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Happy Gen Fic Day, everybody!
Not sure what I'm talking about? Take a look at previous round-ups for Gen Fic Days and Alphabet Soups.
Comment here with links to new fic, older fic, commentfic and drabbles, recs, meta, picspam, vids - anything, as long as it's gen and related to SG-1. Shameless self-promotion is cheerfully encouraged! The theme of the day is Allies, although fanworks can involve any subject.
If you're an Allies Alphabet Soup contributor, this is where you post links to your story. If you're unsure of procedure, please take a quick look here.
On Tuesday, I'll post a round-up of all links and (hopefully) the complete anthology of Allies Alphabet Soup.
Have fun!
Not sure what I'm talking about? Take a look at previous round-ups for Gen Fic Days and Alphabet Soups.
Comment here with links to new fic, older fic, commentfic and drabbles, recs, meta, picspam, vids - anything, as long as it's gen and related to SG-1. Shameless self-promotion is cheerfully encouraged! The theme of the day is Allies, although fanworks can involve any subject.
If you're an Allies Alphabet Soup contributor, this is where you post links to your story. If you're unsure of procedure, please take a quick look here.
On Tuesday, I'll post a round-up of all links and (hopefully) the complete anthology of Allies Alphabet Soup.
Have fun!
Tags:
J IS FOR JUSTIFIED
When she was seven years old, Shau'nac of the Red Hills was taken to the Great Temple of Apophis to receive the mark of the god upon her forehead. Now I am a woman, she thought. She was old enough to move from her mother's rooms in the House of Increase to her own room in the House of Promise. For the first time, she could approach the God's shrine and light its lamps. Her prayers would be heard by the God Himself.
When Shau'nac was ten years old, there was a great ceremony. She returned to the Great Temple, and the priestess of Apophis opened Shau'nac's pouch for the first time and placed the body of a god within her flesh. Now she was Prata.
It was a glorious thing to know she now served the God Apophis directly. She loved the new strength and power that came with his favor, the freedom from the weakness of the human cattle. She loved being able to go to the temple, to hear the praise-songs of the God Apophis in person, not just over the vo'cuum. She loved to walk through rooms and know that He had walked through the same ones, had seen with His own eyes the same sights she beheld. She knew she could never serve Him in His glorious battles with his brother Gods, but she began to hope with all her heart she could serve Him in her own way.
When Shau'nac was thirty years old, she said goodbye to her lover and went to the temple to train to become a priestess. Teal'c had tried to talk her out of it. He swore to her that he would become the greatest of the God Apophis's Jaffa. That he would win such honor in battle that the God would grant him the boon of a wife. And he would come to her and they would wed.
And Shau'nac said: no. The life of a Jaffa warrior was uncertain. The path to the God's favor was long.
And she did not want to wait to serve.
When Shau'nac was thirty-five years old, she saw the God Apophis in the flesh. He came to the Temple to speak to the High Priestess, for a Choosing was to be held, and the Temple would preside over the ceremony in which the Gods were made flesh. He was a glorious figure in golden armor: noble, wise, all-seeing. He smiled at her as he passed, and his eyes glowed with the divine fire.
That image warmed her heart for a very long time.
When Shau'nac was fifty years old, she took her seventh prim'ta and became a priestess of the Temple. She cared for the little Gods awaiting Jaffa pouches. She sang the litanies of praise and victory, and presided over the daily cycle of prayers. She gloried in the knowledge she was building the God's empire among the stars.
When Shau'nac was sixty years old, Bra'tac, First Prime to Apophis, came to the temple with his newest apprentices to dedicate them to the service of the God. Teal'c was among them, and her heart sang, for it was yet another proof of Apophis's wisdom, that he recognized Teal'c's greatness.
It was proof that Teal'c lived.
When she is seventy years old, Shau'nac is given a new duty. Now she presides over the kel'no'reem of the apprentices and the younger priestesses, and knows from this that someday, many years from now, she will be High Priestess of the Temple. Her days are full: she brings children into the world to serve the God. She gives them His flesh to bear. She brings forth the Gods ready to take Their robes of flesh.
Her heart is as full as her days.
In the year she takes her twelfth prim'ta, she is given a miracle. It is a long time before she understands it for what it is. Then there is joy to wash away the sorrow and the fear, the hours she spent before the Great Altar, weeping at the knowledge that had come to her through her folly. She has broken the first and greatest law of her people, the one given to her at her Prata. She has touched the mind of the God whom she carries, and in doing so, has discovered it to be no god at all.
She knew not what it was, this alien mind that sent her terrible visions, that gloried in her suffering and delighted in pain. She thought of the God Apophis, wise and merciful and just, and felt its mockery. For it was of Apophis, was like Apophis.
As Apophis was like the one she carried.
Monster.
But she could not, would not, believe it.
She had already broken the greatest law and concealed her crime. And so she went, again and again, to touch the mind of the being within her. Trying to understand. Trying to explain…
And years passed.
Enemy became ally, became friend, became cal'mah, dear to her as the child she would never bear. And she knew that all the pain she had suffered was justified.
In those years, rumors came to the Temple, and Shau'nac drank them up like sweet nectar. Great Lord Ra, dead. Rebellion among the gods who were no gods. Rebellion among the Jaffa, and her once-lover branded shol'va Traitor.
Only Shau'nac knew this was an honor beyond any the False God Apophis could ever have bestowed. She spoke of it to no one, until the day Master Bra'tac came to the Temple to tell them Apophis was dead, that the Jaffa were free, that the First World had been rediscovered, and the brave warriors of the Tau'ri had pledged themselves to destroy the Goa'uld. And he believed they would, for Teal'c was among them, leading their greatest warriors into battle.
And the cal'mah within her leaped for joy at Bra'tac's words. Soon, she whispered to it, soon you will be ready to take a host. Not as the Goa'uld do, in horror and subjugation, but as Tok'ra do. You will bring justice where there has only been tyranny. She felt its wordless eagerness to help her people, its impatience to join the fight for their liberation.
When Shau'nac was nearly a century old, she beheld her cal'mah in the flesh for the first time. And Hebron smiled at her, and so did Tanith. His eyes twinkled, as if he knew a joke and wanted to share it with her. He took her tenderly in his arms.
"You showed me the means to destroy the Tok’ra," he said. His hands closed on her arms like the shackles of slavery, and she began to struggle.
"Now accept your reward."
Shau'nac of the Red Hills had seen ninety-nine years come and go.
She would not see a hundred.
X is for Xабаровск
It’s December 30th when they bring Ganya home to Khabarovsk.
[Aminev, Gennady Ivanovich. Captain. Born 10 October 1971. Killed in action 10 December 2003, at an undisclosed location. Posthumously awarded Hero of the Russian Federation for conspicuous gallantry.]
The river is thick with ice. The marshallers on the airstrip are bundled up to their eyebrows and wearing fur hats that are quickly collecting their own snowdrifts. Andrei Chekov, in his own fur hat and muffler, his only distinguishing marks a general’s wool greatcoat and the stars on his shoulders, is waiting on the tarmac when they carry Ganya off the plane.
The weather is nothing new to Chekov. Khabarovsk was his first posting. He was nineteen. He remembers the drafty little shed at the edge of the airstrip, and the tiny oil heater whose only function seemed to be convincing rawboned boys that it couldn’t possibly be as cold inside the marshallers’ hut as they thought it was. When they sent him off to Cuba three years later, he praised the God he wasn’t supposed to believe in.
There’s no honor guard waiting when they carry the little pine box draped with the Russian flag off the plane; none but the blowing snow and the marshallers with their beacons and a general several years past his prime.
Chekov thinks of state funerals that will never happen, of parades honoring fallen heroes that would mean admitting state secrets, of cosmonauts whose names are etched in history (Gagarin, Tereshkova) for going a millionth as far from earth as Ganya went. He says a prayer to the God he still doesn’t believe in for the soul of a fallen hero.
They load Ganya into the back of the waiting TIGR. The driver holds the passenger door open for Chekov, offers him a salute.
They’ll bury Ganya in the morning.
Chekov will return his personal effects (all but one) to pretty Yelena, pat Ganya’s sons on the head, tell them their father was a great hero.
He touches his pocket.
Perhaps someday the Americans will loosen their stranglehold on the truth.
Perhaps someday he will be able to go to Yelena, to little Sasha and his brother, and give them the patch he holds in his pocket, with its blazon stitched in silver thread. Perhaps someday he will tell them a story that begins, “Your papa was SG-4.”
Q is for Quacksalver
But what can I do about it? If I raise objections, she dismisses them, the same way she dismissed the concerns of the Tau'ri about the tests she wanted to perform using the Atoneek armbands. She kept insisting that Colonel O'Neill and his team would be all right, in spite of their physician's very vocal unease. In a way, Anise was correct. They would have developed antibodies, the armbands would have fallen off, and everyone would have been safe and healthy. If we hadn't convinced them to undertake that mission for us.
I share the blame for that. Their deaths would have been on my hands as much as… After all these years, I still find myself using phrases that are quite silly in our situation. There is only the one pair of hands, and one head for blame to be heaped upon. It does seem unfair that they should be mine, every time.
Anise is ingenious, there is no denying. She surmised the existence of the Zatarc mind-control technology, and, with a good deal of help, built a machine that uses a modified memory recall device to detect the presence of an implanted false memory. But once again, she believed so strongly in her theories that she overlooked other possibilities, such as the Tau'ri instinct to dissemble under certain circumstances. They are so inhibited and bound by pointless rules.
The Tau'ri have a word for Anise. Well, they have several. But the most interesting one I overheard comes from the language called Dutch: quacksalver, meaning 'hawker of salve', with said salve being considered of highly dubious value. They have shortened it over time to simply 'quack', but Doctor Jackson was more than happy to supply me with the complete definition and etymology when I enquired. More than happy.
Anise sulked for quite a while after that, and perhaps it was unkind of me, especially in view of her regard for Doctor Jackson, but I felt it was in everyone's best interests. Perhaps, going forward, she will be more cautious. More scientific with her scientific experiments. Things clearly could not continue as they were. Certainly her intentions are always of the very best – I can vouch for that.
But quite frankly, with such an ally as Anise, who would require enemies?
~~~~
http://sid.dreamwidth.org/271558.html
http://sidlj.livejournal.com/272934.html
no subject
I is for Ideology and older allies fic
And here are older stories I've written about the SGC's allies! I've written more on this theme than I realized. :)
Crossing the Line. Sha'uri and the Abydons, the original SGC allies, in an expanded scene from Stargate: the Movie.
R is for Reassessment. Bra'tac dismisses the idea of Tau'ri as worthy allies... but then he has the chance to actually meet them. From last year's Bra'tac Alphabet Soup.
Team's Day Out. Thor wants a chance to play with his new friends. :)
No Place Like Home. Jacob and Selmac do an excellent job of distraction during Tangent.
Pay No Attention to the Tok'ra Behind the Curtain. An affectionate and slightly cracky team fic regarding a certain ally, set in S7.
Something Smoother. A missing friendship scene between Jack and Bra'tac during Sacrifices.
Temper, Temper. Jack and Jacob, letting off a little steam during Reckoning.
Z is for Zenith
They are more than an irritant; they interfere with his plans. SG-1, peaceful explorers so they claim, are not welcome here, not now, not when he's so close. Malikai stands before the altar and—with the power of the Stargate at his command—prepares to change the flow of time. He will be with his wife, gone now these twelve long years. He will hold her hand, touch her face, and hear her voice.
He will give anything, do anything, to conquer the past. One more minute and then all minutes will turn back and give him the thing he desires most...
...if they will ever leave him alone.
The rest can be found here.
T is for Troubled Minds
High Chancellor Travell
Travell doesn’t think of herself as the sort of person who vacillates wildly. In her role, she can’t afford to, after all. One doesn’t become High Chancellor by looking indecisive or unprincipled.
SG-1 makes her head spin in ways she doesn’t much appreciate, but then again, less technologically advanced societies do have a tendency to be more volatile than her own more regulated community. First, they insist on ‘rescuing’ the last team from Tollan, and then rescuing them again from their own government by contacting the Nox and engineering their escape. Next they attempt to disrupt the Triad and subvert a highly respected member of the Nox delegation, and somehow end up saving Tollana again. Yet a mere handful of weeks later, other Tau’ri are implicated in the theft of valuable technology from more than one set of allies. It is as if the humans of Earth are constitutionally incapable of acting in rational or predictable patterns, and they are all extraordinarily aggravating to Travell’s sense of order.
Dealing with the Tau’ri is like grabbing on to the end of a wildly swinging rope and hoping it doesn’t fray under your fingers and let you drop somewhere unpleasant.
Travell considers this, and clenches her fingers tightly around that invisible thread of hope, and bows to Tanith’s demands.
............................................................................
Traitor
It’s a hard label to bear on a daily basis. For all Nyan loves being Doctor Jackson’s research assistant, plowing through the massive piles of books and notes that continually overturn everything Nyan thought he knew about the universe, every single page is also a reminder. Every penciled scrawl for transcription, every email heading, every gold-titled tome of folklore mutates under Nyan’s gaze to a scarlet brand of betrayal, like that book he’d picked up in the on-base library. Yes, he is happy to be learning. Yes, he is happy to be alive. Yes, he did the right thing, helping SG-1 escape. Most days he is content with his status as political refugee, as a member of the SGC, as a scientist who put truth above belief.
But some days, he is a traitor to Bedrosia, and he can never go home.