Title: Reaching Out (to Empty Space)
Author: DreamingIce
Characters: Jeannie Miller, Caleb Miller, small bits of Rodney McKay
Spoilers: practially non-existant as we've all seen season 1, right? Other minor details gleaned from episodes through the series.
Disclaimer: Not Mine, italics are quoted directly from Letters from Pegasus [1x17].
Word Count: 1,070
Rating: PG
Summary: "It had come completely out of the blue, and she'd been thrilled, if slightly apprehensive." Rodney's message from 'Letters' reaches it's destination.
Author's Notes: This bunny has been begging to be written for sometime, pretty much since I first watched Letters from Pegasus. I felt Jeannie needed an introspection before her and Rodney actually started talking again.
Also, if it helps me break my what, nearly 18 month writing drought, who am I to complain? New fandoms make me want to write stuff again (yes, I've only recently got into SGA/back into SG1. Bit late to the party.)
Forgive the rusty writing skills, it's been a while. And was mostly written when while pretending to search for nutrition research papers. *whistles innocently*
She had wondered if she was seeing things when she first saw the email. She hadn't seen her brother for nearly two years, since that rather disastrous argument when she dropped out of grad school. She blinked, half expecting the message labelled with 'sender: Dr. R. McKay' to disappear, to morph into some vaguely amusing but ultimately useless email jokes that Caleb's colleagues were so fond of.
It stayed as it was.
Jeannie could feel a sense of excitement building, tapered somewhat by apprehension. Was this Mer trying to build some bridges, or was this going to be a harsh reminder of every insult and recrimination that they'd hurled at each other last time?
She certainly hoped that it was the first option. She missed her big brother. Yes, he had a tendency for being an arrogant ass at times, but he was still her brother, and she know that he cared about her—albeit in his own unique way. She may have vehemently disagreed with his opinion on her dropping out of grad school to have a family, but in retrospect, she can see that even that was borne from the fact that Mer didn't want to see her 'waste her life' as he'd called it. He wanted her to be able to use her skills to the best of her ability.
That said, she was still a little mad that he'd assumed that she couldn't make her own choices or put some thought into the ramifications of that choice.
Listening intently to ensure that her twenty-month-old daughter was still soundly asleep, Jeannie finally succumb to the urge to click on the message.
There was no written message inside, just a video file waiting to be opened. Even in her still slightly disbelieving state, she noticed that while the email had her brother's name on it, it had come via the US Air Force. Jeannie had known that he was working with the USAF for some years, and had been responsible for Mer moving, first down to Nevada, then to Russia (what the hell was in Russia they wanted him to work on anyway?). She didn't where he was now.
For the first time, Jeannie felt a flicker of fear beginning to emerge alongside the apprehension.
Tired of tormenting herself, she clicked on the video file and waited for it to load.
Jeannie let out a sigh of relief when her brother's image appeared in front of her.
"Ford, if you cut everything else, just, um, keep this part, OK?." Jeannie immediately quirked an eyebrow. How long had some had listen to his rambling?
"Jeannie? This is your brother, Rodney ... obviously!." Mer was quite clearly anxious, struggling to sit still and look at the camera directly.
"I wanna say, um ... I wanna say something. Uh ... family is important. I-I've come to realise that because the people here have become a sort of a ... kind of a surrogate family, to me." Jeannie stared at the screen as her brother offered a wry grin.
"Now, I know what you're thinking: I've never really been the poster child for that kind of sentiment but, uh, when ..." He paused, swallowing again before continuing on. "... when one's contemplating one's own demise, one tends to see things more clearly." Jeannie sucked in her breath at that as Mer's face settled into a wan smile.
"I really do wish you the best, you know, and I'm sorry we weren't closer." Jeannie smiled back at the video, echoing the sentiment silently. "Perhaps, um ... if by chance I make it out of this, perhaps one day we can be, and I would like that." Mer stared at the camera a while longer, eyes flitting around before the file stopped.
Jeannie leaned back, trying to process the message. Yes, it was an semi-apology in part—but she doubted that she'd ever really get much better out of her stubborn brother and was willing to take what she could get—but the almost off-hand comments about imminent demise had her worried. Scared.
She clicked the cursor over the file again, freezing the video in certain spots. She searched her brother's face more closely: saw the stress, the circles under his eyes that made Jeannie wonder how much sleep he'd gotten recently. She also noted, with some unease, that something in his body language seemed to indicate that he'd seen far more than he'd expected to. She couldn't pin it down to anything specific, but it was there.
She also wondered what his reaction would be if she told him that his fidgeting reminded her of Madison. Not that he'd ever seen her daughter.
The sound of the front door closing snapped her out of her musings momentarily.
"Jeannie?" she heard her husband call.
"Computer," she replied, still focused on the computer screen.
"Hey," Caleb came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "What's that?" he indicated to the computer screen. He frowned somewhat, "Isn't that..."
"My brother, yes." She finished off for him.
Caleb was silent, but Jeannie could feel the question hanging in the air.
"It's just a recorded message, he even sort of apologised to me."
Caleb eased himself around and into the second chair at the desk, "And..." he indicated that he thought there was more.
"It was somewhat... unsettling too." She tried to explain. Caleb raised an eyebrow in a questioning manner.
Jeannie sighed, and pressed play once again.
Her husband was silent as the short clip played though again, and let out a breath at the end.
"Yeah, I think I get that..." he trailed off.
"Yes, he has a tendency to over-exaggerate, but that's usually accompanied by excessive amounts of waving his hands around. And I don't think he could bluff if his life depended on it," Jeannie was waving her own hands around somewhat, as if demonstrating. "I just..." she shrugged, "I don't know what to think, really."
A sound from Maddie's room alerted them to their daughter's return to wakefulness, and Caleb got up again with a "I'll go get her."
Jeannie took one last look at her brother's image before closing the file and the email down.
As worrying as the video was in one sense, it did give her that they could try and rebuild some of those bridges. And she damn well intended to keep Meredith to that.
Fin.