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sister_wolf is a bad influence.But, I'm going to post it, because it'll make it more likely for me to do this again tonight.
Early Retirement
At the end of the galaxy a planet spins on its axis, round and round a small white star. Island archipelagos make up the greatest portion of the landmass on the planet Rodney likes to call the Ass End, and white, black, and golden sand beaches ring most of the islands. John’s favorite white sand beach also features a waterfall pool, the mating rituals twice-monthly of scaly crawling things much like purple four-legged goldfish, and a shady overhanging cliff under which Rodney is willing to sit for hours while John surfs on the boards Rodney makes for him from the twenty-foot stems of tree-like grasses.
It’s a good life, if primitive. Not really all that primitive, even, because he has Rodney and Rodney’s brain, plus the small groups of happy, scantily-clad, technologically-advanced natives who are always willing to share whatever they have with Rodney and John. Their huts are comfortable and well-built, if easily dismantled, and they remind John of a group of surfers he once spent time with in Hawaii. Their cuisine is excellent, fresh seafood and vegetables artfully prepared, though it took John a little while and Rodney months to become accustomed to it. John even has a small hang glider Rodney made for him to play with when the urge to fly grows strong. It’s better designed and faster than any of the others he’s ever had, though he still misses his puddlejumpers like severed limbs.
Someday, Rodney promises, he will build John a plane, and with the help of the scientists he even thinks he might be able to build a small spaceship. Terrific as that would be, John doesn’t really care. Because they will never return to Earth or Atlantis, not since the stargate here was honest-to-God swallowed by a fish, twenty minutes after the two of them came through it. At first he’d tried everything, demanded that Rodney try everything, to get home. But contact was blocked by several strategically-located black holes, which had also likely made their location undetectable, and they were just too far away for the Daedalus to find without coordinates. And once he’d realized that? Well, he’d settled in and become pretty happy.
Maybe one day they’d be found, but for now they were on an extended vacation in a near-perfect tropical paradise. What was there to complain about? He missed Atlantis, and Ronon and Teyla, and his Johnny Cash cds, but precious little else. Well, maybe turkey sandwiches. But most of the things he wanted, Rodney or the natives could give him, plus he’d taught several of them to surf and play a gentle version of football. They had no real sexual hangups here, so when he and Rodney started sleeping together nobody cared, just gave them smiles and a little extra modong root, “for stamina.”
The singing annoys Rodney, or so he says, but John likes it. Evenings when the moons meet in the sky, round and white and miraculous-looking, the people who call their planet Maltic (“Land of Rest” in their tongue) gather together on the largest island to sing to the oceans. The teenagers seem to find the whole thing ridiculous, and mock the traditional dance and the mock-battle between groups of islanders dressed in costume, some as pernac (the breed of giant fish responsible for John and Rodney’s stranding) and others as brave villagers in historical costume. But even the teenagers join in the singing, which can be heard from miles away. John wishes he could sing so that he could join in with the multi-part harmony, and Rodney, for all his mockery, does join. Sings pretty well, too.
Afterwards, they retire alone and a little buzzed from the local brew to their own hut, and Rodney runs his big hands all over John’s skin until he feels like there is lightning crawling through his veins. They make love until they fall asleep, and then wake up just to do it again.
The End
Epilogue
Teyla refused to mourn John Sheppard, would not sing for him until there was greater reason to believe him dead. She and Ronon argued about it until he finally asked her for her reasons, after which he let her have her faith without dispute. But he didn’t really believe that her dreams of Sheppard riding the cresting waves of a green sea meant anything. He just carved a fist from the wood of a whitebark tree, and set it up in his quarters, where he knelt before it and rubbed his blood into the knuckles every time the team won a significant victory. It would have been better if he could have blackened it with his leader’s ashes, but he felt certain Sheppard would understand.
Meetings often dragged now, without John to make Elizabeth smile in the face of danger. Rodney’s voice stayed with her, surprisingly. She could almost hear his caustic comments when the senior staff made foolish suggestions, and more than once she came close to being unforgivably rude on his behalf. There had never been anything between her and either of them but friendship, but she had had small, romantic daydreams about them both at different times. Now those gave her less comfort, but she still liked to think of them when she grew lonely or bored. Like a talisman against the Wraith, she ran through her store of memories of them each time Atlantis faced their enemies.
Major Lorne tried to refrain from any criticism of his CO while he fought his way through undone paperwork mounds, disorganized computer files, and the redesigning of schedules which Lt. Colonel Sheppard had obviously kept in his head, but it was hard. Three months after the Col. disappeared with McKay, he spent an entire Friday evening ranting to the ocean about the need for order in the armed forces. The ocean never argued, nor mentioned the moisture he’d wiped from his face with shaking fingers.
The labs remained far quieter than Radek could find comfortable, but his duties now made him so busy he had no time for nostalgia. Advances came, always with a cost, often springing from work Doctor McKay had pioneered. It was enough, though the pace seemed always faster, and the faces seemed always younger and less familiar.
Atlantis waited, certain that time would restore all she had lost, for patterns always repeat themselves eventually.
~
