him that way. He's not sure if he should be happy to find out that he seems to be doing a good job.

PotC: Ficlet

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:56:54 GMT

Soft lips on his jaw, slim hands tangling in his hair (easier now than the same action will be in the future, with the strands almost long enough to brush his shoulders and just two beads strung behind his left ear: the first strokes of paint on the canvas, the first planks nailed to the beams of the hull), the touch of something cool and smooth that he can’t quite name as it brushes across his chest. Cool and smooth and round, he feels as the lips move down his throat, and the magpie in his brain straightens to attention as it identifies a rope of pearls.

He twists, tries to wrap his arms around her properly, succeeds only in rolling out of his hammock and being rudely awakened by contact with the deck. It’s not until afternoon watch, when one of his shipmates compliments the new acquisition, that he discovers the black pearl braided in at his temple.

OuatiM: Reset

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:56:15 GMT

Figure suspended above him, grinning skull staring down, and he’s crouched on the floor ready to fight before he recognizes one of the paper-mache skeletons from Dias de Los Muertos. Wrists and ankles lashed to the four posts of the bed like some macabre canopy and it’s the sort of stunt he’d be proud of if he’d pulled it himself.

Clothes folded neatly on the chair in the corner, his own dry blood flaking off at shoulder and thigh. He sticks an experimental finger through the holes as he pulls them on, prodding the unmarked flesh beneath, and makes a note to buy replacements. And a large package of wet-naps, he resolves upon looking in the mirror and seeing the heavy stains trailing down over his cheekbones, or maybe a box of those industrial strength bleach wipes made to clean kitchens and bathrooms. That stuff looks like it’s caked on but good.

Image, after all, is everything.

Momentary twinge as he buttons his left cuff, just the slightest flash of pain, and he folds it back to check on the fresh scar across his wrist; fine red lines looping over the veins like delicate lace, like Celtic knotwork, like copper filigree. Like cursive handwriting.

The table beside the door holds his pistols, his sunglasses, and the Agency identification he remembers Ajedrez saying she’d keep as a souvenier, all polished until they shine. He takes the guns on his way out.

FH: Sweetness, Wormwood, and Rue

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:54:03 GMT

There is an anachronism- the book wasn't published until 1900.

The absinthe is a familiar friend, a green glass lens that brings the visions into sharp focus, though Whitechapel is certainly no Oz.

The flash of memory cuts like a surgeon's scalpel: Margaret in the parlor, laughing at him as he lays beside her on the settee to read passages of childrens' stories to her swelling belly. The books were a gift from her cousin in Surrey. He wonders vaguely if etiquette requires the presents be returned in the absence of the blessed event they were intended to celebrate.

He knows the absinthe like a friend, like a lover, like a wife. Or better than a wife, because even after seven years of cleaning up the cast-offs of Whitechapel he can't picture his laughing Margaret as a stiffening corpse. The absinthe is simple: alcohol, sugar, and wormwood. Temporary oblivion sweetened by just enough poison to dangle the promise of permanence, even if it never delivers.

Margaret hated it when he drank, made him rinse the bitter out of his mouth before letting him kiss her. He's never had reason to try opium before now, but he wonders with the first draw what she would have thought about the the scent of his breath.

Then the dragon is pouring into his lungs, coiling into his blood, and he knows. Knows how she will look tomorrow, pale and cold and still, copper pennies covering her eyes as they lower her into the ground. Knows that she would have laughed, would have stolen the sweet smoke with a kiss until all of his breath was hers. Knows that she loves him, even in his self-destructive grief, and she promises never to leave him alone again.

FH: What I've Tasted of Desire

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:53:08 GMT

Godley tells him again and again that he's destroying his life, that every time he lights a match for the pipe or the glass he's burning away a little more of himself.

He doesn't understand that Abberline welcomes the fire. That the addictions may be killing him, but the craving for more is all that keeps him from killing himself.

The visions he has now are more frequent, more vivid than they've ever been before. They were barely dreams when he was a child, quickly-forgotten glimpses that only came to mind when his mother gave him the new toy he'd been unknowingly expecting, when he wasn't surprised by his father's unscheduled return. They grew and matured as he himself did; the cracking of his voice was accompanied by the absolute knowledge of his grandmother's impending stroke, just as his first awareness of the opposite sex was overlaid with the plumes on the harness of the carriage-horse that would trample his dog the next day.

Not all of it was sorrow and destruction, something he doesn't know whether to be grateful for or not. He met Margaret at a party, the daughter of one of his father's partners, and saw her walking toward him in her wedding dress before he ever knew her name. He knew what it would be like to love her as they courted, heard her congratulate him on his promotion to inspector while she darned his shirt, felt their son kicking in her belly as she cried over her second miscarriage.

However much he cursed God for her death, he thanked all the angels that they spared him the sight of it.

Every dream, every vision had always been related to him. It wasn't until after her funeral that he started seeing the world for the wretched place he suddenly knew it to be, saw that his mother's pale-lipped smile as she ignored the spots of blood on her handkerchief was just as pointless as a Whitechapel doxy strangled in a dirty alley.

The heavy smoke of opium makes it harder to see that hollow place in his chest, that bottomless well that the absinthe numbs but never fills. It's enough to make him envy the Ripper- whatever madness has hold of the man, it's a madness with passion and purpose. Insanity is a hotter, truer fire than the slow smolder and quick flash he makes do with, a beacon as tempting to him as the biblical bush.

Moses spoke to God, and he had the strength to save his people and part the sea. Abberline wonders who speaks in pictures to him, what voice it is that the Ripper hears. He wonders which of them will have the greater faith.

WaT: Til the Depths Give Up Their Dead

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:52:21 GMT

...until the depths give up their dead.

It's driving Martin insane, but he can't remember the entire quote. He's not even sure what it is that he's trying to remember, doesn't remember if it's something he's read in a book, seen in a movie, or just picked up through general pop culture osmosis. Whatever it is, though, it's already happened- the paramedics left with Jessica Fawkes' body twenty minutes ago, and now he and Danny are the only ones on the beach.

None of their cases are easy, but kids are the worst. The faces smiling down from the whiteboard are always straight out of the yearbook, braces and acne and promise all mixed together. They always look so happy, those pictures.

Jessica had passed those awkward years, the ones Martin sometimes half-suspects he never quite grew out of, escaped the indignities of pimples and crooked teeth. Even her promise was becoming reality: she graduated with honors two weeks ago.

She didn't come home Tuesday night.

Forty-eight frantic hours of investigation failed to turn up anything. No drinking, no drugs, no abuse, no debts, no boyfriends, no girlfriends, no pregnancies, no fights, no enemies, no problems. No leads.

The fact that they have a standard checklist for missing teenagers is profoundly depressing.

It wasn't until this morning that they found her car parked at the head of a beach access path, this afternoon that they found her body. They'd known she was a swimmer- team captain, backstroke champion, scholarship winner. They hadn't known about her favorite method of summer training. She hadn't known about the undertow.

The beach spent an hour doing its best impression of a kicked anthill, but now it's practically deserted. Just him and Danny, and they're sitting on the sand staring out at the ocean that killed Jessica Fawkes. The paperwork's waiting, but it's too late for triplicate forms to make any real difference. No one who hasn't died already is going to get hurt because their reports are turned in Monday.

Jackets, ties, shoes, and socks are in a pile up closer to the car. The Suit may be an indispensable part of the FBI image, but at this time of year it's also a portable sauna. It's not until everyone else leaves that they can shed layers, unbutton collars, and roll sleeves in an effort to get some relief.

The sun is beating down, but the breeze off the water is cool and the waves are just barely lapping at their feet. The ocean is a beautiful sight, the beach is silent except for a few gulls, and Danny's shoulder is warm and solid under his head.

Their part's over now.

OuatiM/Sandman: The Belonging Kind

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:50:52 GMT

Title: The Belonging Kind
Author: Rokeon
Rating: R- more mindfucking than actual sex
Pairing: Sands/Corinthian
Feedback: Pretty please with gringo kitties on top?
Disclaimer: Honestly, it's probably better for my health and sanity that I don't own them.
Notes: If you've never read The Sandman series, I cannot describe how badly you need to go buy every single one. Right now. I've tried to explain the Corinthian to the uninitiated, but there's really no substitute for the way Neil Gaiman and his characters get into your brain and make themselves at home. Also, title was shamelessly stolen from William Gibson.
Summary: Some people belong to things greater than themselves. Some of them even know it.

He knows it's a dream.

He's known from the beginning, from the moment he found himself looking around the cheap Mexican motel room and actually seeing it. Even before he stared into the mirror at his own face and saw the gaping sockets, the bloody tears, he knew he was dreaming. So it's not a shock when he looks back to the mirror and sees that it isn't a mirror but a doorway, and standing in it waiting patiently to be noticed is a man who is not his reflection.

There's something familiar about him, though, and it's not just the cocky smile and dark glasses that make him doubt for a moment and think maybe the door is really a mirror after all. It's something intangible, something in his aura or ambiance or attitude or the blood caked beneath his fingernails that says yes, this is a killer of men. One that doesn't bother with gloves when things get messy.

He wonders, in one of those perfectly rational tangents that happen in dreams, if the cockroaches in the bathroom are figments of his imagination or if they are indeed the dreaming selves of the cockroaches he's heard skittering along the tiles at night while he lays in bed and doesn't sleep. He'd been starting to think that maybe he couldn't, that he would spend the rest of his life awake and aware, and he's discovering to his surprise that he would have missed this dreaming if it hadn't come. He's not used to missing things.

He misses his eyes.

"They were wonderful eyes," agrees the man still standing in the door that still might be a mirror. "I saw your balance through them, and it was delicious."

"The best it's ever been," he quotes, feeling the corner of his mouth turn up as he remembers. Maybe that's why his plan failed; his dream was too good. Mexico is a country of extremes, of too-bright colors painted over the too-stark contrast of black and white. She has her six-string samurai sons and her traitorous bitch daughters, and somehow the two dance around each other like matter and antimatter. Never stable, never actually cancelling each other out, but as close to his vision as they can come without exploding.

The man's smile, when it comes, is as sharply edged as a knife sinking into his gut. Because he's seen it on himself a thousand times, practicing it in the mirror until it became second nature, fine tuning that mix of threat and promise that made him more than just another punk kid in high school, more than just another faceless agent in the company. "But you still want to kill them all in the most painful way possible."

It's a beautiful thing, being understood like that without having to explain yourself. And it's half a dozen steps across the room to reach for those sunglasses, to pull them off and toss them away somewhere over his shoulder, ignoring the dull sound of their impact on ragged carpet in favor of the laughter he hears behind the words. The smile is three times as sharp now, and the balance in this- the killer who consumes eyes and the killer who has none- is so perfect it hurts.

A small corner of his mind takes a moment to note that this is quite probably the most fucked-up staredown in history, Mexican or otherwise.

It's probably too perfect, but there's no one here to shoot but himself and the man he's pressed back against the door, and besides he's never had anything that remotely compared to this moment: the taste of good tequila, the smell of fresh blood, the feel of hard muscle, and the sound of the neverending laughter that refuses to stop even when they kiss, biting lips and chewing tongues and clashing teeth and whatever happened to his lunchbox, anyway? He liked that lunchbox.

He forgets to mourn its loss as things abruptly spin out of his control, an ankle hooking behind his knee and hands gripping his shoulders and by the time he figures out what happened it's him that's pressed against the door. One of those hands is tangled in his hair now, wrenching his head back for the inexplicably delicate, nipping teeth that are busy mapping his bared neck as the other hand rubs its way down past his chest and stomach to settle on his leg. There's a pause, just long enough for him to realize that the fingers have wrapped around his thigh and the thumb is lightly stroking over the worst of his collection of half-healed gunshot wounds. It's a transcendent sort of moment, almost an epiphany, during which it's so clear what's about to happen. Then it does, the thumbnail digging in as the teeth sink into his throat and the pain is white heat that flashes through every part of his body before burning its way out.

If it's possible to black out when you're already unconscious, he does, because he has only the vaguest sensation of wooden door transmuting into cotton sheets and gravity somehow resetting itself by 90 degrees so that by the time things come back into focus he's on his back in a rather nice bed. Trying not to think about how exactly it is that he's focusing when he's pretty sure his eyes are still somewhere other than his face, though he'd have to check to make sure. Easier to think about something else, like the way he seems to have conveniently avoided coming in his pants by having said pants conveniently vanish, along with the rest of his clothes and those that had been worn by new best friend.

Speaking of whom, now that certain pressing urgencies have been relieved he can take the opportunity to really look at the man, and damned if he isn't smiling again. These smiles are different though: smug and self-satisfied and hungry, and that's a feeling he can relate to, a banked heat that wasn't satisfied with just a quick flashfire. He seems to recall learning something about REM cycles, though, and unless he's lost even more of his mind than he already had he'll be going through several of them before he wakes up, and they'll only grow longer each time.

It's an abrupt question, one backed by genuine curiosity. "Do you have a name?" The best orgasm in his life, even if it was imaginary, and he's only now getting around to asking. He supposes it fits, priority-wise.

"The Corinthian."

And now he's lost it completely, laughing so hard he's not sure he's ever going to be able to stop. He'd thought the kiss was too much, but this, this is whole worlds of wrong, and Freud would be having a field day with it if he wasn't six feet under somewhere in Austria. Dreaming of sex with the homicidal lovechild born of the affair between his own subconscious and the Hero of Mexico, and all he can think to himself is that he'd always believed firstborn sons should be named after the father, and apparently he's managed to do that without having to pass on the childhood trauma that is Sheldon.

He's also thinking that he knew he was good when he lied his way through the psych exams, but he never imagined that he was this good. What do they call psychic incest, anyway? Is there a clinical term?

"Sands," he offers some time later, when he finally can breathe again. It's only fair to give a name for a name, even if it is a lousy one. "Sheldon Jeffery Sands, late of the CIA."

"I know who you are," says the Corinthian, and there's something in that voice that washes away the last of his hysteria and brings him fully back to the present, back to his body where it's sprawled in bed with this strange man straddling him on hands and knees. It's another set of smiles now, heavy and slow and possessive, and he can't suppress a shiver as lips press softly against his and warm breaths blow feather-soft into the twin pits that were his eyes.

"You're one of mine."

The brush of lips deepens into a kiss, and it's long and slow and very, very thorough. He feels every muscle in his body relax, bones melting as he sinks into the bed, and this is the most foreign sensation he's had to deal with all night. He's been coiled like a spring since he first heard of the coup, on edge since he was first assigned to Mexico, tense since he first joined the CIA. Hell, he's been keeping one eye out for trouble since kindergarten. Stupid fuckmook parents and their book of 1001 Names That Will Scar Your Child For Life.

Of course, one eye is more than he has to spare at the moment. Maybe that's why he's not worrying.

Whatever the reason, he's currently content to lie back and let the Corinthian do the work. He occupies himself with cataloging the tastes: tequila with lime, that one he noticed during that first blitzkrieg of a kiss. Good stuff. Copper and salt, the sweetsharp tang of blood that he's fairly sure is his own. Heavy smoke, tobacco with just the slightest hint of cordite, and he moans as he imagines it, taking a drag off the cigarette and dragging his tongue along the barrel.

Time is melting again, now, stretching and twisting and folding back on itself like a Mobiüs strip made of saltwater taffy. As long as it's not the kind that tastes like licorice. It's strange; the sex, if you can even call it that, was over too fast for him to register any more than a series of impressions, a sudden detonation of heatpressuresharplight giving way to a sea of cotton-wrapped gray. But this drawn out tangle of lips and tongues has lasted for... oh, at least a week, now, and there's absolutely no reason for it to stop anytime this month.

There's a whorehouse in Hong Kong, the sort of place where the girls are just one of the many services available. He paid it a celebratory visit the day after the death of a certain prominent Triad member was officially ruled as being due to natural causes- long soak in a hot tub, full-body massage, fabulous lunch, and what he'd always considered to be some of the best sex in his life. He feels the same way now that he did then, all from a single (neverending) kiss without so much as a hint of physical contact below the neck.

Is it true that dying in dreams means you never wake up? Because he's heard of people having coronaries while they're fucking. (And knows three different drugs that can help trigger the contributing arrhythmia... fascinating subject, chemistry. One of his favorites in school, though he ended up majoring in political science. He still regrets that Professor Rigby, his teacher for Comparative Governments II, wasn't his first kill. Though the origin of the skills the CIA taught him to use to withstand torture, the ones that kept him from breaking down and crying like a little girl while they gouged out his eyes, those can be traced back to two weeks of 7 AM lectures on the Value of Cultural and Historical Uniqueness. So maybe things balanced out after all.) Sands does not want to be one of those people, his end the punchline of some pathetic locker room joke- Did you hear the one about the secret agent that died from a wet dream?

He's vaguely aware that he really shouldn't be able to think this clearly. Maybe it's not that odd, though: his body is behaving like a separate entity, one that can only react to what the Corinthian is doing to him. Independent action just isn't possible, not with the way the endlessly rolling waves of sensations have left him unable to do anything but feel, not without being in serious danger of blowing every single fuse in his nervous system if he tries anything. So there's really no reason his mind shouldn't wander elsewhere. After all, there are a million and one things to think about: things like the best ratio of PETN to RDX for making Semtex, like the way his cousins' dog used to bury stuffed animals in the backyard, like the day he found out he could actually get paid to cause chaos and mayhem, like the JesusfuckingbastardChrist way the Corinthian's tongue just started working the sweet spot on his neck as twin voices whisper sweet nothings into his ear.

Other people have always been the most irritating part of getting laid, before now. They're so needy, demanding gifts and vows and time and effort when all he wants is something more satisfying than his own hand that doesn't require the bar-hopping and drink-buying involved in picking up someone new.

Is easy, regular, completely meaningless sex really too much to ask for?

These are promises of faithfulness and devotion, but not the sort he's ever seen on candy hearts and valentines. These are real. You will never forsake me, they tell him, never belong to another. I am inside you, in your bones in your bile in your blood, and the deeper you cut yourself the deeper you will drive me. When you kill, I will eat their eyes. When you die, it will be at my hand.

He could call it love, but he won't. This isn't about romance; it's barely even about lust. It's about being connected, being possessed, being known from the inside out. It's about being in a place he could stay for the rest of his life, but feeling no regret that he's going to wake up soon. It's about knowing his next kill will be more satisfying and more meaningful than any sex, real or imaginary, could ever be.

It's about knowing that he may be blind, but he'll be seeing the Corinthian's triply-smiling face for a very long time.

WaT: What It Is

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:42:52 GMT

Title: What It Is
Author: rokeon
Rating: G
Feedback: Anything you particularly liked or hated?
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, they're CBS's. More's the pity.
Archive: Wonderful, just let me know.
Summary: Drabble- It's not a ring.

It's not a ring.

It's not a marriage license, not a civil union. It's not sanction from the FBI, certainly not a blessing from his father. It's not names in each other's wills, on adoption papers or mortgage contracts or even matching movie ticket stubs.

It's rug burn. It's a nasty red rash on his knees that's been there for a week now, not cyclically growing and fading like it has for the past two months but getting steadily worse.

It stings like hell, and it's not remotely like a ring, but Martin thinks he could get used to it.

PotC: Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:42:09 GMT

Title: Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes
Author: rokeon
Rating: PG, Gen
Warning: Not deathfic, but there have been deaths in the past.
Feedback: Anything you particularly liked or hated?
Disclaimer: Poetry by Eliot, piracy by Disney.
Summary: Elizabeth's dreams, and reflections.

Elizabeth doesn't allow herself to think on it too deeply, but she remembers the dream she had before everything that happened... good Lord, practically a decade ago. Nine years since she married Will, six months after his formal proposal, three weeks after the very much less than formal breaking of her engagement to Commodore Norrington and the equally abrupt cancellation of the hanging of Captain Sparrow.

James has been dead for two years. A hurricane, though the season was wrong, or some other storm near as strong as one; the Dauntless was lost with all hands.

Of Jack there's been no word, nothing since he went over the wall of the fort. The rumors never cease, of course; there will always be legends about the Black Pearl's swiftness of sail and power of arms, just as there will always be tales of Jack Sparrow's swiftness of blade and power of personality. Even a particularly rowdy (and spectacularly randy) drinking song, one she imagines Jack would take as a great source of pride. But never anything that can be verified.

She has suspicions about the song, though, enough to make her believe that the Pearl saved her final disappearance for some time past that moment when she vanished into the horizon. No one can be persuaded to sing it in the presence of a lady, and even Will blushed beautifully scarlet and refused to quote beyond the second verse, but the melody of his off-key recitation was more than sufficient to recall the heat of fire on her face, the grit of sand in her toes, and the flavor of rum on her tongue.

Nearly ten years since the dream, almost twice as long since the actual events. It's still sharper in her mind than her wedding, her father's funeral, the births of her children. Sunlight skittering across a golden skull, the shine so bright it's as if the rays are trying to escape the metal's touch. Its mirror opposite, light and color and life absorbed into the mist surrounding dark planks and tattered sails that fade away as if they were never more substantial than the shadows around them.

She remembers the dream- doesn't pretend she'll ever forget it- but she doesn't let herself wonder. Doesn't let her curiosity off its tether, and certainly doesn't let words like 'omen' and 'premonition' cross her mind.

She doesn't let any of that happen because she's been having trouble sleeping recently, coming fully conscious in the middle of the night with one hand automatically stroking Will's shoulder to soothe him as he tries to wake at the disturbance. At first she thought it was the baby crying, but little Jamie sleeps like an angel and his nurse is as vigilant as one herself. It wasn't until the third week that she acknowledged what she already knew. She never remembers anything, her mind empty of everything but the weight on her chest: the weight of the water in her lungs that leaves her gasping for breath, the weight of the coin on its chain that her other hand reaches for but never finds.

She never remembers anything, but she wakes with the inescapable conviction that what she's not remembering are dreams.

IV. DEATH BY WATER

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

PotC: Unstoppable

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:40:00 GMT

Title: Unstoppable
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The Mouse sees all, knows all.

Notes: First attempt at a PotC fic, and barely that- 100 word drabble. Gen.

***

They took several months to begin, but now new stories are carried by every ship that docks. Always moderately infamous, at the helm of the Pearl Jack has taken her mythos into his own, and now it’s Sparrow that’s uncatchable, unsinkable.

Sometimes Will recalls the list of crimes from Jack’s almost-hanging, and it seems like no rule of man could hope to contain a force of nature. He’s waiting to hear the tale of Jack’s escape, to hear about how the trapdoor dropped and Jack, calmly as you pleased, defied the law of gravity.

Captain Jack Sparrow will never die.