The Taste of Apples, Sacrificial Drift

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

My rec table.

Claim: Stargate: Atlantis - John Sheppard
Title: The Taste of Apples
Author: Auburn, aka auburnnothenna
Characters: John, Rodney, Teyla, Ford (also Elizabeth Weir, Carson Beckett).
Prompt: 14. Loss.
Rating: PG-13.
Length: epic (32,000 words)
Brief summary: The premise of this story is incredibly cool—in a horrifying, creepy kind of way. I don't want to give too much away, but it involves a kind of mind meld among the team. And John's a very private person, but it isn't the loss of privacy that breaks me into a million pieces (or the past losses that come to light)—it's that everything this story gives, this story takes away.

Teyla joined them on silent feet, coming to a stop at the foots of their two bedrolls. She sank down in a tailor's squat smoothly. "I, too, dreamed, Major," she murmured, "and I have no ATA gene. I saw myself as you, when you arrived on Atlantis. I felt your connection to the city."

Sheppard hid his eyes under his raised forearm. "Great," he drawled, "both of you are wandering around my head. I suppose Ford is, too."

Rodney knew Teyla's smooth face had creased into a smile, though she faced away from him.

"Is it so terrible a place?"

Sheppard shrugged. "It's mine."

Link to the story: The Taste of Apples

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Claim: Stargate: Atlantis - John Sheppard
Title: Sacrificial Drift
Author: Auburn, aka auburnnothenna
Characters: John, Rodney, Teyla, Ford, Bates.
Prompt: 29. Weapons.
Rating: NC-17.
Length: epic (33,000 words)
Brief summary: (Sequel to The Taste of Apples; things make more sense if you read that first.) All that control John is so determined to keep, all those walls he's put up—this is what's behind them; this is what he was always afraid would come out.

Bates carefully cleaned the P90 Major Sheppard had dropped after arriving back in Atlantis. It was Ford's, the one the Lieutenant reported the major had appropriated before sending the rest of his team back to the Stargate.

He thought about the expression in Major Sheppard's eyes as he'd come through the gate.

Whatever had happened, Weir wasn't going to like it.

Bates had seen that look in plenty of soldiers' eyes.

It was the look of a man who couldn't accept what he'd just done.

Didn't mean the major had committed some atrocity, but Bates had been on enough battlefields to recognize the smell of burnt flesh that had clung to the man.

Link to the story: Sacrificial Drift