stargateficrec | Physicist, Soldier, Queen, by Sentientcitizen (PG)

Show: Stargate SG-1

Rec Category: Crossover
Characters: Catherine Langford
Het/Slash/Gen: Gen
Warnings: crossover with The Chronicles of Narnia
Author on LJ:

sentientcitizen
Author's Website: Fanworks Master Post
Link: Physicist, Soldier, Queen

Why This Must Be Read: Fic that features Catherine Langford is always a reason to cheer. And in this superb crossover, Catherine meets a younger Susan Pevensie, post Last Battle, as they both take comfort in intellectual pursuits in the wake of their respective griefs.

I love the way that neither Susan nor Catherine ever learns each other's secrets, even if they learn to share both mental challenges and the pain of loss. This is gorgeous backstory, sketching out a minor character and highlighting with her brilliance. Absolutely wonderful!

“Am I crazy?” Susan asks one day, as they sit on Catherine’s ancient sofa, sipping coffee.

“If you are, we all are,” Catherine replies, automatically flip.

Susan doesn’t seem to hear her. “It’s just that some days, I wonder... because when the accident happened, I lay down in bed, and I didn’t move for three days. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still just lying in a white room somewhere. The poor mad girl who couldn’t cope.”

This time, Catherine does her the courtesy of answering seriously. “Why? What makes you fear it?”

Susan laughs - a short, unhappy sound. “The things in my head, Catherine - the things I believe, they’re...”

Catherine thinks of Ernest. Of Father. Of her own mad wormhole theories, slowly taking shape in her mind and haunted, ever haunted, by the ring from Giza, dribs and drabs of overheard childhood conversations beginning to coalesce in her head to form something so grand she hardly dared think it. “I’m starting to wonder,” she says, after a long moment, “if ‘crazy’ is just another word for ‘genius’. If you’re wrong, they’ll say you were mad. But if you’re right...”