When I Sleep
Title: When I Sleep
Fandom: SGA - AU
Series: Goddess 'verse (Sequence #2)
Characters: Laura Cadman (Laru), Alison Porter, Evan Lorne (Lor), David Parrish
Pairings: Cadman/Porter, Lorne/Parrish, Lorne/Cadman
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,037
Orientation: Femslash, Slash
Notes: Sequel to Goddess in Our Midst
Warnings: BDSM, torture, near death of a canon character (Only Mostly Dead, I swear!)
Prompts:
Summer Flash #5 - Sleep
Kinkbingo fill: "Genital Torture" (Yes, again, damn it stupid 2nd card!)
HCBingo Postage Stamp: Headaches, Insomnia, Nightmares, Mental Health Issues
One of the perks of being a Goddess was that it gave one abilities to do many fun things, such as, mind reading. It came in handy when seeking out new mortals to play with, manipulate and use as a source to draw energies.
She was having a very fine time with her new acolyte, Doctor Alison Porter. Alison knew all about the finer points of proper worship. Laru had not been this sexed in centuries. She was quite satisfied with her current relationship with the talented foot loving Alison.
But a Goddess could not feed off one single person forever; she needed variety in her energy diet, so to speak.
Laru had a list in her head, ideas she had while carrying out her mundane duties as Lieutenant Laura Cadman. Random thoughts of scenarios she could prod people into. One of the top items on her list, one she had frequently thought about was in regards to the botanist, Doctor David Parrish. The doctor, bless his shy little heart, was head over heels in love with the leader of his away team, one Major Evan Lorne. Thanks to some extremely short sighted and ill-advised military regulations, it was seemingly impossible for any of the military on the base to have a same sex relationship. They still happened, of course, but were all secret and clandestine. Shy little Parrish wouldn’t speak up, and Lorne would never make the first move, so the pair were at a standstill, dancing around their attraction to each other.
With no other Gods or Goddesses in the immediate vicinity of the Pegasus galaxy, at least none Laru could sense, she felt it was her duty to step in and play the role of love Goddess and give them a push in the right direction. And if it caused a bit of chaos in the process, well, all the better for her personal energy levels. She could feed off love chaos just as easily as she could off regular, plain old garden variety frenetic chaos. It might even be better this way; she liked living on Atlantis, and while a nice thrilling battle would charge her to the max, she really didn’t want her home destroyed by a lucky wraith shot.
So, Goddess to the lovelorn she would be, temporarily.
~*~
The mission had gone belly up about halfway through the second day of trade negotiations. As usual, someone said something that bothered the natives and things had gone from tense to hostile in short order. Lorne’s ever-present headache got progressively worse as negotiations broke down and bloodshed ensued.
It had gotten really bad when one of the natives picked up a branch and lobbed it with expert precision at Parrish’s head. The doctor had looked quite startled for a few moments after the branch hit him. Then his head fell forward and he crumpled like a puppet with his strings cut into a boneless heap on the ground.
Lorne felt like his heart was in his throat as he ran forward, shoving at the three natives that got in his way and leaping a log to get to his scientist. He fell to his knees beside Parrish, kneeling in the puddle of blood that surrounded him. His hand was shaking as he reached out to press his fingers to Parrish’s throat in search of a pulse. Thank the heavens he had one. If he’d been completely gone, Lorne could do nothing for him.
He glanced around to make sure no one was watching. All eyes were on the fight at the center of the clearing; Sergeant Stackhouse had taken on one of the big brutes of the village and was putting on quite a show for everyone, getting his ass soundly kicked. He slowly and cautiously let out a small bit of energy, concentrating it on repairing the worst damages Parrish had sustained. There was bleeding in his brain - that was bad. He focused on that. He couldn’t heal him completely, that would draw suspicion from Doctor Beckett when the team got back to Atlantis. Drawing that kind of attention would be bad. It would upset the balance of things. Evan could not do anything that would negate the balance, it was not his role, it was anathema to his very nature as a God of Order.
Once Parrish was stabilized, he checked on the status of his other team members. Stackhouse, miraculously, had brought down the brute. He tapped his radio. “We need to get the hell out of Dodge, people. Parrish needs medical attention, stat. I’m going for the ‘jumper. Someone come and stay with Parrish.”
Stackhouse limped over, his P-90 held up and ready. He was apparently done with fisticuffs for the day and prepared to shoot the next person that threatened him. He looked down at Parrish in confusion. “Major?”
“Head wound, someone clubbed him with a branch. Stay with him.”
“Roger that.”
Evan ran full out for the ‘jumper. He could care less at this point about the negotiations or where the natives had taken themselves off to. Parrish was in trouble. Damn it. This might blow his cover. He couldn’t let David go, if he had to use his powers to save him, he would, no matter the consequences. David was the first person in centuries Evan had given a damn about. He wasn’t ready to let him go.
He had come to Atlantis in an attempt to get away from the chaos on Earth. A smaller population meant much less chaos, which was physically painful to Evan in any form he chose to take. Since coming to Atlantis, he had been able to integrate himself into the society here. He could bear to be around people again. He had probably made a mistake, taking another military persona, but the military offered structure and order, which he needed to continue existing. He’d been lucky enough to avoid too many battle situations, battles were chaotic by nature. Battles hurt.
‘I should have gone into accounting, nice safe orderly columns of numbers,’ he thought as he reached the puddlejumper and ran up the back ramp. Throwing himself into the pilot’s seat, he took off and headed back towards the clearing where he had left his team. He murmured a mantra over and over, “David don’t die, David don’t die.”
He touched the jumper down and charged out the back, grabbing the backboard from the straps in the cargo compartment as he passed. His team and this jumper did so many rescues; it had been equipped with everything they could think of that might be used in a rescue op.
David was still breathing when he got to him. With Stackhouse standing guard over them, randomly firing off a few shots with his P-90 any time a native poked their head out of the trees on the other side of the clearing, Lorne and Sergeant Sills were able to get Parrish secured to the backboard and carried him to the jumper. Stackhouse ran in after them and slammed a hand down on the ramp control. “All clear, Major!”
He prayed all the way home to Atlantis. If pressed, he wouldn’t be able to tell which Gods he thought would answer the prayers. He had not seen one of the Others in centuries. He thought he sensed one occasionally on Atlantis, but he could not search fully without revealing himself. He was not very adept at concealing his presence; reconstructing his carefully built cover would take a lot of time and precious energies that he was hoarding for emergencies.
He couldn’t reveal himself. Revealing himself would be a terrible thing to do. It had been awkward in the past, when people only suspected something was odd about him. When he’d been found by one of the Others, when his nature as a God of Order had been discovered, it had been bad, painfully bad.
~*~
“Major you did well, getting him here as quickly as you did. Doctor Parrish has a very bad skull fracture. I’m worried about bleeding and swelling, so I’m keeping him sedated for the present.”
“Will he be all right?” Lorne asked fearfully. His own head was pounding. He wished there was a medication in Beckett’s supplies that had a chance of taking the edge off his headache, but he knew from experience that nothing would help. Nothing but a good strong dose of energies would help him, and that was not happening any time soon.
“Aye, I think so. He’s a strong lad, in good health. So long as there are no complications, I think he’ll pull through this without any lasting effects.” Doctor Beckett patted Lorne’s shoulder. “You lads should clean up and get some sleep.”
Sleep. Lorne laughed in his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually slept. Sleep brought the dreams. The dreams always turned into nightmares. He shuddered at the thought of actually putting this body down and attempting to let it sleep. If he went to sleep, his control would slip. If his control slipped, the cycle of chaos might start all over again. So long as he maintained control, everything was good.
This physical form needed rest, needed downtime. He knew the lack of sleep and the fact that he was functioning on bare sustenance levels of energy were the cause of his headache. The only rest he was able to get was through a very precisely controlled meditation that he had learned on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy back in the days before the Asurans had even finished designing Atlantis. Evan did this exercise every night. It helped, the headache usually abated to tolerable levels by morning. He was able to maintain his mortal form and with a small expenditure of healing energy now and then, he could sustain himself. Natural sleep would be best, but his meditations provided some relief.
“Doc, can I see him?” Lorne called to Beckett’s retreating back as Sills and Stackhouse left the infirmary.
Doctor Beckett waved him in and pointed to one of the medical bays. Lorne walked over and approached the bed. David looked very pale, fragile and broken there on the bed, his head wrapped in stark white bandages. The infirmary always made Evan nervous. It was too much like torture, there was too much pain here. People in pain rubbed against him the wrong way, drained his energies. Lingering between life and death, in flux, in a chaotic state, it was too much for Evan to bear being near the dying.
There were tubes and monitors hooked up to David. He glanced around at them; he only understood half of what he saw. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to do much; just a little, just enough to ensure that David kept on living. He clasped one limp and chilled hand in his own and gave it a squeeze.
“Can you hear me, David? Are you in there? Please be in there.” He opened up, just the slightest bit, and let a little of his precious hoard of energy go into David. Enough to see him through and get him back on his feet. Evan had not done this for a mortal in nearly a thousand years. It had been nearly that long since he had truly cared for another person, had let himself get close enough to care. He had not taken physical form for centuries in an attempt to avoid getting close to anyone. The thought made him very sad and lonely.
Something about this man called out to him, made him want to stay and be part of all of this. He could drift away, find somewhere else to be. He could be incorporeal again and not have to worry about this paralyzing insomnia and fear of sleep and the nightmares that came with it.
He stayed there beside the bed just holding David’s hand and watching his friend sleep. He pulled a chair over to sit, despite his natural inclination to flee the infirmary as soon as possible.
~*~
Alison had come to Laru’s quarters and paid her proper reverences, worshipping at Laru’s feet and pleasuring her greatly with her hands and mouth. Laru really enjoyed having this relationship with the blue eyed doctor.
Her little doctor could also be an invaluable source of locker room gossip. Laru had learned many things through a bit of pillow talk with her lover.
The latest thing of interest to come from Alison was that AG-2 had come in from the field one man down today. Apparently, David Parrish had been seriously hurt on a mission. Laru waited until Alison had fallen asleep and then decided to pay a little visit to the infirmary. She slid out of bed, kissed Alison’s forehead and left the room.
The infirmary had the lights set at the nighttime setting, all was still and quiet. She stealthily went in, gliding past the night nurse on duty with the barest toss of energy to conceal her presence. She was brought up short when she spotted Major Lorne in a chair beside one of the beds. She crept closer and saw that it was Parrish in the bed, as expected from Alison’s report.
She wondered how badly injured he was. His head was heavily bandaged and there were a lot of monitors and tubes attached to him. Lorne probably knew what his condition was, he was his team leader, and he was sitting vigil. She reached out to brush against his mind and grab the information from his surface thoughts. She was hit with a powerful backlash of energy so great it knocked her backwards into the wall. Senseless, she slid down the wall and blacked out.
~*~
When she opened her eyes, Lorne was crouched beside her, a look of absolute disgust on his face. “You!” he hissed.
“What?” She was so confused. What in the hell had happened? She passed out? She never passed out. How had that happened?
“I thought I sensed someone a couple of times. It figures it would be you, Laru. How could I be so blind as to not see it? You even look the same as the last time I saw you.”
“What are you talking about, Major?” He had used her true name, so she knew she was found out. But how? Who and what was he?”
She was about to reach out to use her powers to do a little probing when he raised a hand in warning at her. “Don’t try it. I have enough stored up to put you through this wall, don’t think I won’t.”
She wriggled up into a sitting position and stared at him. “You’re obviously one of the Orderly types, aren’t you? Which one are you?” She tossed up a bubble around them, hiding them from the eyes of anyone that might walk past them in the infirmary, giving them privacy for their little family reunion.
With a nasty little smirk, he nodded. “Lor. What are you doing here, Laru? This is my place. Did you do something to the real Laura Cadman?”
Affronted and completely insulted, she sat up and jabbed a finger at his chest. “I AM the real Laura Cadman, for your information. Did you swap out the real Evan Lorne?”
“No. I’m him; he’s me, same person.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared at her. “Now what?”
“Well, obviously, this ruins all my plans. Completely shreds them into a million little pieces!” she replied in frustration. “We could continue on as we were. We’ve both been here for years and never interfered with each other before. Why not continue that way?”
“You’re a fucking Goddess of Chaos, Cadman! Do you have any idea what you do to me when you work your tricks?”
“I don’t do it often,” she pouted. “I need a place to exist too, Major Lorne. Just because my very being makes you uncomfortable, does that mean I don’t have as much right to be here as you do?”
He sat back on his heels and stared at her, chewing his lower lip. “You’re not trying to stir up a huge mass of chaos here?”
“No. I like it here. I like the city. I don’t want to see anything happen to it. I keep things to a minimum of fuss, a little chaos here and there just to give me enough energy to get by on. I swear by Thorin’s hammer, I am not here to disrupt your perfect, happy world, Major Lorne.”
“I told you my name is Lor.”
“I prefer to think of you as one of my mortal commanding officers; it makes things less frightening than having an Order God around. Now I’ll have to worry that I’m going to be smited into nothingness every second of the day, if I so much as look at you wrong or say the wrong thing.”
He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked on his heels as he looked at her. The anger and aggression drained out of him suddenly and he looked very lost, very unlike the confident Air Force officer she knew. He stared at the wall behind her and in a small voice said, “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Something was wrong with him. Her senses were tingling with it. He didn’t have the same presence as the Others. “Lor, let me look at you, please. I want to help. I might be able to help.” She reached a hand out and clasped his wrist. He stared at her hand for a full minute before he nodded.
Reaching out with her senses, she brushed across his mind. Everything on the surface seemed to be all right. She searched for a doorway down deeper, and finding it, she stepped through.
And found herself in a nightmare.
~*~
Laru knew that she was only an observer here. She knew she could do nothing to affect what she was seeing. This was all memory and construct, the past and imagination. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t now. It was all in Lor’s mind.
She still shivered. This was a cold place, a place of pain. She knew it; she had come here once in error. Desh’s place. A God of Chaos, like herself, but so very different. Desh looked for trouble, he liked causing pain, he fed off negative emotions. There was no sense of play in Desh, none at all. He existed to make others suffer, he reveled in suffering.
She walked down a curving stone stairwell into darkness. She felt her way along the wall, solid here for her, despite being a mind construct. Falling down would likely hurt her. So would running into something like a door or a fist. She hoped she was an invisible observer, it could go either way, one never knew with dreamwalking, she might be invisible, Laru might be part of the dream. She could be taking the place of someone else. The dreamscape was a very tricky thing. She was not an adept at this skill, and so she moved forward with trepidation. She had not expected to walk into this when she touched Lor’s mind, but she would do the best she could with what she had been given.
Torches lit the dungeon further up. Laru walked forward, listening. She heard Desh before she saw him. “Not so strong now, are you? Can’t do anything now, can you?”
“Please.” Lorne’s voice, weak and filled with pain.
A whip cracked and she heard Lor scream, the depth of the pain made Laru wince. She crept closer until she could see. Desh must have bound Lor into his mortal form, or else Lor would have gotten away, would have transmuted himself into energy that could not be hurt by the tools of the dungeon.
What she saw made her ill. Desh raised the whip, a cat o’nine tails with barbed ends and snapped it out, catching Lor’s groin. The skin was caught on the barbs and pulled and tore as Desh yanked back. This was meant to hurt, meant to harm.
Lor’s eyes were brimming with tears as he stared at Desh and begged him to stop.
“Oh, no, little Godling, no I’m not through with you. You dared to interfere in my business? You were stupid enough to fall into my trap and now you will pay the price for your interference. The lash snapped again and Lor screamed.
Desh moved close to Lor, reaching out to stroke a hand along his body. As he did, Desh shuddered. His hand moved down to his leather pants and he shifted his engorged member within. He put a hand to Lor’s limp and bloody groin and pressed a palm hard against it. Lor whimpered in pain and stared at Desh, meeting his eyes. Desh threw back his head and laughed. Then he shuddered again, drawing off Lor’s energies, taking without permission, stealing Lor’s life energies.
Laru was furious. No wonder Lor hated her kind. He probably thought all Chaos Gods were like Desh.
Desh stepped back and dropped the cat, picking up instead a single lash. He stood back and let the whip crack out, echoing through the dungeons. Lor’s screams echoed too, each time the lash landed, another stripe of blood appeared, and other chunk of his flesh was torn away.
How many lashes could a human body take? Lor was definitely stuck in this mortal form. When it seemed like he should not be able to stand any more, Desh dropped the whip and strode forward. He grabbed Lorne’s hair and forced his face up, made him look him in the eye as he hissed, “Oh, no. You do not get to die!” Desh began to glow and light surrounded both Desh and Lor. When it faded, Lor was whole again, the wounds gone.
She sagged in relief, but it was short lived. Bending, Desh retrieved the whip and snapped it out, catching Lor in the groin and wringing a sharp cry of pain from him. “Fresh and new, isn’t it, little Godling? You remember how this goes, don’t you?” Desh ran forward and pulled a sharp blade from his belt. He pressed the edge to Lor’s mid section, drawing it down. “Or shall we do it differently this time? Shall we see what your insides look like?”
Lor let out a strangled cry as the knife slid down. Laru bit down on her knuckles and backed away. She had wanted to wait until the end of this, to see how Lor got away, but she sensed that this had been just one of many such sessions, that Desh had repeatedly healed and tortured Lor to the point of death over and over again.
She found the stairs in the dark and climbed them. She pushed open the door and walked past Lorne’s surface memories of Pegasus missions, Wraith, Colonel Sheppard, painting on the pier, eating meals with Parrish. Laru concentrated her thoughts and forced herself back into her own mind, alone. She blinked at the bright lights of the infirmary.
“Did you have fun?” Lor asked, still in a rocking crouch beside her as she sat on the floor beside him.
“No. Do you know what I saw?”
He shrugged, “I have a pretty good idea. Desh?”
“Desh.” She confirmed with a nod. “How did he get you, how did he bind you?”
He snorted and looked away, “Why, you want a chance at me?”
“No. No.” She clasped his arm and tugged until he looked at her. “I want to help. It doesn’t matter how he got you. I don’t need to know how he bound you either. I suppose it is enough to know that he did manage it. Did he let you go?”
“Eventually, he grew bored. He healed me one last time and dropped me in this form on Earth.”
Laru tilted her head, “Did you seek retribution, did you get Others of Order and go after Desh?”
He laughed at that, running a hand over his face. “As if I could. I haven’t shifted forms since he... I don’t think I can anymore. I haven’t been able to recharge more than a tiny bit, and only when things are perfectly in order and running properly. You know how often that happens.”
“You’re drained?” Understanding dawned and she realized why her existence was bothering him, he had no defenses, no strength to bolster himself against Chaos.
“Almost.”
She felt tears welling up in her eyes. A mortal response to the sadness she felt hearing his story. She had to do something. He needed help. But how, and what kind of help?
Laru glanced over at David lying so still in his bed. Love. No wonder Lor held himself apart, avoided a relationship with Parrish, if he carried all those painful memories.
“You should rest, you look exhausted,” Laru said softly.
He gave another of those derisive snorts. “I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep.”
“Have you tried?”
“Not in a long time.”
“Come with me.” She stood and held a hand out to him, banishing the bubble that had been secluding them with a thought. He stayed as he was for a few moments, staring at her hand. “Lor, when was the last time someone understood what you were and what you needed?”
He slipped his hand into hers and let her drag him up. She led him from the infirmary to her quarters. Once inside, she steered him towards her bed, which was thankfully empty, she had left Alison in her own quarters. He hedged and backed away from the bed as if it were another of Desh’s instruments of torture.
“Shh. Easy. Just a bed, Lor. Get in. I won’t leave you alone. I’ll be here.” He stretched out awkwardly on top of the covers and folded his hands over his belly. Laru lay down beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. When he gave her a suspicious glance, she whispered, “No nonsense, just sleeping, Major.”
He closed his eyes. After about an hour he sat up and said with annoyance, “This isn’t going to work. I cannot sleep, not anymore.”
“Lor, this body needs to sleep, how is it you haven’t collapsed before now?” She rose up on one elbow and stared at him in the moonlight.
“Meditation, a little healing energy now and then.” Propping his elbows on his knees, he dropped his face into his hands. “Look, I appreciate you trying to help, Laura, but this isn’t going to work.”
“Down,” she ordered, tugging on his shirt. He surprised her by complying.
“Don’t fight me. Just go with this.” She spread her hands over his chest and shoved a bit of her energy at him, specifically pushing at him to sleep. She could put mortals to sleep at will; it was one of her best tricks. If Lor was fully integrated with his mortal body the trick should work on him.
It did, he closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. He slept. Laru smiled and settled down beside him and immediately drifted off to sleep.
He woke her with his screaming, and she stroked his face and neck, whispering soft words and endearments into his ear, rocking him in her arms until he calmed and went back to sleep.
In the morning, he woke when her alarm went off, an hour before her duty shift. She opened her eyes and blinked up at him, yawning and stretching. “Good morning.”
“I slept!” He exclaimed happily. He leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth. “I really slept!”
“Yes you did. Don’t you feel better?”
He nodded after thinking about it. “I actually do.”
“Right. So, twenty hundred, here?”
“Huh?” He watched her rise from the bed with confusion.
She opened her cupboard and reached for a clean uniform. “Tonight, twenty hundred, you need to get in the habit of sleeping again, Major. I think once your energies get up to normal levels, you might be able to fight off the nightmares on your own. The insomnia isn’t going away overnight, not with the root cause still firmly in place. I’ve seen your nightmares, Believe me, I understand where this is coming from.”
He chewed his lip and then nodded. “Okay. If you’re willing. I don’t know why you’re willing.”
She moved to stand in front of him and bent down to kiss his lips softly and then she patted his cheek. “I’m lonely too, for Others. Since you’re the best I’ve seen in decades, I’ll make due with you.”
“Well, you’re honest.”
“Today I am.” She gave him a cheeky smile and disappeared into the bathroom while he let himself out.
~*~
She tracked him down that night at eleven hundred hours, in the chair beside Parrish’s bed. There were more tubes, one going down his throat now. When Lor looked up at her, there was resignation in his eyes.
“He’s slipping, he stopped breathing, they had to do that about two hours ago.” He pointed a shaking hand at the breathing tube.
Laru moved to the bedside. She wasn’t a healing adept. That was a God of Orders prevue. She couldn’t heal Parrish, no matter how much she wanted to.
“You love him?” Laru whispered the question.
Lor nodded, his eyes going wide as a machine nearby began to beep alarmingly.
“What would you do to save him?”
“Anything. I have nothing left; I drained myself dry already trying.”
She reached for the hand that wasn’t holding David’s and told him, “This is going to hurt, you find your center again and you use it, find a way to use what I give you to heal him.”
With wide eyes, he clenched her hand and nodded. She closed her eyes and muttered “I must be fucking nuts.” Then she pushed energy at Lor, pure energy, not filtered through her mind for any purpose but being what it already was, energy.
She heard Lor gasp and felt him move as he fell forward out of the chair under the barrage of chaotic energy. If just her random use of these chaotic energies caused him pain, this had to be agony for him, trying to process it in raw form. “No more! Laru, no more, enough, stop!” he cried out and she dropped his hand and stepped back, blinking away the spots in front of her eyes.
He was on his knees, head bent, gasping for breath. She heard the footsteps of infirmary personnel coming to answer the alarm on David’s bedside. She needed to buy Lor time. Checking to make sure David was the only patient, which he was, she tossed a little energy and made the infirmary go dark. She heard the nurses complaining and Beckett cursing a blue streak as they tried to find their way in the pitch dark. Lor could see, he didn’t need the artificial light. She tossed a little more energy and rearranged the furniture around the infirmary, further hampering the medical personnel’s efforts to get to Parrish.
She’d done what she could; the rest was up to Lor.
~*~
When he had drained himself dry, knowing it might end him, he had not cared, if it would save David. Let his existence count for something; let another live, even at this cost.
But it had not helped. And now he was as doomed as David, drained dry of energy, he would wither and fade and cease to be within days. Without David, he didn’t think it mattered.
Then Laru had come into the infirmary, shining bright with healthy energy, and she had given him hope, for a brief moment, before he remembered that a Goddess of Chaos could not heal.
The crash back down to despair was swift and painful.
Then she gifted him, pouring energy into him. Raw Chaos, but energy where he was dry, he could suffer the pain of this. He felt old wounds within himself healing under the onslaught of power. His head stopped hurting, his vision cleared, he felt like himself again, even through the almost unbearable pain.
At some point, the lights went out and he was in darkness. But it did not matter, he could see with Other Sight, he knew where he needed to go, what he needed to do.
He clasped David’s limp hand and forced healing energies on him, forced life back into his fading form. When he sensed David had his fill, only then did he shout for Laru to stop pushing at him, to stop the flow. Rion’s Bow, she had a wellspring of energy to have fed him so much for so long.
“I hope it was enough,” he whispered raggedly and collapsed to the floor.
~*~
David opened his eyes and looked around just as the lights came back on at Laru’s nudge. The infirmary was a mess. It looked like a small whirlwind had cut through the place, knocking everything askew.
“Hello Lieutenant Cadman,” David said when he noticed her standing there beside his bed.
“Doctor Parrish. How are you feeling?”
“My head aches, but otherwise, I feel okay. What happened?”
She looked around and shrugged. “A little tremor or something. The lights just came back on. I think there’s someone here that was waiting to see you.” She reached down and hauled on someone’s uniformed arm.
Major Lorne peeked over the edge of the bed and slowly used the mattress to pull himself up to his feet. Lorne gave him a goofy smile as he leaned on the mattress, looking into David’s face. “Hi, David!”
“Hi… Evan,” David smiled when Lorne’s silly grin got wider.
“You feel okay?”
“My head hurts.”
Beckett and his nurses finally go to the bedside, after navigating a minefield of overturned equipment. Beckett was in time to hear David’s complaint. He went to the side opposite Lorne and leaned in, shining a penlight into David’s eyes. “Aye, well, yer head is going to hurt for a while lad. You’ve a skull fracture.”
“I do?”
Lorne’s smile dimmed and he nodded seriously, his eyes fixed on David’s face.
“Well, ow,” David mumbled. “I’m hungry, can I have rice pudding?”
“We’ve a bit of a mess here…” Beckett started to explain.
“I’ll go get you some. Be back soon. Cadman, with me.” Lorne grabbed her elbow and dragged her out of the infirmary. When they got to a supply closet, he backed into it, pulling her along with him.
“Thank you,” He bent his head and kissed her lips in gratitude. “It appears I owe you a pretty big debt, Laru. Are you all right, you didn’t drain yourself, did you?”
“Nah! I’m fine. A little wobbly, but it’s kinda like being drunk. I don’t mind it a bit.” She laughed and patted his chest. “You don’t owe me anything, Lor; I was just helping a friend. Now, go get your guy his pudding.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He patted her arm and they went to the mess hall together.
~*~
“So, let me get this straight, you don’t want to sleep here because you have a ‘sleep disorder.’” David made air quotes, he was nerdy like that.
“Yeah.”
David was also stubborn. “Do you sleep walk?”
“No.”
“Wet the bed?”
Lorne shook his head vehemently. “No!”
“Do you stop breathing? Oh, wait, do you wear one of those Darth Vader masks at night? Luke I am your father.”
Laughing at David’s Darth Vader impersonation, Lorne leaned in and kissed his lips. “No.”
“Then what?”
“Insomnia, and nightmares, bad ones, when I finally do get to sleep.”
“This calls for early bedtime. And cuddling. Listen to the doctor; he knows what is good for you.”
Lorne chuckled and let David drag him back down to the mattress. “You’re a plant doctor, David.”
“And none of my plants are sick, or have nightmares. So, I must know what I am doing. Cuddle, please.”
Snuggling up against his lover, Lor sighed happily and burrowed his nose into David’s neck. This might not be so bad, staying the night here.
The End
Fandom: SGA - AU
Series: Goddess 'verse (Sequence #2)
Characters: Laura Cadman (Laru), Alison Porter, Evan Lorne (Lor), David Parrish
Pairings: Cadman/Porter, Lorne/Parrish, Lorne/Cadman
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,037
Orientation: Femslash, Slash
Notes: Sequel to Goddess in Our Midst
Warnings: BDSM, torture, near death of a canon character (Only Mostly Dead, I swear!)
Prompts:
Summer Flash #5 - Sleep
Kinkbingo fill: "Genital Torture" (Yes, again, damn it stupid 2nd card!)
HCBingo Postage Stamp: Headaches, Insomnia, Nightmares, Mental Health Issues
One of the perks of being a Goddess was that it gave one abilities to do many fun things, such as, mind reading. It came in handy when seeking out new mortals to play with, manipulate and use as a source to draw energies.
She was having a very fine time with her new acolyte, Doctor Alison Porter. Alison knew all about the finer points of proper worship. Laru had not been this sexed in centuries. She was quite satisfied with her current relationship with the talented foot loving Alison.
But a Goddess could not feed off one single person forever; she needed variety in her energy diet, so to speak.
Laru had a list in her head, ideas she had while carrying out her mundane duties as Lieutenant Laura Cadman. Random thoughts of scenarios she could prod people into. One of the top items on her list, one she had frequently thought about was in regards to the botanist, Doctor David Parrish. The doctor, bless his shy little heart, was head over heels in love with the leader of his away team, one Major Evan Lorne. Thanks to some extremely short sighted and ill-advised military regulations, it was seemingly impossible for any of the military on the base to have a same sex relationship. They still happened, of course, but were all secret and clandestine. Shy little Parrish wouldn’t speak up, and Lorne would never make the first move, so the pair were at a standstill, dancing around their attraction to each other.
With no other Gods or Goddesses in the immediate vicinity of the Pegasus galaxy, at least none Laru could sense, she felt it was her duty to step in and play the role of love Goddess and give them a push in the right direction. And if it caused a bit of chaos in the process, well, all the better for her personal energy levels. She could feed off love chaos just as easily as she could off regular, plain old garden variety frenetic chaos. It might even be better this way; she liked living on Atlantis, and while a nice thrilling battle would charge her to the max, she really didn’t want her home destroyed by a lucky wraith shot.
So, Goddess to the lovelorn she would be, temporarily.
~*~
The mission had gone belly up about halfway through the second day of trade negotiations. As usual, someone said something that bothered the natives and things had gone from tense to hostile in short order. Lorne’s ever-present headache got progressively worse as negotiations broke down and bloodshed ensued.
It had gotten really bad when one of the natives picked up a branch and lobbed it with expert precision at Parrish’s head. The doctor had looked quite startled for a few moments after the branch hit him. Then his head fell forward and he crumpled like a puppet with his strings cut into a boneless heap on the ground.
Lorne felt like his heart was in his throat as he ran forward, shoving at the three natives that got in his way and leaping a log to get to his scientist. He fell to his knees beside Parrish, kneeling in the puddle of blood that surrounded him. His hand was shaking as he reached out to press his fingers to Parrish’s throat in search of a pulse. Thank the heavens he had one. If he’d been completely gone, Lorne could do nothing for him.
He glanced around to make sure no one was watching. All eyes were on the fight at the center of the clearing; Sergeant Stackhouse had taken on one of the big brutes of the village and was putting on quite a show for everyone, getting his ass soundly kicked. He slowly and cautiously let out a small bit of energy, concentrating it on repairing the worst damages Parrish had sustained. There was bleeding in his brain - that was bad. He focused on that. He couldn’t heal him completely, that would draw suspicion from Doctor Beckett when the team got back to Atlantis. Drawing that kind of attention would be bad. It would upset the balance of things. Evan could not do anything that would negate the balance, it was not his role, it was anathema to his very nature as a God of Order.
Once Parrish was stabilized, he checked on the status of his other team members. Stackhouse, miraculously, had brought down the brute. He tapped his radio. “We need to get the hell out of Dodge, people. Parrish needs medical attention, stat. I’m going for the ‘jumper. Someone come and stay with Parrish.”
Stackhouse limped over, his P-90 held up and ready. He was apparently done with fisticuffs for the day and prepared to shoot the next person that threatened him. He looked down at Parrish in confusion. “Major?”
“Head wound, someone clubbed him with a branch. Stay with him.”
“Roger that.”
Evan ran full out for the ‘jumper. He could care less at this point about the negotiations or where the natives had taken themselves off to. Parrish was in trouble. Damn it. This might blow his cover. He couldn’t let David go, if he had to use his powers to save him, he would, no matter the consequences. David was the first person in centuries Evan had given a damn about. He wasn’t ready to let him go.
He had come to Atlantis in an attempt to get away from the chaos on Earth. A smaller population meant much less chaos, which was physically painful to Evan in any form he chose to take. Since coming to Atlantis, he had been able to integrate himself into the society here. He could bear to be around people again. He had probably made a mistake, taking another military persona, but the military offered structure and order, which he needed to continue existing. He’d been lucky enough to avoid too many battle situations, battles were chaotic by nature. Battles hurt.
‘I should have gone into accounting, nice safe orderly columns of numbers,’ he thought as he reached the puddlejumper and ran up the back ramp. Throwing himself into the pilot’s seat, he took off and headed back towards the clearing where he had left his team. He murmured a mantra over and over, “David don’t die, David don’t die.”
He touched the jumper down and charged out the back, grabbing the backboard from the straps in the cargo compartment as he passed. His team and this jumper did so many rescues; it had been equipped with everything they could think of that might be used in a rescue op.
David was still breathing when he got to him. With Stackhouse standing guard over them, randomly firing off a few shots with his P-90 any time a native poked their head out of the trees on the other side of the clearing, Lorne and Sergeant Sills were able to get Parrish secured to the backboard and carried him to the jumper. Stackhouse ran in after them and slammed a hand down on the ramp control. “All clear, Major!”
He prayed all the way home to Atlantis. If pressed, he wouldn’t be able to tell which Gods he thought would answer the prayers. He had not seen one of the Others in centuries. He thought he sensed one occasionally on Atlantis, but he could not search fully without revealing himself. He was not very adept at concealing his presence; reconstructing his carefully built cover would take a lot of time and precious energies that he was hoarding for emergencies.
He couldn’t reveal himself. Revealing himself would be a terrible thing to do. It had been awkward in the past, when people only suspected something was odd about him. When he’d been found by one of the Others, when his nature as a God of Order had been discovered, it had been bad, painfully bad.
~*~
“Major you did well, getting him here as quickly as you did. Doctor Parrish has a very bad skull fracture. I’m worried about bleeding and swelling, so I’m keeping him sedated for the present.”
“Will he be all right?” Lorne asked fearfully. His own head was pounding. He wished there was a medication in Beckett’s supplies that had a chance of taking the edge off his headache, but he knew from experience that nothing would help. Nothing but a good strong dose of energies would help him, and that was not happening any time soon.
“Aye, I think so. He’s a strong lad, in good health. So long as there are no complications, I think he’ll pull through this without any lasting effects.” Doctor Beckett patted Lorne’s shoulder. “You lads should clean up and get some sleep.”
Sleep. Lorne laughed in his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually slept. Sleep brought the dreams. The dreams always turned into nightmares. He shuddered at the thought of actually putting this body down and attempting to let it sleep. If he went to sleep, his control would slip. If his control slipped, the cycle of chaos might start all over again. So long as he maintained control, everything was good.
This physical form needed rest, needed downtime. He knew the lack of sleep and the fact that he was functioning on bare sustenance levels of energy were the cause of his headache. The only rest he was able to get was through a very precisely controlled meditation that he had learned on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy back in the days before the Asurans had even finished designing Atlantis. Evan did this exercise every night. It helped, the headache usually abated to tolerable levels by morning. He was able to maintain his mortal form and with a small expenditure of healing energy now and then, he could sustain himself. Natural sleep would be best, but his meditations provided some relief.
“Doc, can I see him?” Lorne called to Beckett’s retreating back as Sills and Stackhouse left the infirmary.
Doctor Beckett waved him in and pointed to one of the medical bays. Lorne walked over and approached the bed. David looked very pale, fragile and broken there on the bed, his head wrapped in stark white bandages. The infirmary always made Evan nervous. It was too much like torture, there was too much pain here. People in pain rubbed against him the wrong way, drained his energies. Lingering between life and death, in flux, in a chaotic state, it was too much for Evan to bear being near the dying.
There were tubes and monitors hooked up to David. He glanced around at them; he only understood half of what he saw. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to do much; just a little, just enough to ensure that David kept on living. He clasped one limp and chilled hand in his own and gave it a squeeze.
“Can you hear me, David? Are you in there? Please be in there.” He opened up, just the slightest bit, and let a little of his precious hoard of energy go into David. Enough to see him through and get him back on his feet. Evan had not done this for a mortal in nearly a thousand years. It had been nearly that long since he had truly cared for another person, had let himself get close enough to care. He had not taken physical form for centuries in an attempt to avoid getting close to anyone. The thought made him very sad and lonely.
Something about this man called out to him, made him want to stay and be part of all of this. He could drift away, find somewhere else to be. He could be incorporeal again and not have to worry about this paralyzing insomnia and fear of sleep and the nightmares that came with it.
He stayed there beside the bed just holding David’s hand and watching his friend sleep. He pulled a chair over to sit, despite his natural inclination to flee the infirmary as soon as possible.
~*~
Alison had come to Laru’s quarters and paid her proper reverences, worshipping at Laru’s feet and pleasuring her greatly with her hands and mouth. Laru really enjoyed having this relationship with the blue eyed doctor.
Her little doctor could also be an invaluable source of locker room gossip. Laru had learned many things through a bit of pillow talk with her lover.
The latest thing of interest to come from Alison was that AG-2 had come in from the field one man down today. Apparently, David Parrish had been seriously hurt on a mission. Laru waited until Alison had fallen asleep and then decided to pay a little visit to the infirmary. She slid out of bed, kissed Alison’s forehead and left the room.
The infirmary had the lights set at the nighttime setting, all was still and quiet. She stealthily went in, gliding past the night nurse on duty with the barest toss of energy to conceal her presence. She was brought up short when she spotted Major Lorne in a chair beside one of the beds. She crept closer and saw that it was Parrish in the bed, as expected from Alison’s report.
She wondered how badly injured he was. His head was heavily bandaged and there were a lot of monitors and tubes attached to him. Lorne probably knew what his condition was, he was his team leader, and he was sitting vigil. She reached out to brush against his mind and grab the information from his surface thoughts. She was hit with a powerful backlash of energy so great it knocked her backwards into the wall. Senseless, she slid down the wall and blacked out.
~*~
When she opened her eyes, Lorne was crouched beside her, a look of absolute disgust on his face. “You!” he hissed.
“What?” She was so confused. What in the hell had happened? She passed out? She never passed out. How had that happened?
“I thought I sensed someone a couple of times. It figures it would be you, Laru. How could I be so blind as to not see it? You even look the same as the last time I saw you.”
“What are you talking about, Major?” He had used her true name, so she knew she was found out. But how? Who and what was he?”
She was about to reach out to use her powers to do a little probing when he raised a hand in warning at her. “Don’t try it. I have enough stored up to put you through this wall, don’t think I won’t.”
She wriggled up into a sitting position and stared at him. “You’re obviously one of the Orderly types, aren’t you? Which one are you?” She tossed up a bubble around them, hiding them from the eyes of anyone that might walk past them in the infirmary, giving them privacy for their little family reunion.
With a nasty little smirk, he nodded. “Lor. What are you doing here, Laru? This is my place. Did you do something to the real Laura Cadman?”
Affronted and completely insulted, she sat up and jabbed a finger at his chest. “I AM the real Laura Cadman, for your information. Did you swap out the real Evan Lorne?”
“No. I’m him; he’s me, same person.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared at her. “Now what?”
“Well, obviously, this ruins all my plans. Completely shreds them into a million little pieces!” she replied in frustration. “We could continue on as we were. We’ve both been here for years and never interfered with each other before. Why not continue that way?”
“You’re a fucking Goddess of Chaos, Cadman! Do you have any idea what you do to me when you work your tricks?”
“I don’t do it often,” she pouted. “I need a place to exist too, Major Lorne. Just because my very being makes you uncomfortable, does that mean I don’t have as much right to be here as you do?”
He sat back on his heels and stared at her, chewing his lower lip. “You’re not trying to stir up a huge mass of chaos here?”
“No. I like it here. I like the city. I don’t want to see anything happen to it. I keep things to a minimum of fuss, a little chaos here and there just to give me enough energy to get by on. I swear by Thorin’s hammer, I am not here to disrupt your perfect, happy world, Major Lorne.”
“I told you my name is Lor.”
“I prefer to think of you as one of my mortal commanding officers; it makes things less frightening than having an Order God around. Now I’ll have to worry that I’m going to be smited into nothingness every second of the day, if I so much as look at you wrong or say the wrong thing.”
He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked on his heels as he looked at her. The anger and aggression drained out of him suddenly and he looked very lost, very unlike the confident Air Force officer she knew. He stared at the wall behind her and in a small voice said, “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Something was wrong with him. Her senses were tingling with it. He didn’t have the same presence as the Others. “Lor, let me look at you, please. I want to help. I might be able to help.” She reached a hand out and clasped his wrist. He stared at her hand for a full minute before he nodded.
Reaching out with her senses, she brushed across his mind. Everything on the surface seemed to be all right. She searched for a doorway down deeper, and finding it, she stepped through.
And found herself in a nightmare.
~*~
Laru knew that she was only an observer here. She knew she could do nothing to affect what she was seeing. This was all memory and construct, the past and imagination. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t now. It was all in Lor’s mind.
She still shivered. This was a cold place, a place of pain. She knew it; she had come here once in error. Desh’s place. A God of Chaos, like herself, but so very different. Desh looked for trouble, he liked causing pain, he fed off negative emotions. There was no sense of play in Desh, none at all. He existed to make others suffer, he reveled in suffering.
She walked down a curving stone stairwell into darkness. She felt her way along the wall, solid here for her, despite being a mind construct. Falling down would likely hurt her. So would running into something like a door or a fist. She hoped she was an invisible observer, it could go either way, one never knew with dreamwalking, she might be invisible, Laru might be part of the dream. She could be taking the place of someone else. The dreamscape was a very tricky thing. She was not an adept at this skill, and so she moved forward with trepidation. She had not expected to walk into this when she touched Lor’s mind, but she would do the best she could with what she had been given.
Torches lit the dungeon further up. Laru walked forward, listening. She heard Desh before she saw him. “Not so strong now, are you? Can’t do anything now, can you?”
“Please.” Lorne’s voice, weak and filled with pain.
A whip cracked and she heard Lor scream, the depth of the pain made Laru wince. She crept closer until she could see. Desh must have bound Lor into his mortal form, or else Lor would have gotten away, would have transmuted himself into energy that could not be hurt by the tools of the dungeon.
What she saw made her ill. Desh raised the whip, a cat o’nine tails with barbed ends and snapped it out, catching Lor’s groin. The skin was caught on the barbs and pulled and tore as Desh yanked back. This was meant to hurt, meant to harm.
Lor’s eyes were brimming with tears as he stared at Desh and begged him to stop.
“Oh, no, little Godling, no I’m not through with you. You dared to interfere in my business? You were stupid enough to fall into my trap and now you will pay the price for your interference. The lash snapped again and Lor screamed.
Desh moved close to Lor, reaching out to stroke a hand along his body. As he did, Desh shuddered. His hand moved down to his leather pants and he shifted his engorged member within. He put a hand to Lor’s limp and bloody groin and pressed a palm hard against it. Lor whimpered in pain and stared at Desh, meeting his eyes. Desh threw back his head and laughed. Then he shuddered again, drawing off Lor’s energies, taking without permission, stealing Lor’s life energies.
Laru was furious. No wonder Lor hated her kind. He probably thought all Chaos Gods were like Desh.
Desh stepped back and dropped the cat, picking up instead a single lash. He stood back and let the whip crack out, echoing through the dungeons. Lor’s screams echoed too, each time the lash landed, another stripe of blood appeared, and other chunk of his flesh was torn away.
How many lashes could a human body take? Lor was definitely stuck in this mortal form. When it seemed like he should not be able to stand any more, Desh dropped the whip and strode forward. He grabbed Lorne’s hair and forced his face up, made him look him in the eye as he hissed, “Oh, no. You do not get to die!” Desh began to glow and light surrounded both Desh and Lor. When it faded, Lor was whole again, the wounds gone.
She sagged in relief, but it was short lived. Bending, Desh retrieved the whip and snapped it out, catching Lor in the groin and wringing a sharp cry of pain from him. “Fresh and new, isn’t it, little Godling? You remember how this goes, don’t you?” Desh ran forward and pulled a sharp blade from his belt. He pressed the edge to Lor’s mid section, drawing it down. “Or shall we do it differently this time? Shall we see what your insides look like?”
Lor let out a strangled cry as the knife slid down. Laru bit down on her knuckles and backed away. She had wanted to wait until the end of this, to see how Lor got away, but she sensed that this had been just one of many such sessions, that Desh had repeatedly healed and tortured Lor to the point of death over and over again.
She found the stairs in the dark and climbed them. She pushed open the door and walked past Lorne’s surface memories of Pegasus missions, Wraith, Colonel Sheppard, painting on the pier, eating meals with Parrish. Laru concentrated her thoughts and forced herself back into her own mind, alone. She blinked at the bright lights of the infirmary.
“Did you have fun?” Lor asked, still in a rocking crouch beside her as she sat on the floor beside him.
“No. Do you know what I saw?”
He shrugged, “I have a pretty good idea. Desh?”
“Desh.” She confirmed with a nod. “How did he get you, how did he bind you?”
He snorted and looked away, “Why, you want a chance at me?”
“No. No.” She clasped his arm and tugged until he looked at her. “I want to help. It doesn’t matter how he got you. I don’t need to know how he bound you either. I suppose it is enough to know that he did manage it. Did he let you go?”
“Eventually, he grew bored. He healed me one last time and dropped me in this form on Earth.”
Laru tilted her head, “Did you seek retribution, did you get Others of Order and go after Desh?”
He laughed at that, running a hand over his face. “As if I could. I haven’t shifted forms since he... I don’t think I can anymore. I haven’t been able to recharge more than a tiny bit, and only when things are perfectly in order and running properly. You know how often that happens.”
“You’re drained?” Understanding dawned and she realized why her existence was bothering him, he had no defenses, no strength to bolster himself against Chaos.
“Almost.”
She felt tears welling up in her eyes. A mortal response to the sadness she felt hearing his story. She had to do something. He needed help. But how, and what kind of help?
Laru glanced over at David lying so still in his bed. Love. No wonder Lor held himself apart, avoided a relationship with Parrish, if he carried all those painful memories.
“You should rest, you look exhausted,” Laru said softly.
He gave another of those derisive snorts. “I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep.”
“Have you tried?”
“Not in a long time.”
“Come with me.” She stood and held a hand out to him, banishing the bubble that had been secluding them with a thought. He stayed as he was for a few moments, staring at her hand. “Lor, when was the last time someone understood what you were and what you needed?”
He slipped his hand into hers and let her drag him up. She led him from the infirmary to her quarters. Once inside, she steered him towards her bed, which was thankfully empty, she had left Alison in her own quarters. He hedged and backed away from the bed as if it were another of Desh’s instruments of torture.
“Shh. Easy. Just a bed, Lor. Get in. I won’t leave you alone. I’ll be here.” He stretched out awkwardly on top of the covers and folded his hands over his belly. Laru lay down beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. When he gave her a suspicious glance, she whispered, “No nonsense, just sleeping, Major.”
He closed his eyes. After about an hour he sat up and said with annoyance, “This isn’t going to work. I cannot sleep, not anymore.”
“Lor, this body needs to sleep, how is it you haven’t collapsed before now?” She rose up on one elbow and stared at him in the moonlight.
“Meditation, a little healing energy now and then.” Propping his elbows on his knees, he dropped his face into his hands. “Look, I appreciate you trying to help, Laura, but this isn’t going to work.”
“Down,” she ordered, tugging on his shirt. He surprised her by complying.
“Don’t fight me. Just go with this.” She spread her hands over his chest and shoved a bit of her energy at him, specifically pushing at him to sleep. She could put mortals to sleep at will; it was one of her best tricks. If Lor was fully integrated with his mortal body the trick should work on him.
It did, he closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. He slept. Laru smiled and settled down beside him and immediately drifted off to sleep.
He woke her with his screaming, and she stroked his face and neck, whispering soft words and endearments into his ear, rocking him in her arms until he calmed and went back to sleep.
In the morning, he woke when her alarm went off, an hour before her duty shift. She opened her eyes and blinked up at him, yawning and stretching. “Good morning.”
“I slept!” He exclaimed happily. He leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth. “I really slept!”
“Yes you did. Don’t you feel better?”
He nodded after thinking about it. “I actually do.”
“Right. So, twenty hundred, here?”
“Huh?” He watched her rise from the bed with confusion.
She opened her cupboard and reached for a clean uniform. “Tonight, twenty hundred, you need to get in the habit of sleeping again, Major. I think once your energies get up to normal levels, you might be able to fight off the nightmares on your own. The insomnia isn’t going away overnight, not with the root cause still firmly in place. I’ve seen your nightmares, Believe me, I understand where this is coming from.”
He chewed his lip and then nodded. “Okay. If you’re willing. I don’t know why you’re willing.”
She moved to stand in front of him and bent down to kiss his lips softly and then she patted his cheek. “I’m lonely too, for Others. Since you’re the best I’ve seen in decades, I’ll make due with you.”
“Well, you’re honest.”
“Today I am.” She gave him a cheeky smile and disappeared into the bathroom while he let himself out.
~*~
She tracked him down that night at eleven hundred hours, in the chair beside Parrish’s bed. There were more tubes, one going down his throat now. When Lor looked up at her, there was resignation in his eyes.
“He’s slipping, he stopped breathing, they had to do that about two hours ago.” He pointed a shaking hand at the breathing tube.
Laru moved to the bedside. She wasn’t a healing adept. That was a God of Orders prevue. She couldn’t heal Parrish, no matter how much she wanted to.
“You love him?” Laru whispered the question.
Lor nodded, his eyes going wide as a machine nearby began to beep alarmingly.
“What would you do to save him?”
“Anything. I have nothing left; I drained myself dry already trying.”
She reached for the hand that wasn’t holding David’s and told him, “This is going to hurt, you find your center again and you use it, find a way to use what I give you to heal him.”
With wide eyes, he clenched her hand and nodded. She closed her eyes and muttered “I must be fucking nuts.” Then she pushed energy at Lor, pure energy, not filtered through her mind for any purpose but being what it already was, energy.
She heard Lor gasp and felt him move as he fell forward out of the chair under the barrage of chaotic energy. If just her random use of these chaotic energies caused him pain, this had to be agony for him, trying to process it in raw form. “No more! Laru, no more, enough, stop!” he cried out and she dropped his hand and stepped back, blinking away the spots in front of her eyes.
He was on his knees, head bent, gasping for breath. She heard the footsteps of infirmary personnel coming to answer the alarm on David’s bedside. She needed to buy Lor time. Checking to make sure David was the only patient, which he was, she tossed a little energy and made the infirmary go dark. She heard the nurses complaining and Beckett cursing a blue streak as they tried to find their way in the pitch dark. Lor could see, he didn’t need the artificial light. She tossed a little more energy and rearranged the furniture around the infirmary, further hampering the medical personnel’s efforts to get to Parrish.
She’d done what she could; the rest was up to Lor.
~*~
When he had drained himself dry, knowing it might end him, he had not cared, if it would save David. Let his existence count for something; let another live, even at this cost.
But it had not helped. And now he was as doomed as David, drained dry of energy, he would wither and fade and cease to be within days. Without David, he didn’t think it mattered.
Then Laru had come into the infirmary, shining bright with healthy energy, and she had given him hope, for a brief moment, before he remembered that a Goddess of Chaos could not heal.
The crash back down to despair was swift and painful.
Then she gifted him, pouring energy into him. Raw Chaos, but energy where he was dry, he could suffer the pain of this. He felt old wounds within himself healing under the onslaught of power. His head stopped hurting, his vision cleared, he felt like himself again, even through the almost unbearable pain.
At some point, the lights went out and he was in darkness. But it did not matter, he could see with Other Sight, he knew where he needed to go, what he needed to do.
He clasped David’s limp hand and forced healing energies on him, forced life back into his fading form. When he sensed David had his fill, only then did he shout for Laru to stop pushing at him, to stop the flow. Rion’s Bow, she had a wellspring of energy to have fed him so much for so long.
“I hope it was enough,” he whispered raggedly and collapsed to the floor.
~*~
David opened his eyes and looked around just as the lights came back on at Laru’s nudge. The infirmary was a mess. It looked like a small whirlwind had cut through the place, knocking everything askew.
“Hello Lieutenant Cadman,” David said when he noticed her standing there beside his bed.
“Doctor Parrish. How are you feeling?”
“My head aches, but otherwise, I feel okay. What happened?”
She looked around and shrugged. “A little tremor or something. The lights just came back on. I think there’s someone here that was waiting to see you.” She reached down and hauled on someone’s uniformed arm.
Major Lorne peeked over the edge of the bed and slowly used the mattress to pull himself up to his feet. Lorne gave him a goofy smile as he leaned on the mattress, looking into David’s face. “Hi, David!”
“Hi… Evan,” David smiled when Lorne’s silly grin got wider.
“You feel okay?”
“My head hurts.”
Beckett and his nurses finally go to the bedside, after navigating a minefield of overturned equipment. Beckett was in time to hear David’s complaint. He went to the side opposite Lorne and leaned in, shining a penlight into David’s eyes. “Aye, well, yer head is going to hurt for a while lad. You’ve a skull fracture.”
“I do?”
Lorne’s smile dimmed and he nodded seriously, his eyes fixed on David’s face.
“Well, ow,” David mumbled. “I’m hungry, can I have rice pudding?”
“We’ve a bit of a mess here…” Beckett started to explain.
“I’ll go get you some. Be back soon. Cadman, with me.” Lorne grabbed her elbow and dragged her out of the infirmary. When they got to a supply closet, he backed into it, pulling her along with him.
“Thank you,” He bent his head and kissed her lips in gratitude. “It appears I owe you a pretty big debt, Laru. Are you all right, you didn’t drain yourself, did you?”
“Nah! I’m fine. A little wobbly, but it’s kinda like being drunk. I don’t mind it a bit.” She laughed and patted his chest. “You don’t owe me anything, Lor; I was just helping a friend. Now, go get your guy his pudding.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He patted her arm and they went to the mess hall together.
~*~
“So, let me get this straight, you don’t want to sleep here because you have a ‘sleep disorder.’” David made air quotes, he was nerdy like that.
“Yeah.”
David was also stubborn. “Do you sleep walk?”
“No.”
“Wet the bed?”
Lorne shook his head vehemently. “No!”
“Do you stop breathing? Oh, wait, do you wear one of those Darth Vader masks at night? Luke I am your father.”
Laughing at David’s Darth Vader impersonation, Lorne leaned in and kissed his lips. “No.”
“Then what?”
“Insomnia, and nightmares, bad ones, when I finally do get to sleep.”
“This calls for early bedtime. And cuddling. Listen to the doctor; he knows what is good for you.”
Lorne chuckled and let David drag him back down to the mattress. “You’re a plant doctor, David.”
“And none of my plants are sick, or have nightmares. So, I must know what I am doing. Cuddle, please.”
Snuggling up against his lover, Lor sighed happily and burrowed his nose into David’s neck. This might not be so bad, staying the night here.
The End