Supernatural/Stargate: Atlantis (M)

[mf_luder_xf]

Title: And All The World Beneath
Pairing: Dean Winchester/John Sheppard, John/Rodney
Length: ~67,300
Author on LJ: seperis
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read:

It's a downright spooky story set sometime at the end of season 2 and long before the angelic apocalypse. What I particularly loved about this was the setting of an Atlantis based mythology in the world and terms of Supernatural. And when you find out why it's like that, everything will make sense and you'll feel relief...and a sense of new horror for the SGA team. Certain implications are terrifically sad as well.

And since it's seperis writing, the prose is spot on and filled with nuance, the characterizations brilliant (I particularly love how Dean sizes up John and Ronon), the story is filled with wonderful imagery, The OCs are unique (and super creepy), the way the mythology of the two ties together is done smoothly and in a way that reveals little hints at the larger picture but doesn't give it away until the end. The similarities between John and Dean are fascinating, and while Sam isn't actively there, he's always present.

Basically, this fic blew me away. (And the big reveal made me giggle with delight even as I was like, how are they going to stop that?.)



Sheppard's head snaps up, flat hazel eyes boring into Dean as Ronon comes up just behind him, face creased in worry. Dean turns back, opening the front door, frowning at the thickening smell--sweet and sickly, so familiar that Dean's already backing away before his mind catches up to what he's seeing--finger-shaped, rusting brown stains circling the door.

"Jesus," Sheppard whispers, coming up beside him. Dean grabs a handful of shirt, jerking Sheppard back before he can get a foot in the door. "What--"

"Don't go in there," he says hoarsely. The smell's so strong that Dean wonders how he could have missed it before: musty-thick, maybe a week or less. "Marty didn't say shit about this one being this far gone," Dean spits out. Nausea rolls slowly through his stomach, but he controls it by habit, checking on Sheppard before he pats himself down for salt.

"I've seen dead bodies," Sheppard says, but he's white around the mouth, lips thin, staring at the blood stains around the doorframe with an expression that Dean can't decipher.

"Not like this." Focusing on the doorway, he cocks his head, trying to work out the squiggles that look a lot less random than they did at first glance. Squinting, he tries to identify the symbols, aware that Sheppard's come up behind him, touching the doorway with light fingers. "Ritual magic."

"Something like that," Sheppard says, sounding strangled. "Teyla, can you--"

"I am." Dean glances back to see Teyla with a pad, sketching down the symbols. "Are you sure--"

"Pretty sure." Backing off another step, Sheppard's lips move--counting, Dean realizes. "Eight."

"You recognize this?" There's something familiar about them, but Dean's not quite sure what it is--not quite a memory, exactly, and he gives up trying to nudge it out. It'll come when it comes. "What is it?"

Sheppard hesitates. "It's Egyptian, sort of. I've seen it before." He pauses, pulling his hand from the doorframe like he just realized it burned. "Kind of an--address."

"An address."

"Kind of." Reaching for the door, Sheppard pushes it open, and Dean has just enough time to think of stopping him before Sheppard's already inside.

The smell's worse, soaked into the walls as Sheppard follows some kind of inner map. Dean follows helplessly, knowing that Sheppard's found what he's looking for when he comes to a dead stop just inside a slowly swinging door. It's so quiet that Dean can hear it when Sheppard stops breathing.

Dean takes a careful breath through his mouth, tasting rot, and comes up beside him.

Before--before, ritual magic had been fairly rare when idiots weren't trying to call up demons for fun and profit. It had been clean. Neat chalk outlines and candles, symbolically shed blood for a sane, orderly world where magic had been pushed into the periphery, where even the monsters knew the rules of survival and didn't step outside them.

This is nothing like it.

"Jesus," Sheppard whispers, hand closing over the frame of the door, knuckles white. Dean wonders if he's going to pass out, a joke hovering on the tip of his tongue before he thinks better of it, stepping by Sheppard and just short of the chalk.

The walls were once a bare, clean white, now splattered with red-black smears of dried blood, long loops that could be words that Dean mentally catalogues for study before turning his attention to the floor. The faint remains of chalk and grease circle just above the head of a nameless woman, and Dean follows it to the next body, running through every one of these he's ever seen for a parallel. There's a faint hint of a wide circle, bodies neatly spaced at three foot increments--hell, he'd almost think the guy had a fucking ruler it's so perfect. Eight have knives shoved into their chests. Kneeling at the third, Dean studies the blood-smeared forehead over wide, dust-glazed eyes that stare into the ceiling. Dean looks up, just to be sure, but nothing's there.

"Ancestors," comes from the door, and Dean steals a quick glance at Teyla and Ronon, both staring into the room in disbelief. Sheppard pulls away from the door, pacing the outside of the circle, gun in one hand. Which is pretty fucking hilarious, or would be if Dean didn't have a hand close to his gun too.

"There's something on their foreheads," Dean says, frowning slightly as he checks the slashes. Sheppard kneels beside him, thigh brushing his, and Dean approves of the calm; he would approve even more if Sheppard was about thirty feet outside the building and still communing with dead children. "Teyla, bring me that notebook."

Over his head, he can feel them exchange glances, but he doesn't look up, reaching blindly with his right hand and feeling the notebook slap into his palm. Teyla did good work; from the messy scribbles, Dean identifies the first symbol as the one on the second woman's forehead. "Egyptian," he murmurs, shaking his head. Calling what, Egyptian gods? What the hell good would that do?

Getting up, he goes to the next body--no. Not the next one either, but the one after it, second symbol, matched with the knife in her chest. Dean pulls the pencil from the spiral binding and stops, making a second column and drawing each one, circling the ones that match the ones from the doorway. It's slow work, and he glances up once to see Sheppard with his back to the bodies, staring at the walls with a blank expression, mouth a thin, hard line. Teyla's beside him, murmuring softly into his ear as they pace the length of the room. Ronon, at the door, has his gun out, like that can do fuck-all in a situation like this.

Dean glances quickly out the window, then starts drawing faster. When he meets the woman again on the other side, he counts up the total, stepping back to try and get some kind of perspective on what he's seeing.

There's been worse, he's seen worse, but never anything quite like this. "Thirty nine," he says slowly, coming up against the far wall as he takes in the entire floor. "I need a ladder or something."

From the door, Ronon grunts something, going out the door, while Sheppard comes up beside him, looking over his shoulder in curiosity. "Thirty nine?"

"Eight matches to the ones outside," Dean says, scratching just above his ear. Looking at it doesn't make any kind of intuitive sense--the chalk outline houses only the bodies, each one laid out straight, bare feet only inches apart toward the center. "You said it's an address?" Sheppard doesn't answer--he's still staring at the far wall. "Sheppard?"

Sheppard blinks, shaking himself. "Yeah."

That doesn't even make sense. "To what? Wrigley Field? Hell? Another dimension?"

Sheppard flinches. "Something like that."


And All The World Beneath