wannabeawhumper

A quick CG oneshot - spoilers: CG and Sateda

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:20:25 GMT

Sorry about all the typos! I just rattled this off on a whim. No time to edit properly. Maybe later.

The torrential rain turned out to be a blessing. It washed the mud and blood from his eyes. He needed to be able to see. To anticipate Kolya’s moves, and block them before the man broke any more of his bones.

Cradling a useless arm against ribs that protested every breath, John rolled to his back on the sodden ground, searching. Searching for the next foot or fist coming his way. Searching for an opening to land a blow of his own. To end this.

He found none.

He spit blood, and hacked out a laugh as he dragged himself to hands and knees, then stood swaying on legs about as sturdy as saplings in a hurricane. Now he knew how Ronan had felt, he thought absently, knowing he needed to focus. To concentrate on the fight if he was going to survive. And still he couldn’t stop the random thoughts.

Ronan had wanted to kill the Wraith that hunted him himself. He’d told John he’d kill him if John interfered, and at the ferocious look in the Satedan’s eye, he’d had no reason to doubt his friend. Now, months later, John had done the same. Kolya’s was his. And he’d told his team in no uncertain terms what he would do to them if they intervened. He was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that decision.

He glanced over to the treeline, where his team stood staring in horror and fascination. Their faces reflected the tension. The guns held tightly before them stated their readiness. But no…he wouldn’t go their. Not yet.

Lightning flashed across the dark sky, and Kolya took advantage of the momentary blindness it caused, striking out of nowhere. The boot planted in John’s gut doubled him. Drove every molecule of air from his lungs. A moment later a knee connected with the side of his head and then Kolya grabbed John’s bad arm and twisted, shoving him forward facedown into the mud as white-hot explosions of pain flashed through his mind.

As he lay gasping for air, he squeezed his eyes shut and held onto consciousness with a tenuous grip. He tried to rise, to defend himself, but Kolya held him down with a boot on his back, and reached down to pull his head back by a fistful of unruly hair.

Instinctively John knew what would come next. He felt Kolya’s other hand reach for his face, knew it would take only a simple twist to snap his neck. With his abused body screaming in protest, John tucked his chin to his chest and rolled, scissoring Kolya’s legs between his own and pulling at his sleeve, dragging him down intot he mud beside him. Blindly he groped the ground, grasping for anything he could use to protect himself. He came up with a rock, and while Kolya’s dark eyes locked on his, he pounded it into the man’s face twice, three times. He heard a screech like that of a wounded animal and some fragment of his brain registered emabarrassment as he realized it had come from him. He pounded the rock down again and again, until Kolya stopped struggling. Until the bloody pulp that had been the man’s face stared up at him sightlessly.

Then, chest heaving, John shoved himself to his feet and backed away, still clutching the bloody stone. The world spun, and for a few seconds he couldn’t process rational thoughts, speech. Words. Blood pounded in his ears and dripped from his fingertips. Rage pounded in his heart. A primal cry tore from his chest, and for those few seconds he was more animal than man.

He looked over at his team, saw them staring at him in mute horror, and felt bile rise in his throat. His legs buckled and he fell to his hands and knees, shaking. Surely his team would come now. Pick him up. Comfort him. Take him home. But instead he found himself alone in the rain, curled into a fetal ball in the mud, retching up the remnants of the turkey sandwhich he’d had for lunch.

He didn’t blame them. Who wouldn’t be afraid of him after what they’d just witnessed?

Finally he gathered enough strength to look up. Ronan walked slowly toward Kolya. Battered Kolya. Dead Kolya. Slowly he raised his gun, set it to kill and fired. Repeatedly. John frowned as Kolya’s dead body jerked and then lay still again.

Teyla stepped up next, and with eyes as dark and dead as a black hole, fired a burst from her P90 into the dead man’s chest, then stepped back and nodded at Rodney.

Rodney’s fingers clenched and unclenched on the Beretta he held outstretched toward the corpse. His throat worked convulsively.

Rodney. Poor Rodney, whose nightmares used to consist of such innocuous events as being trapped in small spaces or accidentally eating citrus. Whose self-defense skills once consisted solely of his expert wielding of the fly-swatter in his lab. Now his dreams were haunted by life-sucking aliens, and he could make a headshot with a Beretta at forty yards.

Rodney’s trembling stilled. His back straightened, and unloaded the full clip of his 9 millimeter into what was left of Kolya’s head.

John looked away, squeezing his eyes shut at the sight of what his friends had become. What he had made them. Then they were next to him. Ronan and Teyla were on either side, each with a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s over,” Ronan said.

“Kolya will not trouble any of us again,” Teyla added.

Rodney just nodded, taking off his jacket, rolling it up and easing it beneath John’s head and looking for all the world more like a battle-hardened warrior than a scientist.

A tear mingled with the rain on John’s cheek. “Thanks,” he told them. And then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he let himself slip into unconsciousness, knowing his friends would be there to protect him while he was gone.

Common Ground...at Home

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:52:38 GMT

COMMON GROUND…at Home

A tag for the Stargate Atlantis episode “Common Ground”. Warning…spoilers for this episode!!!!!

Note: Story written solely for personal entertainment. I do not own Stargate Atlantis, the characters, or the Pegasus Galaxy.

John Sheppard rested his head against a pillar on the Atlantis balcony and prayed that the soft footsteps padding down the corridor behind him would pass on by. Halfway through yet another night of insomnia, he’d given up on sleep and headed out to the balcony to clear his head of the stench of the prison cell, the foul odors of fear and desperation that he hadn’t been able to shake for nearly two weeks. He really wasn’t in the mood for company.

He held his breath and listened, then murmured a curse. Beneath the muted sound of the slap of the sea against the pilings below, the footsteps had stopped. The sliding door he’d left open must have him away. He shouldn’t have bothered to hope for a little solitude, the way his luck had been running. Worse, the silent stillness from the corridor told him who had discovered his hiding place. Only she would stand there and watch him without saying anything. He could feel her there in the darkness behind him. The pull of her presence, her pain, was palpable. The undercurrent gentle, yet undeniable as the tide.

Closing his eyes, he sighed and gave in to the tow. “I warned you when we first decided we wanted more than friendship from each other. I suck at relationships.”

“You still think that?” Her voice was feathery as the sough of the sea breeze winding through Atlantis’s main spire, and mingled with the equally light tread of her bare feet as she padded to his side. Her clothes rustled as well as she settled down beside him. Close, but not touching. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d actually touched. “Here’s a news flash for you: You don’t suck at relationships.”

A wry smile turned the corner of his mouth. “That’s why at 2:30 in the morning I was wrecking my back trying to sleep on the couch and you were locked in your office working, just like last night. And the night before.”

“So who was avoiding whom?”

He opened his eyes. Moonlight glowed off her fair skin, glinted off her dark, silky curls. How many times had he sat in this same spot and told her how beautiful she looked under the Atlantis moon. Like some kind of goddess to be worshipped. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say both of us.”

She ducked her head and he knew he’d hurt her again. Just another jab in a string of jabs since he’d come back. He knew she wanted to talk about what had happened with Kolya and the Wraith—needed to talk about it. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Probably not ever.

She lifted her chin in that take-no-prisoners slant of hers. “For the last ten months, you’ve been the most caring, kind, thoughtful, romantic partner I’ve ever known. Ever dreamed of.” Her lips quirked up. “Not to mention you’re damned good in bed.”

Okay, now he knew something was really wrong with him. The woman he loved more than life had just complemented him on his sexual prowess, and it hadn’t even phased him. All he felt was numb, and that was probably a good thing. Because if he let himself feel the turmoil bouncing around inside him right now, well…it wouldn’t be pleasant—for him or anybody else unfortunate enough to be within striking range. Yeah, they’d had a good ten months. But nothing was the same anymore. He wasn’t the same. Couldn’t she see?

“And the last ten days?” he asked, knowing she wouldn’t be able to paint such a pretty picture. After his return, they’d quickly progressed from stiff gestures of comfort, to subtle digs, heated fights and finally to…nothing. Avoiding each other as much as possible. Yesterday he’d quietly checked to see if anyone else had taken up residence in the quarters he’d given up when they’d moved in together. Oh yeah, he’d made damned sure she wouldn’t want anything to with him anymore.

He turned to her, waited for the argument to start. For her to tell him their problems were all his fault. If he’d only talk about what had happened—

“The last ten days have made me love you more than ever,” she said.

A lump as cold and hard as the ice in Antarctica rose in his throat. Damn it, why did she have to say that? Throw him a curveball when he’d finally come to accept the inevitable.

They weren’t going to survive this, them as a couple. It was that simple. Hell, he wasn’t sure he was going to survive this. It didn’t matter that the wraith had restored his youth. The son-of-a-bitch couldn’t take away the memory of what had happened before he’d given the so-called gift of life.

A lot of people thought Air Force pilots were arrogant. Some probably were, but mostly those people mistook the natural self-confidence it took to ride a rocket through the sky faster than the speed of sound with hundreds of pounds of explosives and jet fuel strapped side by side on your wings and bandits firing on your tail for conceit. You had to believe you were bulletproof. You couldn’t do the job otherwise.

Ten days ago, John had learned just how bulletproof he was not. He’d had every fiber of his self-confidence stripped away. For the first time he’d felt helplessness. Paralyzing fear. Utter vulnerability. And worse, his whole team, not to mention Elizabeth, had watched it in full color video. How could he ever go on another mission and believe, as a leader needed to believe, that if they got in a tight spot, he could get his team out.

He couldn’t. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to get himself out. It had taken a wraith to save him. There was no place on Atlantis for a washed out Zoomie who’d lost his nerve. Certainly no place in Elizabeth’s life.

Panic closed in on him. His chest tightened and his heart kicked. He felt chilled even as a sweat broke out on the back of his neck.

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, this was what he sucked at. All this touchy-feely stuff. Putting what he felt into words. Figuring out how to tell her it was over when he so desperately didn’t want it to be. So he opted to change the subject instead.

“So what were you working on that was important enough to keep you up all night?”

Her bright eyes faded some at his clumsy attempt to save himself from actually having to communicate, but she let it go. Elizabeth was, after all, an expert negotiator. She could talk circles around him. She knew when to push and when to back off and wait for the next opportunity.

She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “It wasn’t work. It was…research.”

“On what.”

She hesitated just a second. Enough to clue him in that she actually considered lying. “R2I,” she finally admitted. “Resistance to Interrogation. It’s a set of techniques military personnel learn in case they should be taken prisoner or tort—“

“I’m familiar with the term, Elizabeth.”

“Yeah, I guess you would be.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth. “What I don’t get is how you train someone for something like that. I mean, reading how to do it in a book is one thing, but how does that help them actually do it? I mean, the military can’t exactly torture their new recruits just for practice.”

“Torture, no. But they can make them damned uncomfortable. Like sending them on twenty mile runs with full packs on a ninety-five degree day at Fort Benning.” John was pretty damned uncomfortable right now. He called upon all of his R2I training just to sit their without squirming. The expert negotiator had launched her second attack more quickly than he expected, and she was maneuvering him very neatly into a corner he didn’t want to be in.

“So how do you do it? How do you just blank your mind and tune it all out?”

“That’s the whole trick. You don’t blank your mind, you fill it up with something else, something nice, so the bad stuff can’t get in.”

“Just like that?”

He managed a weak smile. “It takes some practice. You start simple with relaxation breathing techniques, then add in basic meditation. You visualize an object and focus on holding that image in your mind. Eventually the visualizations get more complex, until you can build a whole world in your head. Then the stressors are added in—noise, light, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Pain. You try to hold the image under pressure.”

“Sounds brutal.”

“You get good enough at it, eventually when things get bad you can…” He shrugged, struggled for the right words. “Just pick up your mind and leave. Go someplace better.”

She didn’t say anything, and eventually he slid his gave over to her, trying to figure out where she was going with this. Big mistake. Her gaze locked on his, nailed him like a butterfly on a pin board. “Where are you now, John? Where have you been for the last ten days?”

So he hadn’t been doing as good a job covering up his retreat as he’d thought he had. He thought he’d done pretty well walking with one foot in the Pegasus Galaxy and the rest of him elsewhere. He’d taken care of basic needs, answered simple questions. Hadn’t drooled on himself as far as he knew.

He should have known she’d see through that.

He wanted to cut and run, avoid her questions, but he couldn’t move. He had this disconnected feeling, like a helium balloon that’s slipped out of some kid’s grasp and was slowly drifting away, into the sky. Where had he been for the last week and a half? The hazy image formed in him mind. “On an island in the Carribean,” he said, watching as he rose higher and higher, and the Earth shrunk beneath him until he could see the whole world in the pupils of her eyes. “Baggy swim trunks, flip flops and a lounge chair. White sand beaches. Bronzed cabana girls in bikinis bringing me fruity little drinks with umbrellas in the glasses.”

“Sounds nice. Maybe I could join you there sometime. Assuming we could add a few bare-chested cabana boys to the mix, as long as we’re fantasizing.”

She blinked, and like that, set him free. His head fell back against the pillar with a thud and as he winced and rubbed the spot, a laugh broke from his chest. It sounded rusty and hacked, but was still an honest-to-goodness laugh. “Yeah, sure,” he smiled. “Why not.”

She inched closer and he slipped his arm over her shoulders out of reflex, before he realized what he was doing. He started to pull back, but before he could, she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “So, flyboy. You thinking about coming home anytime soon?”

“I don’t know. Fantasy Island is pretty appealing compared to real life right now.”

“Must get lonely—cabana girls aside.”

“Nah. I’ve got friends there. You, Teyla, Ronon, Even Rodney.” He cringed inwardly as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Imaginary friends. How pathetic did that sound.

“Not Carson?” she asked in an obvious effort to keep the mood light.

“No need for doctors on Fantasy Island.”

“What about your real friends?”

“I get along better with the imaginary versions.” Ronon and Teyla didn’t understand why he hadn’t killed the wraith. Carson was going nuts trying to figure out the wraith de-aging process. And Rodney…well, Rodney was just always a pain in the ass. More so every time John nearly got himself killed.

He gave Elizabeth a false and flippant smile. “That’s the great thing about a fantasy. You can make people do and say exactly what you want.”

“What do your imaginary friends do and say?”

He thought a moment. “Not much.”

“Sit around and drink fruity drinks with you?”

“Something like that.” Most importantly, they didn’t ask him to talk about his feelings.

“So that’s it? You’re just giving up on everything you’ve done here? You’re a private person, John. When something really bad happens you pull back. You need time to work through it on your own, it’s how you cope. I get that—I really do. But I never thought you’d abandon your team when they need you most.”

His anger flashed white and hot, as it had since he’d escaped Kolya’s slimy grip. His mood swings alone should have been enough to convince most of the population of Atlantis that he’d lost his marbles. That he wasn’t fit to lead. “There’s a difference between abandoning people and knowing when to step aside for their own good, Elizabeth.”

“Not to them! They’re all struggling with this. Do think it was easy for any of us to stand there and watch the way we did? Your whole team has been to see Kate, most of them more than once. Even Ronon.”

He winced, not wanting to go down this path. Of all the fights they’d had over the last week and a half, their discussion about the hour and a half he’d spent sitting in the shrink’s office without saying a word after Elizabeth had ordered him to go topped the charts.

The worst of his anger had ebbed at the thought of the suffering he’d caused his team, but the gaze he raised to Elizabeth’s still held plenty of heat. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend everything is fine? Then what happens when we’re out on an overnight and I wake them all up at three a. m. screaming from another nightmare? Or the wraith are on our ass and I slow them down because my damn legs are shaking so bad I can’t run? What do I tell them when I break one of them’s arm because the accidentally touch my chest and I think it’s—”

He couldn’t go on. Knew he didn’t have to.

Elizabeth’s upturned face paled to ivory. Her voice softened. “Is it that bad, John?”

His chest began to heave the way it had those last seconds before the wraith fed on him. The strangling panic wound its way around his throat. He’d managed to hide the worst of the nightmares from her, sleeping—what little he slept—mostly during the day while she worked. And the fear…well, with the bedroom door closed, she hadn’t noticed that he’d been leaving the bathroom light on so that he wouldn’t be alone in the dark in the other room. She hadn’t seen him with the pillow clutched to his chest, listening for the wraith breathing he imagined he heard from the other side of the wall. There is no escape.

He pulled his arm from around her and clenched both of his hands into fists to still their trembling. Damn it, she’d maneuvered him into exactly the conversation he didn’t want to have. He could have retreated again. Gone back to his happy place. He’d taken his R2I training to the level of an art. But he was just so damned tired. He couldn’t fight it any more. Couldn’t fight her anymore.

“What do want me to say?” he asked, hating the way his voice shook. “That being fed on was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced? That I was so scared every time they put me in that chair that I almost choked on my own puke behind that gag? Yeah, it was all that. But you know what the worst part was?” His eyes turned wet, and he trembled with the effort of preventing a single tear from spilling over the edge of his lashes the way it had after he’d been fed on a second time.

“The worst part was that fucking camera. And knowing you were on the other end of the video stream, watching everything that was happening. That was the torture.” And that was it. That was all he could take. He dredged up enough memories with that one statement to feed his nightmares for weeks. He headed toward the door, but not back toward their quarters. He’d sleep in the damned men’s room if he had to. He needed to be alone.

She followed him and tried to stop him with a hand on his arm. He jerked away, but the motion turned him enough that he could see now her eyes were wet. And if she was struggling to hold back the tears as he had, she was loosing the battle. “I’m so sorry, John. I should have made the trade, but—“

“No! You made the right decision. The only decision.” He turned back to face her fully. Had she known that was the only card she could have played that would hold him here? No, she wasn’t that calculating, even if she was the best negotiator in this galaxy or any other. She probably didn’t even realize that the one thing he wouldn’t walk away from—couldn’t walk away from—was her feeling guilty for his screw-up.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty about what happened to me.”

“Don’t I dare?”

“You heard me.”

She planted her fists on her hips. “So now Mr. Emotional is telling me how I should feel?”

“It was my fault. I’m the one who got myself captured.”

She stared at him incredulously. “Well, imagine that. What happened, did you forget to call the Pegasus Galaxy Psychic Hotline before you left? Or maybe you sat on your x-ray vision glasses at breakfast that morning. Because you didn’t see in advance that there was a lunatic in the woods waiting to kidnap you.”

Her sarcasm grated on his raw nerves. He gritted his teeth. “That call from the Geni never felt right to me. But they had the codes and I know how important their alliance is to Atlantis, so I ignored my intuition. And walked right into an ambush.”

“So you made a mistake. You’re human.”

To tell the truth, right now he felt more akin to a starving wraith whose name he didn’t even know than to his own people. The wraith understood…. Odd how he could be so terrified of the wraith as a whole, and yet feel such a bond to that one. That bond turned everything he’d believed for the last three years, everything he still believed, on its ear.

How had his world gotten so fucked up in just a few short hours?

Kolya. That’s how.

The truth struck him then. His stomach plummeted. The wraith weren’t the true source of his suffering. Kolya was. And Kolya was just a human. A slimy, backstabbing, evil bastard of a human. But still a human. And one he could beat. Had beaten before.

Kolya, who was still on the loose to wreak his havoc wherever he chose.

Some of the confusion coursing through him must have shown on his face, because Elizabeth called to him. “John?”

He swayed slightly on his feet. “He’s gotta be stopped.”

“The wraith?”

His lip curled as he snarled the name. “Kolya.”

“All of the loyal Geni informants are looking. And our friends on other planets are keeping their eyes open, too.” She took a step toward him and wound her fingers in the front of his T-shirt to hold him close. “But if you’re not up to it, then Ladon’s men or Major Lorne will have to go after him once we’ve got a lead.”

John looked down into Elizabeth’s devious, liquid eyes. Had he just said she wasn’t that calculating? “Now you’re playing dirty.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“It’ll be a long road back. I honestly don’t know if I can make it.”

“You’ll make it,” she said firmly. “You have a lot of friends, the flesh and blood kind, who’ll be right beside you to help. If you’ll let them.”

Maybe—just maybe—the thought of his hands around Kolya’s throat would provide enough to get him through. Get both of them through, since looking into Elizabeth’s blazing eyes, he thought she might just be thinking about her own hands around the man’s throat. And maybe—just maybe—that little bit of common ground between them would be enough. Would give them a chance, at least.

“I”ll try.” His voice cracked.

She cupped the back of his neck with her hand, ruffled her fingers through his hair. “What is it, John? What’s really hurting you?

The single tear he’d been holding back finally topped his lashes and spilled down his cheek. “I miss you, Elizabeth. I want you back.”

She stood on her tiptoes and laid her lips on the side of his throat, then worked slowly across his jaw line and finally feathered a kiss over his lips. “You never lost me, John.”

Hand in hand they walked back to their shared quarters in silence, and this time, when the nightmares came, he didn’t face them alone.