"Through Midnight Rain, Question Me Again" by Sageness (Explicit)

[patk.livejournal.com]

Show: SGA
Rec Category: Team
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Elizabeth Weir, Kell of Sateda, Radek Zelenka
Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Categories: Slash
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Author on LJ: sageness
Author's Website: none
Link “Through Midnight Rain, Question Me Again" by Sageness

Summary by the author:
At noon Atlantis time, the team walks through the 'gate and steps out onto a barren hillside above a dead city, with wind howling and drifts of broken glass littering the streets. The only major energy reading comes from a slowly degrading, wildly contaminated nuclear reactor in the country downstream from town. It's a dismal place.


Why This Must Be Read:
It's kind of a ghost story and I have to admit, I don't quite get the connection between the crystal and the "visions" of the team back on Atlantis (hey, I wouldn't mind if someone who does would explain it to me ;-) ), though I recommend the story anyway.

Why? Because I adore the way Sageness portraits the team-members as individuals and shows us how different they are. How differently they're shaped by their descent, culture and upbringing, resulting in the fact that they sometimes don't understand each other completely (or *do* understand in the sense Teyla does in "Doranda", understanding why Ronon killed Kell but just knowing that the Earth-people wouldn't understand/accept it) but connect as a team and perceive themselves as a team anyway.
This is one of the rare stories that show us the members of SGA-1 as a team as much as individuals, as independent *characters*.

"The movie is weird. Ronon's seen ninety-three movies so far and parts of sixteen others, although some of them were probably television shows. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Scrooged is okay. He thinks it's a little stupid and a little sweet and he watches Sheppard and McKay sneak looks at each other. From time to time, he sees them holding hands inside the popcorn barrel, and he knows it's forbidden as well as he knows that Teyla sees it, too. He likes knowing he's trusted to guard their secret. On Sateda, if you couldn't trust your squad-mates, you couldn't trust anyone. It's nice that something translates.

The pale woman in the film reminds him of a woman on Sateda who ran the orphanage down the road from his father's house. They have the same eyes, at least as Ronon remembers her. She herded the children up and down the street daily, showing them off to be apprenticed. They all grew up to be servants and soldiers, though she pleaded for the brightest of them to be allowed a real education. It never happened.

The first dead guy makes Ronon uncomfortable. The humor is strange and even though Sheppard explained what golf was a while back, he doesn't understand why that's supposed to make it funny. The thing with the window is fucking creepy.

The other ghosts creep him out, too. The mocking kindness…the makeup that's so thick and consciously exaggerated, Ronon has to believe there's an atrocity lurking underneath. Even the woman, who gets him to laugh a little at one point. By the time Frank opens the faceless one's cloak, Ronon's drawing sahti signs on his left palm with his right thumbnail. He knows it's stupid. Sheppard will probably call this one a thing for kids, too, and yet he hasn't had a reaction like this since the fourth time the Wraith wiped out a village he'd just left.

Next to him, he feels Teyla watching. He's tense and she's responding subconsciously, naturally, like a good squad-mate. She manages to catch his eye, but he shakes his head minutely and focuses back on the movie."