Title: The Cold
Author: jadestrick aka Meg
Character/Pairing: John Sheppard/Sparky
Rating: Ehhhh, PG
Spoilers: For "The Last Man" and "Before I Sleep"
Summary: John's thoughts before the cold took him.
Disclaimer: I own a vanilla latte that I'm drinking, a few Neil Gaiman books and I borrowed this laptop. Alas, none of these characters are mine and I claim nothing. This world is unfair.
Author's Notes: This just hit me after watching Friday's episode. Talk about deja vu. And I couldn't get it out of my head. It's probably the only fic to come from my fingertips that ever wrote itself for me.
Reviews: Are LOVE for my lonely Shep-lacking heart.
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The Cold
He smiled slightly at Rodney and stepped up into the pod.
He leaned his head back to touch and felt a cold there. Something so cold before the cold ever existed. And it reminded him of her. Her hands had been cold when last he saw her. But in her eyes were warmth and even though they had tried to take them: memories. Memories of looks between them, memories of kisses that shouldn't have been and weren't even theirs, memories of terror during the fights, memories of laughter, memories of pain, memories of desire. Desire that never was quenched.
The cold seeped through the back of his head and he felt his legs become cramped.
She had done this. She had felt the cold. She had embraced the cold even before he loved her. Even before she loved him. "You never gave up trying," she said. Neither did she. She stood in the cold for years, hundreds of years, thousands. Until the day they found her. She had looked at him in respect, in honor, with the eyes of memories that could've happened, but for her, never did.
How could she have lived like that? Alone, with nothing but her dreams and hopes to keep her going. Nothing but the determination of restoring what could have--what should have--been. How could he stand there, frozen for hundreds of years…hoping and praying with the little thinking his mind would do…in order to restore what should have been?
Was this the right way? Was this what should have happened? Was he truly supposed to fix everything?
Was she?
The cold reached his ears now, and he felt his brain ceasing to think. But one word, one lonely word full of strength and determination and hope, muttered through his mind.
Yes.
There was opportunity. There was hope. There was justice.
There had been no justice in her world. There had been only happenstance, circumstance, bad luck. Mistakes. But she, more determined, more determined than even the Ancients, endeavored to fix what was wrong. Endeavored to give them the chance that things could be made right. Endeavored to give them a chance to live.
And endeavored to give him the chance to love her. For only a look can say so much. Unspoken words, reading faces, but in her eyes, he had seen the future. He had seen the looks, the smiles, the desire, the pain.
The cold was nearing his eyes. On instinct, he tried to close them, but found he could not. The cold had reached his eyelashes and forbade him from shutting out the Atlantis that would become. In the distance, he saw her.
She was dressed in white, one hand against the door frame to the room of his pod. Even though she looked like the ghost of her past self, there was still the fire. The fire in her eyes that he had seen in the heat of the moments. Moments full of war and peace and love and silent hatred. She raised her left eyebrow. Her face told him all he needed to know. Those words he'd needed to hear for the past year since she had been gone. Such a simple phrase and yet such a profound reaction he had. One would have thought that "Good luck" meant merely that. But there had always been more. Though he had seen her and walked with her and talked with her and silently begged her that she was the one, she eyed the words that had caused strength to appear. Those words that had given him the courage. Those words that had caused him to think of one thing and one thing alone: Come home to me.
She disappeared. His hand fought the cold and his fingers twitched. Of its own accord and by reaction, it moved less than a fraction of an inch before the cold trapped it.
Home.
No, there would not be this future for Atlantis.
No, there would not be an end in sight for this city that had survived wars, and battles, and politics, and viruses, and death, and bitterness.
No, he would wait.
He would wait however long it took. He would wait in the cold just as she had done.
In the cold, he found a strange warmth.
No.I will bring our city back.
He would bring their city back for her to come home to.
It was her turn to come home. It was his turn to save home.