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Title: Five Times Someone on Atlantis Wished They Weren't
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluflamingo
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Characters: Lorne, Teyla, John, Sora, Cam
Rating: G
Words: 1801
Disclaimer: No, I don’t own them. To my profound disappointment.
A/N: Originally posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sg1_five_things; spoilers for Atlantis up to 4.20 The Last Man, inc major spoilers for that episode; SG1 10.3 The Pegasus Project.
5 Times Someone on Atlantis Wished They Weren’t
1. Major Lorne
Lorne gives it another three hours before he makes an executive decision that their Genii contact isn’t coming and dials Atlantis.
“Nothing?” Colonel Carter asks when they step through, making her way down to them.
“No, ma’am,” Lorne agrees. He looks round quickly for Sheppard, wanting to say I told you so, because he just wasted three hours on that planet, and he’s got a stack of paperwork he could have been getting on with. There’s no sign of him though – it’ll have to wait till they run into each other later in the day.
Carter looks behind him, taking in his team, who are hovering, waiting to be dismissed. “Did Colonel Sheppard decide to stay behind?” she asks, frowning.
“No,” Lorne says, feeling the familiar, unpleasant sensation of things going horribly wrong in new and interesting ways. “He came back half an hour after we were supposed to meet the Genii, left us there just in case the guy turned up.”
Carter makes a strange face, like she’s trying to smile reassuringly, but can’t quite manage it through the frown. “That’s odd. Maybe I missed him coming back, I was down in the labs earlier.”
“Maybe,” Lorne agrees, but he knows she didn’t. There’s no way someone wouldn’t have informed her that Sheppard was back – no way Sheppard wouldn’t have gone looking for her to report on their contact’s failure to show. He nods to his team, dismissing them – it’s already starting to look like they’ll be going back out later today.
“Come with me, Major,” Carter says, leading the way up to the control balcony. “Sergeant, is Colonel Sheppard in the city?”
Campbell looks at her like she’s losing her mind. “No, ma’am. As far as we’re aware, he’s still on the planet Major Lorne’s team just returned from.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Carter says, and taps on her earpiece, summoning McKay and Zelenka to the gate room.
Lorne hands off his gear to one of the security detail, even though he kind of wants to hang onto his weapons; it’s bad enough that his team let Teyla get taken a couple of weeks ago, now he’s the guy who managed to lose Colonel Sheppard as well. He doesn’t want to think about what McKay’s going to have to say about it.
2. Teyla Emmagan
Atlantis sends a jumper to the mainland once a week with anything that Teyla’s people might need, to pick up messages and anyone needing to go through the ring. Teyla manages to make the trip about once every month – though Major Sheppard promises to have them in the city for each weekly trip, they rarely manage it, between trips that go badly and trips that take too long and, not infrequently, Teyla herself being kept in the infirmary for injuries sustained on one of their trips through the ring.
Even so, it has been longer than usual since her last trip when she accompanies Sergeant Stackhouse in the jumper to the mainland. She expects that there will be, as there usually is, a party waiting for the jumper – the children, in particular, find the flying ships a source of much fascination, and frequently beg for rides in them from the pilots.
Instead, they land in an empty clearing. “Quiet today,” Stackhouse says as the jumper powers down. “We’re early, though.”
“Yes,” Teyla says. She takes one of the boxes of medical supplies before Stackhouse can take both, and follows him out of the ship. “I am sure they will be surprised to see us already.”
They are not – no-one looks up when she steps into the village, in fact, though there are many people gathered there, far more than she would expect, even on a day of a visit. “One moment,” she says to Stackhouse, who nods.
Halling separates from a small group as Teyla nears him, and bows his forehead silently to hers. “Finally, you have come,” he says quietly.
“Of course,” Teyla says. “What has happened?”
Halling tells her of a cave-in, of two people trapped, both of them injured beyond their skill to save. Two of her people, gone, and Teyla knew nothing of it.
She sends a message with the sergeant that she will be remaining with her people for a time of mourning, and thinks that this will likely not be the last time that something of this nature occurs, when she cannot be present for them.
3. John Sheppard
John’s halfway through his lunch when Major Lorne stops by the table and asks to join him. John waves for him to go ahead, since the rest of his team have abandoned him for the day.
Ten minutes later, he’s starting to regret it – Lorne, unfortunately, has learnt that scheduling a meeting to discuss requisitions won’t work, and has instead starting cornering him randomly to talk through the list. John’s head is spinning with cases of bullets, and food supplies, toothpaste and soap and a hundred other things that he never expected to have to care about when he became military commander of a base in another galaxy.
“How about you just make up the list, and I’ll agree to it?” he says in the end. “I trust you.”
Lorne smiles like he knows what John really means, but agrees.
John flees.
He doesn’t get very far – Dr Amundsen wants to discuss sending a team from anthropology to P7F 205 to take life histories from the people there, some of whom live to over two hundred years old; Sergeant Polanski wants to talk about re-arranging his jumper qualification flight and Lieutenant Roberts wants to know if John has ten minutes at all in his day to talk about something ‘kind of personal, sir,’ (which, in John’s experience, will always take more like an hour and be the most excruciating part of his day, no matter what his day has included prior to that).
He was planning to drop by the labs, see what McKay’s up to, but he changes his mind, heading for the military quarter of the city instead. He ends up in a transporter with one of the new chemists, whose name he doesn’t know yet, who follows him down three corridors, talking about something she obviously thinks she’s already talked to John about; when John finally shakes her, he gets tag-teamed by Corporal Fox and Lieutenant Maclean, who want to ask about the possibility of setting up an Atlantis assassins group, and John’s only halfway through explaining all the reasons (and they are manifold) why this is a bad idea, when his headset bleeps and Elizabeth asks for his presence in the control room.
John loves his city, and he loves his people, but, hurrying back down the corridors he just walked along, he really wishes that he could go home to somewhere else at the end of the day.
4. Sora of the Genii
This is the city that she trained for. The city that would have saved her people, given them a beautiful new world in which to live, safe from the Wraith. A place to build an army that could have taken on the Wraith and won, brought peace to so many worlds.
This is the city that her entire platoon died to take. That they died failing to take. There is no-one but her left to go back to their home-world, to tell the story of a battle that ended in defeat, of the soldiers who fell at the hands of three people in Atlantis. Commander Kolya, she has been told, was shot, fell through the ring and is probably dead.
She is the only remaining member of her platoon, the last fighter of the Atlantis strike team.
And she has been locked into a small room, one with no windows and little furniture. Men with guns keep her in place, and she is brought bland, tasteless food three times a day. If it were not for the light in the corridor, she would not even know if she was fed during the night or the day.
She will not be welcomed back by her people; her parents are dead, and the ties she had through her status as a soldier will be torn away. She has a bond with Teyla, who has allied with the people of Atlantis, and is the only survivor of a battle; all of this makes her suspicious, and Chief Cowen is not a man who trusts easily.
Sora finds that none of this matters, whether she is allowed to return, or sent away. She does not belong in this city, with these people, and she will do whatever is necessary to get away.
5. Cameron Mitchell
Cam understands, when they get there, just why Jackson wants to go to Atlantis so badly. He’s kind of honored, actually, that the guy hasn’t put more effort into getting reassigned – it’s not like his permission was revoked when he didn’t make it the first time. Not that Cam’s complaining – he likes his team the way it is, thanks very much.
The Daedalus is docked in the city for a week, and their adventures with the super-gate only take a couple of days. Sam gets spirited away to the labs within minutes of the debrief finishing, Jackson holes up with the hologram that really is a hologram now and Vala – well, Cam’s not quite sure where Vala goes, but the place has a marine security patrol and a real-time tracking system for everyone, so he’s not too worried.
When he sees his team in the mess at dinner, they look more relaxed than they have in weeks.
Cam’s going out of his mind with boredom. It’s just not fair, being stuck in a city with alien space ships and not being able to fly them. Sheppard keeps promising to take him up, but every time they go down to the jumper bay, McKay is there, telling them about another problem that means they can’t have a jumper, no, not even to go round the planet, Colonel, and I don’t care that you’re the military commander, I’m the chief scientist, and I have the last word. Ask Elizabeth. Sheppard just rolls his eyes, amused and tolerant, but Cam has no idea how he puts up with the man. It probably helps that McKay doesn’t hate Sheppard.
He’s never been so grateful to say goodbye to people he’s getting to like as he is when he shakes Sheppard’s hand and thanks him for his hospitality. It’s not that Atlantis isn’t cool, in its way – it’s just that he wants to go home.
Author:
bluflamingoFandom: SGA/SG1
Characters: Lorne, Teyla, John, Sora, Cam
Rating: G
Words: 1801
Disclaimer: No, I don’t own them. To my profound disappointment.
A/N: Originally posted to
sg1_five_things; spoilers for Atlantis up to 4.20 The Last Man, inc major spoilers for that episode; SG1 10.3 The Pegasus Project.5 Times Someone on Atlantis Wished They Weren’t
1. Major Lorne
Lorne gives it another three hours before he makes an executive decision that their Genii contact isn’t coming and dials Atlantis.
“Nothing?” Colonel Carter asks when they step through, making her way down to them.
“No, ma’am,” Lorne agrees. He looks round quickly for Sheppard, wanting to say I told you so, because he just wasted three hours on that planet, and he’s got a stack of paperwork he could have been getting on with. There’s no sign of him though – it’ll have to wait till they run into each other later in the day.
Carter looks behind him, taking in his team, who are hovering, waiting to be dismissed. “Did Colonel Sheppard decide to stay behind?” she asks, frowning.
“No,” Lorne says, feeling the familiar, unpleasant sensation of things going horribly wrong in new and interesting ways. “He came back half an hour after we were supposed to meet the Genii, left us there just in case the guy turned up.”
Carter makes a strange face, like she’s trying to smile reassuringly, but can’t quite manage it through the frown. “That’s odd. Maybe I missed him coming back, I was down in the labs earlier.”
“Maybe,” Lorne agrees, but he knows she didn’t. There’s no way someone wouldn’t have informed her that Sheppard was back – no way Sheppard wouldn’t have gone looking for her to report on their contact’s failure to show. He nods to his team, dismissing them – it’s already starting to look like they’ll be going back out later today.
“Come with me, Major,” Carter says, leading the way up to the control balcony. “Sergeant, is Colonel Sheppard in the city?”
Campbell looks at her like she’s losing her mind. “No, ma’am. As far as we’re aware, he’s still on the planet Major Lorne’s team just returned from.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Carter says, and taps on her earpiece, summoning McKay and Zelenka to the gate room.
Lorne hands off his gear to one of the security detail, even though he kind of wants to hang onto his weapons; it’s bad enough that his team let Teyla get taken a couple of weeks ago, now he’s the guy who managed to lose Colonel Sheppard as well. He doesn’t want to think about what McKay’s going to have to say about it.
2. Teyla Emmagan
Atlantis sends a jumper to the mainland once a week with anything that Teyla’s people might need, to pick up messages and anyone needing to go through the ring. Teyla manages to make the trip about once every month – though Major Sheppard promises to have them in the city for each weekly trip, they rarely manage it, between trips that go badly and trips that take too long and, not infrequently, Teyla herself being kept in the infirmary for injuries sustained on one of their trips through the ring.
Even so, it has been longer than usual since her last trip when she accompanies Sergeant Stackhouse in the jumper to the mainland. She expects that there will be, as there usually is, a party waiting for the jumper – the children, in particular, find the flying ships a source of much fascination, and frequently beg for rides in them from the pilots.
Instead, they land in an empty clearing. “Quiet today,” Stackhouse says as the jumper powers down. “We’re early, though.”
“Yes,” Teyla says. She takes one of the boxes of medical supplies before Stackhouse can take both, and follows him out of the ship. “I am sure they will be surprised to see us already.”
They are not – no-one looks up when she steps into the village, in fact, though there are many people gathered there, far more than she would expect, even on a day of a visit. “One moment,” she says to Stackhouse, who nods.
Halling separates from a small group as Teyla nears him, and bows his forehead silently to hers. “Finally, you have come,” he says quietly.
“Of course,” Teyla says. “What has happened?”
Halling tells her of a cave-in, of two people trapped, both of them injured beyond their skill to save. Two of her people, gone, and Teyla knew nothing of it.
She sends a message with the sergeant that she will be remaining with her people for a time of mourning, and thinks that this will likely not be the last time that something of this nature occurs, when she cannot be present for them.
3. John Sheppard
John’s halfway through his lunch when Major Lorne stops by the table and asks to join him. John waves for him to go ahead, since the rest of his team have abandoned him for the day.
Ten minutes later, he’s starting to regret it – Lorne, unfortunately, has learnt that scheduling a meeting to discuss requisitions won’t work, and has instead starting cornering him randomly to talk through the list. John’s head is spinning with cases of bullets, and food supplies, toothpaste and soap and a hundred other things that he never expected to have to care about when he became military commander of a base in another galaxy.
“How about you just make up the list, and I’ll agree to it?” he says in the end. “I trust you.”
Lorne smiles like he knows what John really means, but agrees.
John flees.
He doesn’t get very far – Dr Amundsen wants to discuss sending a team from anthropology to P7F 205 to take life histories from the people there, some of whom live to over two hundred years old; Sergeant Polanski wants to talk about re-arranging his jumper qualification flight and Lieutenant Roberts wants to know if John has ten minutes at all in his day to talk about something ‘kind of personal, sir,’ (which, in John’s experience, will always take more like an hour and be the most excruciating part of his day, no matter what his day has included prior to that).
He was planning to drop by the labs, see what McKay’s up to, but he changes his mind, heading for the military quarter of the city instead. He ends up in a transporter with one of the new chemists, whose name he doesn’t know yet, who follows him down three corridors, talking about something she obviously thinks she’s already talked to John about; when John finally shakes her, he gets tag-teamed by Corporal Fox and Lieutenant Maclean, who want to ask about the possibility of setting up an Atlantis assassins group, and John’s only halfway through explaining all the reasons (and they are manifold) why this is a bad idea, when his headset bleeps and Elizabeth asks for his presence in the control room.
John loves his city, and he loves his people, but, hurrying back down the corridors he just walked along, he really wishes that he could go home to somewhere else at the end of the day.
4. Sora of the Genii
This is the city that she trained for. The city that would have saved her people, given them a beautiful new world in which to live, safe from the Wraith. A place to build an army that could have taken on the Wraith and won, brought peace to so many worlds.
This is the city that her entire platoon died to take. That they died failing to take. There is no-one but her left to go back to their home-world, to tell the story of a battle that ended in defeat, of the soldiers who fell at the hands of three people in Atlantis. Commander Kolya, she has been told, was shot, fell through the ring and is probably dead.
She is the only remaining member of her platoon, the last fighter of the Atlantis strike team.
And she has been locked into a small room, one with no windows and little furniture. Men with guns keep her in place, and she is brought bland, tasteless food three times a day. If it were not for the light in the corridor, she would not even know if she was fed during the night or the day.
She will not be welcomed back by her people; her parents are dead, and the ties she had through her status as a soldier will be torn away. She has a bond with Teyla, who has allied with the people of Atlantis, and is the only survivor of a battle; all of this makes her suspicious, and Chief Cowen is not a man who trusts easily.
Sora finds that none of this matters, whether she is allowed to return, or sent away. She does not belong in this city, with these people, and she will do whatever is necessary to get away.
5. Cameron Mitchell
Cam understands, when they get there, just why Jackson wants to go to Atlantis so badly. He’s kind of honored, actually, that the guy hasn’t put more effort into getting reassigned – it’s not like his permission was revoked when he didn’t make it the first time. Not that Cam’s complaining – he likes his team the way it is, thanks very much.
The Daedalus is docked in the city for a week, and their adventures with the super-gate only take a couple of days. Sam gets spirited away to the labs within minutes of the debrief finishing, Jackson holes up with the hologram that really is a hologram now and Vala – well, Cam’s not quite sure where Vala goes, but the place has a marine security patrol and a real-time tracking system for everyone, so he’s not too worried.
When he sees his team in the mess at dinner, they look more relaxed than they have in weeks.
Cam’s going out of his mind with boredom. It’s just not fair, being stuck in a city with alien space ships and not being able to fly them. Sheppard keeps promising to take him up, but every time they go down to the jumper bay, McKay is there, telling them about another problem that means they can’t have a jumper, no, not even to go round the planet, Colonel, and I don’t care that you’re the military commander, I’m the chief scientist, and I have the last word. Ask Elizabeth. Sheppard just rolls his eyes, amused and tolerant, but Cam has no idea how he puts up with the man. It probably helps that McKay doesn’t hate Sheppard.
He’s never been so grateful to say goodbye to people he’s getting to like as he is when he shakes Sheppard’s hand and thanks him for his hospitality. It’s not that Atlantis isn’t cool, in its way – it’s just that he wants to go home.
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Does this fit into your Return'verse? Because I've always wondered if Mitchell and Sheppard were attracted to one another when they met that first time.
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Does this fit into your Return'verse?
I don't know, actually. It could. I think in R'verse, in my head, they knew each other a little before they met in Pegasus Project, though not well, and always been a little bit attracted to each other.
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She's just so desperate in this piece. She's refusing to give up, at least consciously. But underneath it she's despairing. It's beautifully subtle.
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Wonderful views on Teyla, John, and Cam. The one with Sora was pretty interesting, too.
Can't wait to read more from you.
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Definitely not; at least when they get Sheppard back, McKay'sprobably distracted by the brilliance of his future self :)
Thanks for commenting.
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Wouldn't the Athosians have been left with at least one comm set while they were on the mainland of the same planet as Atlantis? We never saw it dealt with one way or another on the show, but I'd have assumed it would be an easy way to keep in touch for emergencies.
no subject
I'm not sure (obviously, or they would have had one here!). We only really see the expedition with in-ear radios, which I'd assume wouldn't carry round the other side of the planet.
A more paranoid commander than Carter might look askance at Lorne's choice of people to lose track of...
Yeah, but, you know, we never see her go off-world with him. Gotta be a reason for that, right :)