Unidentified by the_drifter (PG-13)

[unrequited-rain.livejournal.com]

This is my last AU rec for a while. I'm leaving you all with a real tearjerker.
I might show up again later, possibly when I'm done with my anotheratlantis fic.

Rec Category: AU
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Category: AU, Slash,
Warning: slash, amnesia, grab a box of tissues
Author on LJ: the_drifter
Author's Website: writing journal=fiercelydreamed
Link: Unidentified Index Post

Why This Must Be Read: because it's beautiful, I simply have no other words for it. I first came across is when sheafrotherdon (the author of A Farm In Iowa) pimped it out and I was going through my bookmarks when I clicked on it again.

Seriously though, I don't know what else I can say for this other than to read it, and be sure to have a box of tissues on hand. It's heart-and-gut-and-kidney-and-other-internal-organs wrenching. And I love it so much.

John gets a phone call from Rodney, who is apparently in the hospital. When he gets there he finds that Rodney has no clue who he is, anything he's learned, complete and total amnesia.

I'm warning you, the exerpt is really long, but the fic is roughly 30,000 words, so I think it can spare a few.

Rodney dips his chin, and his fingers drum a little on his knees, the way they do when he's thinking himself up to something. "So," he says. "Um. We're ... friends?"

John's hands tighten down on the steering wheel, smile going rigid at the corners. Of course he wants to know that, no shit, Sherlock, but it still takes a second for John to swallow and say, "Yeah. Yeah, we're friends."

It's hard to think what to follow it with, so John just drives, and Rodney fidgets for a bit before replying, "That's ... um, good." His wince is obvious even in John's periphery, and when he checks the sideview, he sees Rodney's hands worriedly washing themselves in his lap.

Nice going, Sheppard; way to come through in a pinch. "We met fifteen years ago, at Caltech -- the California Institute of Technology, that's a university not far from here," John adds, before Rodney'll have to ask. "We were roommates, us and Carson Beckett."

It's not much, but Rodney perks up a little; his shoulders drop their protective hunch (the one John knows, they all know, well enough to draw from memory) and he shifts a little in his seat so he can look at John more easily. "Okay," he says; his fingers are drumming again.

Afternoon traffic congeals around them. It takes two and a half hours to get back to LA, and John spends all of it trying to summarize Rodney's life, his own, their history, in some kind of coherent fashion. Aeronautics, but you were doing your doctorate work in math and astrophysics. Research at CERN for a while -- uh, a big particle physics laboratory -- a few government contracts, a couple years at the Calphysics Institute. You're headed back to Caltech, actually -- what? No, research and teaching. This fall. A condo in West L.A.; not that far from where I live.

Me? I fly planes.

He talks, and Rodney nods more and asks more questions, studying John and the highway and the open air in the middle distance. He does this when he's working on a novel problem: seeks out as much information as possible, because if he can ask enough, learn enough, sooner or later it'll all click into place. The whole thing is so familiar, except that it's John's sketched-out version of their lives he's committing to memory. John tries to answer everything as best he can, because it's Rodney, but there are these moments, like when he says, I was in the Air Force after college, but after three years I came back to L.A. Rodney just nods and takes it at face value, and they're strangers.

About an hour and a half into the drive, they hit a quiet patch. In the middle of it, Rodney pinches the bridge of his nose and says, "Thank you. I mean, for coming to get me. I really don't know what would've happened if you hadn't."

And there's nothing John can say to that, except, "No problem. Anytime."

Comments

[sg-wonderland.livejournal.com]

I don't normally read Atlantis fic because, frankly, I just don't love SGA like I do SG1. But I had to stay home today, waiting for a phone call, had plenty of time to kill so I read this.
Completely breathtakingly beautiful. There are people being paid real money who can't tell a story with this much realism. I could touch both John and Rodney in their pain and misery and lost memories. The characters on the periphery were also wonderful, especially Jeannie. That phone call between she and John was superb. And the ending was just so bittersweet.
Keep up the great work, that was awesome.