Fear and Loathing
Title: Fear and Loathing
Summary: Post Siege, character study
Characters :Beckett, McKay, Teyla, Weir
Rating:G
Author's Note - this has been sitting around for ages, and I was going to post it to the Amnesty, but then the intrepid Chaps1870 convinced me it was really finished.....
Rodney finally understood, what they had all missed over their first few months in Atlantis. He understood and looking across the room, scanning the pallets that held the wounded. Understanding came at far too great a price.
Loathing. The word popped into his too-tired brain. Pure unadulterated loathing. After today he understood the difference between fear and loathing. He watched as Carson threaded his way across the room, glancing at each patient he passed. Watched him stop as something he saw bothered him. Who was that? Ah, one of the Athosians? Jared, that was his name, the one who had discovered the berries that tasted surprisingly like strawberries. It was one of the last lighthearted moments Rodney remembered, then they’d discovered the long range sensors and the hive ships.
Carson knelt down and placed a hand on the young man’s chest, skimmed it up to his neck, waited for the briefest of moments as he closed his eyes and slumped minutely. It was something you could easily have missed if you hadn’t been watching. But Rodney had been watching and Rodney knew the exact moment when Carson accepted that the tiny bump bump bump beneath his finger tips would never come. He watched the grayblue eyes open again and there was …what?…failure…sadness…and loathing. Then the cool efficient doctor was back, pulling the blanket up over the too calm face and calling one of the soldiers to carry the boy to the morgue.
Rodney pulled himself up off the pallet and limped across the room to where the doctor stood, put a hand on his arm and squeezed.
“What a bloody waste.”
Rodney squeezed again turning Carson to face him, “I’m sorry, he was a good kid.”
“What?” The doctor blinked, weary, lost in he own thoughts.
“I’m sorry about, Jared."
Teyla and Halling were here somewhere. Carson stood up searching across the sea of wounded. One of the Althosian leaders needed to be told. Rodney stood up, “Let me.” He headed off before the words to thank him had even formed in Carson’s mind.
A touch on his arm and he was drawn back into the madness. Eventually Rodney returned, Teyla with him. She helped him down onto his pallet and they waited. His injury was minor in comparison, he could wait, especially with the Althosian leader to keep him company. They waited and watched as the hours passed. Carson never stopped.
When the Wraith had invaded the city he’d fought with the rest of them. He’d been terrified of being taken by the Wraith, of living in that dreadful half alive state as his life was sucked out of him. The Wraith wakened every fear from a childhood lived in a land where ancient spirits dwelled. He was a scientist, but Carson knew what people like Rodney didn’t, that not everything was explained by logic and the orderly solving of mathematical equations. Rodney and Radek and the rest of the science staff lived in a world of data. Carson loved that world, but he wasn’t blinded by it. He’d walked the hills of his native land and felt the presence of souls much older than his own. He didn’t want his soul left to drift in some vast emptiness. The dead didn’t stay because they had to, they stayed because they didn’t want to be alone. Carson didn’t want to spend eternity alone.
Then the Daedalus had come and they’d fought off the attack. He’d carefully put aside the pills he’d carried with him, the ones he’d given to anyone who’d wanted them. Elizabeth hadn’t told him to, but she’d been the first to ask. “Don’t leave me without a way out, Carson. I need to know I won’t give up Earth.” And when he’d looked at her with eyes that had slowly gone from blue to gray with the weight of all their lives, she had blushed. “I don’t want to die that way…” So he’d quietly handed the pills to people, not even asking their names. He wondered briefly if he’d be made to pay for it, accomplice to how many murders? Some of the bodies in the morgue had no injuries.
Teyla studied him. She hadn’t asked for the pills, but she hadn’t forbidden him from giving them to her people either. There was no shame in denying the Wraith their lives however it was done, but she knew it would still weigh heavily on him. The man she looked at had given himself away, bit by bit. They weren’t good friends, but she respected him. He was a Healer. It was one of the things that she didn’t understand about the Earthlings, why they didn’t hold him in more reverence. To be a keeper of life was a great thing and not many had his gift for it. She knew, she had watched too many of her people die not to know when a man had the gift of keeping the spirit from leaving the body when there was nothing to keep it there anymore.
She had asked him about it once, why it was that the military didn’t respect him or the scientists. He had just chuckled and told her, “Never mind lass, it’s just the way it is. My job is to patch them up and send them back out again…..” It had started when she’d seen the words Dr. Kusangi had brushed on the wall in the early days of setting up Atlantis as their home. The Japanese doctor had come to the infirmary looking for headache tablets and left looking for animal fur to make a brush. Carson had been sketching the words out on the wall when she’d interrupted him. Primum non nocere. Teyla had asked him what they meant, and he’d translated for her, “First do no harm.”
She quirked her eyebrow, silently asking, and Beckett explained, “As a physician, it’s the principle I am sworn to uphold.”
“Is it not something we should all live by?”
“Aye lass, but that’s far easier said than done. More often than not ‘tis a matter of choosing between devils.”
And it was true. As a leader she’d been faced with the difficult choices that life here forced on you. “You are honored among my people Carson Beckett.” She’d said it solemnly and touched her forehead to his.
Now, months later, as the weary doctor slumped against a blessedly empty infirmary bed, she walked over to him and repeated the gesture.
Summary: Post Siege, character study
Characters :Beckett, McKay, Teyla, Weir
Rating:G
Author's Note - this has been sitting around for ages, and I was going to post it to the Amnesty, but then the intrepid Chaps1870 convinced me it was really finished.....
Rodney finally understood, what they had all missed over their first few months in Atlantis. He understood and looking across the room, scanning the pallets that held the wounded. Understanding came at far too great a price.
Loathing. The word popped into his too-tired brain. Pure unadulterated loathing. After today he understood the difference between fear and loathing. He watched as Carson threaded his way across the room, glancing at each patient he passed. Watched him stop as something he saw bothered him. Who was that? Ah, one of the Athosians? Jared, that was his name, the one who had discovered the berries that tasted surprisingly like strawberries. It was one of the last lighthearted moments Rodney remembered, then they’d discovered the long range sensors and the hive ships.
Carson knelt down and placed a hand on the young man’s chest, skimmed it up to his neck, waited for the briefest of moments as he closed his eyes and slumped minutely. It was something you could easily have missed if you hadn’t been watching. But Rodney had been watching and Rodney knew the exact moment when Carson accepted that the tiny bump bump bump beneath his finger tips would never come. He watched the grayblue eyes open again and there was …what?…failure…sadness…and loathing. Then the cool efficient doctor was back, pulling the blanket up over the too calm face and calling one of the soldiers to carry the boy to the morgue.
Rodney pulled himself up off the pallet and limped across the room to where the doctor stood, put a hand on his arm and squeezed.
“What a bloody waste.”
Rodney squeezed again turning Carson to face him, “I’m sorry, he was a good kid.”
“What?” The doctor blinked, weary, lost in he own thoughts.
“I’m sorry about, Jared."
Teyla and Halling were here somewhere. Carson stood up searching across the sea of wounded. One of the Althosian leaders needed to be told. Rodney stood up, “Let me.” He headed off before the words to thank him had even formed in Carson’s mind.
A touch on his arm and he was drawn back into the madness. Eventually Rodney returned, Teyla with him. She helped him down onto his pallet and they waited. His injury was minor in comparison, he could wait, especially with the Althosian leader to keep him company. They waited and watched as the hours passed. Carson never stopped.
When the Wraith had invaded the city he’d fought with the rest of them. He’d been terrified of being taken by the Wraith, of living in that dreadful half alive state as his life was sucked out of him. The Wraith wakened every fear from a childhood lived in a land where ancient spirits dwelled. He was a scientist, but Carson knew what people like Rodney didn’t, that not everything was explained by logic and the orderly solving of mathematical equations. Rodney and Radek and the rest of the science staff lived in a world of data. Carson loved that world, but he wasn’t blinded by it. He’d walked the hills of his native land and felt the presence of souls much older than his own. He didn’t want his soul left to drift in some vast emptiness. The dead didn’t stay because they had to, they stayed because they didn’t want to be alone. Carson didn’t want to spend eternity alone.
Then the Daedalus had come and they’d fought off the attack. He’d carefully put aside the pills he’d carried with him, the ones he’d given to anyone who’d wanted them. Elizabeth hadn’t told him to, but she’d been the first to ask. “Don’t leave me without a way out, Carson. I need to know I won’t give up Earth.” And when he’d looked at her with eyes that had slowly gone from blue to gray with the weight of all their lives, she had blushed. “I don’t want to die that way…” So he’d quietly handed the pills to people, not even asking their names. He wondered briefly if he’d be made to pay for it, accomplice to how many murders? Some of the bodies in the morgue had no injuries.
Teyla studied him. She hadn’t asked for the pills, but she hadn’t forbidden him from giving them to her people either. There was no shame in denying the Wraith their lives however it was done, but she knew it would still weigh heavily on him. The man she looked at had given himself away, bit by bit. They weren’t good friends, but she respected him. He was a Healer. It was one of the things that she didn’t understand about the Earthlings, why they didn’t hold him in more reverence. To be a keeper of life was a great thing and not many had his gift for it. She knew, she had watched too many of her people die not to know when a man had the gift of keeping the spirit from leaving the body when there was nothing to keep it there anymore.
She had asked him about it once, why it was that the military didn’t respect him or the scientists. He had just chuckled and told her, “Never mind lass, it’s just the way it is. My job is to patch them up and send them back out again…..” It had started when she’d seen the words Dr. Kusangi had brushed on the wall in the early days of setting up Atlantis as their home. The Japanese doctor had come to the infirmary looking for headache tablets and left looking for animal fur to make a brush. Carson had been sketching the words out on the wall when she’d interrupted him. Primum non nocere. Teyla had asked him what they meant, and he’d translated for her, “First do no harm.”
She quirked her eyebrow, silently asking, and Beckett explained, “As a physician, it’s the principle I am sworn to uphold.”
“Is it not something we should all live by?”
“Aye lass, but that’s far easier said than done. More often than not ‘tis a matter of choosing between devils.”
And it was true. As a leader she’d been faced with the difficult choices that life here forced on you. “You are honored among my people Carson Beckett.” She’d said it solemnly and touched her forehead to his.
Now, months later, as the weary doctor slumped against a blessedly empty infirmary bed, she walked over to him and repeated the gesture.