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"Long Road Home" vignette
I'm procrastinating this afternoon, so I wrote a snippet from the Long Road Home universe. Well, it was supposed to be a snippet. Instead it ended up being about 2200 words long. It's kind of a follow-up to the other one that I wrote a little while back.
It's raining in D.C. The last time John was here, he was in Walter Reed. The doctors had said he'd never walk again; they'd said putting together his pelvis and legs after the chopper crash was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Now he's walking through the rain with barely a limp. He can still feel the old wounds each time his bad leg takes his weight, though -- silvery twinges of pain where the doctors lined up his shattered bones.
Teyla is quiet beside him, sensing his mood as usual. She was a chatterbox on the drive to D.C.. The spring semester's just wrapped up, and whenever she's home from school, it's impossible to shut her up -- not that he'd want to. He really couldn't care less about classes and campus life, but he loves seeing the animation in her eyes and face when she talks about it. She's majoring in biology at Texas A&M, and she thinks she might become either a doctor or a veterinarian; she's not sure which.
John has never found out how she got a student visa, but he's pretty sure that Rodney pulled some strings to accomplish it. He's doubly sure when he announces to the household that he's going up to D.C. for a few days, and Teyla immediately springs to her feet and announces that she's going with him.
They leave the ranch in the capable hands of Ronon and Melena and the kids. It's really a ranch these days, too -- their handful of sheep have become two dozen, and they also have three horses at the moment, though two are being fostered. The third, Jumper, is a beautiful sorrel with twisting white scars on his legs and side; when they got him, he'd had an accident with barbed wire and wasn't expected to pull through. John is still not quite sure how this happened, but the ranch -- which he's informally dubbed Pegasus Acres -- has somehow turned into a regular animal-rescue facility. In the process of trying to keep the sheep alive that first year, Teyla got to know every veterinarian in the county, and for the last year or so, John and his crew have been fostering convalescing animals who need more space to run around than the veterinary practices in town can provide. They've had goats, horses, dogs, even a llama. And then there are the cats Rodney keeps bringing home, which now number four.
Rodney is the reason they're here in D.C., even though neither of them mentions it. Rodney's not tied to the ranch in the same way the rest of them are. He comes and goes. But it is obvious to all of them, except maybe Rodney, that he's far happier at the ranch than away from it. Working for the government is like a drug for him. It's not good for him, but he can't seem to quit permanently. He comes back to the ranch, each time, with most of the light gone from behind his eyes; and they put him back together; and then the letters with the Washington postmark start coming to his drop box -- and sooner or later he's gone again.
He's been gone for a year and a half this time. A long time ago, John threatened to come up to D.C. and drag him home. John was raised to believe that you don't make threats you don't mean.
He thrusts a cold hand deep into the pocket of his trench coat, checking on his secret weapon.
"There," Teyla says softly.
It's been hard to find Rodney. He's never given them a home address; when he leaves the ranch, it's like he's gone to another galaxy. But despite the years that John's been a civilian, he still knows people who know people. It's taken the better part of a long rainy day, a double handful of change fed into pay phones, and getting the runaround from just about every office of the U.S. government, but finally Dr. Weir at the State Department had been able to give him the information he needed. He has the address of Rodney's apartment, and also of a bar/restaurant where Weir says that Rodney often hangs out after work.
They've been to the apartment, a secure building in a nice neighborhood. No one answered the buzzer. It's after hours, but Rodney might be working late. Rather than camping out in the foyer, they decided to walk to the restaurant. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place, not where John would have expected to find a highly sought-after government employee who probably pulls down a six-figure income. But Rodney is Rodney. And through the window, John sees him -- tucked away at a booth in the corner.
A little of the tension uncoils in his stomach.
"Seat yourself," a waitress says, but instead they drip their way through the jammed-together tables to the back of the room. It is obvious that Rodney has been here for a while; the table is littered with half-empy coffee cups and empty beer glasses, along with a burger congealing on a plate. There are scientific journals and papers covered with equations spread out everywhere, and Rodney is typing on a laptop as they come up to him. He looks grayish and shrunken, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. There are dark circles under his eyes.
"Hey," John says.
Rodney jumps and looks up. Emotions chase each other across his face too quickly to read, before the walls slam down. "Well, you two are a long way from h -- from your usual haunts."
John straddles a chair without being invited. "I hear the cherry blossoms in D.C. are supposed to be beautiful in the spring."
Rodney watches him through narrowed eyes. His body language is hostile, defensive. "The damn cherries bloomed weeks ago, not that I'd even know if I wasn't allergic to them."
John lifts his shoulders in a brief shrug. "I'm a procrastinator."
Rodney's glare passes from John to Teyla. "Aren't you supposed to be in school or something?"
"My finals are over and summer classes have not started yet. John wanted to show me my capital city." When Teyla speaks of "my country" these days, she does not mean Guatemala.
"Road trip. Thrill a minute, I'm sure." Hostility radiates off him so fiercely that it's almost visible. Teyla withdraws, looking hurt.
"Everyone's great back at the ranch," John says. "Thanks for asking, by the way. The sheep are doing fine, and we have a horse now."
"Words fail to convey how much I do not care about your livestock, Sheppard." Rodney is drunk, John realizes, though it's barely evident; he doesn't slur and he isn't clumsy, though there's a certain deliberation to his normally quick movements as he begins gathering up papers, swiping them roughly into a pile or turning them facedown.
John can't understand why Rodney is so vehemently displeased to see them until it clicks into place, suddenly, as he watches Rodney slide the papers under the laptop. It's because Rodney is ashamed of what he does here, and doesn't want them to know. John thinks of late-night alcohol-lubricated conversations, when their rambling discussions of anything and everything would glide around the edges of the things they didn't want to talk about, when Rodney would get a little too open and then pretend he hadn't said anything. He works for the Department of Defense; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what sort of things he does for a living.
While John fumbles around, seeking the words to say We know who you are and we don't care -- only in a more manly way, of course -- Teyla seems to come to a similar conclusion. She rounds the table and hugs Rodney before he can pull away, resting her cheek against his. He stiffens, then relaxes against her, sagging just a little -- and there is such total weary resignation in that tiny little slump that it makes John look away.
"Brought you something from the ranch," he says, reaching into his pocket.
Rodney makes a sound that's not quite a laugh and might be dangerously close to a sob, though it's muffled by Teyla's hair. "From Texas, on the bike? It had better be small."
"It is," John says. The secret weapon is fast asleep and boneless; despite its diminutive size, he needs both hands to deposit it on Rodney's side of the table in a furry gray puddle.
Rodney separates himself from Teyla, and stares.
"Uh, Sheppard, that's a puppy."
"No, really?" John fakes surprise.
Giving John a withering glare, Rodney pokes at the puppy with his fingertip. The furry ball uncurls long enough to make a squeaky yawn, then falls asleep again with its head on his laptop keyboard. Rodney is obviously at a loss for words, a rare and unusual event.
"It's from a litter of racing greyhound puppies," John explains. "This one's not racing quality, so the breeder was going to have it destroyed. One of Teyla's friends in the Aggie vet program gave it to us instead. I thought you might want it."
Rodney's hands hover nervously over the snoozing ball of fur. He is obviously struggling to maintain the appropriate level of scorn in his voice without letting an awwww slip through. "And you thought that, why?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because every time you come home from D.C. --" John can't help dropping some emphasis onto the word "-- you bring a stray cat with you?"
"Those are cats, Sheppard. This is a dog. Dogs need -- I don't know, training and walking and -- and affection, and stuff. They're as bad as kids." The puppy chooses this moment to roll over onto its back; its tiny triangle-shaped ears flop out on either side of its head, covering the delete and shift keys.
"Greyhounds," John says, "also need to run a lot."
"Great, so you've given me a pet that I can't keep in my apartment. Well, take it back to the ranch, then. It can run all it likes."
John sits back and crosses his arms. "But it's yours now, Rodney; I can't take it. Like you pointed out, a dog needs its owner."
Rodney's mouth drops open. "You son of a bitch, you're trying to lure me back to the farm using a puppy as bait!"
"Is it working?" John asks hopefully.
Rodney stands up and yanks the laptop out from under the puppy's head. It wakes up and begins to make small dismayed noises. Rodney reaches under the table for a briefcase and begins slapping papers into it.
John is getting the feeling that Operation Deploy Puppy is not going smoothly. "Rodney, look --"
"Shut up." Rodney gives the puppy a shove, sliding it roughly over to John's side of the table. It begins to howl. "And you shut up too!" he snaps at it. "Take your damn dog, take your pity, and go take pictures of the Washington Monument or whatever you came here for. And leave me alone."
Briefcase in hand, he stomps towards the door, snaps, "Charge it to my tab," at the waitress and then vanishes into the night.
"Rodney, damn it!" John grabs the puppy as he gets up from the table.
"No pets allowed," the waitress informs them, eyeing the still-squalling puppy.
"Put it on my tab," John retorts. Teyla is ahead of him as they hurry out into the rain. Rodney's an indistinct figure, far down the sidewalk.
The one thing John still can't do with his bad leg is run, but Teyla darts off in pursuit. By the time John catches up to them, limping and feeling every step from ankle to hip, the two of them are standing in earnest conversation under a streetlight. Rodney is trying not to look Teyla in the eyes.
"I didn't ask you guys to come here," he's saying, while the hand that's not holding the briefcase flutters around, scattering raindrops.
"I know," she says, capturing his waving hand in her small one. "You would never ask. That is why we came."
"Your dog wants you," John pants, shoving the crying puppy against Rodney's chest. Rodney yanks his hand free of Teyla's to catch the puppy before it falls into a puddle. It immediately quiets down against his chest and begins snuffling at the front of his jacket.
"See?" John says. "It likes you."
Rodney looks back and forth between them. Rain glistens on his hair, his eyelashes. He looks lost and confused, but maybe, just maybe, there is a trace of a smile on one edge of his crooked mouth. "You people are completely insane, you know that?"
A day later, they leave D.C.: John on his Harley, and Rodney in a sleek, brand-new silver convertible that John gives him no end of grief for buying. The top is down, the insanely expensive-looking stereo is cranked up with jazz playing, and John keeps catching Rodney smiling when he doesn't know anyone's looking. The puppy is curled up on Rodney's jacket in the floor behind the seats. Teyla takes turns riding behind John on the Harley, or riding in the passenger seat beside Rodney, and on the long stretches of highway between D.C. and Texas, he lets her take the wheel.
I don't know a thing about Washington, D.C. Or Texas for that matter. I just Googled for a school where Teyla might conceivably be studying veterinary medicine somewhere not horrendously far from the ranch. Walter Reed is Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C.
And now I need a name for the puppy, but I already used Jumper on the horse.
EDIT: And there is now an illustration to go with this.
It's raining in D.C. The last time John was here, he was in Walter Reed. The doctors had said he'd never walk again; they'd said putting together his pelvis and legs after the chopper crash was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Now he's walking through the rain with barely a limp. He can still feel the old wounds each time his bad leg takes his weight, though -- silvery twinges of pain where the doctors lined up his shattered bones.
Teyla is quiet beside him, sensing his mood as usual. She was a chatterbox on the drive to D.C.. The spring semester's just wrapped up, and whenever she's home from school, it's impossible to shut her up -- not that he'd want to. He really couldn't care less about classes and campus life, but he loves seeing the animation in her eyes and face when she talks about it. She's majoring in biology at Texas A&M, and she thinks she might become either a doctor or a veterinarian; she's not sure which.
John has never found out how she got a student visa, but he's pretty sure that Rodney pulled some strings to accomplish it. He's doubly sure when he announces to the household that he's going up to D.C. for a few days, and Teyla immediately springs to her feet and announces that she's going with him.
They leave the ranch in the capable hands of Ronon and Melena and the kids. It's really a ranch these days, too -- their handful of sheep have become two dozen, and they also have three horses at the moment, though two are being fostered. The third, Jumper, is a beautiful sorrel with twisting white scars on his legs and side; when they got him, he'd had an accident with barbed wire and wasn't expected to pull through. John is still not quite sure how this happened, but the ranch -- which he's informally dubbed Pegasus Acres -- has somehow turned into a regular animal-rescue facility. In the process of trying to keep the sheep alive that first year, Teyla got to know every veterinarian in the county, and for the last year or so, John and his crew have been fostering convalescing animals who need more space to run around than the veterinary practices in town can provide. They've had goats, horses, dogs, even a llama. And then there are the cats Rodney keeps bringing home, which now number four.
Rodney is the reason they're here in D.C., even though neither of them mentions it. Rodney's not tied to the ranch in the same way the rest of them are. He comes and goes. But it is obvious to all of them, except maybe Rodney, that he's far happier at the ranch than away from it. Working for the government is like a drug for him. It's not good for him, but he can't seem to quit permanently. He comes back to the ranch, each time, with most of the light gone from behind his eyes; and they put him back together; and then the letters with the Washington postmark start coming to his drop box -- and sooner or later he's gone again.
He's been gone for a year and a half this time. A long time ago, John threatened to come up to D.C. and drag him home. John was raised to believe that you don't make threats you don't mean.
He thrusts a cold hand deep into the pocket of his trench coat, checking on his secret weapon.
"There," Teyla says softly.
It's been hard to find Rodney. He's never given them a home address; when he leaves the ranch, it's like he's gone to another galaxy. But despite the years that John's been a civilian, he still knows people who know people. It's taken the better part of a long rainy day, a double handful of change fed into pay phones, and getting the runaround from just about every office of the U.S. government, but finally Dr. Weir at the State Department had been able to give him the information he needed. He has the address of Rodney's apartment, and also of a bar/restaurant where Weir says that Rodney often hangs out after work.
They've been to the apartment, a secure building in a nice neighborhood. No one answered the buzzer. It's after hours, but Rodney might be working late. Rather than camping out in the foyer, they decided to walk to the restaurant. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place, not where John would have expected to find a highly sought-after government employee who probably pulls down a six-figure income. But Rodney is Rodney. And through the window, John sees him -- tucked away at a booth in the corner.
A little of the tension uncoils in his stomach.
"Seat yourself," a waitress says, but instead they drip their way through the jammed-together tables to the back of the room. It is obvious that Rodney has been here for a while; the table is littered with half-empy coffee cups and empty beer glasses, along with a burger congealing on a plate. There are scientific journals and papers covered with equations spread out everywhere, and Rodney is typing on a laptop as they come up to him. He looks grayish and shrunken, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. There are dark circles under his eyes.
"Hey," John says.
Rodney jumps and looks up. Emotions chase each other across his face too quickly to read, before the walls slam down. "Well, you two are a long way from h -- from your usual haunts."
John straddles a chair without being invited. "I hear the cherry blossoms in D.C. are supposed to be beautiful in the spring."
Rodney watches him through narrowed eyes. His body language is hostile, defensive. "The damn cherries bloomed weeks ago, not that I'd even know if I wasn't allergic to them."
John lifts his shoulders in a brief shrug. "I'm a procrastinator."
Rodney's glare passes from John to Teyla. "Aren't you supposed to be in school or something?"
"My finals are over and summer classes have not started yet. John wanted to show me my capital city." When Teyla speaks of "my country" these days, she does not mean Guatemala.
"Road trip. Thrill a minute, I'm sure." Hostility radiates off him so fiercely that it's almost visible. Teyla withdraws, looking hurt.
"Everyone's great back at the ranch," John says. "Thanks for asking, by the way. The sheep are doing fine, and we have a horse now."
"Words fail to convey how much I do not care about your livestock, Sheppard." Rodney is drunk, John realizes, though it's barely evident; he doesn't slur and he isn't clumsy, though there's a certain deliberation to his normally quick movements as he begins gathering up papers, swiping them roughly into a pile or turning them facedown.
John can't understand why Rodney is so vehemently displeased to see them until it clicks into place, suddenly, as he watches Rodney slide the papers under the laptop. It's because Rodney is ashamed of what he does here, and doesn't want them to know. John thinks of late-night alcohol-lubricated conversations, when their rambling discussions of anything and everything would glide around the edges of the things they didn't want to talk about, when Rodney would get a little too open and then pretend he hadn't said anything. He works for the Department of Defense; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what sort of things he does for a living.
While John fumbles around, seeking the words to say We know who you are and we don't care -- only in a more manly way, of course -- Teyla seems to come to a similar conclusion. She rounds the table and hugs Rodney before he can pull away, resting her cheek against his. He stiffens, then relaxes against her, sagging just a little -- and there is such total weary resignation in that tiny little slump that it makes John look away.
"Brought you something from the ranch," he says, reaching into his pocket.
Rodney makes a sound that's not quite a laugh and might be dangerously close to a sob, though it's muffled by Teyla's hair. "From Texas, on the bike? It had better be small."
"It is," John says. The secret weapon is fast asleep and boneless; despite its diminutive size, he needs both hands to deposit it on Rodney's side of the table in a furry gray puddle.
Rodney separates himself from Teyla, and stares.
"Uh, Sheppard, that's a puppy."
"No, really?" John fakes surprise.
Giving John a withering glare, Rodney pokes at the puppy with his fingertip. The furry ball uncurls long enough to make a squeaky yawn, then falls asleep again with its head on his laptop keyboard. Rodney is obviously at a loss for words, a rare and unusual event.
"It's from a litter of racing greyhound puppies," John explains. "This one's not racing quality, so the breeder was going to have it destroyed. One of Teyla's friends in the Aggie vet program gave it to us instead. I thought you might want it."
Rodney's hands hover nervously over the snoozing ball of fur. He is obviously struggling to maintain the appropriate level of scorn in his voice without letting an awwww slip through. "And you thought that, why?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because every time you come home from D.C. --" John can't help dropping some emphasis onto the word "-- you bring a stray cat with you?"
"Those are cats, Sheppard. This is a dog. Dogs need -- I don't know, training and walking and -- and affection, and stuff. They're as bad as kids." The puppy chooses this moment to roll over onto its back; its tiny triangle-shaped ears flop out on either side of its head, covering the delete and shift keys.
"Greyhounds," John says, "also need to run a lot."
"Great, so you've given me a pet that I can't keep in my apartment. Well, take it back to the ranch, then. It can run all it likes."
John sits back and crosses his arms. "But it's yours now, Rodney; I can't take it. Like you pointed out, a dog needs its owner."
Rodney's mouth drops open. "You son of a bitch, you're trying to lure me back to the farm using a puppy as bait!"
"Is it working?" John asks hopefully.
Rodney stands up and yanks the laptop out from under the puppy's head. It wakes up and begins to make small dismayed noises. Rodney reaches under the table for a briefcase and begins slapping papers into it.
John is getting the feeling that Operation Deploy Puppy is not going smoothly. "Rodney, look --"
"Shut up." Rodney gives the puppy a shove, sliding it roughly over to John's side of the table. It begins to howl. "And you shut up too!" he snaps at it. "Take your damn dog, take your pity, and go take pictures of the Washington Monument or whatever you came here for. And leave me alone."
Briefcase in hand, he stomps towards the door, snaps, "Charge it to my tab," at the waitress and then vanishes into the night.
"Rodney, damn it!" John grabs the puppy as he gets up from the table.
"No pets allowed," the waitress informs them, eyeing the still-squalling puppy.
"Put it on my tab," John retorts. Teyla is ahead of him as they hurry out into the rain. Rodney's an indistinct figure, far down the sidewalk.
The one thing John still can't do with his bad leg is run, but Teyla darts off in pursuit. By the time John catches up to them, limping and feeling every step from ankle to hip, the two of them are standing in earnest conversation under a streetlight. Rodney is trying not to look Teyla in the eyes.
"I didn't ask you guys to come here," he's saying, while the hand that's not holding the briefcase flutters around, scattering raindrops.
"I know," she says, capturing his waving hand in her small one. "You would never ask. That is why we came."
"Your dog wants you," John pants, shoving the crying puppy against Rodney's chest. Rodney yanks his hand free of Teyla's to catch the puppy before it falls into a puddle. It immediately quiets down against his chest and begins snuffling at the front of his jacket.
"See?" John says. "It likes you."
Rodney looks back and forth between them. Rain glistens on his hair, his eyelashes. He looks lost and confused, but maybe, just maybe, there is a trace of a smile on one edge of his crooked mouth. "You people are completely insane, you know that?"
A day later, they leave D.C.: John on his Harley, and Rodney in a sleek, brand-new silver convertible that John gives him no end of grief for buying. The top is down, the insanely expensive-looking stereo is cranked up with jazz playing, and John keeps catching Rodney smiling when he doesn't know anyone's looking. The puppy is curled up on Rodney's jacket in the floor behind the seats. Teyla takes turns riding behind John on the Harley, or riding in the passenger seat beside Rodney, and on the long stretches of highway between D.C. and Texas, he lets her take the wheel.
I don't know a thing about Washington, D.C. Or Texas for that matter. I just Googled for a school where Teyla might conceivably be studying veterinary medicine somewhere not horrendously far from the ranch. Walter Reed is Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C.
And now I need a name for the puppy, but I already used Jumper on the horse.
EDIT: And there is now an illustration to go with this.
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