The Value of a Memory Is
Tappan Traveler
When John was eight, his father built him a rope swing in the back garden.
A length of strong, sturdy rope looped several times around the thickest branch of an old cherry tree that stood in the centre of the Sheppard's oversized yard. The other end was tied securely around a tire John's father had rescued from the dregs of a garage sale.
John loved it. It was his third favorite childhood present, below the bike he had been gifted with for his tenth birthday, and his uncle's well-beloved collection of Airfix airplane models that hung from the ceiling until he moved out to college.
Now he was twelve years old, and a growth spurt had forced his parents to ban him from the swing. He was too heavy, the tree was too weak, it was too dangerous. Each warning came with a ticked off finger. When the garden was occupied he would obey the command, but if his mother was busy in the front room, and his father was working away, John would sneak out to the back yard and spend a happy hour feeling the breeze against his face.
He was always caught. If not found in the act, then the patch of worn turf and mud beneath the swing was a giveaway. John would receive a strict lecture from his mother, then be back out on the tire only hours later.
His father was away, fighting a war John didn't understand, and his mother was in the front garden tending to her roses. John, tall and gangly, with skin tanned by the sun and a shock of unruly hair that refused to obey his mother's clippers, stepped lightly down the garden path until he reached the cherry tree.
Reverently he reached out and touched the bark, rough and gnarled with age. With foresight came certainty – this would be his last ride, the last game. A month from now his mother would sit him down on the couch and tell him, with a soft voice and sad eyes, that she had cancer. Six months later it was just him and his dad, returned from service.
He laced one hand around the rope and curled the other beneath. It rubbed against blisters on his skin, formed through the many months. More evidence to betray his disobedience. With ease he pulled his weight up and laced his long legs around the tire, bending his knees so his feet wouldn't touch the ground.
The movement caused the tire to swing, and John rocked his body forward, building momentum. His speed started to increase, as did his height, lifting him three or four meters into the air at its peak, dropping him close to the ground in the dip, his shoes scuffing against the mud. The wind whistled past his ears, the branch above him creaked in protest, and John Sheppard closed his eyes and dreamt he was flying.
There was a sudden, very loud snap, and then he was.
Flying through the air, hurtling up for what seemed like several beautifully long seconds, the blue sky beneath him and the ground above, John unlocking his hands from the useless rope and stretching out. Gravity, seeming to remember its responsibility, took hold moments later and he dropped exactly like a bird doesn't, landing on the sun-baked ground torso first, putting one hand out to cushion the impact. His arm made a horrible noise, the sound of snapping bone, and crumpled beneath him, crushed by his body.
With a supreme effort John managed to roll over and then lay with his back against the grass, panting heavily against the pain and cradling his broken arm to his chest. Dimly he heard his mother scream, but it seemed at a great distance, and oddly unimportant. Disconnectedly Sheppard stared up into the brilliant blue sky and grinned.
"These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations…"
"To boldly go where no one has gone before," Rodney chorused. He kept his voice soft, careful not to disturb the body lying curled against his.
She had fallen asleep before the end of the movie, a chick-flick he had grudgingly allowed her to pick in penance for his late arrival to dinner. With great care he had managed to extricate the television remote from down a crack in the sofa and now rested it gently on his thigh with one hand poised over the volume button.
She stirred a little at the theme music, released a soft sigh, and pressed herself closer into his shoulder. Her arm looped lightly across his waist and McKay could feel the movements of her chest as she breathed.
Her hair tickled his chin and he wriggled his nose ineffectually. Carefully releasing his hold on the remote he lifted his hand and scratched the offended area, then dropped it so his fingers could gently caress her cheek. Her lips moved in a silent whisper of words, then stilled.
Turning his gaze from the television screen, Rodney looked across the room to the remains of a candlelit dinner, and the coat he had thrown so carelessly across the back of a chair. He dropped his eyes to stare at a bulge in the jacket pocket, square shaped and bulky. It had formed an odd, alien weight, knocking uncomfortably against his hip as he had walked back to the lab from the shop, moving quickly to avoid running over his allocated lunch hour.
When she had been in the kitchen fetching the specially prepared, citrus free desert, he had pulled it out. He had rested the item in his hand, closed his fingers over its surface, opened it quickly to catch a glimpse of silver and sparkles. Now or never, he told himself, fight or flight, he whispered. To prove he was everything his mother accused him of not being.
Of being capable of something more, something stronger than what he paraded before his fellow scientists. More than brains, more than knowledge.
Now or never.
She shifted again, her left leg pushing gently between his. Rodney moved obediently, their bodies entwining on the sofa, feeling her breath hot against his skin.
Who was he kidding?
He buckled, picked never, and became the coward his sister said he was.
Tomorrow he would take it back to the shop.
There would be no nightmares tonight.
Teyla curled into the crook of her father's arm, and allowed herself a sleepy smile as his fingers gently brushed her hair.
She loved his hands. They were large, dangerous with their strength, but gentle in their ministrations. Calluses ran across the surface of his palm, a result from toiling against wood and sweat beneath the hot, seasonal sun. Thick, raised veins formed a pattern across the back, and when curled against him she would trace her own, soft fingers against them and feel his pulse against her skin.
It had been his hands she had seen first, lying beneath a dense bush amidst the leaves and twigs of the forest floor. They had parted the branches deftly then reached down to pick her up without effort, and pull her, sobbing, to his chest.
Later, he would scold her, and look forbidding, and for a short while, deny her the respect she craved from him. She was too young, he had told her, to go into the forest alone. She had made promises to her mother, and then broken them, and been lost for hours as punishment.
But that was later. That night there were no recriminations, not from her father, whose arms had carried her the whole way back to the village. And not from her mother, who had burst into tears at the sight of them, and held them both in a deep, tight embrace. Teyla had then been whisked off to bathe, change from her torn and muddy clothes, and then been instructed to sit on the bed whilst her mother had carefully brushed her long hair.
For once Teyla had not protested. She sat silently and allowed her mother to tug and pull at the rebellious strands without once raising a note of complaint. And when her mother's breath had hitched, and the brush's movements had stilled, Teyla had turned and wrapped her arms around her mother's waist, and promised brokenly that she would never, ever, run off on her own again.
"Aiden!"
His grandmother had perfected the call over many years, accenting the 'd' and dragging the 'a' and 'I' into a drawl, the tone rising to a higher pitch on the second syllable. It was casual, familiar, and more reassuring than the fast stutter of his name that scolded and reprimanded.
"Aiden!"
This time it held a note of urgency and impatience. Aiden took the stairs two at a time, his cousin Josh just behind him, their feet pounding on the floorboards.
Josh's elder sister Marissa stood at the bottom, her arms folded, and looking more and more like Ford's aunt every day. The eleven years between her and Josh had always given her an inflated sense of superiority, and though both Josh and Aiden were now head and shoulders above her she still took it upon herself to be their grandmother's spokesperson.
"We were ready to serve ten minutes ago, and you said you would do the table."
The last part was directed at Josh, fifteen years old and awkwardly insecure. He ducked his head. "I forgot."
"There's a surprise." She shot a glare at Aiden. "What about you?"
"I peeled!" he protested. "Potatoes and carrots!"
"Hmm." She scowled, turned smartly on her heel, and headed towards the kitchen. "At least you've both cleaned up."
Aiden flashed her a grin, ducking underneath the ceiling and hopping down the last two steps. The den had been turned into a temporary dining area, since the kitchen was too small to hold the whole family. Three tables were covered under two large tablecloths, and an array of mismatching chairs clustered around them. His grandfather was sat at the far end, his hands clasped and resting between his knife and fork.
"Good game?" the older man asked, raising an eyebrow at his grandsons.
Aiden punched Josh on the arm gently, then dropped into a chair. "He beat me. Four out of five."
Josh flushed, taking a seat beside his cousin. "The third game was luck."
"Potatoes," came a declaration from the kitchen. Meredith appeared from the kitchen, oven gloves over her hands to protect her from the heated casserole dish she now placed on the table. A simple white blouse flowed over the slight bump of her stomach. "There's more in the kitchen."
"Vegetables." Aiden's aunt followed, placing two bowls down before Josh. "You'll eat at least two kinds," she told him. "And you'll like them."
Aiden watched his cousin screw his face up in a look of disgust, and kicked him sharply under the table.
"Great," Josh managed.
His mother smiled approvingly, then took up a seat at the opposite end to her father. "There's sauce already on the table, and there's a jug of juice cooling in the fridge if you finish that one."
"Green bean salad," came a voice from the kitchen, followed by the appearance of Lindsay, Aiden's younger cousin and Josh's elder sister. She deposited her cargo onto the table before taking a seat beside Meredith.
"And…" Aiden said expectantly, gripping knife and fork in his fists and holding them upright. Beside him Josh did the same.
"Turkey," said his grandmother, stepping out of the kitchen in time with Marissa, who held the other side of the basting tray. Together they manhandled the oversized bird to place it before Aiden's grandfather, then took the remaining seats at the table.
Aiden smiled, watching his grandfather theatrically swipe the carving knife across the sharpener with a flourish. It was a ritual that never changed despite the years, and one Aiden suddenly realized he would miss. He felt a deep, painful ache in his chest, a sensation of both longing and regret, looking around the table at his family.
A week ago he had received official notification of his acceptance onto the Atlantis expedition. Aiden still hadn't told his family. Waiting for the right moment, he lied to himself. He had spent time away before, trapped in Cheyenne during lockdowns, or on off-world missions to alien worlds, but not like this.
To make a trip to another galaxy, and know the journey was likely to be one-way…
The excitement suddenly died within him, buried under intense pangs of homesickness and longing. He could say no, he could ask for reassignment, explain he had commitments. There were options. He didn't have to go.
"Wait!" Marissa's shrill voice cut abruptly through his thoughts. "Salt. We don't have salt."
"We can live without salt," their grandfather said.
"No, no." She shook her head. "It has to be done right. Aiden, go get it."
He blinked, momentarily thrown. "What?"
"The salt," his grandmother said, giving him a broad smile. "Make your cousin happy, Aiden."
"Oh." He nodded. "Sure." Rising from the table, he left the family bickering over the vegetables and headed to the kitchen.
He had told himself this was the right time. They were all together – a rare occasion, and one that was becoming harder and harder to achieve, as his cousins grew older and built families of their own.
But now it came to it, the words would not come, and the folded paper in his pocket felt a dead weight, pulling him down.
He stepped into the kitchen and moved towards the cupboard beside the fridge. Its surface was a tribute to the family: aging photos of his parents in uniform, crude drawings done by his cousins when they were younger, a yellowed and wrinkled school report from Josh's school. He paused for a moment to touch the edge of his parent's photo reverently.
"Aiden!"
Meredith's voice. He turned sharply to send back a retort, but the dining room was gone, as was the kitchen – photos evaporating under his touch, fridge and cupboards gone. He looked down to see the very floor beneath his feet fade, and he was suddenly surrounded by white…