This bit of Sheppard and Starbuck, John and Kara, whatever you want to call them, it can't stand on its own. It requires this story/snippet/thing to be understood, even though it's a different enough style (I don't know, I was tired) that I don't really know that I can just stick the two of them together. Again, it was supposed to be for the sf_friday48 challenge, but I don't know whether something that's kind of turning into a weekly WIP counts, so... It barely meets the challenge guidelines of "teamfic" and "secrets," anyway.* And it too is flying completely without beta.




John woke with a crick in his neck and a blanket across his stomach, and immediately sat up, because he wanted to put an arm over his eyes and never move again.

~~

They didn't talk any more that day than they had before. He found Kara picking fruit in the woods surrounding the jumper, and the most personal she got was a comment about him probably holding out on "those oh so handy food packs."

John didn't think that he was supposed to be surprised. Whatever. He wasn't, exactly.

~~

He left her playing with the wires the next day, since maybe blind luck might work where driving himself insane obviously wasn't, and took the rocks with him into the trees.

They'd gathered quite a collection of all sizes: skipping, golf ball, a couple almost baseball. But one bunched up blanket held them all. Who knew if it would actually work, but bullets were harder to find, so any animal that came within range of him was going to get brained with a rock and then, hopefully, killed with his knife.

He came back empty handed, but, he pointed out when she sneered, with some rocks that might even qualify for softball. Or, sure, her pyramid, which sounded kind of like field hockey without the added danger of players armed with those weapons they called sticks.

They had fruit for dinner, the same tart stuff as they'd had for breakfast. Some of the juices ended up splattered, wet and red and probably sticky as hell, on the side of the jumper, since he ducked after he smirked when she admitted that she'd stopped trying after the second time she shocked herself.

She didn't say anything about the cuts and bruises on his knuckles, and he eventually stopped thinking about Ronon.

~~

They had sex -- fucked, gave in -- the next afternoon. She made the first move again. John hadn't thought that he should.

Putting all of his weight into his hands, he pressed down hard when hers flexed, keeping them pinned, since "move" had been a lot like "attack." He leaned closer to say that, glaring into the hot sparks in her eyes, and her laugh was loud until she met his mouth half-way.

~~

That morning, he was the first one up. Kara was on top of him, though, her body holding him against the hard tread on the jumper floor, so he lay there, looking at her.

When the sun was high enough to light up the control panels with the wrong color light, he moved, and she woke all at once.

~~

She came back with something that used to fly, returning to their clearing just before the sun fell into the clouds and turned the sky orange.

They had to use her lighter; his was finally out of juice. After shaking and cursing it didn't help, he was ready to grab two sticks and pretend that he expected the trick to work that time. She just bumped him aside with her hip and, with a sly sideways look, pulled out her own metal flip-top source of flame.

And he flashed on Teyla's smug smile in the caves that first afternoon.

And he was on his feet, with Kara frowning up at him.

When she opened her mouth, he walked away -- fast enough so she couldn't grab him, just going in a circle, a circuit going around the jumper, away, until he could go back.

The bird thing, it turned out, wasn't very big, but it tasted really good, even burned.

~~

The sparring at mid-day was his idea. Pretty much. Kara was complaining about losing muscle tone, about push-ups and sit-ups only doing maybe a quarter of the job. She finally "wished" out loud, with a pointed look at his hands, for a something "harder than air but softer than, oh, I don't know, a tree."

She taunted, and she forced him to hit, not just defend. Everything was fine, matched, mindless. Then came that damn right jab. Her fist caught his jaw, sharp pain compounded by the bruise that was already right there. Just enough pain to make him snap out, "Shit," and lower his hands instead of trying to knock her flat in retaliation.

Didn't matter; she fell back and stood there, her arms crossed, cool examination as natural on her face as it had ever been on Weir's.

That look changed to confusion before he finally got away. While she went looking for more low-flying creatures, he tried soaking his head. He kept his face down in the shallow stream, wishing the water were colder but holding, holding, holding there until his lungs were desperate.

He was back and the fire was started well before Kara returned. He didn't need that much time to know that it hadn't worked, though. He hadn't needed yet another galaxy to teach him that drowning them wasn't the answer to getting rid of ghosts.





* At least this ended up shorter than the other thing that thepouncer would recognize. The one that really would have met the challenge. Remember that idea about two spiky-haired Sci-Fi Friday characters? Damn it, I knew that wasn't going to be simple or short, so why the hell did I start it? I've forgotten how to write, although there's also the argument that I never knew.