Stargate Atlantis: Lost Road (Stackhouse/Markham)
Title: Lost Road.
Author: sparxxa
Rating: PG-ish
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairing: Stackhouse/Markham
Spoilers: Season One’s ‘Brotherhood’, ‘38 Minutes’ and ‘Siege’
Warning: Reference to character death in canon and Slash; this is slash.
Disclaimer: I do not own Stackhouse, Markham or anything Stargate related.
Summary: In life, change and death are inevitable…moving on, is not.
The long and winding road that leads to your door
Will never disappear, I’ve seen that road before
Atlantis was always at its most beautiful at night, when very few people were around to experience it. With the exception of the skeleton ‘graveyard’ shift and those few scientists that ‘just had to finish that experiment’, everyone else in the city was, theoretically, fast asleep in their quarters.
Sergeant Adam Stackhouse never really minded when it was his turn to take the night-time patrol of the city; it gave him time to think. Some of the marines found the peace, quiet and solitude of the night shift somewhat unnerving, which was why Lieutenant Keith Crosby always chose to do guard duty in the Gate room when he was on night duty as someone else was always around, but Adam enjoyed the time spent walking alone through the silent corridors of the pre-dawn Atlantis.
He slowed to a stop as his patrol of the corridors through the habitation area brought him to outside Jamie’s door; or at least, it used to be Jamie’s door.
It still felt hard to believe that he was gone. It was even harder to believe that it had been almost four months since Sergeant Jamie Markham had died; killed when a Wraith Dart had shot the jumper that he’d been piloting out of the sky.
Those quarters were someone else’s now; one of the ‘new’ contingent from Earth, sent after ‘the siege’ to boost numbers and to replace those that had been injured, killed or just hadn’t wanted to stay from the ‘original’ expedition. Although all these new expedition members were all needed and appreciated, from Major Lorne to Sergeant Barrosso, something just didn’t feel right.
It felt odd without Bates glaring and muttering about the new recruits being underfoot and being collectively less use than a chocolate teapot, or without Jamie and Ford bouncing about with their overt friendliness checking whether the “newbies” were ok and which ones would be easiest to trick into believing things about other members of the expedition…but they were all gone; Bates back on Earth injured, Ford somewhere in the galaxy apparently hyped up on Wraith enzyme and Jamie…Jamie was dead.
Sergeant Tim Kagan tried his best to fill the role Jamie and Ford had left (albeit minus the extreme enthusiasm) but it wasn’t the same. Tim wasn’t Jamie.
No-one could ever be Jamie.
Jamie could be like a force of nature at times; a hurricane, all energy and enthusiasm. He had a smile that was simply infectious; once Jamie was grinning it wouldn’t take long for even the sourest faces in Atlantis to start smiling too. He knew who he was and what he was doing and was practically at ease with every situation he found himself in. Nothing fazed him…with the exception of flying, especially after that incident where they’d almost been permanently dematerialised after getting stuck in the ‘gate, but he’d been getting better; even flying wasn’t going to get the better of him. He always had an overwhelming belief that everything would be fine in the end, coming up with quotes like “Don’t say die until we’re dead” and “Everything will be alright in the end, if it’s not alright it’s not the end”; he never let anyone stay pessimistic for too long. A complete optimist with a sunny disposition to match…not like Adam.
Adam had always been the type of guy that preferred to fade into the background, observing people, not particularly endeavouring to be noticed. He was quiet, liked his own company, quite liked getting lost in his own thoughts, only saying what needed to be said and keeping his own counsel when arguments broke out. He was a realist, trying to balance hope with truth. He couldn’t make himself believe that everything would end out fine just because in the movies good always triumphed over evil or because someone else said that it would be fine; he couldn’t believe that kind of thing until it became a reality, until he was there seeing for himself at the end of it all. In short he was almost the complete opposite of Jamie…but that was ok.
It didn’t matter that they were as opposite as day and night because you can’t have day without night. They were two parts of a whole; you couldn’t have one without the other. For some utterly bizarre reason their differences were what made them work. They completed each other and fully realised the belief that you are attracted to what you lack; the cynic adoring the believer and so on. Jamie provided the laughter and hope while Adam provided the stability and support. There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship but as far as they were concerned it was pretty close.
He felt so empty now without Jamie.
Someone had commented once, not long after Jamie’s death, that it was strange seeing him without Jamie, that everyone had considered them to be something of a double act despite the fact that they hadn’t spent all of their time in Atlantis together; they weren’t even on the same work team, except for a few missions. He’d wanted to agree and tell them that without Jamie being there it felt like there was a permanent breeze down one side and that his heart was breaking every time he remembered that Jamie was gone and never coming back; but he couldn’t. He still couldn’t bring himself to finally put an end to the most contentious issue between himself and Jamie. He couldn’t tell people that they had been more than just friends. Jamie in all his hope and optimism had wanted to stop lying about them saying it would all work out, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it and now it was too late. Once upon a time a few people in Atlantis had actually known, four to be precise, but now that was down to two, Kagan had known since before they went to Atlantis and Chuck…well Chuck knew because Chuck knew practically everything about everyone in Atlantis (though how he found out such things was anyone’s guess).
Losing Jamie had been so hard and there were days when it didn’t seem real; some days he could almost delude himself into believing that Jamie was just off-world or back on Earth and that he’d be returning on the Daedalus any day now; but those moments didn’t last for long. There were times when there were things that he wanted to tell Jamie about, before remembering that he couldn’t. It wasn’t things like a new film or book Jamie might like, they were too far away from Earth for that to be a problem, it was silly everyday Atlantis things like “You’ll never believe it but Kagan’s gone and got himself locked out of his quarters again. For a guy who has been living in an almost automatic city for nearly two years you’d think he’d have learnt how to not get outsmarted by his door by now” or “Run for your life, Crosby’s written a new poem!”; just silly things but it was things like that that made him miss Jamie even more.
He’d loved him. He hadn’t said it all that much when he’d been alive, Jamie had always been better at expressing that kind of thing, but he’d always felt it, and when he had said it, had meant it with everything he had. Going on, making it through every day was so difficult and at times damn well near impossible, but he kept trying to make it; it was the only thing he could do.
When he’d been a child his Grandmother had attempted to explain to him about love and the power it had. She told him how love could redeem and how it could destroy, how it could bring people together, how it could make people feel like they belonged and how it could push people to the edge, how it could make people feel alone and how much it could hurt. She’d taught him the differences between the love of family, friends and community, and of course true love. Her tales of what true love meant and how it felt had always fascinated him but the one thing that stood out in his memory of what his Grandmother had told him was her analogy of love being like a road.
Everyone in life, she’d explained, has their own path to follow but sometimes these paths and roads intersect. People will come and go, walking in and out of your life as your paths cross, but they will always leave you with something that will help you along the way, it may be a lesson that they have taught you or a feeling, good or bad, that will give you the strength to continue on your own path. You will for the most part though, walk your roads somewhat alone, until you fall in love. When you fall in love, for however long that may be, you will walk your road together. There will be twists and turns, as life is anything but smooth, and sometimes you may feel lost but your path will always be there beneath your feet and you will find your way again. And when fate decides to separate you from your love, even though they are gone, the road you shared will never disappear, you just need to look for it inside your heart to know that they will always be there beside you, no matter what life will bring, until your paths meet once more.
It was almost a comforting thought that one day he might somewhere, somehow be reunited with Jamie again, but nagging doubts, guilt and realism kept him from fully believing those words and beliefs that his Grandmother had imparted on him so many years ago. The path he’d walked with Jamie was gone, destroyed by the Wraith; there was no coming back from that.
With a sigh Adam turned and continued with his patrol. Jamie was gone, he wasn’t coming back and their road was lost forever…just like him.