Title: Procul Diluculo (At the Dawn)
Pairing: mentioned McShep
Characters: Rodney; all others are only in our hearts.
Word Count: 685
Warning: implied slash, implied character death (no details)
Spoilers: none...?
Author's Note: eh... guess I'll say somethin' at the end
Summary: A man goes about his normal day on Earth, only there's nothing normal about it.
Procul Diluculo:
At the Dawn
"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk." - Unknown
When the alarm next to his bed goes off, he supposes he could turn it off, roll back over, go back to sleep, and forget, for even just those few beautiful seconds, that this isn't Atlantis; that this bed that's just a few inches too large (because only the American military is cruel enough to requisition beds not big enough for children) isn't floating on an alien ocean that feels more like home than any place he's ever been. For those few seconds he can pretend that the too big bed won't be empty when he rolls over, and he can pretend that instead of just air, he'll be able to run his hands through an unruly pelt of hair.
But he doesn't bother. He has a class to lecture and coffee to make. (Besides: he's used up all his sick days this month doing exactly that.) Maybe next month, he thinks to himself, and then decides that the therapy might actually be helping because he hasn't made a plan for "next month" or "tomorrow" or "later" since before he came back to Earth. (He hates that his therapist is blonde though; wishes she didn't have a second story office, though he knows it's not real concern, at least, not for her.)
He flops himself into to an upright position and goes about his daily routine: glare at mirror, relieve self, take shower, glare at scars, drink coffee, glare at hand that twitches towards thigh when the neighbors bang their doors shut, grab bagel, glare at package of blue jell-o, amble to crappy old Corvette, yell at idiots on road, dash to class room and proceed to enlighten the moronic masses. It was the same every day.
Sometimes he wishes there would be some kind of crises. In-coming asteroid; debilitating technologic virus; Wraith infestation.
Most of the time he doesn't.
When he's finally done with the morons they send to the university, he staggers home and sits in a hideous, green, stuffed recliner he bought in a garage sale (just because he knew He would have loved it) and pulls The Shoe-box out from under the bed to sit in front of his feet. He knows what's in it. He knows every detail about it. How it works, how to clean it, how to reload it, and most importantly: how to shoot it. He never opens the lid of The Shoe-box. Sometimes he thinks he does; Sees the lid on the side table next to the chair, feels the familiar weight of a .9 mm in his hand, smells the dull tang of metal covered in dust, and hears the click-click of the hammer pulling back. But he never does. He'll wake the next morning with the alarm buzzing and Jose's finest tipped on the floor. (Those are usually the mornings he's "sick".)
Sometimes, though, he sees his foot slide the box back under the bed. Sees himself get up and back into his car. He never sees himself drive there, but he'll see the black steel of the gate as it opens to let the old, dying automobile through; sees the faded black of fake onyx; sees the letters "Lt" and "J" ingrained in stone forever but never lets himself see more than that. (He'll usually be on time the next morning; the kids hate those days.)
Tonight he does neither. Tonight he leaves The Shoe-box in front of the recliner, and finds himself plastered to his window. He can see the stars; and despite the fact that he deliberately chose Virginia (for more than one reason) he can smell salt in the air and waves echo in his ears. And for once he doesn't want to see a patient, radiant smile; or hear an exasperated lecture in a familiar brogue; or taste the bitterness of a special Home Brew; or to smell the combination of sweat, wilderness, and mashed potatoes; or even to feel the soft rasp of a more callused hand than even his own against his cheek. For once: he doesn't want anything.
He wonders what he'll be like in the morning.
Initially I kinda wanted to just have John still on Atlantis and let you go about that in your mind, but I ended up killing him. No one ever makes Sheppard the bad guy... guess it's kind of impossible to, huh?