Damaged Goods: SGA Sheppard/Dex, Chapter 7/?
Title: Damaged Goods
Fandom/Pairing: SGA, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex
Rating: PG-13 (will go up in future chapters)
Spoilers: Runner, Vegas
Summary: AU: Ronon's immune to the wraith. Detective John Sheppard doesn't die in the Las Vegas desert. It would probably be easier if the opposites of both were true.
Notes: Sorry for the delay! Things have been hectic lately, so I'm really hoping that there won't be any more massive delays in posting.
Totally lost? Previous chapters are available on AO3, Dreamwidth & Livejournal.
John gives it a few minutes, sits quietly on the floor, just slightly closer than he'd sat yesterday. Eight's watching his hands again, but it seems to be taking more effort. John doesn't get his hopes up; Eight doesn't trust him, he's just too tired to keep his guard up. The shadows under his glassy eyes are even darker than before, and yesterday's food is sitting untouched, stale and dry on the tray.
He's getting worse. John probably doesn't need to mention it. But it means they're looking at a timeline, here.
"Yesterday, you said the wraith never let you go," he says instead. "What did you mean?" It's not the first question he wants to ask, but it's his best chance at getting the ball rolling. If Eight had considered it important enough to say once, maybe he'll keep talking.
The resignation in Eight's voice, when he eventually speaks, almost makes John wishes he wouldn't.
---
"They came to Sateda many years ago, and we fought back," Ronon says, forcing himself not to make a fist when the guard shifts her stance. It's a good exercise, a good distraction from the explosions and the shouting and the burning smell of everything. Better than the sense memory of knowing that Kell had betrayed them, that his brother's squad, dispatched to the north side of the capitol, had missed two check-ins.
He's running, now, drawing the wraiths' fire, no choice but to keep low, keep moving, another two corners and he'll be through the alley. Tyre and Ara will be waiting in position, they'll have cover fire ready and-
Several spans in front of him, the rear of the western building is hit, and it's the hospital all over again, the shockwave and the blinding flash, the percussive hit of air against his chest, flinging him back as the wall starts to crumble.
It's a kill box, there's nothing to do but turn and fight but he's already been stunned, can't bring his hands up to brace his fall, the pavement breaking red against his face is the last thing he sees-
John's looking at him, but there's no way to explain it. John hadn't been there, hadn't seen. And he's not interested in Ronon's suddenly knife-blade clear memories, any more than Ronon is in discussing them.
"I was captured." Ronon catches himself rubbing his hands on his thighs again; the skin of his palms is rough, calloused, but there are no teeth. He doesn't know why he keeps thinking otherwise. "I came to on the hive. They made me a runner. Been hunting me ever since."
John frowns, confused, like he doesn't understand and it's bothering him. "Why? For fun? Training?"
Because they can't feed on me, Ronon doesn't say, his head swimming. It's hot in here. Maybe it's just the fever coming back again. Because I'm more entertaining to them alive than dead. Because they're wraith.
John's intent is all too clear with his next words, spoken carefully as he moves past his unanswered questions. "So they hunt you, catch you, then release you. Then start it all over again. Does that about sum it up?"
Ronon's not giving anything away by nodding. John doesn't look like he believes him, anyway.
---
They're doing good, here. Eight's talking, at least, though it's obvious it won't last for long. Usually by now, the an interviewee is pushing back for information, making demands. But Eight's sweating and the effort required to rub his hands on his legs again seems to be taking a lot out of him.
It's the third time in ten minutes that he's done so, and probably means one of three things. His leg could be hurting- he hasn't stood up or pushed himself further into the corner since John arrived. It could be nerves, though Eight's tics tend to manifest in ways that keep his hands clear. Or it could be that he's so filthy- a detail that's becoming harder to ignore with each passing minute- that it's just not possible to wipe his hands clean.
John remembers trying to wipe sweat and salt off onto fatigues that hadn't been able to absorb any more, sitting on the floor of a filthy shack in the foothills. Somewhere over the course of his two weeks spent as a guest at gunpoint, his dreams had changed, gone from rescue and freedom and Golden Gate Park to showers and soap and towels. They could've broken the toes on his other foot, too, and he would have kept his mouth shut.
John still wonders, sometimes, how much he would have told them if they just would've let him get clean. Maybe it's worth a shot with Eight.
"Hey, ah-" John breaks off, not wanting to call him Eight and still having nothing better to go by. "You know, you should really tell me your name one of these days." John pauses, half-waiting for a reply that he's not honestly expecting, and uses the opportunity to glance at Cadman, who nods back at him. She's ready for him to get to the plan. "Still no, huh? That's fine, but look at me. You've got a decision to make. If you want, there are showers upstairs. We can take you up there to get cleaned up."
He watches Eight's eyes dart to the lavatory off the end of the room, past the wraith's cell. It's tiny, just a toilet and sink, too deliberately cramped to allow real movement. There is, however, a spigot built into the wall beneath the sink, and unless ordered otherwise, Sargent Stackhouse and his team are going to be attaching a hose, running it across the cells, and spraying Eight down, clothes and everything.
There might not be a need to spell it out, though; something resembling interest is flashing across Eight's eyes. He obviously realizes that this excursion means getting into the elevator, going to a different level. It'll be the most freedom he's had in weeks.
The moment passes, though, and Eight's shutting down again, his eyes dropping to John's hands as his own fists clutch at his shirt hem. It's filthy and threadbare in places, but they've already taken nearly everything else of his; his clothes are all that's left. John's pretty sure he'd be reluctant to be parted from his shirt, too, even one so hideous as this, under the circumstances.
"We can give you something to wear while your clothes get washed," John adds, honestly wondering how much of the material might disintegrate once it hits the water, but that's a problem for later. "Might suck for a while, but you'll be more comfortable in the end, right?"
Maddeningly, there's still no real response. "And hey, if anything else, it'll be a change of scenery for a while, right?" At that, Eight's eyes find his for just a moment, not believing a word of it. "Okay," John concedes. "Maybe not that much of a change."
John stands. He can't actually wait here all day long for Eight to decide if he wants a shower or not. Another few hours and it won't matter; he'll be hosed off, maybe they'll toss him a towel as an afterthought, and what little progress they've made will be gone.
Behind him, though, Eight's unfolding himself, rising to his feet slowly.
---
Ronon just wants to go back to the hazy sleep he's been drifting in and out of, but can't let himself, not with everything that John's just offered.
There's a spark of something in his head as he stands; it feels something like hope and he clamps down on it, hard. Escape is unlikely, given how much the room sways when he stands. But even if all he gets out of this is a chance at reconnaissance, it'll be worth the effort.
The elevator is small enough that if he neutralized the guard first, John would be defenseless. Ronon turns as the doors slide shut, gauging her position. she's blocking the control panel with her body. Pressing a sequence of buttons; command or passcode, he can't tell, but it gives him pause. It's another piece of information he's going to need.
Inside the elevator, the guard blocks his view of the control panel with her body as she presses a sequence of buttons. There's no way to tell whether they're commands or pass codes. Ronon tells himself it's the only thing stopping him from neutralizing her before attacking John. The swaying against the railing as they lurch and begin to rise has nothing to do with it.
He's careful to stare at nothing in particular; the nothing he's chosen is just to the left of the readout displaying the floors they've passed. He keeps it just at the edge of his scope of vision, in case either of them look up at him. There are at least four sub-levels here, probably several more above, and Ronon's not at all surprised, when the doors slide open, that they're stepping into a field of uniforms.
Four guards immediately flank them- Markham and Stackhouse had been on the ship, the other two are even more unknown- and Cadman backs out first, her eyes never leaving his. The three stunners and two guns pointing at him are almost a compliment. The guards immediately flank him as John leads them down the corridor.
There are no windows, here, no way to tell where any of the heavy doors they pass lead, but eventually they're turning into a room that smells clean and dirty all at once. The female guard- Cadman, he thinks he remembers- doesn't follow them inside.
Narrow metal cabinets line the walls, and there are two low benches bolted to the floor. At the end of one of them is a stack of coarse cloth- perhaps the clothes John had mentioned- and a small collection of bottles and tubes. There's a comb, and a small brush on a long handle that looks like it might be a toothbrush, but Ronon's not certain.
"Okay," John eventually decides, grabbing the bottles and brushes and heading around the side end of the cabinets. The guards shift. Ronon's meant to follow, and they mean to follow him.
"Toothbrush, toothpaste." He sets them by the sink before moving away again, gesturing for Ronon to move forward.
Ronon had found a toothbrush- the handle had been much shorter, more familiar feeling- in a long abandoned storeroom last year, but it had fallen apart some months ago. The sensation of cleaning his mouth is strange, pleasant even though the thick paste he's using tastes awful. He's unsurprised to find five sets of eyes on him in the polished metal mirrors, but it's still strange, doing this with an audience.
It's bad enough, he realizes, that he's gone so far as to put this into his mouth. The toothpaste seems safe enough so far, but there's nothing that could make him swallow it, so he spits it out into the sink, watching for a reaction from the guards. There is none, however. Either he'd gotten it right, or they're more well trained in schooling their features than he thought.
A moment later there's the sound of a shower running, echoing loudly. The reason is obvious, when Ronon rounds the corner; this part of the room is tiled- even the walls, gleaming mutely under the blueish lights. They make John look older than he's seemed, warier as he engages in silent communication with one of the guards. It's an interchange of glances and shrugs that Ronon hasn't yet learned to translate. After a few moments of this, though, they seem to have come to some sort of decision.
"Strip down and toss your clothes in the hamper," the taller of the two guards Ronon hasn't seen before today points to a canvas bin the the corner. His voice is gruff, jarring, almost as bad as the reality of the situation is becoming.
The wraith take everything from him, the first time they capture him. His world hadn't been enough. They stare impassively as they strip him down to nothing, take his shirt, his knives as they wrestle him to the table, sick cold hands, sharp in all the wrong places, grind into his wrists as they hold him down under their knives.
When they finish, they throw a heavy black coat at him. Not his armor, not his shirt. It's clothing made for a wraith, a coat made of material that drags sickly across his skin and they force him into it before hitting releasing him out into the world with no idea what's happening.
This isn't Sateda. He doesn't know where he is, can't even see the gate. It's not Sateda; he needs to get home, get some supplies, find out what's happening. He doesn't even know how long he's been gone.
The first blast streaks wide of him, impacting on nothing but grass. The second hits closer; it's a warning but he's already taken it. He's running.
He's got to get home. Find some proper clothes. He'll be able to breathe again.
---
Eight starts withdrawing into his head when Stackhouse gives the order, his face slackening and seeming a million light years away, but when John steps forward, he snaps to attention, tense, ready maybe to fight, to try to run. John can hear his breathing from here. Eight's eyes are burning the bottles in John's hands, but there's no way to know if he's seeing them.
"Hey," he says, careful to move slowly again as he draws closer. He hadn't missed the Marine's tensing response; he needs to play this clean for both sides.
"This bottle's shampoo," he says dumbly, brandishing the bottle in his left. "For your hair. This one is for your skin. Come on." He starts heading back towards the shower, feels the humidity dampening his clothes while he's still across the room, and places the bottles on the floor, just outside the spray. Eight's followed, ignoring the Marines and their guns for the moment as he takes in the tiles and the lack of exits.
There's no way this will end well if Eight decides to make a move right now. But Markham, unfortunately, is at the end of his patience, handing his stunner to Stackhouse before stepping forward, his hands outstretched.
Eight, it turns out, can move very quickly when he wants to. A feinted dodge right, then left, testing the Marines and finding them blocking off his exit. He back-steps away, almost against the wall, now.
"Cool it, everyone, hey?"
Markham snorting in derision. John probably would too, were their positions reversed. They don't take orders from him, but they're not the only ones with a job to do. Eight's still panting, but John isn't any more armed than he's ever been, and Eight's got to be lucid enough to remember that.
"Come on," John says, keeping his voice calm, trying for reassurance. "The sooner you get started, the sooner you're done." Stackhouse thankfully enough, picks up on what John's trying to do, urges the other three Marines back towards the door. The entrance is still blocked, but Eight's got space again, and John steps again into the very edge of it.
"We've got towels and clothes for you and you don't have to fight us on this."
More waiting for a reaction. This time, when it comes, it's impossible to tell if Eight's about to relent or about to fall down. He wavers a bit as he turns away, and it's another moment before before his hands go to the leather-mounted fasteners on his shirt. They're moving slowly; for a moment it looks like modesty, but it's more likely that he's merely keeping the Marines in sight. He unbuckles his right cuff, his left, then the collar, and he's shrugging the ragged black shirt off of his shoulders.
John's not certain he sees it at first, under all the hair, but as Eight shifts to disentangle one of his dreadlocks from a catching closure, John's eyes lock on what looks like a tattoo in the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. It's a black, spidering design-
-that's done in three dimensions, with crusted streaks of brown to red to pink bleeding into the clammy expanse of his upper back, infected and wrong and whatever's under there raises the skin, pushes it out from his spine. For a moment John thinks he can see something just barely glinting through the crusted, pulling scabs, bone or metal or worse, but it's gone too quickly, because the heavy leather of the cuff, when thrown, is enough to weight the material when it's thrown, send it flying into Markham's face, but it's Eight's follow through, the heavy lunge, the startling speed, that sends everything to hell.
It's a pointless move, expected, already accounted for, and Eight goes down unsurprisingly quickly, and it's Stackhouse's stunner blast, not Monroe's bullets bringing him down, but Eight collapses to the floor all the same. His eyes are rolling back, closing, the muscles of his back are stuttering from the hit to the chest, and then it's just quiet..
There's a moment of silence while the Marines, too, survey the scene. John's having a hard time looking at anything other than the wound- or whatever that is- sticking sickly out of Eight's infected skin, so obviously, sickeningly there that John's feeling sick for letting it go for so long. He doesn't have time to consider it for long, however. Cadman's head pokes around the corner only an instant behind the barrel of her gun. Her stunner's on her hip; she's not an idiot.
"Hose him off before he comes out of it," Stackhouse decides after a moment, waving the others into motion. "We'll get him cleaned up a bit, get him back in the cell." John's got it in him to protest, he knows he does, but he's not in charge. This is his mess they're cleaning up, and it's only becoming more apparent as the Marines close in, surrounding Eight, getting ready to move him.
John steps out of the locker room, rejoins Cadman, wondering what it is, exactly, that's setting up shop in his head, worrying at the edge of his thoughts. If it's the stupidly obvious risk he'd created, here, or his small likelihood of getting another chance. Or maybe, too, it's the certainty that this had been some test that he'd failed- Eight's maybe, or Woolsey and McKay's.
As he leaves, he can hear the rasping of fabric and leather, the dragging of skin against tile and the breathing of the Marines, their annoyed wet grumbling as they attend to the task. Cadman joins him at the elevator, watching him with eyes that she's obviously trained not to widen, but her curiosity's impossible to hide.
"What're you going to do?"
The same thing he's always done is the only thing he can think of. "Gonna salvage what I can."
---
By the time he's explained and justified the failed plan to Woolsey and Weir, nearly an hour's gone by. He's been relegated to a chair in the corridor while inside, their deliberation continues. Every so often, words bleed through the walls.
"It's not Sheppard's station," Woolsey's saying, but his voice sounds more resigned than angry. It's as good as he can hope for. "He exposed the entire operation to what could've been a serious threat," though, is more troubling. It sounds like a firing offense, like any minute, the door's going to open, he's going to be brought back inside and given his papers, another reprimand, and then escorted off the premises.
He'll go back to his apartment, back to his busted air conditioner, empty fridge and empty life and will just have to put all of this behind him. It's all getting surreal again, and the strange angle of the sunlight hitting the linoleum floor isn't doing anything to dissuade the feeling.
I met an alien, once, he can see himself thinking aloud, wary of the nondisclosure agreements he's signed and the strong likelihood that they're not just a feel-good bureaucratic tool. Tried to get through to him. It didn't take. Put the world at risk, and they wound up having to...
It's really just as well he'll have nobody to tell, because he suspects he knows how that sentence would have to end.
Chapter 8 ... But check out the soundtrack before you go!
Fandom/Pairing: SGA, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex
Rating: PG-13 (will go up in future chapters)
Spoilers: Runner, Vegas
Summary: AU: Ronon's immune to the wraith. Detective John Sheppard doesn't die in the Las Vegas desert. It would probably be easier if the opposites of both were true.
Notes: Sorry for the delay! Things have been hectic lately, so I'm really hoping that there won't be any more massive delays in posting.
Totally lost? Previous chapters are available on AO3, Dreamwidth & Livejournal.
John gives it a few minutes, sits quietly on the floor, just slightly closer than he'd sat yesterday. Eight's watching his hands again, but it seems to be taking more effort. John doesn't get his hopes up; Eight doesn't trust him, he's just too tired to keep his guard up. The shadows under his glassy eyes are even darker than before, and yesterday's food is sitting untouched, stale and dry on the tray.
He's getting worse. John probably doesn't need to mention it. But it means they're looking at a timeline, here.
"Yesterday, you said the wraith never let you go," he says instead. "What did you mean?" It's not the first question he wants to ask, but it's his best chance at getting the ball rolling. If Eight had considered it important enough to say once, maybe he'll keep talking.
The resignation in Eight's voice, when he eventually speaks, almost makes John wishes he wouldn't.
---
"They came to Sateda many years ago, and we fought back," Ronon says, forcing himself not to make a fist when the guard shifts her stance. It's a good exercise, a good distraction from the explosions and the shouting and the burning smell of everything. Better than the sense memory of knowing that Kell had betrayed them, that his brother's squad, dispatched to the north side of the capitol, had missed two check-ins.
He's running, now, drawing the wraiths' fire, no choice but to keep low, keep moving, another two corners and he'll be through the alley. Tyre and Ara will be waiting in position, they'll have cover fire ready and-
Several spans in front of him, the rear of the western building is hit, and it's the hospital all over again, the shockwave and the blinding flash, the percussive hit of air against his chest, flinging him back as the wall starts to crumble.
It's a kill box, there's nothing to do but turn and fight but he's already been stunned, can't bring his hands up to brace his fall, the pavement breaking red against his face is the last thing he sees-
John's looking at him, but there's no way to explain it. John hadn't been there, hadn't seen. And he's not interested in Ronon's suddenly knife-blade clear memories, any more than Ronon is in discussing them.
"I was captured." Ronon catches himself rubbing his hands on his thighs again; the skin of his palms is rough, calloused, but there are no teeth. He doesn't know why he keeps thinking otherwise. "I came to on the hive. They made me a runner. Been hunting me ever since."
John frowns, confused, like he doesn't understand and it's bothering him. "Why? For fun? Training?"
Because they can't feed on me, Ronon doesn't say, his head swimming. It's hot in here. Maybe it's just the fever coming back again. Because I'm more entertaining to them alive than dead. Because they're wraith.
John's intent is all too clear with his next words, spoken carefully as he moves past his unanswered questions. "So they hunt you, catch you, then release you. Then start it all over again. Does that about sum it up?"
Ronon's not giving anything away by nodding. John doesn't look like he believes him, anyway.
---
They're doing good, here. Eight's talking, at least, though it's obvious it won't last for long. Usually by now, the an interviewee is pushing back for information, making demands. But Eight's sweating and the effort required to rub his hands on his legs again seems to be taking a lot out of him.
It's the third time in ten minutes that he's done so, and probably means one of three things. His leg could be hurting- he hasn't stood up or pushed himself further into the corner since John arrived. It could be nerves, though Eight's tics tend to manifest in ways that keep his hands clear. Or it could be that he's so filthy- a detail that's becoming harder to ignore with each passing minute- that it's just not possible to wipe his hands clean.
John remembers trying to wipe sweat and salt off onto fatigues that hadn't been able to absorb any more, sitting on the floor of a filthy shack in the foothills. Somewhere over the course of his two weeks spent as a guest at gunpoint, his dreams had changed, gone from rescue and freedom and Golden Gate Park to showers and soap and towels. They could've broken the toes on his other foot, too, and he would have kept his mouth shut.
John still wonders, sometimes, how much he would have told them if they just would've let him get clean. Maybe it's worth a shot with Eight.
"Hey, ah-" John breaks off, not wanting to call him Eight and still having nothing better to go by. "You know, you should really tell me your name one of these days." John pauses, half-waiting for a reply that he's not honestly expecting, and uses the opportunity to glance at Cadman, who nods back at him. She's ready for him to get to the plan. "Still no, huh? That's fine, but look at me. You've got a decision to make. If you want, there are showers upstairs. We can take you up there to get cleaned up."
He watches Eight's eyes dart to the lavatory off the end of the room, past the wraith's cell. It's tiny, just a toilet and sink, too deliberately cramped to allow real movement. There is, however, a spigot built into the wall beneath the sink, and unless ordered otherwise, Sargent Stackhouse and his team are going to be attaching a hose, running it across the cells, and spraying Eight down, clothes and everything.
There might not be a need to spell it out, though; something resembling interest is flashing across Eight's eyes. He obviously realizes that this excursion means getting into the elevator, going to a different level. It'll be the most freedom he's had in weeks.
The moment passes, though, and Eight's shutting down again, his eyes dropping to John's hands as his own fists clutch at his shirt hem. It's filthy and threadbare in places, but they've already taken nearly everything else of his; his clothes are all that's left. John's pretty sure he'd be reluctant to be parted from his shirt, too, even one so hideous as this, under the circumstances.
"We can give you something to wear while your clothes get washed," John adds, honestly wondering how much of the material might disintegrate once it hits the water, but that's a problem for later. "Might suck for a while, but you'll be more comfortable in the end, right?"
Maddeningly, there's still no real response. "And hey, if anything else, it'll be a change of scenery for a while, right?" At that, Eight's eyes find his for just a moment, not believing a word of it. "Okay," John concedes. "Maybe not that much of a change."
John stands. He can't actually wait here all day long for Eight to decide if he wants a shower or not. Another few hours and it won't matter; he'll be hosed off, maybe they'll toss him a towel as an afterthought, and what little progress they've made will be gone.
Behind him, though, Eight's unfolding himself, rising to his feet slowly.
---
Ronon just wants to go back to the hazy sleep he's been drifting in and out of, but can't let himself, not with everything that John's just offered.
There's a spark of something in his head as he stands; it feels something like hope and he clamps down on it, hard. Escape is unlikely, given how much the room sways when he stands. But even if all he gets out of this is a chance at reconnaissance, it'll be worth the effort.
The elevator is small enough that if he neutralized the guard first, John would be defenseless. Ronon turns as the doors slide shut, gauging her position. she's blocking the control panel with her body. Pressing a sequence of buttons; command or passcode, he can't tell, but it gives him pause. It's another piece of information he's going to need.
Inside the elevator, the guard blocks his view of the control panel with her body as she presses a sequence of buttons. There's no way to tell whether they're commands or pass codes. Ronon tells himself it's the only thing stopping him from neutralizing her before attacking John. The swaying against the railing as they lurch and begin to rise has nothing to do with it.
He's careful to stare at nothing in particular; the nothing he's chosen is just to the left of the readout displaying the floors they've passed. He keeps it just at the edge of his scope of vision, in case either of them look up at him. There are at least four sub-levels here, probably several more above, and Ronon's not at all surprised, when the doors slide open, that they're stepping into a field of uniforms.
Four guards immediately flank them- Markham and Stackhouse had been on the ship, the other two are even more unknown- and Cadman backs out first, her eyes never leaving his. The three stunners and two guns pointing at him are almost a compliment. The guards immediately flank him as John leads them down the corridor.
There are no windows, here, no way to tell where any of the heavy doors they pass lead, but eventually they're turning into a room that smells clean and dirty all at once. The female guard- Cadman, he thinks he remembers- doesn't follow them inside.
Narrow metal cabinets line the walls, and there are two low benches bolted to the floor. At the end of one of them is a stack of coarse cloth- perhaps the clothes John had mentioned- and a small collection of bottles and tubes. There's a comb, and a small brush on a long handle that looks like it might be a toothbrush, but Ronon's not certain.
"Okay," John eventually decides, grabbing the bottles and brushes and heading around the side end of the cabinets. The guards shift. Ronon's meant to follow, and they mean to follow him.
"Toothbrush, toothpaste." He sets them by the sink before moving away again, gesturing for Ronon to move forward.
Ronon had found a toothbrush- the handle had been much shorter, more familiar feeling- in a long abandoned storeroom last year, but it had fallen apart some months ago. The sensation of cleaning his mouth is strange, pleasant even though the thick paste he's using tastes awful. He's unsurprised to find five sets of eyes on him in the polished metal mirrors, but it's still strange, doing this with an audience.
It's bad enough, he realizes, that he's gone so far as to put this into his mouth. The toothpaste seems safe enough so far, but there's nothing that could make him swallow it, so he spits it out into the sink, watching for a reaction from the guards. There is none, however. Either he'd gotten it right, or they're more well trained in schooling their features than he thought.
A moment later there's the sound of a shower running, echoing loudly. The reason is obvious, when Ronon rounds the corner; this part of the room is tiled- even the walls, gleaming mutely under the blueish lights. They make John look older than he's seemed, warier as he engages in silent communication with one of the guards. It's an interchange of glances and shrugs that Ronon hasn't yet learned to translate. After a few moments of this, though, they seem to have come to some sort of decision.
"Strip down and toss your clothes in the hamper," the taller of the two guards Ronon hasn't seen before today points to a canvas bin the the corner. His voice is gruff, jarring, almost as bad as the reality of the situation is becoming.
The wraith take everything from him, the first time they capture him. His world hadn't been enough. They stare impassively as they strip him down to nothing, take his shirt, his knives as they wrestle him to the table, sick cold hands, sharp in all the wrong places, grind into his wrists as they hold him down under their knives.
When they finish, they throw a heavy black coat at him. Not his armor, not his shirt. It's clothing made for a wraith, a coat made of material that drags sickly across his skin and they force him into it before hitting releasing him out into the world with no idea what's happening.
This isn't Sateda. He doesn't know where he is, can't even see the gate. It's not Sateda; he needs to get home, get some supplies, find out what's happening. He doesn't even know how long he's been gone.
The first blast streaks wide of him, impacting on nothing but grass. The second hits closer; it's a warning but he's already taken it. He's running.
He's got to get home. Find some proper clothes. He'll be able to breathe again.
---
Eight starts withdrawing into his head when Stackhouse gives the order, his face slackening and seeming a million light years away, but when John steps forward, he snaps to attention, tense, ready maybe to fight, to try to run. John can hear his breathing from here. Eight's eyes are burning the bottles in John's hands, but there's no way to know if he's seeing them.
"Hey," he says, careful to move slowly again as he draws closer. He hadn't missed the Marine's tensing response; he needs to play this clean for both sides.
"This bottle's shampoo," he says dumbly, brandishing the bottle in his left. "For your hair. This one is for your skin. Come on." He starts heading back towards the shower, feels the humidity dampening his clothes while he's still across the room, and places the bottles on the floor, just outside the spray. Eight's followed, ignoring the Marines and their guns for the moment as he takes in the tiles and the lack of exits.
There's no way this will end well if Eight decides to make a move right now. But Markham, unfortunately, is at the end of his patience, handing his stunner to Stackhouse before stepping forward, his hands outstretched.
Eight, it turns out, can move very quickly when he wants to. A feinted dodge right, then left, testing the Marines and finding them blocking off his exit. He back-steps away, almost against the wall, now.
"Cool it, everyone, hey?"
Markham snorting in derision. John probably would too, were their positions reversed. They don't take orders from him, but they're not the only ones with a job to do. Eight's still panting, but John isn't any more armed than he's ever been, and Eight's got to be lucid enough to remember that.
"Come on," John says, keeping his voice calm, trying for reassurance. "The sooner you get started, the sooner you're done." Stackhouse thankfully enough, picks up on what John's trying to do, urges the other three Marines back towards the door. The entrance is still blocked, but Eight's got space again, and John steps again into the very edge of it.
"We've got towels and clothes for you and you don't have to fight us on this."
More waiting for a reaction. This time, when it comes, it's impossible to tell if Eight's about to relent or about to fall down. He wavers a bit as he turns away, and it's another moment before before his hands go to the leather-mounted fasteners on his shirt. They're moving slowly; for a moment it looks like modesty, but it's more likely that he's merely keeping the Marines in sight. He unbuckles his right cuff, his left, then the collar, and he's shrugging the ragged black shirt off of his shoulders.
John's not certain he sees it at first, under all the hair, but as Eight shifts to disentangle one of his dreadlocks from a catching closure, John's eyes lock on what looks like a tattoo in the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. It's a black, spidering design-
-that's done in three dimensions, with crusted streaks of brown to red to pink bleeding into the clammy expanse of his upper back, infected and wrong and whatever's under there raises the skin, pushes it out from his spine. For a moment John thinks he can see something just barely glinting through the crusted, pulling scabs, bone or metal or worse, but it's gone too quickly, because the heavy leather of the cuff, when thrown, is enough to weight the material when it's thrown, send it flying into Markham's face, but it's Eight's follow through, the heavy lunge, the startling speed, that sends everything to hell.
It's a pointless move, expected, already accounted for, and Eight goes down unsurprisingly quickly, and it's Stackhouse's stunner blast, not Monroe's bullets bringing him down, but Eight collapses to the floor all the same. His eyes are rolling back, closing, the muscles of his back are stuttering from the hit to the chest, and then it's just quiet..
There's a moment of silence while the Marines, too, survey the scene. John's having a hard time looking at anything other than the wound- or whatever that is- sticking sickly out of Eight's infected skin, so obviously, sickeningly there that John's feeling sick for letting it go for so long. He doesn't have time to consider it for long, however. Cadman's head pokes around the corner only an instant behind the barrel of her gun. Her stunner's on her hip; she's not an idiot.
"Hose him off before he comes out of it," Stackhouse decides after a moment, waving the others into motion. "We'll get him cleaned up a bit, get him back in the cell." John's got it in him to protest, he knows he does, but he's not in charge. This is his mess they're cleaning up, and it's only becoming more apparent as the Marines close in, surrounding Eight, getting ready to move him.
John steps out of the locker room, rejoins Cadman, wondering what it is, exactly, that's setting up shop in his head, worrying at the edge of his thoughts. If it's the stupidly obvious risk he'd created, here, or his small likelihood of getting another chance. Or maybe, too, it's the certainty that this had been some test that he'd failed- Eight's maybe, or Woolsey and McKay's.
As he leaves, he can hear the rasping of fabric and leather, the dragging of skin against tile and the breathing of the Marines, their annoyed wet grumbling as they attend to the task. Cadman joins him at the elevator, watching him with eyes that she's obviously trained not to widen, but her curiosity's impossible to hide.
"What're you going to do?"
The same thing he's always done is the only thing he can think of. "Gonna salvage what I can."
---
By the time he's explained and justified the failed plan to Woolsey and Weir, nearly an hour's gone by. He's been relegated to a chair in the corridor while inside, their deliberation continues. Every so often, words bleed through the walls.
"It's not Sheppard's station," Woolsey's saying, but his voice sounds more resigned than angry. It's as good as he can hope for. "He exposed the entire operation to what could've been a serious threat," though, is more troubling. It sounds like a firing offense, like any minute, the door's going to open, he's going to be brought back inside and given his papers, another reprimand, and then escorted off the premises.
He'll go back to his apartment, back to his busted air conditioner, empty fridge and empty life and will just have to put all of this behind him. It's all getting surreal again, and the strange angle of the sunlight hitting the linoleum floor isn't doing anything to dissuade the feeling.
I met an alien, once, he can see himself thinking aloud, wary of the nondisclosure agreements he's signed and the strong likelihood that they're not just a feel-good bureaucratic tool. Tried to get through to him. It didn't take. Put the world at risk, and they wound up having to...
It's really just as well he'll have nobody to tell, because he suspects he knows how that sentence would have to end.
Chapter 8 ... But check out the soundtrack before you go!