stargateficrec | "Do I Dare Disturb the Universe" by vaguely

Show: SGA
Rec Category: AU
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, OC Faith Lumsbred, Queen Harmony, various OCs
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard
Categories: slash
Warnings: temporary character death
Author on LJ: [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]
Author's Website: none
Link: "Do I Dare Disturb the Universe" by vaguely_concerned

Summary by the author:
When Faith Lumsbred disobeys the decree of Queen Harmony and goes into the forbidden part of the woods, she expects to discover something cool, or at least something suitably unsettling. Finding instead an ageing astrophysicist and his cat she decides to get to the bottom of the things. How did McKay end up here? Why has the queen gone to such lengths to keep him hidden? And what exactly has he been doing out here all by himself?

Why This Must Be Read:
Because, dear reader, you know something terrible must have happened to get Rodney stranded on Harmony's planet for decades and you want the answers to all those questions the author brought up. *g*

Excellent storytelling, largely seen from Faith Lumbsbred's POV (the granddaughter of canon-character Nolan Lumsbred from the episode "Harmony"). She's a well developed character, a girl at the beginning of adolescence, who apparently takes after her grandfather and we discover Rodney's secrets followin in her tracks. We also see what happened int the past in retrospective through Rodney's eyes.

I love pretty much everything about this story. The way Faith gets to know Rodney, her fascination with Rodney's drawings, the scene in which she finds John's old leather jacket - which means nothing to her but with the background the reader has from a few scenes earlier it's heartbreakting to see it there.

The grown up Queen Harmony who is surprising likable. Rodney's desperate search for a solution to the catastrophe, that he will go to any lengths to change the outcome, the innovative and surprising way he finds to reach his goal and then, what he actually *does* to change the situation. wow! Destroying this uninhabited solar system has nothing on what he does here.

There's a gut-wrenching scene in which he watches the downfall of Atlantis and after that, I was totally with him on what he decided to do.

I especially love the final part of the story - it's cleverly written and it isn't immediatly noticeable what has changed, or if anything has changed at all but then, when the scenes continue and you realize step by step what has changed you'll feel your heart go lighter. Since the last part is told from Faith's POV at age 13 we only get to see the result of Rodney's efforts at this moment - not the whole process of change - but that's perfectly well done. Reading the final part I *felt* the changes and it made me very much happy to imagine what must have happened in the last 25 years to lead to this.

Read it, it's worth every minute of your time and despite the bleak situation at the beginning, it is a happy story.

And I have just discovered that there's a small companion story to it:

"That Time Harmony Should Probably Just Have Listened To Nolar (but it wouldn't have been as much fun)" http://archiveofourown.org/works/7469478

Faith finds the cottage just as the sun is draping itself over the
horizon and lending a golden tinge to the crowns of the surrounding trees.

For all the fuss that has been made about it it’s a thoroughly innocuous structure. Huddled in its little dip in the landscape it sports a freshly thatched roof and plain light-painted walls that have been spared the thrash of the north wind because of its protected position. A small boat lies dipping up and down in the ocean right below it, moored to a small pier. The salty smell of sea is fresh and sweet in her nose, and there’s an apple tree stubbornly clawing at its soil, flowers blooming pink-white.

A clothesline is strung between the apple tree and the cottage. A pair of undergarments are still hanging off it, probably forgotten last night and now damp again from dew.

Nothing looks even remotely haunted. At least she can’t remember a single ghost story that had involved underpants. She squints down at the whole picture from her hiding place behind a rocky overhang. This was... not what she’d expected.

There is a rustling in the underbrush behind her and she jumps, barely containing a yelp of surprise as something shoots past her leg in a flurry of fur and paws. As abruptly as the thing had come barreling out it stops, coalescing from a blur of speed into... a cat. A slightly chubby tabby cat with white markings.

It glares reproachfully up at her in the way of cats everywhere, as if astounded at the abject rudeness of any being occupying space where they weren’t supposed to. Faith returns the glare as her pulse settles back down again. She can practically hear her grandfather’s voice in her head berating her for letting herself be taken by surprise like that. There could be much worse than this sorry excuse of a fleabag rat catcher in these woods.

She clenches her teeth and shoos at the cat quietly, waving her hands at it. As if to prove a point the cat sits down. If it had had eyebrows it would be raising them sardonically. Its tail flops lazily back and forth on the forest floor.

Be like that, Faith thinks, peering back down at the little cottage. It continues to look wholly innocent.

Figures. For as long as Faith can remember these parts of the woods have been forbidden by Queen Harmony’s decree. Now that she knows that there’s nothing out here except this harmless building, she’s forced to consider that the queen’s reasons had always been a bit on the vague side. Nobody was allowed to go there because was the Beast’s hunting ground, and it doesn’t mind the taste of human flesh from time to time. (It was especially partial to small children, because they were fresh and tender.) Nobody was allowed East of the hunting post on the border of Tanglewood and Rockwell – because it was haunted by the ghosts of evil witches, or because the ground was soaked with poison when the Wraith attacked somewhere in the distant past; because at night the ocean yielded its scale-covered monsters and slimy sea worms.

The anger bubbles back up Faith’s throat because she’d believed it. She’d sat with all the other children, wide-eyed in horrified fascination as the queen spoke. She’d never even noticed that the reason was never the same twice, or that the queen would be conveniently hazy on the details – just enough to ensure it sounded ominous, yet not enough to actually say anything ever.

It had all been just bullshit. Everything was.

She jumps for the second time in ten minutes when the cat, having changed its assessment of her from ‘Personal Insult’ to ‘Possible Source of Stomach Rubs’, headbutts her arm insistently until she scratches behind its ears.

“Dumb animal,” she mumbles, petting its head and getting a chorus of purrs. Its fur is soft and warm and surprisingly clean for being so long. It looks like it’s been cared for.

Down by the water the cottage door bangs open. The cat perks up noticeably.

There are various clanging and crashing noises from down there, a muffled shout that sounds like a swear word, and then a figure steps out of the doorway, ineffectively kicking off a coil of rope that has wound itself around his foot. The figure moves a little stiffly, like her grandfather does on cold mornings.

After realizing that the current method isn’t working out so well he leans heavily on the door frame and uncoils the rope by hand. Then he nearly overbalances, only catching himself before he faceplants into the door.

The scary aspect of this place is diminishing by the minute.

The man kicks the rope back in over the doorstep absently and briefly ducks back inside. When he comes out again he’s holding two metal bowls. A new sound breaks the morning silence.

“Archimedes!” the man’s voice calls. It sounds cracked and raw, like it hasn’t been used for a while. “Archimedes, breakfast time!” Like a shot the cat disappears from under Faith’s hand and barrels down the rocky crag towards the man with the bowls. When it reaches him it claws at his legs until he crouches down and scoops it up, letting it sink its claws into his shoulder as he fills the bowls from two different buckets standing close to the cottage wall.

Yup, that’s... decidedly disappointing. Why would the queen go to all that trouble just to hide an old man and his cat?

While the cat eats, the old man goes inside for a while and then comes out carrying a mug of something that steams in the morning air and a bowl of his own, heaped dangerously high with food.

He goes to sit on the pier, legs dangling in the air above the low tide.

Faith watches him and tries to find a more comfortable position. Her grandfather has always told her that a good hunter should be as capable of being still for hours as she is at tracking and shooting, but he hasn’t told her any great secrets as to how to stop your knees from burning while you kneel.

The man puts his food away with great enthusiasm, popping bit after bit into his mouth between gulps from the steaming mug. The sun glints off the water lazily. The cat pads over to him and starts washing itself. His appetite makes her uncomfortably aware of her own stomach rumbles. She could probably have planned this better – the bread and piece of cheese she’s brought had gone last night, and while there are plenty of good qualities to edible roots, taste tends not to be one of them.

The old man finishes and gets up off the pier heavily. He takes his own bowl and the cat’s over to the barrel where he presumably gathers rain water and sloshes some water over them.The cat winds unhelpfully between his legs as he carries the bowls inside. He’s only gone for a couple of minutes before he comes out again, a leather bag slung over his shoulder. After a long period of indecision on the cat’s part as to whether it wants to go out or stay inside, full of false starts and jerky turns, the man shakes his head and shuts the door in its face.

The man starts walking up the hill, but way too far to the right to see her. The entire rocky overhang she’s hiding behind is in shadow; in her dark clothes she is virtually invisible.

It’s pretty slow going – the man doesn’t seem too set on going wherever it is he’s headed at any speed. At one point he even stops, as if realizing he’s just forgotten something, and roots around in his bag. She can’t make out what he fishes up, but it’s a rectangular shape in a light color.

For a while the man just looks down at it, and then he raises his head and studies the forest. For one heart-clenching moment Faith thinks he’s looking right at her, even though it’s impossible. He reaches into his bag again and comes up with –

The shot hurtles by dangerously close to the top of her head, a flash of blue light and a crackle of sound as it passes.

She looks up, stunned, tempted to pat the top of her head just to make sure the hair isn’t singed.

“I know you’re there,” the old man yells. “If that shot didn’t stun you, you should come out where I can see you!”When she peers over the edge of the stone she sees that in his hand is something that looks a lot like the guns the Genii use, except the shapes of it are rounder, the colors lighter.

The man hesitates. “Well, that was a pretty dumb thing to say,” he points out. “You still could just pretend to be stunned to lure me up there, couldn’t you.”

Faith, who had been about to stand up with her hands above her head, thinks this over. She comes to the conclusion that any old man who gives his enemies tips like that is probably not a lot to be afraid of. She might as well do the easy thing for both of them and pretend she’s just a stupid little girl who’s gotten lost or something.

Her evaluation immediately changes as she stands up and has to throw herself to the side to avoid the second shot.

“Hey!” she screams, hands coming up to protect her head, “cut it out, I’m trying to surrender!”

There’s a pause. “Wait – what? I... stay right there.”

It turns out that his former slowness had been deceptive, because he moves up the hill pretty quickly if clumsily, gun still pointing in Faith’s direction. Closer up he’s not as old as she’d first thought – probably younger than her grandfather, or at least less weather-worn.