Fic: A Great Day for Freedom
Title: A Great Day For Freedom
Pairings: John/Elizabeth with mild Teyla/Lorne
Rating: heavy R for cruelty
Genre: dark!fic - probably the darkest thing I've ever written
Warnings: character death and torture.
Spoilers: none
Beta: chris4short and momm2five . You rock my world, guys!
Summary: Seven women are taken from Atlantis. Four of them are saved. Their saviors end up broken.
Author's notes: Fics like this one happen to me from time to time - I guess this one was caused by remembering the missing in Balkans war during 1990's and the events of 9/11. I guess this was my way of addressing something I still can't understand, even after seeing aforementioned war unfold in front of my very eyes - the fact that some people seem to think that killing other human beings in unimaginable and cruel ways is somehow just and right. In a situation all you can do is kill before you or your loved ones end up killed, and while doing so good people commit horrible things. At the end the war doesn't pick sides, it destroys everyone equally.
The inspiration came from one particular scene in the final episode of “Band of Brothers” - actually the idea started with me wondering what would make John behave exactly like one of the soldiers in that scene. The title was lovingly stolen from Pink Floyd.
--- x ---
This is what I bring home. Death, destruction and broken men.
On that morning there was a smell of fear in the air.
There was fog, thick as the darkness, the mud under John's boots and the sound of his raging heart in his ears. There was the whisper of harsh breathing as the men that followed him ran down the hill and toward the designated spot.
And then there were gunshots and smell of death they sent.
It wasn't even a remarkable search and rescue mission. The Genii spy provided them with intel, and after some bribery, Atlantis got its hands on exact location of the prison camp. Their spy described it as a large compound, with several long, narrow buildings without windows and only several doors, surrounded with muddy ground and barbed wire.
There was a photograph too, a single one, showing the guards on their posts, and weak, thin people sitting in the dirt. Their faces on the photo were too small to tell if any of those hungry, tortured faces was a teammate or a friend, a beloved person ripped out of the protective hold of the Ancient city. Just like Nazi prisons, whispered Radek, as Elizabeth issued the order for the rescue mission.
The guards, although numerous, didn't stand a chance against the striking force of Atlantis. Through the fog and fire and screams John ran toward the barbed wire with his men in tow. He remembered, like in slow motion, cutting the wire and feeling the ripping pain when hurt cut into his palms. He remembered shocked faces of the people standing behind the fence, their eyes silently asking if their saviors would turn into masters even worse than previous ones. It could have happened before. There was a little bit of breathtaking hope in their eyes too; and it was probably the last thing keeping them alive.
The crowd quieted and the silence fell like a hammer. Bruised and barefoot women were shielding their children with their bodies and with a sickening feeling John realized they were terrified of the men who came to set them free. Several feet away from him a small boy stood frozen, staring at the soldiers, looking like a tiny, hungry kitten. One of the marines knelt to the ground and lowered his gun. The boy stared as the man searched his pocket for a chocolate and offered it to the starved child. The boy took it after a moment of hesitation and nearly choked eating it.
Silence broke like the ice as the men lowered their guns and offered a little food and water they had with them. There wasn't nearly enough, and desperate people surrounding them kept begging for more. John saw Lorne radioing the men near the gate to dial Atlantis and ask for help. What do you need, asked the marine on the radio, and Lorne answered Everything. They need everything.
John left Lorne and his team to calm the crowd. Just like the people they set free were desperate for food, John was desperate for something else. Ronon walked in front of him, parting the crowd with his hands like Moses parted the sea. Two men searched the sea of faces - empty eyes, desperate and hungry eyes; eyes full of pain, and for a moment John wondered if he would recognize them, after months spent here, where human dignity ceased to exist.
They found them - or rather what was left of them - in the third barrack they entered.
The kidnapped women of Atlantis were sitting or sleeping on the hard, cold ground.
Sergeant Doley was sitting on the concrete floor reeking of excrement, with her eyes fixed in front of her, dirty hair curtaining her face. Sergeant Mattina was lying on a narrow cot, her feet bare and bruised, her body shuddering with fever. Next to her Teyla sat on another cot, cradling Laura Cadman like a child.
John crossed the room in few long strides and one single breath. His heart stopped for a second as the eyes he could barely recognize looked at his face. He knelt between Teyla and Sarah Doley, and his hand stopped short of touching the young Sergeant who stared through him.
Seven women were taken. They had found only four.
“Teyla,” he breathed and her eyes focused on his face. Ronon knelt next to him. It took a moment before she recognized either of them.
“Ronon? John?” she spoke their names like she had forgotten them at some point. Cadman moved from her hold and when she sat up John's stomach lurched.
Laura's hair looked like it was cut off with a knife. Half of her face was marred with a bruise, but that wasn't the worst part. Her left hand was missing, just a hollow sleeve hanging at her side instead.
John remembered their return to Atlantis through a fog of shock and disbelief. Three of them were dead. As he walked toward the gate, following the wounded, a single thought played in his mind.
This is what I bring home.
He didn't remember the briefings afterwards. The images of medical personnel and many volunteers going through the gate to help the prisoners were just scattered images without color or the sound in his mind, but were etched there forever.
He would never forget Teyla limping through the gate room as Lorne helped her to walk. Two scientists who barely knew how to bandage a wound carried Cadman on a stretcher. Doley walked by herself, but when she stepped through the wormhole, she collapsed on the floor, kissing the ground of her home. Ronon carried Sergeant Mattina, for she couldn't even stand on her feet. Tears streamed down her face, trailing through the dirt on her cheeks, and she was trembling in tall man's arms.
John stepped through the wormhole the last. The silence he met when the vortex behind him disappeared was unlike any silence he faced before.
He looked up and toward the railing where Elizabeth stood, meeting her eyes as she put both hands over the protrusion of her stomach. John swallowed as his eyes glided from her hands down onto the body that cradled his child.
This is what I bring to you, he thought. Destruction and death. This is how I return home, with half of the missing lost and the others broken.
Elizabeth kept her eyes on him as the room around them spiraled into motion. John's throat was tight as his eyes fell onto Laura Cadman's body on the stretcher - beaten, abused and mutilated. The scientists carrying her placed her onto the floor when Carson reached them running and for a moment John met the man's eyes, then looked away.
Elizabeth was walking down the stairs toward Cadman who woke up. She was crying, Carson was crying, almost everyone was. Elizabeth took Cadman's hand into hers, the hand that was still there, and bowed over the stretcher to kiss the woman's face.
Only John didn't cry. He couldn't cry. He watched, failing to understand. Who could have done that? And why? He saw wars and he saw men killing men because of the land or some other property - that kind of war he could comprehend. However he never stood face to face with pure evil - until today.
John watched Elizabeth as she walked toward Teyla and embraced her with trembling hands. His body was tight in knots as he watched two women that mattered to him the most, realizing this time he failed to protect them all - not only Teyla, or Cadman or the other women. He failed to protect Elizabeth too.
It could have been her instead of Cadman, or maybe instead of Teyla who stood on her feet but her eyes looked like she had died several times. It could have been Elizabeth so easily, beaten or even killed and he would be helpless for months. It wasn't Elizabeth by pure chance.
This is what I bring home, he thought, as part of his mind turned numb and cold.
John made himself listen to every detail, every word as Carson spoke.
Beaten. Malnourished. Overworked.
Teyla was shot in the leg. There were broken or fractured bones on all of them. Cadman's hand was crushed under a heavy rock. Nobody was certain wither she had to carry the rock, or if she was tortured - Heightmeyer advised it would be best not to force them to talk, not until they were ready. Mattina had second degree burns along the left side of her body and an infection accompanied by high fever. Doley was starved and beaten so hard that her whole backside was covered with bruises and scars.
All of them were raped.
Atlantis had fallen silent. The city took in the refugees and her people struggled against the monstrosity they couldn't explain, couldn't understand. During his nights John was alone with the screams and echoes of Carson's words, as Elizabeth slept next to him.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
Two days after the rescue one of the field teams had found a mass grave not far away from the prison camp. The bodies of the dead and killed were stripped naked and then thrown inside. Doctor Biro feared some of them were still alive when it was done.
There were children inside of that hole too.
Nobody had ever crawled back up. Nobody had survived.
Two days after the rescue mission, despite the effort of the medical staff Sergeant Lea Mattina had died.
It was the tenth day after the rescue when the new intel came.
The Genii spy had found out about the possible hideout of the prison camp keeper.
John pulled on his boots and strapped the gun holster to his thigh in the gray silence of the morning. He prepared for the battle in the room full of grim and angry men. Ronon was quiet as always, and Lorne followed him with darkness in his eyes. Their feet echoed heavy through the halls of the city.
When they walked near the tall windows of the city, John barely recognized the reflection of his own face.
Elizabeth was on her usual spot. Her eyes were on John. She didn't stand in his way when he suggested this mission, she expected him to do it, but John knew she didn't want him to go.
This time it wasn't about his safety. She knew the deadly determination that brought him to his goal and carried him back home, she knew him enough to feel it every time he moved in the bed on those ten nights when he couldn't sleep. It wasn't about him not coming home - it was about what he would bring as he walked back through that gate.
Destruction and death; death and broken men, thought John.
Lorne's voice followed him, but John was too blind with hatred to listen. His foot hit the door and it swung open.
A short man in dark clothes got up from his desk, eyes shooting daggers at the strangers. He started shouting in a language John didn't know, but his indignant tone and arrogance were unmistakable as he probably demanded to be left alone.
They couldn't be certain. The man fit the description, but they couldn't be certain. All they had were, in fact, rumors.
John didn't care. He crossed the room and caught the man by the neck, pushing him back into the chair with the force of his single hand. He didn't think twice when he pulled out his gun and placed it against the bastard's temple.
“Are you the one?!”
The man was shouting, his arrogance was turning into fear now. His face was pale and his eyes had lost everything but the miserable desire to live. John could find no mercy in his heart as he thought of a flag above the coffin yesterday and the letter he still had to write.
“Are you the one? Tell me!! Answer me!!!”
“Sir!”
Lorne's shout was half choked, but John didn't look at him. He didn't want to see the warning in Major's eyes and remember that the trembling man under his gun could have been innocent.
There had to be explanation and the reason for all the pain, for everything horrible that had happened. There had to be a cause, there had to be someone to blame.
“Sir we don't know...!”
“Shut up, Lorne! It's him!!”
The air of the cabin was motionless. Only the sounds of whimpering filled the silence.
“Sir...,” Lorne's voice carried a plea.
John's hand that held the gun was shaking. The eyes of the stranger were begging for bare, pathetic existence still pulsing through his veins.
For a moment John was about to let him go, but then Carson's voice echoed in his mind.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
John's hand was still shaking when he pulled the trigger.
He didn't kill him. The bullet shot through the place where shoulder became the neck. Warm, red blood sprayed all over John's vest and pants and the unknown man scrambled to his feet with a scream as he staggered toward the door. Frozen in shock John jerked backwards and watched him run for his life.
The shock was only momentary. When it passed John's feet carried him outside, and Lorne and the rest of the men followed him. The stranger ran down the hill, falling and getting up, tripping again, and probably screaming for help.
John stared, realizing the man didn't have a gun or a knife, nor he presented any kind of imminent danger. There was a voice inside his mind, a voice reminding him people were supposed to be treated as innocent until proven guilty, but it lost all the significance and meaning. John saw Cadman's bruised face and Teyla's empty eyes and raised his gun again.
Then he saw Elizabeth, with hands around her stomach and tears in her eyes.
His hand was shaking again.
This is what I bring home. Death, destruction and broken men.
He remembered the sound of Lea Mattina crying, remembered the hungry people behind the barbed wire, looking at him like a pack of beaten, starved animals, and darkness filled his heart. It had to be explained. There had to be a cause, there had to be someone to blame.
The wounded man tripped and got up again.
There had to be a reason, but John couldn't pull the trigger.
A shot rang out from behind him, and another and then another. John turned around and saw Lorne still holding his gun high, his face cold as stone, his eyes lacking any emotion. The faces of other two soldiers reflected what John felt.
Lorne lowered the gun, his eyes still fixed on the dead man on the ground.
“Teyla was pregnant by one of them...,” Lorne closed his eyes and shuddered. He didn't finish the thought but John and the other two men understood.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
“They kicked her with their feet until she miscarried.”
The briefing was short. Lorne was the one who spoke the most, and he was the one who said that the suspect was the person they were after. John however knew Elizabeth could see the truth in his eyes.
When the night settled over Atlantis that night, John could hear voices and waves and the usual hum of the city. The refugees were fed and cared for and a horrible chapter of their life was closed. The man responsible for their torture and suffering was proclaimed dead. For the first time after the rescue there was a semblance of peace covering the city like a thin veil.
John walked into infirmary that evening, just like every evening since they brought the women back. The bed where Lea Mattina lay was empty. There was a single white rose and Italian flag neatly folded and placed on the foot of the bed.
Teyla slept, and Lorne sat by her side, his hand on hers.
Cadman was awake.
John didn't have the intention of talking to her - he'd avoid talking to anyone, but she kept looking at him and he walked toward her.
“I heard you killed him, Sir,” she whispered. John mouth was dry as he stood in front of her.
“I killed many, Lieutenant,” he said. Cadman's eyes burned.
“No. You killed someone today. That man,” she said, her eyes demanding to hear what John in his madness wanted to be the truth as he held that man at the gunpoint. He looked away from Cadman, only to meet the memory of the eyes full of fear staring at him as gun holding hand shook.
“Tell me,” demanded Cadman, her voice tainted with desperation. “Tell me you killed him. Tell me.”
Her eyes demanded that reason, that explanation. John thought of the night when they were taken, thought of all the mistakes he had made, and of all the things he could have done differently, all the precaution he had failed to take.
They trusted their new allies too quickly. He wasn't careful enough. Seven women were taken right out of his hands, seven good, healthy women, and it could have been Elizabeth instead of those still missing three women, ending up thrown in the mass grave, dead with their unborn child inside of her.
There was no sense or logic in this. There was no higher purpose or explanation. He couldn't even call it fate - if fate existed, then he should have been the one punished. There was no order, no pattern, nothing but swimming blindly in the dark.
He had shot someone today; he had shot that man in cold blood and hot rage. There was no justification for what he had done. It was wrong. It was a mistake, not the explanation.
Cadman's lips trembled as she kept staring at John. He shook his head, feeling tired and old.
“Tell me, Sir. Tell me.”
“I can't tell you that, Lieutenant,” he whispered and then he left.
That evening Elizabeth found him sitting on their bed, the bloodied BDUs still covering his body.
“Lorne lied,” he said, not daring to look into her eyes. Elizabeth neared him and he waited, staring into emptiness, waiting for the hammer to fall and her voice to say he was the monster that could have been hidden but never banished from his mind.
Instead of that a soft hand threaded into his hair and round belly touched his face, a detail of everyday that seemed foreign now. His hands slid around her on instinct and he could feel the life in her pulsing under his fingers.
Death and destruction, he thought. It's what I bring home. With that thought he tried to pull away, but she caught his hands and placed them above her stomach.
“I know Lorne lied,” she said, and her voice was quiet. “John, look at me.”
He ignored her words and pressed his face against the dark fabric covering her stomach. She tugged at his hands.
“Look at me,” this time she asked firmly and he looked up, tired and broken.
“I made a mistake,” his voice was hoarse and raw. Elizabeth's eyes were firm on his.
“I know,” her voice was soft like forgiveness. The truth fell on him and he let it sink into his bones. As she held him, he found the strength to accept the responsibility for what he had done. When he rose to his feet to face her, she still held his hands against her stomach, his fingers tainted with death covering that new, innocent life. Elizabeth leaned into him, pressed her face against his and for the second time within an hour he felt the universe spin around him, rearrange itself, giving him a different purpose.
Maybe he couldn't protect her like he should have, but he was ready to do desperate things, horrible things, just to keep her out of harm's way. He thought of the white rose, of Italian flag and Laura Cadman's face. Beaten, burned, raped. The woman in his arms sighed and the child in her womb moved with a flutter against his abdomen. Thanks to the accidental whim of chance they had a clean bed instead of the narrow, dirty cot. His eyes stung. Her hands held him tighter.
“I would do it again,” he whispered numbly and she pulled him even closer, burying her face against his skin. John remembered Lorne after he fired that shot today; he remembered the man's voice, and the words he had spoken. He remembered how he held Teyla's hand.
The life he held under his fingers was so fragile. One breath, one mistake, and it could have been gone, taken away from him. There were places without any mercy in this galaxy. There was evil that couldn't be explained, just fought against, and the ones John loved had to be protected - even if his very soul was the price to pay.
Holding onto Elizabeth desperately, John closed his eyes. “It could have been you and that's why I would do it again.”
On the day the wall came down
They threw the locks onto the ground
And with glasses high we raised a cry for freedom had arrived
Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbors turn away
And there's a change that, even with regret, cannot be undone
Now frontiers shift like desert sands
While nations wash their bloodied hands
Of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray
~ Pink Floyd, A Great Day for Freedom
Pairings: John/Elizabeth with mild Teyla/Lorne
Rating: heavy R for cruelty
Genre: dark!fic - probably the darkest thing I've ever written
Warnings: character death and torture.
Spoilers: none
Beta: chris4short and momm2five . You rock my world, guys!
Summary: Seven women are taken from Atlantis. Four of them are saved. Their saviors end up broken.
Author's notes: Fics like this one happen to me from time to time - I guess this one was caused by remembering the missing in Balkans war during 1990's and the events of 9/11. I guess this was my way of addressing something I still can't understand, even after seeing aforementioned war unfold in front of my very eyes - the fact that some people seem to think that killing other human beings in unimaginable and cruel ways is somehow just and right. In a situation all you can do is kill before you or your loved ones end up killed, and while doing so good people commit horrible things. At the end the war doesn't pick sides, it destroys everyone equally.
The inspiration came from one particular scene in the final episode of “Band of Brothers” - actually the idea started with me wondering what would make John behave exactly like one of the soldiers in that scene. The title was lovingly stolen from Pink Floyd.
--- x ---
This is what I bring home. Death, destruction and broken men.
On that morning there was a smell of fear in the air.
There was fog, thick as the darkness, the mud under John's boots and the sound of his raging heart in his ears. There was the whisper of harsh breathing as the men that followed him ran down the hill and toward the designated spot.
And then there were gunshots and smell of death they sent.
It wasn't even a remarkable search and rescue mission. The Genii spy provided them with intel, and after some bribery, Atlantis got its hands on exact location of the prison camp. Their spy described it as a large compound, with several long, narrow buildings without windows and only several doors, surrounded with muddy ground and barbed wire.
There was a photograph too, a single one, showing the guards on their posts, and weak, thin people sitting in the dirt. Their faces on the photo were too small to tell if any of those hungry, tortured faces was a teammate or a friend, a beloved person ripped out of the protective hold of the Ancient city. Just like Nazi prisons, whispered Radek, as Elizabeth issued the order for the rescue mission.
The guards, although numerous, didn't stand a chance against the striking force of Atlantis. Through the fog and fire and screams John ran toward the barbed wire with his men in tow. He remembered, like in slow motion, cutting the wire and feeling the ripping pain when hurt cut into his palms. He remembered shocked faces of the people standing behind the fence, their eyes silently asking if their saviors would turn into masters even worse than previous ones. It could have happened before. There was a little bit of breathtaking hope in their eyes too; and it was probably the last thing keeping them alive.
The crowd quieted and the silence fell like a hammer. Bruised and barefoot women were shielding their children with their bodies and with a sickening feeling John realized they were terrified of the men who came to set them free. Several feet away from him a small boy stood frozen, staring at the soldiers, looking like a tiny, hungry kitten. One of the marines knelt to the ground and lowered his gun. The boy stared as the man searched his pocket for a chocolate and offered it to the starved child. The boy took it after a moment of hesitation and nearly choked eating it.
Silence broke like the ice as the men lowered their guns and offered a little food and water they had with them. There wasn't nearly enough, and desperate people surrounding them kept begging for more. John saw Lorne radioing the men near the gate to dial Atlantis and ask for help. What do you need, asked the marine on the radio, and Lorne answered Everything. They need everything.
John left Lorne and his team to calm the crowd. Just like the people they set free were desperate for food, John was desperate for something else. Ronon walked in front of him, parting the crowd with his hands like Moses parted the sea. Two men searched the sea of faces - empty eyes, desperate and hungry eyes; eyes full of pain, and for a moment John wondered if he would recognize them, after months spent here, where human dignity ceased to exist.
They found them - or rather what was left of them - in the third barrack they entered.
The kidnapped women of Atlantis were sitting or sleeping on the hard, cold ground.
Sergeant Doley was sitting on the concrete floor reeking of excrement, with her eyes fixed in front of her, dirty hair curtaining her face. Sergeant Mattina was lying on a narrow cot, her feet bare and bruised, her body shuddering with fever. Next to her Teyla sat on another cot, cradling Laura Cadman like a child.
John crossed the room in few long strides and one single breath. His heart stopped for a second as the eyes he could barely recognize looked at his face. He knelt between Teyla and Sarah Doley, and his hand stopped short of touching the young Sergeant who stared through him.
Seven women were taken. They had found only four.
“Teyla,” he breathed and her eyes focused on his face. Ronon knelt next to him. It took a moment before she recognized either of them.
“Ronon? John?” she spoke their names like she had forgotten them at some point. Cadman moved from her hold and when she sat up John's stomach lurched.
Laura's hair looked like it was cut off with a knife. Half of her face was marred with a bruise, but that wasn't the worst part. Her left hand was missing, just a hollow sleeve hanging at her side instead.
John remembered their return to Atlantis through a fog of shock and disbelief. Three of them were dead. As he walked toward the gate, following the wounded, a single thought played in his mind.
This is what I bring home.
He didn't remember the briefings afterwards. The images of medical personnel and many volunteers going through the gate to help the prisoners were just scattered images without color or the sound in his mind, but were etched there forever.
He would never forget Teyla limping through the gate room as Lorne helped her to walk. Two scientists who barely knew how to bandage a wound carried Cadman on a stretcher. Doley walked by herself, but when she stepped through the wormhole, she collapsed on the floor, kissing the ground of her home. Ronon carried Sergeant Mattina, for she couldn't even stand on her feet. Tears streamed down her face, trailing through the dirt on her cheeks, and she was trembling in tall man's arms.
John stepped through the wormhole the last. The silence he met when the vortex behind him disappeared was unlike any silence he faced before.
He looked up and toward the railing where Elizabeth stood, meeting her eyes as she put both hands over the protrusion of her stomach. John swallowed as his eyes glided from her hands down onto the body that cradled his child.
This is what I bring to you, he thought. Destruction and death. This is how I return home, with half of the missing lost and the others broken.
Elizabeth kept her eyes on him as the room around them spiraled into motion. John's throat was tight as his eyes fell onto Laura Cadman's body on the stretcher - beaten, abused and mutilated. The scientists carrying her placed her onto the floor when Carson reached them running and for a moment John met the man's eyes, then looked away.
Elizabeth was walking down the stairs toward Cadman who woke up. She was crying, Carson was crying, almost everyone was. Elizabeth took Cadman's hand into hers, the hand that was still there, and bowed over the stretcher to kiss the woman's face.
Only John didn't cry. He couldn't cry. He watched, failing to understand. Who could have done that? And why? He saw wars and he saw men killing men because of the land or some other property - that kind of war he could comprehend. However he never stood face to face with pure evil - until today.
John watched Elizabeth as she walked toward Teyla and embraced her with trembling hands. His body was tight in knots as he watched two women that mattered to him the most, realizing this time he failed to protect them all - not only Teyla, or Cadman or the other women. He failed to protect Elizabeth too.
It could have been her instead of Cadman, or maybe instead of Teyla who stood on her feet but her eyes looked like she had died several times. It could have been Elizabeth so easily, beaten or even killed and he would be helpless for months. It wasn't Elizabeth by pure chance.
This is what I bring home, he thought, as part of his mind turned numb and cold.
John made himself listen to every detail, every word as Carson spoke.
Beaten. Malnourished. Overworked.
Teyla was shot in the leg. There were broken or fractured bones on all of them. Cadman's hand was crushed under a heavy rock. Nobody was certain wither she had to carry the rock, or if she was tortured - Heightmeyer advised it would be best not to force them to talk, not until they were ready. Mattina had second degree burns along the left side of her body and an infection accompanied by high fever. Doley was starved and beaten so hard that her whole backside was covered with bruises and scars.
All of them were raped.
Atlantis had fallen silent. The city took in the refugees and her people struggled against the monstrosity they couldn't explain, couldn't understand. During his nights John was alone with the screams and echoes of Carson's words, as Elizabeth slept next to him.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
Two days after the rescue one of the field teams had found a mass grave not far away from the prison camp. The bodies of the dead and killed were stripped naked and then thrown inside. Doctor Biro feared some of them were still alive when it was done.
There were children inside of that hole too.
Nobody had ever crawled back up. Nobody had survived.
Two days after the rescue mission, despite the effort of the medical staff Sergeant Lea Mattina had died.
It was the tenth day after the rescue when the new intel came.
The Genii spy had found out about the possible hideout of the prison camp keeper.
John pulled on his boots and strapped the gun holster to his thigh in the gray silence of the morning. He prepared for the battle in the room full of grim and angry men. Ronon was quiet as always, and Lorne followed him with darkness in his eyes. Their feet echoed heavy through the halls of the city.
When they walked near the tall windows of the city, John barely recognized the reflection of his own face.
Elizabeth was on her usual spot. Her eyes were on John. She didn't stand in his way when he suggested this mission, she expected him to do it, but John knew she didn't want him to go.
This time it wasn't about his safety. She knew the deadly determination that brought him to his goal and carried him back home, she knew him enough to feel it every time he moved in the bed on those ten nights when he couldn't sleep. It wasn't about him not coming home - it was about what he would bring as he walked back through that gate.
Destruction and death; death and broken men, thought John.
Lorne's voice followed him, but John was too blind with hatred to listen. His foot hit the door and it swung open.
A short man in dark clothes got up from his desk, eyes shooting daggers at the strangers. He started shouting in a language John didn't know, but his indignant tone and arrogance were unmistakable as he probably demanded to be left alone.
They couldn't be certain. The man fit the description, but they couldn't be certain. All they had were, in fact, rumors.
John didn't care. He crossed the room and caught the man by the neck, pushing him back into the chair with the force of his single hand. He didn't think twice when he pulled out his gun and placed it against the bastard's temple.
“Are you the one?!”
The man was shouting, his arrogance was turning into fear now. His face was pale and his eyes had lost everything but the miserable desire to live. John could find no mercy in his heart as he thought of a flag above the coffin yesterday and the letter he still had to write.
“Are you the one? Tell me!! Answer me!!!”
“Sir!”
Lorne's shout was half choked, but John didn't look at him. He didn't want to see the warning in Major's eyes and remember that the trembling man under his gun could have been innocent.
There had to be explanation and the reason for all the pain, for everything horrible that had happened. There had to be a cause, there had to be someone to blame.
“Sir we don't know...!”
“Shut up, Lorne! It's him!!”
The air of the cabin was motionless. Only the sounds of whimpering filled the silence.
“Sir...,” Lorne's voice carried a plea.
John's hand that held the gun was shaking. The eyes of the stranger were begging for bare, pathetic existence still pulsing through his veins.
For a moment John was about to let him go, but then Carson's voice echoed in his mind.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
John's hand was still shaking when he pulled the trigger.
He didn't kill him. The bullet shot through the place where shoulder became the neck. Warm, red blood sprayed all over John's vest and pants and the unknown man scrambled to his feet with a scream as he staggered toward the door. Frozen in shock John jerked backwards and watched him run for his life.
The shock was only momentary. When it passed John's feet carried him outside, and Lorne and the rest of the men followed him. The stranger ran down the hill, falling and getting up, tripping again, and probably screaming for help.
John stared, realizing the man didn't have a gun or a knife, nor he presented any kind of imminent danger. There was a voice inside his mind, a voice reminding him people were supposed to be treated as innocent until proven guilty, but it lost all the significance and meaning. John saw Cadman's bruised face and Teyla's empty eyes and raised his gun again.
Then he saw Elizabeth, with hands around her stomach and tears in her eyes.
His hand was shaking again.
This is what I bring home. Death, destruction and broken men.
He remembered the sound of Lea Mattina crying, remembered the hungry people behind the barbed wire, looking at him like a pack of beaten, starved animals, and darkness filled his heart. It had to be explained. There had to be a cause, there had to be someone to blame.
The wounded man tripped and got up again.
There had to be a reason, but John couldn't pull the trigger.
A shot rang out from behind him, and another and then another. John turned around and saw Lorne still holding his gun high, his face cold as stone, his eyes lacking any emotion. The faces of other two soldiers reflected what John felt.
Lorne lowered the gun, his eyes still fixed on the dead man on the ground.
“Teyla was pregnant by one of them...,” Lorne closed his eyes and shuddered. He didn't finish the thought but John and the other two men understood.
Beaten. Malnourished. Burned. Raped.
“They kicked her with their feet until she miscarried.”
The briefing was short. Lorne was the one who spoke the most, and he was the one who said that the suspect was the person they were after. John however knew Elizabeth could see the truth in his eyes.
When the night settled over Atlantis that night, John could hear voices and waves and the usual hum of the city. The refugees were fed and cared for and a horrible chapter of their life was closed. The man responsible for their torture and suffering was proclaimed dead. For the first time after the rescue there was a semblance of peace covering the city like a thin veil.
John walked into infirmary that evening, just like every evening since they brought the women back. The bed where Lea Mattina lay was empty. There was a single white rose and Italian flag neatly folded and placed on the foot of the bed.
Teyla slept, and Lorne sat by her side, his hand on hers.
Cadman was awake.
John didn't have the intention of talking to her - he'd avoid talking to anyone, but she kept looking at him and he walked toward her.
“I heard you killed him, Sir,” she whispered. John mouth was dry as he stood in front of her.
“I killed many, Lieutenant,” he said. Cadman's eyes burned.
“No. You killed someone today. That man,” she said, her eyes demanding to hear what John in his madness wanted to be the truth as he held that man at the gunpoint. He looked away from Cadman, only to meet the memory of the eyes full of fear staring at him as gun holding hand shook.
“Tell me,” demanded Cadman, her voice tainted with desperation. “Tell me you killed him. Tell me.”
Her eyes demanded that reason, that explanation. John thought of the night when they were taken, thought of all the mistakes he had made, and of all the things he could have done differently, all the precaution he had failed to take.
They trusted their new allies too quickly. He wasn't careful enough. Seven women were taken right out of his hands, seven good, healthy women, and it could have been Elizabeth instead of those still missing three women, ending up thrown in the mass grave, dead with their unborn child inside of her.
There was no sense or logic in this. There was no higher purpose or explanation. He couldn't even call it fate - if fate existed, then he should have been the one punished. There was no order, no pattern, nothing but swimming blindly in the dark.
He had shot someone today; he had shot that man in cold blood and hot rage. There was no justification for what he had done. It was wrong. It was a mistake, not the explanation.
Cadman's lips trembled as she kept staring at John. He shook his head, feeling tired and old.
“Tell me, Sir. Tell me.”
“I can't tell you that, Lieutenant,” he whispered and then he left.
That evening Elizabeth found him sitting on their bed, the bloodied BDUs still covering his body.
“Lorne lied,” he said, not daring to look into her eyes. Elizabeth neared him and he waited, staring into emptiness, waiting for the hammer to fall and her voice to say he was the monster that could have been hidden but never banished from his mind.
Instead of that a soft hand threaded into his hair and round belly touched his face, a detail of everyday that seemed foreign now. His hands slid around her on instinct and he could feel the life in her pulsing under his fingers.
Death and destruction, he thought. It's what I bring home. With that thought he tried to pull away, but she caught his hands and placed them above her stomach.
“I know Lorne lied,” she said, and her voice was quiet. “John, look at me.”
He ignored her words and pressed his face against the dark fabric covering her stomach. She tugged at his hands.
“Look at me,” this time she asked firmly and he looked up, tired and broken.
“I made a mistake,” his voice was hoarse and raw. Elizabeth's eyes were firm on his.
“I know,” her voice was soft like forgiveness. The truth fell on him and he let it sink into his bones. As she held him, he found the strength to accept the responsibility for what he had done. When he rose to his feet to face her, she still held his hands against her stomach, his fingers tainted with death covering that new, innocent life. Elizabeth leaned into him, pressed her face against his and for the second time within an hour he felt the universe spin around him, rearrange itself, giving him a different purpose.
Maybe he couldn't protect her like he should have, but he was ready to do desperate things, horrible things, just to keep her out of harm's way. He thought of the white rose, of Italian flag and Laura Cadman's face. Beaten, burned, raped. The woman in his arms sighed and the child in her womb moved with a flutter against his abdomen. Thanks to the accidental whim of chance they had a clean bed instead of the narrow, dirty cot. His eyes stung. Her hands held him tighter.
“I would do it again,” he whispered numbly and she pulled him even closer, burying her face against his skin. John remembered Lorne after he fired that shot today; he remembered the man's voice, and the words he had spoken. He remembered how he held Teyla's hand.
The life he held under his fingers was so fragile. One breath, one mistake, and it could have been gone, taken away from him. There were places without any mercy in this galaxy. There was evil that couldn't be explained, just fought against, and the ones John loved had to be protected - even if his very soul was the price to pay.
Holding onto Elizabeth desperately, John closed his eyes. “It could have been you and that's why I would do it again.”
On the day the wall came down
They threw the locks onto the ground
And with glasses high we raised a cry for freedom had arrived
Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbors turn away
And there's a change that, even with regret, cannot be undone
Now frontiers shift like desert sands
While nations wash their bloodied hands
Of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray
~ Pink Floyd, A Great Day for Freedom