Written in a notebook at a gas station, a rest stop, a diner while drinking orange juice...
...with so much pulp I wanted it to come with floss.
SGA with possible spoilers for Common Ground in one of them, also possible deathfic and general ickiness in some of these, blahblahblahwarningcakes.
For springwoof All AU, all the time.
SGA
5 Ways Col. Marshall Sumner survived the first Pegasus Galaxy mission.
1. Weir touched his arm. “Colonel. We may need you here.”
Sumner paused, then nodded. He didn't like it, but... “Major Sheppard, take Sgt. Bates and his squad and find us an evacuation site.”
“Sir,” Sheppard drawled.
Bates looked disgusted.
“Lt. Ford,” Sumner added, "you go with them too." At least, Ford had been through the stargate a few times. But Sheppard did have combat experience. He hoped they made it back in time before the city and the sea collapsed on top of them all.
2. Bates froze. Sumner yelled at him, but the sergeant was overwhelmed. He tackled Bates, pushing him away from the specious bit of cover he'd taken. One of those searchlight beams skimmed past where they'd just been. Then the alien aircraft was past, it's strafing run finished and half of Sumner's men were gone, along with too many of the indigs. The village was in flames around them.
Over the radio push, he heard Sheppard telling Ford to memorize the gate address as the hostiles dialed out. At least one of his people, even if was an insubordinate Air Force puke, was keeping his head.
He pulled Bates to his feet. They needed to get to the gate and back to Atlantis. Evacuating into the middle of a war zone was going to be bad, but dying as the Ancient city flooded would be worse.
3. Sheppard showed up after the aliens took one of the Athosians and then Sergeant Bates. Sumner didn't waste time asking how the major had found them. Neither did the Athosian woman.
He didn't even recognize the old man Ford brought back. A series of charges set by the marines were going up and those screaming alien fighters were buzzing like stirred up hornets, while Sheppard powered up the invisible spaceship. Not until he asked Ford where Bates was and the old man said in a quavering voice, “Colonel Sumner, I told them about Earth.”
4. She took his life away, claws sunk in his chest, pain arcing through him, all his years draining away, and he sank down to his knees. She took his memories, acid eating through his mind and he tried to hold on, but the pain was too much. Then she laughed and said, “Earth. For such a gift, I will give you one in return,” and all his life rushed back into him, dirty and tainted and so wonderful he bent and kissed his queen's feet in gratitude.
5. She teased and taunted, circling him, and Sumner held still, schooled his face into a blank. Then she pounced, slamming her hand against his chest, razor sharp nails tearing though his uniform and sinking into his flesh. There was a shock of quick pain and a burn as her palm with that hideous mouth at the center latched onto him. Then she stiffened, her head going back, mouth stretching wide as she screamed. The sound rang through the chamber before she slumped to the floor. The drone tried to attack then, but Sumner was stronger and faster than any human it had encountered before. He tore its weapon away, then drove the bayonet-like end through its mask and into its brain.
A clatter from above made Sumner spin and look up. Major Sheppard stared down at him over the sights of a P90. Sumner's eyes flashed gold.
Sheppard disappeared, running, and Qingu cursed, running from the chamber in pursuit of the Tau'ri, even as he healed his host's wounds.
5 Things Rodney McKay was allergic to and how he discovered it
1. According to Rodney, “Flowers. This is why I don't go to funerals. All the damn flowers. The first time I got stung by a bee, I thought my parents were just going to roll me into the convenient hole.”
2. “It was actually a mild sensitivity for years. As a child I ate things with citrus and only experienced a sort of tingling feeling on my lips and inside my mouth. It got worse after puberty and the day a glass of lemonade gave me hives, I swore off everything citrus. But one day there was lemon meringue pie...and full anaphylactic shock. I'm not joking about my allergies, Colonel.”
3. "Stupid people. Don't look at me like that, Teyla. If I'd let Henderson connect the primary drive control crystal to the drone firing system the way that idiot wanted to, the first time the Colonel tried to take that jumper out he would have blown up the jumper bay. I've known I was allergic to stupidity since the first time a bully beat me up."
4. "Latex, okay? I'm allergic to latex. You really don't want to know how I found out.”
Sheppard nods, looking vaguely horrified and confirms, “You really don't.”
5. “Oh, wow, Teyla was right, these are wonder--”
“Shit, someone get Beckett! Where's his epipen?”
“It must be in his gear vest. I can't find -- “
”Damn it, McKay, don't you fucking dare die in the mess hall - No. No. Ah, God, Rodney, don't - .”
“Sir?”
“Fucking tava beans....”
5 Ways Teyla Emmagen became a Wraith Worshipper
1. "My people have worshipped the Wraith since they defeated the Ancestors. They are great and we are small, sparks before the great conflagration."
2. "This one," the Queen said.
"I knew it," Bates spat as the drones escorted Teyla away from the rest of the captives.
Sheppard slumped against McKay, barely able to stand. Both men had already been fed from once. The mummified remains of Peter Grodin, Lt. Ford and Doctor Weir were scattered through the control room. Sheppard looked at her, pained more by her betrayal than his impending death, so that she felt a matching ache.
"For my people's survival, Major."
He closed his eyes and nodded tiredly.
The Wraith finished hooking up their power source and dialed the gate address of Earth.
3. She knew somehow, felt it in that part of her that was Wraith and even stronger with the enzyme coursing through her veins, when John Sheppard died.
She watched Kanayo die next, then Ford, and saw Ronon grow sicker and sicker. She could smell the illness sweating from his pores and feel it burning under her own skin.
When the Wraith offered her what she needed, she said yes.
4. She watched in shock as the Wraith Queen did a thing she had never seen or been told of: she stole the life of Toran and the stranger called Sumner. She watched Sumner become an old man, just as her father had become...and then the Queen laughed. "Earth. For such a gift, I will give you one in return.”
Teyla watched as Sumner became a young man again, a younger man than he had been. She watched him kneel before the Wraith as before a god.
And she knelt too.
5. She lost track of how many times the one they had called Michael fed from her and forced life back into her body. She forgot her name. There was only dying and reviving, screaming when He touched her, begging her god's forgiveness for a fault she no longer remembered.
He made her stand before a human, a dark-haired man who called her Teyla, and begged her to walk away from the Wraith.
"That isn't part of our bargain, Colonel," He said.
"To hell with our bargain. Give her back!"
"What have you done to her?" the pale, soft man standing at Sheppard's shoulder demanded. His voice shook. She thought she should remember his name, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered beyond pleasing Him.
"Go back to them if you want," He told her.
"Do not send me away."
"My God," the soft man exclaimed.
"My god," she said, looking only at Him.
5 Reasons Acastus Kolya Joins the Atlantis Team
1. There are no sexual harassment laws on Genia and Cowen kept groping him at meetings. He couldn't take it anymore. Those nice Atlanteans looked like they might civilized.
2. The uniforms. So colorful and comfortable compared the proto-fascist Genii uniforms.
3. All the Prophecies say the Man With the Hair will save the Genii from the Wraith. Ronon Dex is the Man With the Hair.
4. Gene therapy.
5. His serious man crush on that sexy stud Rodney McKay!
Five Ways the Wraith Get to Cull the Milky Way
1. The MALP exits into vacuum, tumbling in space above a planet and there's no way to go after Sumner, even Sheppard has to acknowledge that. McKay's still stretched out on a makeshift bed, concussed and mumbling. Sheppard sits down next to him and winces at the feel of the cold floor under his butt. Somehow, he's sure that if McKay hadn't been knocked out by a falling equipment crate, he would have found a way for them to go after Colonel Sumner.
He's still sitting there, half asleep, when the gate activates. Grodin sings out in excitement and relief, "It's Colonel Sumner's IDC!"
Weir orders him to lower the shield before Sheppard can sprint to the control room and countermand that.
The shield drops and Colonel Sumner comes through. The Athosian woman, Teyla, follows him. Sumner's hair is pure white and his eyes shine with a fanatic's gleam, echoed in Teyla's eyes too.
Behind them come the Wraith.
2. The Wraith sweep into the risen city, victorious and glorious, and she remembers the war. She remembers golden drones firing against the silent black of space, hives shattered by defense satellites, drones sacrificed in wave on wave against the shimmer of the Alterran shields. She remembers and smiles as her new pet, this debased son of the Ancestors, wakes the city into its final servitude.
Her drones guard the other strange humans from this...Earth, while her scientists, brought awake to serve and open the way to this rich new feeding ground, this other galaxy, work to merge the hive's power sources with the Alterran equipment. Her pet soothes the city's defense systems.
He activates the gate.
She drains him first, a mercy because he has pleased her more than anyone in ten thousand years.
3. The Wraith virus is versatile and designed to protect itself, to mutate and change and spread through every system it contacts.
Sometime during the Daedalus' layover for repairs on Earth, it downloads a kernal of itself into the SGC's computers. It waits, hidden and hibernating, with the patience of something that does not breathe or eat or need, until the navigational computers of the newest 303 are connected. It uploads itself into the ship.
The Icarus disappears on her maiden voyage.
4. Atlantis and Earth never considered the possibility that a Wraith Hive would produce its own genius, an anomalous individual among the breeding caste, who merely needed to know a thing was possible before he pursued the answers until he had them. The !!!___! Hive followed one of the human's hyperdrive ships across the Great Dark in a ship with a drive he designed.
There they feasted and the Queen allowed one her precious Queen eggs to be fertilized and hatched as the first Queen of the Milky Way.
5. The city shook and groaned. Even as deep as the holding cells, the walls and floors vibrated with the force of the bombardment. Sheppard imagined he could hear the whining scream of the darts flying between her towers. He pressed his hand to the floor and whispered, "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this." He looked at Rodney, once more in his fetal ball in the other corner, mewling with each explosion, and repeated himself. "You didn't deserve this."
He wondered, in a detached way, if the power would fail and let him escape before the Wraith found the cell. He honestly wasn't sure whether he would try to make it to Jumper Bay or go after Kolya.
Kolya, he supposed. The man had killed Weir and broken Rodney when the Genii took the city. In the end, he'd broken John too. After a week of cat-and-mouse, Kolya had opened all the intercoms and made John listen as the rest of the expedition, taken prisoner on Menarea, were executed one by one. Tossed back into the wrong side of the wormhole as soon as they came through. And then he made John listen as Rodney screamed and wept and begged, until John thought he would begin screaming himself.
John gave himself up.
Kolya kept him alive, because the Genii still needed someone who could make the city systems respond and no one else left had the gene. Except Rodney and Rodney wasn't really fit for anything anymore. He just whimpered and curled himself into the other corner of the cell. John had seen what Kolya had done to him. He didn't blame Rodney, he just wanted to be there to see when Kolya died.
Now the Wraith had come, just the way they'd always known they would. The Genii couldn't hold the city. Sheppard doubted anyone could have.
He closed his eyes, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, when Sora opened the cell. Sheppard lifted his head just enough to watch her through half-lidded eyes.
"Major Sheppard, you have to -- "
"I don't have to do shit. I'm a prisoner, remember?" he interrupted. The city shuddered.
"You'll die," she said.
"Yeah, but so will you," he told her.
"Commander Kolya tried to make a deal with the Wraith."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"He gave them the coordinates and gate address for your world, your Earth, that were found in your computers," Sora said.
"Looks like he made a bad deal," Sheppard said.
"They have betrayed their bargain."
"Big surprise," Sheppard said. He let his head fall back down onto his knees.
Another strike and the city seemed to scream and lurch.
Sora's scream made him look up again.
A bone-faced Wraith drone faced him over her fallen body. Sheppard sighed and didn't move as the Wraith aimed its stunner at him.
SGA for enname
Five things John Sheppard thinks when looking in the mirror.
He stares into the mirror and tries to see any difference. Any difference. Rodney said he looked younger. His face looks the same to him. Same pointy nose, same not quite green, not quite brown, not anything eyes. Same smart-ass expression even when he's being serious. He can remember his father saying, "Wipe that smart ass expression off your face, John." He doesn't look like his father. Everything about his looks must have come from his mother, because he doesn't look like any of the Sheppards. Of course, he doesn't know, beyond some memories of a woman with long, black hair, because she left when he was two. He'll never know now, because she's dead. Everyone he knew on Earth is dead. Everyone he knew on Atlantis is dead too. Even the ones that didn't get killed eventually got old. Everyone but him. He hasn't aged a day since the Wraith pushed life back into his chest. He checks the mirror every day, but there's never even a gray hair.
Alias for quiet_rebel
5 Things Julian Sark wishes he'd said to Sydney Bristow before she died (end second season)
1. "Whatever you think you know is only the first layer."
2. "Working with you in Paris was just as good as I always thought it would be."
3. "You drop your left shoulder just before you kick with your right leg. It's a tell."
4. "Sorry I didn't kill Sloane in Tokyo. It would have saved a lot of misery."
5. "Your friend Francie is dead - she's been replaced. Is that proof enough that I want to defect?"
Once Upon a Time in Mexico For pinkdormouse
5 Reasons Retired Agent Ramirez Respects Sands
1. Still, Ramirez has to respect a man who knows how to push his buttons. Sands didn't even play it nice, didn't sweet talk him really, just left him in the same restaurant as Barillo and his torturer. He knew that would be all that was needed to get Ramirez to do what he wanted.
2. He still has people he knows in the Bureau. He reached out and touched someone who tapped someone at the agency who told him anonymously about Sands. He was a good agent once. No one's sure what tipped him over the edge. But they dumped him in Mexico with every intention of getting rid of an embarrassment.
3. The man has big brass cojones, playing the cartel and the government and El Mariachi all off against each other. Maybe it didn't work, but Sands does think big. And Barillo is dead.
4. So's Ajedrez. Ramirez isn't sure how a blind man could take her out, but he respects the sheer viciousness and determination it took for Sands to manage it.
5. Last time he saw him, he was still standing.
SGA/Alias for ravurian
5 Ways Julian Sark goes to Atlantis
1. Milo Rambaldi was an Ancient. Sark infiltrates the IOA and gets dispatched to Atlantis undercover to steal some doodad.
2. While he was in prison for two years, the CIA did DNA tests on him. When it's discovered that he has the ATA gene in spades, the Trust recruits him. They want all the other ATA gene carriers taken out and only the ones they control left. He stows away aboard the Daedalus, knocks Hermiod out and beams himself down to Atlantis, there beginning his killing spree.
3. (apologies to [info]seperis for snagging the Atlantis as Alcatraz idea) Sark is captured and deemed too dangerous to be imprisoned on Earth, so he's shipped to another galaxy and the ultimate max security prison of Atlantis.
4. (I'm dying here, really, five ways?) When Sydney finally kills Sark, she's shocked as his body dissolves into a ball of glowy energy squid and it shoots into the sky in the direction of Pegasus. Turns out he was a descended Ancient.
5. He doesn't know. He was fighting Sydney in this buried chamber for this peculiar Rambaldi artifact that looked like a giant amber crystal, after they figured out the puzzle that opened its concealed hiding place together, and this stone ring started spinning, then water splashed out horizontally, just missing them both, and then she kicked him and he fell through the weirdest green roller-coaster ride in the universe. And could they all put their guns down and tell him where he is and why the steps are glowing under his feet?
ETAJust two more to go. You notice how they're getting shorter and crackier? Yeah, so do I.
(batdina, yours is coming, it just might be a story or a vignette.)
SGA with possible spoilers for Common Ground in one of them, also possible deathfic and general ickiness in some of these, blahblahblahwarningcakes.
For springwoof All AU, all the time.
SGA
5 Ways Col. Marshall Sumner survived the first Pegasus Galaxy mission.
1. Weir touched his arm. “Colonel. We may need you here.”
Sumner paused, then nodded. He didn't like it, but... “Major Sheppard, take Sgt. Bates and his squad and find us an evacuation site.”
“Sir,” Sheppard drawled.
Bates looked disgusted.
“Lt. Ford,” Sumner added, "you go with them too." At least, Ford had been through the stargate a few times. But Sheppard did have combat experience. He hoped they made it back in time before the city and the sea collapsed on top of them all.
2. Bates froze. Sumner yelled at him, but the sergeant was overwhelmed. He tackled Bates, pushing him away from the specious bit of cover he'd taken. One of those searchlight beams skimmed past where they'd just been. Then the alien aircraft was past, it's strafing run finished and half of Sumner's men were gone, along with too many of the indigs. The village was in flames around them.
Over the radio push, he heard Sheppard telling Ford to memorize the gate address as the hostiles dialed out. At least one of his people, even if was an insubordinate Air Force puke, was keeping his head.
He pulled Bates to his feet. They needed to get to the gate and back to Atlantis. Evacuating into the middle of a war zone was going to be bad, but dying as the Ancient city flooded would be worse.
3. Sheppard showed up after the aliens took one of the Athosians and then Sergeant Bates. Sumner didn't waste time asking how the major had found them. Neither did the Athosian woman.
He didn't even recognize the old man Ford brought back. A series of charges set by the marines were going up and those screaming alien fighters were buzzing like stirred up hornets, while Sheppard powered up the invisible spaceship. Not until he asked Ford where Bates was and the old man said in a quavering voice, “Colonel Sumner, I told them about Earth.”
4. She took his life away, claws sunk in his chest, pain arcing through him, all his years draining away, and he sank down to his knees. She took his memories, acid eating through his mind and he tried to hold on, but the pain was too much. Then she laughed and said, “Earth. For such a gift, I will give you one in return,” and all his life rushed back into him, dirty and tainted and so wonderful he bent and kissed his queen's feet in gratitude.
5. She teased and taunted, circling him, and Sumner held still, schooled his face into a blank. Then she pounced, slamming her hand against his chest, razor sharp nails tearing though his uniform and sinking into his flesh. There was a shock of quick pain and a burn as her palm with that hideous mouth at the center latched onto him. Then she stiffened, her head going back, mouth stretching wide as she screamed. The sound rang through the chamber before she slumped to the floor. The drone tried to attack then, but Sumner was stronger and faster than any human it had encountered before. He tore its weapon away, then drove the bayonet-like end through its mask and into its brain.
A clatter from above made Sumner spin and look up. Major Sheppard stared down at him over the sights of a P90. Sumner's eyes flashed gold.
Sheppard disappeared, running, and Qingu cursed, running from the chamber in pursuit of the Tau'ri, even as he healed his host's wounds.
5 Things Rodney McKay was allergic to and how he discovered it
1. According to Rodney, “Flowers. This is why I don't go to funerals. All the damn flowers. The first time I got stung by a bee, I thought my parents were just going to roll me into the convenient hole.”
2. “It was actually a mild sensitivity for years. As a child I ate things with citrus and only experienced a sort of tingling feeling on my lips and inside my mouth. It got worse after puberty and the day a glass of lemonade gave me hives, I swore off everything citrus. But one day there was lemon meringue pie...and full anaphylactic shock. I'm not joking about my allergies, Colonel.”
3. "Stupid people. Don't look at me like that, Teyla. If I'd let Henderson connect the primary drive control crystal to the drone firing system the way that idiot wanted to, the first time the Colonel tried to take that jumper out he would have blown up the jumper bay. I've known I was allergic to stupidity since the first time a bully beat me up."
4. "Latex, okay? I'm allergic to latex. You really don't want to know how I found out.”
Sheppard nods, looking vaguely horrified and confirms, “You really don't.”
5. “Oh, wow, Teyla was right, these are wonder--”
“Shit, someone get Beckett! Where's his epipen?”
“It must be in his gear vest. I can't find -- “
”Damn it, McKay, don't you fucking dare die in the mess hall - No. No. Ah, God, Rodney, don't - .”
“Sir?”
“Fucking tava beans....”
5 Ways Teyla Emmagen became a Wraith Worshipper
1. "My people have worshipped the Wraith since they defeated the Ancestors. They are great and we are small, sparks before the great conflagration."
2. "This one," the Queen said.
"I knew it," Bates spat as the drones escorted Teyla away from the rest of the captives.
Sheppard slumped against McKay, barely able to stand. Both men had already been fed from once. The mummified remains of Peter Grodin, Lt. Ford and Doctor Weir were scattered through the control room. Sheppard looked at her, pained more by her betrayal than his impending death, so that she felt a matching ache.
"For my people's survival, Major."
He closed his eyes and nodded tiredly.
The Wraith finished hooking up their power source and dialed the gate address of Earth.
3. She knew somehow, felt it in that part of her that was Wraith and even stronger with the enzyme coursing through her veins, when John Sheppard died.
She watched Kanayo die next, then Ford, and saw Ronon grow sicker and sicker. She could smell the illness sweating from his pores and feel it burning under her own skin.
When the Wraith offered her what she needed, she said yes.
4. She watched in shock as the Wraith Queen did a thing she had never seen or been told of: she stole the life of Toran and the stranger called Sumner. She watched Sumner become an old man, just as her father had become...and then the Queen laughed. "Earth. For such a gift, I will give you one in return.”
Teyla watched as Sumner became a young man again, a younger man than he had been. She watched him kneel before the Wraith as before a god.
And she knelt too.
5. She lost track of how many times the one they had called Michael fed from her and forced life back into her body. She forgot her name. There was only dying and reviving, screaming when He touched her, begging her god's forgiveness for a fault she no longer remembered.
He made her stand before a human, a dark-haired man who called her Teyla, and begged her to walk away from the Wraith.
"That isn't part of our bargain, Colonel," He said.
"To hell with our bargain. Give her back!"
"What have you done to her?" the pale, soft man standing at Sheppard's shoulder demanded. His voice shook. She thought she should remember his name, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered beyond pleasing Him.
"Go back to them if you want," He told her.
"Do not send me away."
"My God," the soft man exclaimed.
"My god," she said, looking only at Him.
5 Reasons Acastus Kolya Joins the Atlantis Team
1. There are no sexual harassment laws on Genia and Cowen kept groping him at meetings. He couldn't take it anymore. Those nice Atlanteans looked like they might civilized.
2. The uniforms. So colorful and comfortable compared the proto-fascist Genii uniforms.
3. All the Prophecies say the Man With the Hair will save the Genii from the Wraith. Ronon Dex is the Man With the Hair.
4. Gene therapy.
5. His serious man crush on that sexy stud Rodney McKay!
Five Ways the Wraith Get to Cull the Milky Way
1. The MALP exits into vacuum, tumbling in space above a planet and there's no way to go after Sumner, even Sheppard has to acknowledge that. McKay's still stretched out on a makeshift bed, concussed and mumbling. Sheppard sits down next to him and winces at the feel of the cold floor under his butt. Somehow, he's sure that if McKay hadn't been knocked out by a falling equipment crate, he would have found a way for them to go after Colonel Sumner.
He's still sitting there, half asleep, when the gate activates. Grodin sings out in excitement and relief, "It's Colonel Sumner's IDC!"
Weir orders him to lower the shield before Sheppard can sprint to the control room and countermand that.
The shield drops and Colonel Sumner comes through. The Athosian woman, Teyla, follows him. Sumner's hair is pure white and his eyes shine with a fanatic's gleam, echoed in Teyla's eyes too.
Behind them come the Wraith.
2. The Wraith sweep into the risen city, victorious and glorious, and she remembers the war. She remembers golden drones firing against the silent black of space, hives shattered by defense satellites, drones sacrificed in wave on wave against the shimmer of the Alterran shields. She remembers and smiles as her new pet, this debased son of the Ancestors, wakes the city into its final servitude.
Her drones guard the other strange humans from this...Earth, while her scientists, brought awake to serve and open the way to this rich new feeding ground, this other galaxy, work to merge the hive's power sources with the Alterran equipment. Her pet soothes the city's defense systems.
He activates the gate.
She drains him first, a mercy because he has pleased her more than anyone in ten thousand years.
3. The Wraith virus is versatile and designed to protect itself, to mutate and change and spread through every system it contacts.
Sometime during the Daedalus' layover for repairs on Earth, it downloads a kernal of itself into the SGC's computers. It waits, hidden and hibernating, with the patience of something that does not breathe or eat or need, until the navigational computers of the newest 303 are connected. It uploads itself into the ship.
The Icarus disappears on her maiden voyage.
4. Atlantis and Earth never considered the possibility that a Wraith Hive would produce its own genius, an anomalous individual among the breeding caste, who merely needed to know a thing was possible before he pursued the answers until he had them. The !!!___! Hive followed one of the human's hyperdrive ships across the Great Dark in a ship with a drive he designed.
There they feasted and the Queen allowed one her precious Queen eggs to be fertilized and hatched as the first Queen of the Milky Way.
5. The city shook and groaned. Even as deep as the holding cells, the walls and floors vibrated with the force of the bombardment. Sheppard imagined he could hear the whining scream of the darts flying between her towers. He pressed his hand to the floor and whispered, "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this." He looked at Rodney, once more in his fetal ball in the other corner, mewling with each explosion, and repeated himself. "You didn't deserve this."
He wondered, in a detached way, if the power would fail and let him escape before the Wraith found the cell. He honestly wasn't sure whether he would try to make it to Jumper Bay or go after Kolya.
Kolya, he supposed. The man had killed Weir and broken Rodney when the Genii took the city. In the end, he'd broken John too. After a week of cat-and-mouse, Kolya had opened all the intercoms and made John listen as the rest of the expedition, taken prisoner on Menarea, were executed one by one. Tossed back into the wrong side of the wormhole as soon as they came through. And then he made John listen as Rodney screamed and wept and begged, until John thought he would begin screaming himself.
John gave himself up.
Kolya kept him alive, because the Genii still needed someone who could make the city systems respond and no one else left had the gene. Except Rodney and Rodney wasn't really fit for anything anymore. He just whimpered and curled himself into the other corner of the cell. John had seen what Kolya had done to him. He didn't blame Rodney, he just wanted to be there to see when Kolya died.
Now the Wraith had come, just the way they'd always known they would. The Genii couldn't hold the city. Sheppard doubted anyone could have.
He closed his eyes, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, when Sora opened the cell. Sheppard lifted his head just enough to watch her through half-lidded eyes.
"Major Sheppard, you have to -- "
"I don't have to do shit. I'm a prisoner, remember?" he interrupted. The city shuddered.
"You'll die," she said.
"Yeah, but so will you," he told her.
"Commander Kolya tried to make a deal with the Wraith."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"He gave them the coordinates and gate address for your world, your Earth, that were found in your computers," Sora said.
"Looks like he made a bad deal," Sheppard said.
"They have betrayed their bargain."
"Big surprise," Sheppard said. He let his head fall back down onto his knees.
Another strike and the city seemed to scream and lurch.
Sora's scream made him look up again.
A bone-faced Wraith drone faced him over her fallen body. Sheppard sighed and didn't move as the Wraith aimed its stunner at him.
SGA for enname
Five things John Sheppard thinks when looking in the mirror.
He stares into the mirror and tries to see any difference. Any difference. Rodney said he looked younger. His face looks the same to him. Same pointy nose, same not quite green, not quite brown, not anything eyes. Same smart-ass expression even when he's being serious. He can remember his father saying, "Wipe that smart ass expression off your face, John." He doesn't look like his father. Everything about his looks must have come from his mother, because he doesn't look like any of the Sheppards. Of course, he doesn't know, beyond some memories of a woman with long, black hair, because she left when he was two. He'll never know now, because she's dead. Everyone he knew on Earth is dead. Everyone he knew on Atlantis is dead too. Even the ones that didn't get killed eventually got old. Everyone but him. He hasn't aged a day since the Wraith pushed life back into his chest. He checks the mirror every day, but there's never even a gray hair.
Alias for quiet_rebel
5 Things Julian Sark wishes he'd said to Sydney Bristow before she died (end second season)
1. "Whatever you think you know is only the first layer."
2. "Working with you in Paris was just as good as I always thought it would be."
3. "You drop your left shoulder just before you kick with your right leg. It's a tell."
4. "Sorry I didn't kill Sloane in Tokyo. It would have saved a lot of misery."
5. "Your friend Francie is dead - she's been replaced. Is that proof enough that I want to defect?"
Once Upon a Time in Mexico For pinkdormouse
5 Reasons Retired Agent Ramirez Respects Sands
1. Still, Ramirez has to respect a man who knows how to push his buttons. Sands didn't even play it nice, didn't sweet talk him really, just left him in the same restaurant as Barillo and his torturer. He knew that would be all that was needed to get Ramirez to do what he wanted.
2. He still has people he knows in the Bureau. He reached out and touched someone who tapped someone at the agency who told him anonymously about Sands. He was a good agent once. No one's sure what tipped him over the edge. But they dumped him in Mexico with every intention of getting rid of an embarrassment.
3. The man has big brass cojones, playing the cartel and the government and El Mariachi all off against each other. Maybe it didn't work, but Sands does think big. And Barillo is dead.
4. So's Ajedrez. Ramirez isn't sure how a blind man could take her out, but he respects the sheer viciousness and determination it took for Sands to manage it.
5. Last time he saw him, he was still standing.
SGA/Alias for ravurian
5 Ways Julian Sark goes to Atlantis
1. Milo Rambaldi was an Ancient. Sark infiltrates the IOA and gets dispatched to Atlantis undercover to steal some doodad.
2. While he was in prison for two years, the CIA did DNA tests on him. When it's discovered that he has the ATA gene in spades, the Trust recruits him. They want all the other ATA gene carriers taken out and only the ones they control left. He stows away aboard the Daedalus, knocks Hermiod out and beams himself down to Atlantis, there beginning his killing spree.
3. (apologies to [info]seperis for snagging the Atlantis as Alcatraz idea) Sark is captured and deemed too dangerous to be imprisoned on Earth, so he's shipped to another galaxy and the ultimate max security prison of Atlantis.
4. (I'm dying here, really, five ways?) When Sydney finally kills Sark, she's shocked as his body dissolves into a ball of glowy energy squid and it shoots into the sky in the direction of Pegasus. Turns out he was a descended Ancient.
5. He doesn't know. He was fighting Sydney in this buried chamber for this peculiar Rambaldi artifact that looked like a giant amber crystal, after they figured out the puzzle that opened its concealed hiding place together, and this stone ring started spinning, then water splashed out horizontally, just missing them both, and then she kicked him and he fell through the weirdest green roller-coaster ride in the universe. And could they all put their guns down and tell him where he is and why the steps are glowing under his feet?
ETAJust two more to go. You notice how they're getting shorter and crackier? Yeah, so do I.
(batdina, yours is coming, it just might be a story or a vignette.)