Dark Muse - Chapter One
By AshtakRa
Story: Dark Muse
Pairing: Sheppard/Lorne
Rating: M for the moment
Genre: AU from the beginning of season4, McKay is in charge and the Asurans are allies
Disclaimer: I own nothing but use everything without remorse
Warning: MM slash
Spoilers: none
Summary: After being freed from the Wraith Major Lorne must face a very different future to the one he imagined. Old friends will resurface and the tide of war will turn. Who will survive and who will fall? Sequal to Atlantis Manifest.
DARK MUSE
"To see the future John is to know too much, and understand so little."
: The Ancient known as Dr David Parrish - current status unknown.
Training Room, Atlantis - Pegasus Galaxy
Major Evan Lorne hit the floor as his newly replaced knee collapsed and he groaned more in disappointment than pain. Teyla circled him like a predator, twirling her batons menacingly and barely showing any fatigue after their twenty minute workout.
“You have given up already Major?” she harrumphed loudly and tapped his head with the weapon. “In a universe of infinite possibilities we usually only end up with two choices - live or die. I would say your choice is made.”
With a growl of defiance Lorne planted a hand on the floor and used it to pivot his body around and, in defiance of what an arm should be able to do, snap him up into a standing position. A flurry of thrusts and counter-thrusts ended with him pinning Teyla against the wall, on of Lorne’s batons at her throat. “You were saying?” he chuckled and eased the pressure. Both of their chests were heaving with effort, Evan’s a little more than Teyla’s but sweat dripped off them in the same amount.
Teyla pushed forward and planted a leg between Evan’s and his eyes bulged as she brought it up, slowly like a caress. When he looked down she took the opportunity to sweep his baton away and slip around him, elbowing his kidney and locking their arms, bringing him up and over to land beneath her. Now with the advantage Teyla tracked her baton along his saturated chest and gave a satisfied smile. “I would say Major Lorne that the choice remains somewhat the same.”
His expression went from hesitant to uncomfortable as her gaze lingered on his and her smile turned to a leer. Just as he was about to try and wriggle out she released him and walked away, laughing loudly. “Forgive me, I have been looking forward to time alone with you - and I think I took the opportunity too far.”
“No it’s not that,” spluttered Lorne, not wanting to insult her but neither wanting what she seemed to be offering. He rose and flexed his knee, it worked fine now but he would need the Doc to check it out. A mixture of ancient technology, Asuran nanobots and good old human innovation had replaced his numerous damaged body parts with advanced but experimental biotechnology. Super-strong alloys, enhanced tissue regeneration and lab grown tendons and muscles had given Lorne a new lease on life, literally. “I’m just not looking for that.”
Throwing him a towel Teyla snorted loudly, her mood was decisively sarcastic today. “Not from me maybe.”
“What do you mean by that?” For sure he had some designs on a certain Colonel and that same Colonel had made it clear he felt the same; but they had done nothing beyond spending time together. Lorne was not so much worried what Teyla thought but that she assumed they were already involved.
“I mean no disrespect Major,” she relented and picked up the discarded batons, placing them back in their wall mounts. “I merely think that it is time the two of you moved things along; it is quite obvious to everyone how you feel.”
Groaning into his towel Lorne took a moment to fold it and place it in the used pile, ignoring the futility of doing such a thing. “Exactly - everyone thinks they know how I feel.”
“You do not have feelings for Colonel Sheppard?” asked Teyla incredulously.
“Yes! No! I mean I do but there are other things to consider.”
“Like what?”
“Like…” he stripped off his soaked shirt, modestly putting another on quickly. “Like regulations, like how can we carry on a relationship in even a normal command structure - let alone Atlantis?”
Teyla nodded sagely, “I have heard of these…rules that your governments insist on - they seem rather, strange. You are asked to risk your life, say goodbye to friends and family and face horrors beyond imagining yet they think to prohibit the one thing that could make you happy.”
“Happy? Yeah, that’d be nice. I was happy with David you know - no-one knew, well almost no-one.” He flexed a hand that glinted silver in the late afternoon light. “That worked out well, ‘hey guess what - I’m an ancient and like all ancients can’t do a thing to help’.”
“As I understand it he did as much as he was allowed,” Teyla grabbed his hand, running her fingers along the lines of alloy. After torture at the hands of the Wraith his hands had been left little more than claws; the bones badly healed and the tendons severed. The alloy provided the strength and dexterity he otherwise would never have regained through traditional treatments. “You lost much; but in losing you he lost it all.”
“That’s kind of you to say, but I know how damaged I am.” Reclaiming his hand he self-consciously ran it over the scars on his neck that stretched right up to his ear. “Not just physically you know. I still can’t stand the dark, and even a small fire sends me into fits.”
“Time,” said Teyla, as if in answer to everything, and perhaps it was. David had spoken much the same and he would know. He had lived for millennia; experiencing not just the present but possible futures. Time was all he had. David was gone now, to where no word had come. John had said the ascended ancients had made David leave, but part of Lorne believed that David had wanted to. Who would truly want to deal with a broken human who still cried in the dark and spoke to invisible phantoms?
“You guys done or what?” shouted a voice from the door. It was Colonel John Sheppard, and although the Colonel looked at Teyla for a moment his eyes lingered over Lorne; hungry eyes that traveled up and down, stopping at sensitive areas until Lorne had to shift or be embarrassed by his own reaction. Is this how John had seduced so many aliens, pure and obvious lust?
“We are,” answered Teyla. “He’s all yours,” she almost sniggered and bumped past Sheppard, leaving just the two of them. Normally Lorne would feel no discomfort but the post training conversation with Teyla had raised some painful memories. He took a moment to gather his gear then headed to the door, to find John still blocking it.
“Somewhere important you have to be?” whispered John, purposely invading Lorne’s space. To Lorne’s bio-technically enhanced sense of smell John had been in the botany labs again; he spent a lot of time there according to the rumors. Lorne avoided them, the memories of stolen moments with David too vivid and painful. Perhaps John was trying to connect with David somehow, believing that if the ancient returned he would appear there first. Stranger things had happened.
Beneath that smell and rising fast was another, a scent Lorne was familiar with but had avoided all this time. It was not a rebuke against John; the man had been nothing but supportive and it was no secret that his single minded determination to rescue Lorne had been the only reason he was alive today.
The rescue had been a great success, not just for the rescue part but as a huge strike against the Wraith. They had not easily recovered and while the numbers were still with the Wraith the newly formed Pegasus Alliance was succeeding strategically. In no small part this was due to the Asurans ability to construct ships and battle stations and the Genii to supply troops and clean-up operations. Much of this success could be laid at the feet of the man before him; yet Lorne could barely look Sheppard in the eye. He knew that he would be lost if he did - and much as they both wanted it Lorne could not help but fear that such a relationship could destroy them both.
Why? If only that was clear; it was more a premonition, much like a gut feeling before a mission turned out badly. Until recently John had been patient, almost sage like in his ability to give Lorne time. Yet even his patience was running short and he had been a little more forceful in his pursuit of Lorne, much to the amusement and exasperation of the Atlantis personnel.
“I have to see the Doc; my knee seems to be malfunctioning.” It was an excuse, the truth but an excuse none-the-less and Lorne winced inside at the deception. John just nodded silently and stood to the side but Lorne could feel eyes on his back all the way down the hall. Eyes that spoke of need and want, lust and love; all intertwined in the complex man that was John Sheppard. If only, thought Lorne to himself, I could let go and let him in. He was sure that eventually he would, it was an inevitability, yet Lorne continued to put up the barriers.
Ghosts and phantoms still haunted his existence. Even now, walking down the corridor, shadowy figures slipped in and out of the alcoves - visible to Lorne alone. They were a figment of his sub-conscience, the doctors and psychologists were adamant on that. So Lorne tried to ignore them and the hundred other ‘things’ he saw every day that could not be real; visions of his friends dead and dying, Atlantis in ruins and Wraith everywhere. If he told the doctors all of what he saw they would have shipped him back to Earth in a padded cell on the Daedalus. His whole body shuddered as a particularly nasty looking Wraith in full body armor and what seemed to be cybernetic implants walked right through him. Looking back the figure had disappeared but Lorne could swear he had actually felt some resistance as they had passed through each other.
Yet another thing to file away as ‘never to be spoken of’ just like the images of McKay with half his head cut away, and Teyla strapped down heavily pregnant with what Lorne had just known was a human/wraith hybrid. He didn’t even know if such a thing were possible and couldn’t ask without revealing his visions. Worst of all had been John, wired into the Atlantis command chair and obeying the directions of his Wraith captors. His body had been skeletal and his eyes dead, his body alive but mind erased; somehow Lorne knew that he had caused that and was one reason he was avoiding John.
What if all that was to actually happen and it was his fault?
Shaking his head to clear the visions Lorne entered the infirmary and put on his non-committal happy face - his mask to face a world that was only half real most of the time and nightmare for the rest. One thought above all others remained - what had David done to him?
Tbc…
Next: Chapter Two