FIC: Graceland (Alpha Centauri 8)

[hth]

Graceland
8/8 in the Alpha Centauri series
by Hth

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't been able to update my website effectively recently, so this story is in text format for now. Eventually, this will change, so if you want to link to it for any reason, *please* link to this post. That way I can update here when I can, and you won't get stuck with a dead link. Thank you!

SPOILERS!
Obviously for everything in the Alpha Centauri series, and for much of season 2, and for season 3's "Sateda." Lots of spoilers for season 3's "Sateda." (Oh, and PTB? Thanks a whole freaking lot for sticking me with an entirely new character at the eleventh hour. Kisses.)

WARNINGS!
This story contains possibly inappropriate instances of: Ghostbusters, black & tan, yoga, knives, Blue Hawaii, mommy issues, daddy issues, song lyrics, sodomy, emotional core-dumps, fake alien words, minor characters, Rodney's sad eyes, and the Bible.

AUTHOR'S NOTE!
This story is dedicated to all the people who said, "I don't see how you're going to resolve this." Turns out, you'd be amazed what a mere 33,067 words can accomplish....
More particularly, this is dedicated to thisisbone, who drove all the way to North Carolina to buy me lunch and beg me not to break her heart with this ending. She has both excellent taste in tall, dark alien men and a touching faith in my nobler nature, and is one hell of a writer, to boot.

Alpha Centauri is a trinary star system composed of a primary pair of yellow dwarfs (Alpha Centauri A and B) gravitationally bound to an outlying red dwarf (Proxima Centauri). These stories are a lot like that.

Comments

[dodificus.livejournal.com]

Well, initially I was going to post this comment anonymously but *points up* you've disabled anonymous posting:( But this means enough to me to actually go through the embarrassment of posting this comment with my name attached.

I spent the afternoon re-reading this series, I had free time on my hands and I love your writing. It must have been awhile or maybe I missed this part first time around but I don't remember this:


She surprises him by adding, "I can answer this one, though, if you want. This one is easy – common."

"Yeah?" It’s hard for him to believe. He feels so messed up, so out of step with the world. He never figured anyone felt like this before him, let alone lots of people.

"Yeah," she says kindly. "They took you seriously when they thought you were suicidal. They stopped treating it like a phase and started behaving as if you were in real danger. And you were in real danger. You knew that. You’re not comfortable with verbal self-disclosure, so you couldn’t tell anyone. You made it physical instead, made it something they could see when it was right in front of them. And it worked. It’s a desperate tactic, but it does sometimes work. We call it a cry for help."

I think it's enough for me to say that this made me cry, that it's so sharp and vicious, like you cut right into me and pulled out something that I was aware of but didn't understand, couldn't really articulate.

I think that if you wrote that part completely without any first hand experience of the topic then my respect and admiration for your writing has just exploded, it's insightful and beautifully written. Painful but beautiful.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this comment! It's always a little nerve-wracking to step away from the monsters-destroyed-my-planet kind of story conflict and deal with something that you know full well will cut close to the bone for some of your readers. I felt a little odd about having his motives stated that directly on the page (I usually like to do a little dance around the outside, if at all possible *g*), but I really felt like it had to be clear that death wasn't what Ronon was ever looking for -- that he was essentially a strong man who'd lost all control in his life and been made very helpless, and that when he tells Sheppard "this is my decision," what he really means is, "I have to make *some* kind of decision, so get me back to a place in my life where this isn't the only decision I get to make." I think that kind of frustration and helplessness is a familiar feeling to a lot of people, whether or not they've ever tried to cope with it the way Ronon does. I wish everyone had friends like Teyla and Sheppard in their lives to help them get where they should be, you know?

Thanks again for braving the non-anonymity to tell me that this had an effect on you. I think good writing has done that for me in the past -- made my own experiences make more sense in context -- so it's really amazing to know that I wrote something that did that for someone else.