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fiercelydreamedThere was a whole big disclaimer that was going to precede this, with musing on my current weird combination of creative productivity and selective writer's block, but my friend just showed up to take a walk with me. Look for this post to be edited later with relevant information, but for now, what you need to know is: I had this idea months ago, I came home and just suddenly started writing it, I don't know the plot, I don't know where it's going, but tell me if you find it interesting and I'll keep posting it in chunks as I try to figure that out.
*
Consciousness seeps back to her one sense at a time, and it says something about Jo's life that she's only gotten as far as smell and hearing when she knows she's in the infirmary again. She really kind of longs for the days when she would have had to actually open her eyes to recognize the place. Now, the antiseptic tang and the beep of the machines are enough to tell her that mission probably didn't end as planned.
She raises an hand experimentally to her head, teeth set in preparation for whatever it is that's going to hurt like hell this time. Weirdly, nothing does. Jo blinks both eyes open and pushes herself the rest of the way to sitting, looking at the curtains partitioning off her cot. Everything cooperates, which is reassuring, but there's absolutely no one in her line of sight, which is not. They've got a standing team rule that no one who gets knocked out off-world wakes up alone, because as often as it seems to happen, they've learned to appreciate the continuity of least one face. Christ, just how badly did things go back there?
"Guys?" she calls, and there's an abrupt silence as the background murmur of voices, which she hadn't properly registered, drops out. "Everybody okay?"
Footsteps converge in on her position, a lot of them, and when Keller's hands appear and pull the curtains partway open, there are about eight people staring way too intently at her through the gap: Carter, Teyla, Ronon, Radek, a couple of nurses, and -- way at the back of the throng, instead of shoving officiously to the front as usual -- Rodney.
Keller's got her lips pursed and Carter's eyes are flickering intently back and forth over Jo's face. Teyla's wearing that smooth smile that she always summons when she thinks it's important for someone to be reassuring, Ronon's eyebrows have fixed themselves about halfway up his forehead, and the nurses are frankly staring.
Rodney's expression is -- actually, she's not sure she's ever seen this particular expression before, white and rigid, eyes enormous and mouth sealed tight. He looks like he's about ten seconds away from running to the nearest basin to puke, and Jo stifles the urge to sigh, feeling both guilty and aggrieved. Whatever happened that landed her here, there's clearly going to be A Conversation about it later -- if by "conversation," you mean a good twenty minutes of Rodney yelling himself hoarse and Jo making unfunny jokes until he runs out of steam and she can actually apologize. Sleeping with Rodney is more than worth the associated trouble, but he really, really hates it when Jo gets herself almost killed. And while Jo feels almost bizarrely fine, she also can't remember what happened, and from the look on everyone's faces, she's guessing it may have been a little more dramatic than usual.
Everyone looks at her. No one says anything.
"... hi," she says after a minute, one eyebrow tugging upwards. Everybody twitches. She feels her other eyebrow join the first one. "Anybody still got the power of speech?"
"Colonel Sheppard!" Keller stutters a little over the delivery, face going fake-animated like someone flipped the switch marked bedside manner. She steps forward through the curtains and to the edge of the bed, not quite moving out of neutral territory. People shift subtly behind her, like they're trying to get a better view, but no one comes any closer. "How are you feeling?"
"Apparently, much better than I should," she drawls, glancing involuntarily toward Rodney, who hasn't moved. Jo pulls on a half-smile, scratches her head with a sheepishness that's mostly faked. "Somebody want to fill me in on what happened?"
"Um ..." Keller glances back to either side, letting the pause lengthen, but none of the others look like they're going to bail her out anytime soon. She takes a deep breath and moves forward to stand directly next to Jo, clipboard clutched against her chest. "Colonel, I'm not really sure how to say this, but ..." Her mouth moves soundlessly for a moment, then she closes her eyes in the wince of someone confronting a Pegasus galaxy first and states, "You're a woman now."
The last time anyone said those words to Jo in that order, she was twelve, her mother was in the hospital recovering from the car accident, and her aunt Trudy had just run into her at the commissary, sweatshirt around her waist, trying to decipher any meaningful differences between the two different brands of pads. "Uh," she says, intelligently, then licks her lips. "And?"
Keller's eyes get a little bigger, and her hands open and close around the edges of the clipboard. "I -- feel like maybe I'm not getting my point across, Colonel, but I'm not really sure how to say this more clearly."
Jo blinks, and then horror rolls through her. "Keller," she hisses in a low voice, swinging her legs off the edge of the cot and leaning forward so she can get their faces right up close together, "if you're trying to tell me I somehow got knocked up on an alien planet, can we please for god's sake do this without the audience?" She holds a hand up between her head and the gap in the curtain, fingers spread wide. It won't do fuck-all to screen their conversation and luck's doesn't exactly seem to be on her side right now, but just maybe everyone else can still recognize it as the universal symbol for go the fuck away.
"'Knocked up'?" Keller repeats much more loudly and with an expression of total disbelief. "John--"
"'John'?" Jo echoes back, struck with the bizarre feeling that she's woken up to find that this time, everyone has a concussion but her. She points toward her chest with both index fingers. "Jo," she says emphatically.
There's a bitten-off sound from beyond the curtain and she looks up to find Rodney staring at her with a stricken, helpless expression, the one she's seen on his face every time someone gets her at gunpoint and starts to pull the trigger, and before she even has a chance to react, he's turning away and fumbling for a chair and dropping down into it, head between his knees.
*
[Edited 1/19/2008.]
[All installments archived here.]
*
Consciousness seeps back to her one sense at a time, and it says something about Jo's life that she's only gotten as far as smell and hearing when she knows she's in the infirmary again. She really kind of longs for the days when she would have had to actually open her eyes to recognize the place. Now, the antiseptic tang and the beep of the machines are enough to tell her that mission probably didn't end as planned.
She raises an hand experimentally to her head, teeth set in preparation for whatever it is that's going to hurt like hell this time. Weirdly, nothing does. Jo blinks both eyes open and pushes herself the rest of the way to sitting, looking at the curtains partitioning off her cot. Everything cooperates, which is reassuring, but there's absolutely no one in her line of sight, which is not. They've got a standing team rule that no one who gets knocked out off-world wakes up alone, because as often as it seems to happen, they've learned to appreciate the continuity of least one face. Christ, just how badly did things go back there?
"Guys?" she calls, and there's an abrupt silence as the background murmur of voices, which she hadn't properly registered, drops out. "Everybody okay?"
Footsteps converge in on her position, a lot of them, and when Keller's hands appear and pull the curtains partway open, there are about eight people staring way too intently at her through the gap: Carter, Teyla, Ronon, Radek, a couple of nurses, and -- way at the back of the throng, instead of shoving officiously to the front as usual -- Rodney.
Keller's got her lips pursed and Carter's eyes are flickering intently back and forth over Jo's face. Teyla's wearing that smooth smile that she always summons when she thinks it's important for someone to be reassuring, Ronon's eyebrows have fixed themselves about halfway up his forehead, and the nurses are frankly staring.
Rodney's expression is -- actually, she's not sure she's ever seen this particular expression before, white and rigid, eyes enormous and mouth sealed tight. He looks like he's about ten seconds away from running to the nearest basin to puke, and Jo stifles the urge to sigh, feeling both guilty and aggrieved. Whatever happened that landed her here, there's clearly going to be A Conversation about it later -- if by "conversation," you mean a good twenty minutes of Rodney yelling himself hoarse and Jo making unfunny jokes until he runs out of steam and she can actually apologize. Sleeping with Rodney is more than worth the associated trouble, but he really, really hates it when Jo gets herself almost killed. And while Jo feels almost bizarrely fine, she also can't remember what happened, and from the look on everyone's faces, she's guessing it may have been a little more dramatic than usual.
Everyone looks at her. No one says anything.
"... hi," she says after a minute, one eyebrow tugging upwards. Everybody twitches. She feels her other eyebrow join the first one. "Anybody still got the power of speech?"
"Colonel Sheppard!" Keller stutters a little over the delivery, face going fake-animated like someone flipped the switch marked bedside manner. She steps forward through the curtains and to the edge of the bed, not quite moving out of neutral territory. People shift subtly behind her, like they're trying to get a better view, but no one comes any closer. "How are you feeling?"
"Apparently, much better than I should," she drawls, glancing involuntarily toward Rodney, who hasn't moved. Jo pulls on a half-smile, scratches her head with a sheepishness that's mostly faked. "Somebody want to fill me in on what happened?"
"Um ..." Keller glances back to either side, letting the pause lengthen, but none of the others look like they're going to bail her out anytime soon. She takes a deep breath and moves forward to stand directly next to Jo, clipboard clutched against her chest. "Colonel, I'm not really sure how to say this, but ..." Her mouth moves soundlessly for a moment, then she closes her eyes in the wince of someone confronting a Pegasus galaxy first and states, "You're a woman now."
The last time anyone said those words to Jo in that order, she was twelve, her mother was in the hospital recovering from the car accident, and her aunt Trudy had just run into her at the commissary, sweatshirt around her waist, trying to decipher any meaningful differences between the two different brands of pads. "Uh," she says, intelligently, then licks her lips. "And?"
Keller's eyes get a little bigger, and her hands open and close around the edges of the clipboard. "I -- feel like maybe I'm not getting my point across, Colonel, but I'm not really sure how to say this more clearly."
Jo blinks, and then horror rolls through her. "Keller," she hisses in a low voice, swinging her legs off the edge of the cot and leaning forward so she can get their faces right up close together, "if you're trying to tell me I somehow got knocked up on an alien planet, can we please for god's sake do this without the audience?" She holds a hand up between her head and the gap in the curtain, fingers spread wide. It won't do fuck-all to screen their conversation and luck's doesn't exactly seem to be on her side right now, but just maybe everyone else can still recognize it as the universal symbol for go the fuck away.
"'Knocked up'?" Keller repeats much more loudly and with an expression of total disbelief. "John--"
"'John'?" Jo echoes back, struck with the bizarre feeling that she's woken up to find that this time, everyone has a concussion but her. She points toward her chest with both index fingers. "Jo," she says emphatically.
There's a bitten-off sound from beyond the curtain and she looks up to find Rodney staring at her with a stricken, helpless expression, the one she's seen on his face every time someone gets her at gunpoint and starts to pull the trigger, and before she even has a chance to react, he's turning away and fumbling for a chair and dropping down into it, head between his knees.
*
[Edited 1/19/2008.]
[All installments archived here.]