Elementary Elemental
by: muaaimoi
The first thing Rodney ever remembers is downing.
He's caught in the current, it's dragging him under, tugging him this way and that. It's utterly irresistible. He has no control of anything, completely at the waters mercy. It's all he can see. He doesn't even know up from down.
It's everywhere. In his mouth, his nose. He's completely enveloped.
The wave that swept him away dumps him at the shore then. Suddenly he can breathe. He can see. Everything is vital and present in a way he's never known.
His father snatches him from the shore, and sets him down on the sand clear outside the waters reach. He looks down at him, expecting his unruly three year old to begin flailing and screaming. Meredith has never been what one would call a quiet child. He won't even tell him to be silent this time. He feels guilty he'd been so caught up arguing with his wife that he'd barely noticed his son had almost drowned.
Instead he watches in shock as Meredith merely blinks at him, evidently stunned, before jumping up and running right back towards the water.
He wants to meet another wave. Maybe a nicer one will let him breathe.
Rodney almost kills himself six more times that afternoon, not that he notices, far too infatuated with the waves. That part he doesn't recall. Neither does he remember that later that night, his father begins what becomes something of a tradition. He reads him the tale of Moby Dick. And then spends the rest of his childhood attempting to terrify him away from the water.
He never quite succeeds.
Years later, in another galaxy, a different sea tries to claim him. And while the experience is horrible for him, lacking the shine of childish enthusiasm and curiosity, indeed, he learns to hate enclosed spaces, it still doesn't even occur to him to be scared of the water.
xXx
Before he was old enough to know better, John loved to fly.
He didn't have wings, so he made due with his tricycle. He learned to run fast enough to feel the wind in his hair and beneath his feet. And once, before the maid managed to track him down to the horse stable, he managed to climb a stack of hay and jump.
For five, beautiful seconds, John was home.
The air was where he belonged. He was weightless, free of everything that had ever tried to hold him down. A piece of the sky, like a bird or a cloud.
Then he crashed.
Had the maid cry and fuss that his parent's were going to kill her. And was he alright? He was lucky he hadn't broken his neck. John just stared at her, utterly confused, and told her nothing bad ever happened when he was flying.
The maid didn't believe him.
Once he was too old to fly on his own, he found out how pilots did it. John never had any problems with his father until he went into the military. He never truly understood why it was a problem, didn't his father understand he needed to fly? It wasn't a choice in the least.
And the first time he boards a Plane, breaks free of gravity and pulls into the sky for hours. It's the happiest he ever manages to be on earth.
xXx
When she was nothing but a slip of a girl, nothing pleased Teyla more than to play in the ground. She loved running around just after it rained, feeling the earth moving beneath her. Between her fingers and her toes. She refused to stop, no matter how filthy she became, no matter how much her father and Charin would scold her.
But the best part was always when she could get away.
She would find a puddle of the thickest, almost solid mud and lie down. Press herself deep into the earth, like one of it's stones. The ground was strong. No matter where her people went, no matter when the wraith came, or what would happen after, the earth was forever. The earth was strong.
And Teyla loved it.
She could feel herself become a part of it. Become another stone within that hard eternal strength. And when someone found her, and they took her back to the village, her father would send her to bathe and strip the layers of the earth away.
But Teyla liked to pretend that she kept the strength.
Sometimes, she had to. Teyla would lead her people one day.
She studied the batons, the way her father dealt with new people, and the way he'd trade. Teyla would be a good leader, and she would have to be strong.
When she grew older and she took the mantel of leader before her time, she could only pray to the ancestors that she still held that strength. It was so hard to believe she'd once believed it so easily. But at least she'd known she had to be strong all along. Forewarned was forearmed.
And that was her true strength. She could warn her people when the wraith were coming.
xXx
For reasons that never made sense to him, but that he would learn to be truly grateful for, Ronon's parent's would always take him camping. They would rough it completely. He was only allowed to bring a knife and since he was a child, it was a small one.
Ronon would whine and complain bitterly most of the day. But his protest always ceased at night.
That was when they would make a fire.
Fire always left Ronon in awe. It was the most captivating thing he had ever seen. The way the fire would light, spread and consume all it could. He was sure wraith would burn just like wood. He wondered why they never tried attacking wraith with fire.
Ronon's job was to feed the flame, and he loved to do it. He would find twigs, carefully deliberate until he fond the driest around, and trow them right in. It was the only time he could get close to the flames. His parents were always warning him away. Don't get too close, be careful, you'll burn.
But Ronon had never truly believed it. Fire wouldn't hurt him. It was his friend.
When he became a Runner, he couldn't afford a fire. Fire meant smoke, and smoke meant that the wraith could find him. He found that, almost impossibly, he came to hate the wraith just a little bit more because of that.
xXx
The first time they meet, they all recognize it in each other.
It's almost confusing. Some unnamed quality they can't define, but that each of them so blatantly possessed.
The first time John see's Rodney McKay, he thinks his eyes are blue like the sky. It isn't until they're in Atlantis, an entire ocean pressing against the city's shield there for comparison, that he realizes that no, their so clearly an ocean instead.
Rodney has had a subconscious obsession with John Sheppard's hair since he met the Major. It's something he's constantly aware of, the constant shift in follicular angles. For a while, he likened it to the sea, unpredictable as the waves. It isn't until the storm, seeing the major drenched and cold, that he thinks of it as utterly wind swept.
Teyla had thought John was strong since she laid eyes on him. It's not an opinion that ever truly changes, but in the course of their friendship she comes to realize his greatest strength is his ability to adapt. To bend with the winds, not break before their might.
John had seen Teyla Emmagen as someone gentle. Firm, but with a softer side, someone who lead but would rather follow. He learns he was perfectly wrong. Teyla has a core of steel inside her.
Rodney had seen it within seconds of meeting her. Some part of him had feared her, the strength of convictions he thought he would never understand. He comes to know they're actually quite similar, in the end. The same ideals approached from opposite sides.
Teyla knew there was something special about Doctor McKay. She is the only Athosian unsurprised when he pulls miracle after miracle from tin air. The man was like an ocean, full of unknown depths.
When John runs into Ronon Dex, for a second, he's almost scared. There was such a desperation to him, a savage sort of strength. He knew Ronon would do anything to survive. And no matter how long he knows the other man, that thought never leaves his mind for long.
Ronon had thought Sheppard weak. It's a notion that's soon shattered. John isn't quite like anyone else he knows. Able to be charismatic and strong one second, and laid back, almost lazy, the next. Sheppard was like the wind. Constantly changing while staying, oddly enough, perfectly the same.
Ronon had been intimidating at first, it takes a long time for Rodney to warm up to him. In the end, they bond over food. Earth style delights are they're favorites. If theirs anything Rodney can understand, it's the need to consume.
McKay is someone who comes off as rather useless. Ronon hadn't understood how someone so soft and weak could have been so important. Then Rodney saved their lives a few times and it suddenly made all kinds of sense. Turned out science was important, who knew?
Teyla thought Ronon was a great warrior. As someone who had been learning to fight since she could pick up her baton rods, this was quite the compliment. But what she refers to isn't his ability to fight, impressive though it is. It's the strength it has taken him to survive. Teyla knows what being a Runner means better than any Earth human ever will.
The first time they all walk through the Stargate together, it all slots into place.
xXx
Originally I was going to continue this to mean they all became elementals, but it never quite took off and this has been sitting in my hard drive for a good two years now. Time to publish as is methinks. Maybe I'll go back and write a sequel someday...