Chyler Silva (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
childofaxios) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riverviewlogs2018-01-27 05:42 pm
childofaxios) wrote in riverviewlogs2018-01-27 05:42 pm
[closed] they said we could be heroes
who: Chyler Silva, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
what: Dreamsharing, poking the wall, possibly monster-shooting.
when: Near the end of January
where: In the city and near the wall.
warnings: VIOLENCE, PROBABLY.
It starts with wind. For a long time that's all it is, wind in darkness, then voices she doesn't recognize saying things she can't quite hear.
Then, one she does know: John.
"I am going to kill you."
Rain hits her face like a slap and keeps coming, soaking her through, stinging her cheeks and half-blinding her to the heaving and tossing of a sea so large she never would have imagined its existence. There's a threat at her back as great as the one bearing down on the city--Atlantis--and she has work to do.
It feels like a dance, her movement through the halls. Like someone else wrote these steps and all she can do is follow them. More voices. The enemy. She lays her trap and waits, brutal and elegant in its simplicity.
"You're right on top of him," the voice on the radio below says. Chyler feels a smile twitch across her face at the irony as she watches them from overhead. These men aren't cautious enough. They're overconfident, drunk on their own advantage, letting it lull them while they walk into a room full of smoke.
She kills all three with a quick burst of gunfire, not wasting a single bullet.
"Do you see him?"
Chyler climbs down to the bodies below, looting them for anything useful, taking one of their own communicators and ignoring the increasing despair of the voice on the other end. "Did you get him?" the stranger says. "Report," he says, without hope.
She moves on.
The dream moves the way dreams do, scenery shifting without interrupting the flow. "Hold Stargate Command until reinforcements arrive," says Kolya's voice against a backdrop of white. Kolya. Weir's murderer.
Those reinforcements can't get through. The power is down to the control room and Chyler knows that she did it, the same way she knows which sequence to enter to raise the Stargate's shield. A dance. A blow to the back of the head for the man guarding the consoles, a quick tap of the ancient keys, and bodies start hitting the closed shield across the gate like fingers tapping across the taut surface of a drum. One, two. Three-four. Five.
Touchdown.
"Stop him!" Gunfire erupts and she fires back, fleeing into the bowels of Atlantis again, focus on the generators, on stealing power from these people in any way she can.
She's descending the stairs to disable the next generator when Kolya contacts her next.
"Kolya," John's voice says. "I'm having a hard time keeping up. What's the score again?"
(Drum, drum, drumming against the gate shield, human beings turned into impacts, erased from existence. She hasn't killed Kolya yet, no, but it isn't a bad start.)
"How many made it through?" says Kolya on that stolen communicator.
"Five. Of sixty."
Not bad at all.
The urgency that's followed her through ever corridor shifts to something just on the sane side of panic. Weir is alive. Weir can be saved. So long as she/he's willing to walk into what no doubt is a trap.
Wouldn't be the first time. He goes. Weir and McKay are on borrowed time. Every minute he can give them is another minute he has to try and save them. He'll do whatever he has to, he'll do whatever it takes. He'll kill as many of their people as get in his way.
Again, that dizzy shift, and she/he stands on the floor of the gate room, gun trained on a big, scarred man with rage in his eyes.
"I will shoot you if you don't let her go," Chyler says. It's her voice. Her mouth moving. The words still feel like they were spoken first by someone else. Kolya shifts back a step, toward the liquid surface of the gate.
"And risk hurting Dr. Weir?"
Cold confidence washes through her. "I'm not aiming at her."
No more dancing. No more following someone else's plan.
She pulls the trigger and shoots Kolya in the head. He topples backward, releasing Weir and following the spray of brain matter and bone through the gate.
"Chyler," Weir says, breathless, wide-eyed, with a spattering of gore along one cheek.
"I'm sorry about that," Chyler says, and feels a surge of emotion that doesn't belong to her.
She wakes up, lurching out of bed and onto the floor of her room.
what: Dreamsharing, poking the wall, possibly monster-shooting.
when: Near the end of January
where: In the city and near the wall.
warnings: VIOLENCE, PROBABLY.
It starts with wind. For a long time that's all it is, wind in darkness, then voices she doesn't recognize saying things she can't quite hear.
Then, one she does know: John.
"I am going to kill you."
Rain hits her face like a slap and keeps coming, soaking her through, stinging her cheeks and half-blinding her to the heaving and tossing of a sea so large she never would have imagined its existence. There's a threat at her back as great as the one bearing down on the city--Atlantis--and she has work to do.
It feels like a dance, her movement through the halls. Like someone else wrote these steps and all she can do is follow them. More voices. The enemy. She lays her trap and waits, brutal and elegant in its simplicity.
"You're right on top of him," the voice on the radio below says. Chyler feels a smile twitch across her face at the irony as she watches them from overhead. These men aren't cautious enough. They're overconfident, drunk on their own advantage, letting it lull them while they walk into a room full of smoke.
She kills all three with a quick burst of gunfire, not wasting a single bullet.
"Do you see him?"
Chyler climbs down to the bodies below, looting them for anything useful, taking one of their own communicators and ignoring the increasing despair of the voice on the other end. "Did you get him?" the stranger says. "Report," he says, without hope.
She moves on.
The dream moves the way dreams do, scenery shifting without interrupting the flow. "Hold Stargate Command until reinforcements arrive," says Kolya's voice against a backdrop of white. Kolya. Weir's murderer.
Those reinforcements can't get through. The power is down to the control room and Chyler knows that she did it, the same way she knows which sequence to enter to raise the Stargate's shield. A dance. A blow to the back of the head for the man guarding the consoles, a quick tap of the ancient keys, and bodies start hitting the closed shield across the gate like fingers tapping across the taut surface of a drum. One, two. Three-four. Five.
Touchdown.
"Stop him!" Gunfire erupts and she fires back, fleeing into the bowels of Atlantis again, focus on the generators, on stealing power from these people in any way she can.
She's descending the stairs to disable the next generator when Kolya contacts her next.
"Kolya," John's voice says. "I'm having a hard time keeping up. What's the score again?"
(Drum, drum, drumming against the gate shield, human beings turned into impacts, erased from existence. She hasn't killed Kolya yet, no, but it isn't a bad start.)
"How many made it through?" says Kolya on that stolen communicator.
"Five. Of sixty."
Not bad at all.
The urgency that's followed her through ever corridor shifts to something just on the sane side of panic. Weir is alive. Weir can be saved. So long as she/he's willing to walk into what no doubt is a trap.
Wouldn't be the first time. He goes. Weir and McKay are on borrowed time. Every minute he can give them is another minute he has to try and save them. He'll do whatever he has to, he'll do whatever it takes. He'll kill as many of their people as get in his way.
Again, that dizzy shift, and she/he stands on the floor of the gate room, gun trained on a big, scarred man with rage in his eyes.
"I will shoot you if you don't let her go," Chyler says. It's her voice. Her mouth moving. The words still feel like they were spoken first by someone else. Kolya shifts back a step, toward the liquid surface of the gate.
"And risk hurting Dr. Weir?"
Cold confidence washes through her. "I'm not aiming at her."
No more dancing. No more following someone else's plan.
She pulls the trigger and shoots Kolya in the head. He topples backward, releasing Weir and following the spray of brain matter and bone through the gate.
"Chyler," Weir says, breathless, wide-eyed, with a spattering of gore along one cheek.
"I'm sorry about that," Chyler says, and feels a surge of emotion that doesn't belong to her.
She wakes up, lurching out of bed and onto the floor of her room.
no subject
[Their mission is a simple one, and the brief took all of ten minutes. Five of which Chyler’s been staring with a blank expression at the white board. John knows his handwriting isn’t great, but it’s not that bad.
In big letters: KEEP MCKAY OUT OF TROUBLE.
That’s it. That’s the mission. An in-and-out with a focus on keeping Rodney from getting eaten, or otherwise injured, by whatever creepy crawlies are living inside the infrastructure of the city wall.
They’re lucky that’s all it is. Chyler looks like she’s ready for the mission to be over already, and John can’t entirely blame her. His night hadn’t gone so smoothly either. He’d fallen asleep alright, he almost always does when Poe stays the night, but as soon as his eyes were closed he’d been stuck in one of those nightmares you can’t wake up from. The kind that leaves you even more tired when you wake up than before you passed out.
The storm. Again. It never goes away. Years later, and Kolya’s voice is still in his head. Some part of John wonders if it wouldn’t be more quiet if he were still alive. The ghost of him is almost worse than the man. John can’t kill it.]
Do we need to stop for coffee on the way out, cadet? I didn't issue us any espresso.
no subject
Not that she has illusions about the work that John does in Atlantis. He's military. Where there's a need for the military, there's always going to be bodies on the ground.
She gets to her feet, automatically smoothing her clothes the way she would have smoothed her uniform, if she still had it. She's still fastidious, even without it, maintaining her appearance everywhere but in the field with a care that borders on the obsessive.
For a second she almost tells him that no, she's fine. But he's starting to wear into that habit of hers, that self-defensive need to be prepared or project preparedness at all times. ]
If we could, sir. I had a long night.
[ One way of putting it. She remembers again that attack from above, the perfect elimination of a superior threat. Part of her wants nothing more than to sit down and pick the dream apart, taking every technique she can find to quiz John about their viability.
It reminds her of that last lesson with Colonel Mehaffey. What she'd said about hubris. The underestimation of the opponent. Chyler grew up knowing the danger of assuming victory. That was the Genii's biggest mistake. It was what sentenced so many of Kolya's troops to death, before arrogance turned into desperation.
And she's staring into space again, Chyler realizes. She clears her throat and draws herself up. ] I'm ready.
no subject
[A cross between a joke and a thinly veiled probe for more information. Chyler can say she's ready all she wants, but John isn't moving until he's certain she's in fighting shape. For once, their objective isn't impossibly time sensitive. John actually has the luxury to postpone their mission if necessary. Rodney will gripe, but that's nothing new, and he'll be griping anyway as soon as he sees his escort is John and a sixteen year old girl carrying a rifle almost as big as she is.
John sits on the edge of his desk, resting his arms comfortably on the stock of his P90. Smiling a stubborn, insufferable smile that lets Chyler know he can sit here all day, if that's how long she takes to give him an answer.]
no subject
No, sir.
[ Ease or no, she feels a twinge if shame admitting that she’s this distracted by a dream. It’s unprofessional, undisciplined, all the things she isn’t and doesn’t want to be. But she’s learning his habits. His expressions. She knows when John Sheppard has his heels dug in and is just waiting for someone to try and move him. ]
I—it was a dream. A very vivid dream, one about Atlantis. I keep thinking about it. That’s all.
no subject
[Ever since they spoke about Chyler coming back with him, John can't help but talk more and more about Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy. He wants Chyler to be able to make an informed decision when and if the time comes that they get to go home, but there's some selfishness, too.
John's homesick, and sharing Atlantis with her, the good, and the bad, makes the city feel a little less far away. She's the first person he's given anything more than the most basic of details to. He's careful about what he says, and to who. You never know who's listening, even in a place like this. If John wouldn't say it in front of a Genii spy, he won't say it in public.
Behind closed doors, he tells Chyler stories. He talks about the people, places, and missions. Good and bad. Nothing that isn't his to tell, and not always every detail, but more than he should. She's not part of Atlantis, yet. John knows that.
But he wants her to be. He can already picture how Ronon and Teyla would react to her. The guiding figures they would be. Teyla, in all her strength and wisdom, would be an amazing role model to any teen girl, and Ronon's just fun.
As for Rodney? Chyler will meet him today. John's honestly not sure how that will go, but he knows it'll be interesting. And that he'll need Advil and a six-pack when they're through.]
Guess I should stop telling you stories before bed. That last one about the spooky computer ghost might've been too much.
no subject
It was different than any of your stories. And it was so real.
[ She runs her fingers over the edge of the desk, watching her hand. ] As real as this.
no subject
[Sometimes, Chyler looks exactly like a teenage girl. Probably because she is one. That's something John does his best to keep in mind, even when it's more convenient to forget. John signed her on for who she is, as she is. The worst mistake an officer can make is to expect their members to be anything but what they are.
There's a moment John thinks about telling Chyler to take the day off, because she's tired, and the mission might get hard, and she looks so young. He slaps himself on the wrist, mentally, and jumps down off the desk almost silently despite his many layers of gear. Practice makes perfect.]
You'll have to tell me about it while Rodney's doing whatever the hell it is he needs to do. If the last report on wall integrity is solid, the hardest part of this mission will be staying awake.
Either way, we're definitely going to need that coffee. Mckay's what you might call 'high energy'.
no subject
If there's one thing Chyler can and always will be able to do, it's to turn on her field-readiness the moment she gets the signal that it's time. Even during the invasion at Corbulo, after she broke down in that hallway, when it came time to fight again she made herself be ready. It was harder to find the switch, but it was still there.
The difference now is that she knows for a fact she can kill when it's required. ]
Yes, sir.
no subject
Second they grab Rodney, who's already waiting for them at the wall at one of the smaller utility entrances. There's no getting in without a key.
John shoves a maple latte into his hand before he can protest that they're a couple minutes late.]
Mckay, Cadet Silva. Cadet Silva, Mckay. Let's all get along, shall we?
no subject
So when John walks up, with some other unfortunate uniformed soul behind him, Rodney's mouth is already open in protest - until John shoves a latte into his hand. Huffing, Rodney takes a sip, blue eyes flicking over John and then the...person...he's brought with him.
She looks about 12, with a pretty face and too-serious expression, and Rodney's not sure if he's more annoyed or worried about her. And himself, if she's the one who's supposed to be watching his back. But his eyes eventually flick back to John for a moment as the flavour of the coffee he's drinking actually registers.]
Maple? How original.
[There's a bite of sarcasm in it, but he takes another sip of the coffee, because it's good. A nice, familiar flavour. After a moment, he leans over, peers behind John and the girl.]
Where's the rest of the team?
[A beat.]
Oh right. Nice to meet you Cadet Silva.
[He holds a hand out perfunctorily.]
no subject
She's more concerned with Rodney McKay's appraisal, though she has no reason to prove herself to him. Sheppard picked her, he brought her with, and if that's not recommendation enough then that's between this man and the commander. McKay seems high-strung at best, which will make anything that goes wrong while they're out there interesting. But John knows him and trusts him. And that has to be recommendation enough for Chyler, too. ]
Nice to meet you, Dr McKay.
[ She shakes his hand as perfunctorily as it's offered.
There. Getting along just fine. ]
no subject
[John smiles winningly, adjusting his night-vision goggles on his head in entry preparation.]
That, and I haven't recruited anyone else. Decent help is hard to find.
[He doesn't look at Chyler, but his eyes crinkle tellingly at the corners. Yes, that was an underhanded compliment from her CO. John's never been to the type of leader to pat anyone's ass, he simply believes in recognition when it's deserved. Usually in between good-natured elbows and jabs.
Can't have anyone getting a big head.]
Now are we going to stand around here all day, or are you going to let us in? I'm not saying there are places I'd rather be than the inside of an old bug-infested wall, but...
no subject
Emphasis on smaller. She looks like she's too young to have gone in the field, let alone seen battle.
[The set of his mouth is disapproving, and he glances back up at John, sees the way he's smiling at her, and then notices the underhanded compliment he aims at her. For a moment, Rodney is quiet, because he recognizes the way John is talking to her and looking at her. For a moment, he misses home in a keen and profound way.
Then he sighs and shakes his head.]
Fine, fine, I thought the same thing about Ford, and Ford was adequate.
[More than adequate, and desperately missed and mourned. But Rodney isn't the sort to say that out loud, isn't the sort to acknowledge it, not really.]
Yes, yes, let's get going.
no subject
That he relents doesn't do much to soothe her.
Still, she keeps her mouth shut, her weapon at the ready, and follows John silently into the wall. It's her first time actually going inside, and she's more curious than she is insulted. ]