Anbernen by Klostes (teen)

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: Gen
Pairing: none
Category: Carson Beckett, Rodney McKay, Radek Zelenka, John Sheppard, Ronon Dex, episode related
Warning: canon character death
Author on LJ klostes
Author's Website: unknown
Link: Anbernen

Why This Must Be Read:
The Stargate: Atlantis episode "Sunday" spawned a lot of fic tags, and this is one of my favorites. In this short, missing scene set during "Sunday," klostes's writing has the same intense, fractured feeling of beautiful and deafening silence as the explosion she describes. Each character's reaction, frozen in a moment in time, is heart-wrenching and the reader stops breathing for a minute right along with Rodney.

This story contains spoilers for "Sunday."


Elbows braced against the burnished metal worktable, Ronon stills, too familiar with this sudden echoing absence to struggle. Radek simply closes his eyes and lets his chin sink down to his chest, one hand still resting on the lid of his laptop as he surrenders to the thickening silence.

John hunches over the worktable, his eyes locked on the computer in front of him. Carson's defiance, once limned in red, is now a tiny, splattered, glowing thing on his screen. John's lips and knuckles are white, his fist clenched and hovering in midair, as if caught and held out of time by the dead air in his earpiece. Small bubbles cluster along creaking fractures, as if to prevent the solidity of Atlantis from splintering away beneath their feet.

There is no air where Rodney stands. He is frozen in amber, mouth open, eyes wild already with the curse of knowing, knowledge that will not allow him denial, will not forgive, not even if heathen lips spilled the numberless lies shaped as prayers he'd never confess.