No. 16

Prompt: SGA, John Sheppard, He tells people he wanted to fly because it would be cool, truth is when he was 7 he went to see Star Wars and thought Han Solo was bigger than Jesus and wanted to be like him.
http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/697573.html?thread=91935461#t91935461

When John walked out of the theatre, holding onto his mom's hand, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He was going to grow up and be Han Solo. He was going to fly and be super smooth with the ladies and he was going to battle aliens.

Han Solo had to run around and fight a lot, so John started running whenever he could. At first Dad insisted that one of the nannies watch him while he did laps around the paddock, but eventually Dad figured out that John wasn't going to run away from home, and then John grew out of needing nannies anyway.

Han Solo had a grin that all the girls seemed crazy about. John didn't have the same face, but he practiced in the mirror a lot, and there it was, the smirk.

He learned to walk like Han, all cool and swaggering, and even though he had to wear a stuffy uniform at school, he managed to convince his mom to buy him a really cool leather jacket.

Han Solo was a rebel, so instead of submitting to frustrating round with a comb and hair gel, he let his hair be. Spiky. Punky. All the other boys wore it long and soft, hoping the girls would run their fingers through it, but it was John they asked to dance, John they flirted with.

The girls and the leather jacket and the hair were all fine and good, but the best part of being Han Solo was flying a space ship. By the time John was eight, he understood that there weren't any aliens, but there were spaceships, and his best chance of getting to fly one, to become an astronaut, was to join the Air Force as a pilot.

When he was fourteen, his dad sat him and Dave down in the kitchen for a Very Serious Talk about what it meant to be a Sheppard Man. Harvard. Business degree. Running the Family Business. Marrying a Suitable Woman.

John didn't want any of that. He told Dad so. Dad turned all red and purple and sent John to his room.

John didn't care if Dad was angry. He was going to be Han Solo.

So he applied for Stanford, and after he was accepted – and halfway across the country from his family and his father's disappointment ringing in his ears about how Mom would be turning over in her grave – he joined the Air Force ROTC.

And after college, they gave him his wings, and he got to fly. And he could fly anything he got his hands on. Chopper. Jet. Cargo plane. If it could fly, John could make it soar.

And then he met Nancy, and okay, so she wasn't Princess Leia, but she was a good woman, beautiful, and just suitable enough that Dad would be happy.

And then he got sent to Afghanistan, and things with Nancy fell apart, and things with the Air Force fell apart, and John found himself stationed out at McMurdo, which was basically a hut on the ice and a handful of choppers and nerds doing things he didn't understand. But it was peaceful, and quiet, and John had the chance to contemplate where everything went wrong.

He was closer to being Han Solo than he'd ever been, but he was pretty sure his chances at ever flying a space ship were gone forever.

Until the day he was transporting a taciturn general and was almost shot down by a glowing squid.