The Inescapable Agamemnon, by halotolerant (Scars Challenge)
Title: The Inescapable Agamemnon (Sequel to 'Iphigenia at Atlantis')
Rating: R
Warnings: Character death
Pairing(s): mention of Ronon/Sheppard, possible Ronon/Ford pre-slash
Notes: Much belated sequel to 'Iphigenia at Atlantis'
Summary: Sometimes those who cause the worst scars have none of their own, and sometimes the scarred will do anything to protect those people
'Dr McKay came some days and told you how you were building the tree house wrong and how you ought to do it and you said “I have kids here, Rodney, and I’m not afraid to deploy them”.'
Dear Colonel Sheppard.
No one else is writing so I will. In books people always leave a note and besides they say it’s going to be another two hours before the batteries are charged so I have plenty of time, unless of course you actually turn up and stop them. They’re worried you’re going to come, I can tell.
Maybe you know exactly why everything happened the way it has, but I guess I hope you don’t.
I mean, I don’t understand why it happened like this, so why should you?
Do you remember ages and ages ago last year when you and Ronon had just finished building the tree-house for us? You used to come to the mainland almost every day and you let us - the kids - help cut logs and nail things and bring you water in your breaks. You both smiled a lot and sometimes, when you thought we couldn’t see, you kissed each other, which was probably why it took twice as long to build as you said. Dr McKay came some days and told you how you were building the tree house wrong and how you ought to do it and you said “I have kids here, Rodney, and I’m not afraid to deploy them”.
Anyway, when you finished (and it was such a great tree-house, the best ever) you said we could come and watch the movies at your apartment in Atlantis, like, every week.
(And Ronon said “Is it really big enough?” and you said “Hmm, maybe I should clear out some of the clutter, you know, stuff I’m bored of” and punched him on the shoulder and he pushed you over and sat on you and said “Later, John, much later” - Gregon said it meant you were going to make a baby together, which I think is probably not the case.)
We all came and we saw The Lion King and Spiderman and The Simpsons and The World Series and The Nightmare before Christmas and something that said One Night in Paris but you turned if off and made us watch The Simpsons again and went and yelled at someone called Lorne.
The Nightmare before Christmas was scary and also took forever to watch because it kept being stopped while you explained stuff like what is a pumpkin and what is a Christmas. I remember that Teyla was hugging the littler kids by the end and saying “It is just a story. There are not any nasty monsters like that.”
But that’s a lie, isn’t it?
And then the visits stopped, and we didn’t go to Atlantis for two weeks. People said there were grown-up problems there now, which I figured meant the Wraith but everyone said ‘it’s fine, don’t worry’. Then, one night, everyone on the mainland had to leave and get taken to the City and as soon as we got there we had to run through the Gate, with Ronon yelling, yelling at us to go quick, and we spent four days in a meadow on the other side, mostly in the rain. The adults cried a lot.
I don’t know what happened to all of you in Atlantis. I guess it was horrible. When we came back we saw all the burnt patches and broken walls and gun-marks.
On the mainland some of the homes were destroyed and the school had been wrecked and even the land round it had tunnels like something burrowing, open earth scarred across the ground. The tree-house was completely gone, like it had never even been there.
Did you know about that? Why didn’t you come and fix it?
As it was, it took months to sort out. I was kind of bored because everyone had stopped coming to the mainland and because of they told me not to go to school any more. Gregon’s mother, who was being my Mama too, was angry and hugged me and Gregon’s father said “We can’t go against the others’ wishes, we can’t make them endanger their children” and she said “No one knows where that rumour came from! No one knows why the Wraith came!” and he said “Can’t blame people for hedging their bets. Our house, Betta, our old house was worse torn up than any other, do you think that was chance?”
She hugged me tight. I didn’t ask why. This was because when people talk about the Wraith they never, ever want you to ask questions and if you do all they ever say is ‘it’s fine, don’t worry’.
The doctor started doing my checks again, which I had thought were finished. He asked me how long my skin had been turning blue and I couldn’t say. I never went back to the City because they carted all the equipment over in the Puddle jumpers. Otherwise I’d have tried to find you and say hi and stuff.
I tried to help out round the settlement but they were always telling me to run off and play so I wandered a lot. I walked along the river bank to the sea over and over. That was how I found the monster.
It was on the beach where there’s old dry seaweed and little crabs live and there are pools of water you can paddle in. There are some scrub bushes there down close to the shore and when I turned around he was lying there on the ground, watching me.
He was mostly man-shaped and wearing rags. There were things wrong with his face and skin and there was blood on his arms. One of his eyes was a lump.
He held out his hand to me and it was very rough and twisted, run over with scratches. He said “I need water, I need water and I need…” and he stopped. His voice was dry. I didn’t have any water and I was scared of him so I said I’d go and get some and then I just turned and walked to the settlement and stayed there.
All through the next day I thought about him and his hand and the water. I thought about how I had said I’d take him some and I thought that maybe he was dying out there, every minute I didn’t help him might be when it was too late.
Towards evening I ran back to the shore with a bottle of juice I should have had for lunch and he was still there, but he was sitting leaning on the bushes trying to eat the insides of a tiny crab - his twisted hand kept skidding. He had taken off his top and there were cuts and insect-bites and little circles all over his arms and up his neck and on his stomach. He was even more scary like that, but his skin looked so nasty it made me feel tingles all over my own arms and so I gave him my juice-mix by throwing it at him from the next rock along. He held it upside down over his mouth and drank it all in one go, and smiled and whooped and threw up all of it and the crab and horrible black lumps. It went all over his legs and he didn’t seem to care.
Monsters can’t eat ordinary food. That’s one way to tell.
“Do you want more food tomorrow?” I asked. He bared his teeth at me, then said “I might be dead tomorrow.”
I said “Do you want to be dead?”
He said nothing for a bit. Then he said “Yes.”
Then he said “I already am.”
Which sounds like a monster too.
The next day I took him a separate lunch bag with water and some bread and an apple.
The monster took his shoes off when I saw him that third time and he had a foot where the skin had gone completely black, and yellow around the toes, and some of them had fallen off. It smelt really, really bad and was all swollen and also shiny like it had been painted in tar.
I was half-hoping he wouldn’t be there but he was in the exact same place even though he’d been to the toilet there. I sat down two rocks away and hugged my knees and waited to see if he’d do anything. He moved towards the water first, slow and careful like it hurt to move, and poured it into him again, then he put the bread in his mouth in two shoves and was chewing the apple when he was sick again.
I’ve seen kids get sick after too much sun or too many biscuits and this wasn’t like that at all. He moved with his whole body, and breathed in pants and started crying. His sick was partly the things he’d just swallowed but also more black lumps.
He looked me in the eye, and one of his eyes was a black lump too, like what he was throwing up were eyes. The other eye was angry.
“You’re stupid” he said, sleepily. “You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
He started yelling at me, words I didn’t know, things I didn’t understand. He called me names that weren’t mine. He yelled until he coughed. He was like a crab that has fallen on its back and is waving its legs in the air, and you know that unless you do something it will just die, just there.
I sat on my rock a while, watching him. He watched me back and then slept a little. He seemed to be breathing easier.
When he woke up he took the rest of the apple and ate it a bit more slowly. He wasn’t sick even by the time I left which was when it was getting dark.
I tried to tell about the monster. I really did. I told Gregon’s mother and she said “Don’t be silly” and Gregon’s father said “The city folk have machines, Jeannie, they searched this place time and again before they let us back, there’s nothing here.”
I told the doctor. He wrote it down on his piece of paper where he writes my height and weight and whatever part of me he measures with all the other equipment. I thought that meant he’d do something but no one ever said anything about it.
When you brought Dr McKay to the mainland, I tried to tell him. I was happy you both were there but also sad because no one had told me about what had happened to Dr McKay when the Wraith came so it was a shock. I didn’t mean to stare and I’m sorry if I did - I just wanted to tell him about the monster but by the time you’d got back from your puddle jumper flight and talked in the elder hut I suppose you were both tired and didn’t really want to see kids.
He did beckon me over and he said “Hey, Jeannie” and that was when you came and said “What do you reckon?” and he said “Well, I don’t want to think so, I really don’t want to, John” and you said “But we need to know” and he said “How are you, Jeannie?” and held a bleeping, flashing thing near my head, and I was going to ask about the monster but you said you both had to leave.
You pushed the wheelchair away over the bumps in the ground and he turned in it and looked back at me and waved and smiled and it was really weird.
So I don’t really know if I upset him but I’m sorry if I did. I know you’re sad about his legs. I’m sad too.
That evening the monster looked different. He wasn’t in the same dirty spot any more and he had bandages on his cuts and a wrapped cotton thing on his foot. He wasn’t sick at all with the food.
“I found my supplies” he said, after I’d sat watching him a while.
I nodded. Monsters don’t have supplies, I thought.
“So, you’re not freaked out at all?” he asked, like he was angry. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.
I guess it was nice to visit him. He talked to me more than other people had had time for, lately.
On the day Ronon came I was playing hopscotch by myself near where the tree house was. There’s still some boards there, and you have to be careful because of there’s still a few nails in the ground too. When he said my name he was almost right next to me and I was so surprised I tripped and my knee grazed right then on a nail. He rubbed spit on it quickly and said I was brave, then he knelt next to me so we were face to face, even though I was mostly interested in my bleeding, my red blood on my almost-all blue skin.
He said “Jeannie, do you remember anything odd happening before the attack?” and I didn’t know what he meant and he said “You remember the first week the film was cancelled at Colonel Sheppard’s? Do you remember any odd dreams, or hearing voices, about that time?”
He had other questions too about dreams and hearing things and feeling like bad things were near. It didn’t make any sense to me at all.
I said, “Ronon, I think I found a monster” but he didn’t hear.
He said: “And how are you feeling now?”
I said “I’m fine, don’t worry”.
He stood up and looked at me, then he frowned and said, “Your skin wasn’t blue when we watched that movie about skeletons, were you? And you were going blue on the evacuation day - I thought you had frostbite.”
I said “I don’t want to be blue.”
He ran a hand over his face and said: “It could be sweat. It could be a genetically programmed hormone signal in the sweat. A homing beacon” but it wasn’t like he was talking to me, and he walked quickly up and down and then said goodbye and went.
I have tried to wash off the blue, you know, but it won’t. I tried real hard.
For a while the only City person we saw was Teyla, who came to have meetings and elder-dinners and stuff. I snuck round and I heard some of the meetings, but not many because they were so dull. Lots of numbers, lots of old songs. Teyla talked about it being hard in the City, and having problems getting through the Gate because the Wraith were everywhere, but adults are always talking about stuff like that so mostly I went and counted things and played hopscotch.
When it was Teyla’s funeral, I wished so hard I’d listened more, to have got more of her before it was too late.
The singing was still going on when they put the box with the body in the ground and then you made the men fire guns in the air. You were pushing Dr McKay’s wheelchair and Dr Weir was crying. Ronon had only come for like five minutes at the very beginning and then he walked off and once he’d gotten about a mile away he screamed. No one else heard it - I don’t think he wanted anyone to hear.
I don’t know what had happened between you two. You weren’t hugging any more. I’m sorry about that. I guess you’ve had a pretty bad time recently.
At the funeral I missed Teyla so bad I wanted to scream too, and I ran and hid behind the food tent. I was looking for you and Dr McKay. You were so nice to me about the tree house and I’ve never forgotten.
The doctor passed me, but he didn’t see me, just went into the tent. He had a package in his hand and he found you in the crowd and gave it to you. You walked up near the wall of the tent, near where I was, and he said “Are you sure? We could bring her to the City, watch her…” and you said “Teyla’s in the fucking ground, do I look like I want to split hairs? The last thing we need is the focus drawn onto the City. This ends now” and then Dr McKay came up and you held the package behind your back and talked about cream cake and how there wasn’t any.
I was so close I could read the label on the package that said: Pancuronium Bromide 100mg
You set off walking, after a while, when it was dark. You were walking along the path that leads to the beach. I was wishing, crossing fingers, that you could find the monster and tell everyone and help him, but you came back by yourself.
I couldn’t sleep the night of Teyla’s funeral. There were still drunken people singing funeral songs and torches burning and smelling bad. No one saw me leave the village and I ran to the monster, that’s how well I knew the way.
I have a tiny electric torch but I didn’t really need it in the full moon. I could see quite soon as I came closer that he was different again. He had something in his hand and he was poking it into his other arm. I think it was a syringe like for vitamin shots. He also had a new belt, with bulky pockets on it.
He looked up real quick when he heard me coming, and he dropped the syringe like he was a boy in school with a flip-catapault and teacher had come in. He looked at me differently, more like he was looking at me and less like his eyes were just open and his head pointed in my direction.
He blinked: “You’re fucking blue” he said.
“I have been this whole time” I said back. I didn’t like it when he picked up his syringe again. I don’t know why, because I’ve seen loads, but I didn’t like this one at all.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, to make him stop. I knew he must have found it when he found the other supplies (except where were they? I couldn’t figure that out).
“Ask and it shall be added unto you” he said. I have no idea at all what that means but he laughed and then he coughed but there wasn’t any blood.
“So are you a human being?” I asked, “Not a monster after all?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that” he said, after a few moments when he was quiet and just staring at me. He looked at the syringe and then he looked down real quick at his belt.
We were quiet for a bit.
“So, Jeannie” he said, “How many times do you think a person gets to be saved?”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“What I said. How many times can you be saved?”
“I don’t understand when adults talk like that” I said, “but if you want me to help save you I will because you’ve been nicer to me than most anyone these past weeks and I think it’s sad that you’re dead and I don’t think you’re a monster at all.”
I was kind of crying at the end but it was stupid to be because I wasn’t even sad any more, just kind of used to it.
“Jeannie,” he said, slowly, “isn’t that McKay’s sister’s name?”
“You know Dr McKay?” I asked.
“Used to, real well. I owe him a favour. Sheppard? I owe him about a million favours” he leant forward and held up the syringe “and still he keeps giving me what I want, and only asks me for one thing in return, one favour back again.”
He looked at me. He was quiet again. His fingers rubbed over his thumbs and he stared.
“Your eye got better” I said, after a while. Both his eyes were white and brown now, no more black lumps.
“I was sick” he said, “sick really badly. I couldn’t go home. But now I’m better - every time I see you I get better - and I could walk right to the City on the water itself if I had to. I could walk through that Gate and right back to my Nana. I could be there before the sun rises over this forsaken beach.”
He didn’t sound happy.
“And I want to protect my friends” he said, as if that made sense with what he’d just said, “my friends are getting hurt and I want to help stop that but…”
I waited. He tore up some grass and dropped it and then some more and then he smashed his hand down on the syringe and there was more blood. I’m so tired of blood.
“…but I…I know I can’t trade to get my humanity back” he said, “I can’t fake my way back in on this kind of ticket.” And he stood up so quickly I fell back in surprise and he took off his new belt and took something out of it, something that looked like the package you had had in the tent, and he hurled it into the riverbed.
“Seems you have the devil’s own luck, little girl” he said, sitting down, panting.
And then of course Ronon ran up.
He shoved his gun in my monster’s face and I had to explain very fast to both of them that no one had hurt me, which for some reason they were both very worried about.
My monster said: “Sheppard send you to finish the job?”
And Ronon said: “How long have you been here, Ford? How have you avoided capture? Have you done anything, anything, to Jeannie?” He grabbed my monster by the neck and it was horrible because he was choking when he spoke.
My monster said: “I was hitchhiking one of the attack darts. Been crashed here almost a month now. As for Jeannie, none of this was my plan, OK? And no freaking way am I going through with it. But you know all that.”
And Ronon said: “No I don’t.” Then he sat down fast, like his legs folded, and he said “Sheppard.” And his face went all…like it had been wrenched.
He bit his lip and took a huge breath and said “But you... You’re…you look different.”
“I think it’s in her sweat, her, um secretions” my monster said, rubbing at his neck. “She gave me one of her water bottles, and a few days ago some of her blood got onto me. It helps. I can’t think why. And why is she blue, anyway?”
Ronon said: “Well, you are part wraith. You were, anyway, and she…” He stopped and turned to me: “Jeannie, we’re going to go talk. Stay here.”
They walked away together for a while, and I couldn’t hear anything they said beyond the odd yelled word. But after a while the shouting stopped and they sat on some rocks, talking slow and intent and just looking back to check on me every now and again as I waited on the cold rocks near where my monster had lain so long.
When they came back they were walking in step. Ronon opened up his arms and lifted me; like it was a year ago and nothing had changed.
I asked if everything was OK. I was worried - I still am worried - that this is about the blue thing.
I have tried to get it off.
“Don’t worry” Ronon said, into my hair, “Me and Ford have decided we’re going to make sure you’re safe.”
So I guess everything isn’t OK. But I guess maybe it’s going to be.
He carried me all the long way towards his Puddle-jumper, and I fell asleep on his shoulder.
When I woke up I was here, in the jumper bay. They’d wrapped me in a grey blanket and put me in the corner, and both of them were doing things inside the belly of the jumper, moving wires and swearing.
Dr McKay came in, silently - he oils his wheels I guess.
He said: “Ford?” Then he wheeled real quickly towards the comm. panel on the wall, but Ronon rushed over and said “Did you know about this?”
Dr McKay said, “What?” and then “Why is Jeannie here? What on earth?”
Ronon knelt down so they were eye-level and spoke real quick, but whispered, and Ford - the monster’s name is Ford - came and stood behind him, and when McKay exclaimed and looked at him, Ronon said, more loudly: “But he didn’t, McKay. He didn’t.”
I don’t know exactly if this is what happened. I kept dozing. Even when I’m awake I don’t know half the words they say, or what they’re talking about.
When I woke up again Dr McKay was twiddling wires as well. “I still say you’re insane” he was saying, “Where are you going to go? She’ll bring them onto you, wherever you are.”
“Well she can’t stay here” Ronon said. “And we’re all agreed that we don’t much care for the other ways of getting rid of her.”
He put his hands on his hips, stepped back.
“I’ve run once. I can run again. But Sheppard…oh…” and he bent over, wilting.
“He’s taken it all so hard” Dr McKay said, softly. “My legs, even. I think he really thinks he should be able to stop bad things happening, and I think he’s lost track of how he’s going about it. But he’s a good man - he’s trying to be.”
“He wasn’t happy about the lethal injection plan” Ford said, softly. “The more I think about it, the more I think maybe this is the best way I can repay him - heal him, I guess - to take this decision away from him.”
“You don’t think you’ll kill each other? You two? In space for days on end with a child to look after?” Dr McKay sounded more like himself again.
“I’ll guess we’ll just have to not” Ronon said, then; “We’ll tie you up, after. You have to say that we made you help us at gun-point make this thing long-term space-worthy.”
So we’re going into space, I guess. I’m pretty excited.
I was hungry - I hadn’t eaten since before the funeral, which is hours and hours ago now - so I found the rations box in the jumper and ate three and a half biscuits and a vanilla Powerbar. There was a pad of paper in it, so I decided I’d write to you because in books people always leave a note and besides they say it’s going to be another two hours before the batteries are charged so I have plenty of time, unless of course you actually turn up and stop them.
They’re worried you’re going to come, I can tell.
I don’t understand any of it, Colonel Sheppard. I trust Ronon better than Gregon’s Mama, the only person I ever trusted more was Teyla and she’s gone, but she trusted Ronon.
But I trust you too, and I don’t understand at all.
I don’t know where we’re going, but when they let you know please write to me, and tell me what happened to you. And let Gregon have my skipping rope, which will annoy him because of it’s girls toy but he knows I know he likes it.
Love and best wishes, Jeannie.
Rating: R
Warnings: Character death
Pairing(s): mention of Ronon/Sheppard, possible Ronon/Ford pre-slash
Notes: Much belated sequel to 'Iphigenia at Atlantis'
Summary: Sometimes those who cause the worst scars have none of their own, and sometimes the scarred will do anything to protect those people
'Dr McKay came some days and told you how you were building the tree house wrong and how you ought to do it and you said “I have kids here, Rodney, and I’m not afraid to deploy them”.'
Dear Colonel Sheppard.
No one else is writing so I will. In books people always leave a note and besides they say it’s going to be another two hours before the batteries are charged so I have plenty of time, unless of course you actually turn up and stop them. They’re worried you’re going to come, I can tell.
Maybe you know exactly why everything happened the way it has, but I guess I hope you don’t.
I mean, I don’t understand why it happened like this, so why should you?
Do you remember ages and ages ago last year when you and Ronon had just finished building the tree-house for us? You used to come to the mainland almost every day and you let us - the kids - help cut logs and nail things and bring you water in your breaks. You both smiled a lot and sometimes, when you thought we couldn’t see, you kissed each other, which was probably why it took twice as long to build as you said. Dr McKay came some days and told you how you were building the tree house wrong and how you ought to do it and you said “I have kids here, Rodney, and I’m not afraid to deploy them”.
Anyway, when you finished (and it was such a great tree-house, the best ever) you said we could come and watch the movies at your apartment in Atlantis, like, every week.
(And Ronon said “Is it really big enough?” and you said “Hmm, maybe I should clear out some of the clutter, you know, stuff I’m bored of” and punched him on the shoulder and he pushed you over and sat on you and said “Later, John, much later” - Gregon said it meant you were going to make a baby together, which I think is probably not the case.)
We all came and we saw The Lion King and Spiderman and The Simpsons and The World Series and The Nightmare before Christmas and something that said One Night in Paris but you turned if off and made us watch The Simpsons again and went and yelled at someone called Lorne.
The Nightmare before Christmas was scary and also took forever to watch because it kept being stopped while you explained stuff like what is a pumpkin and what is a Christmas. I remember that Teyla was hugging the littler kids by the end and saying “It is just a story. There are not any nasty monsters like that.”
But that’s a lie, isn’t it?
And then the visits stopped, and we didn’t go to Atlantis for two weeks. People said there were grown-up problems there now, which I figured meant the Wraith but everyone said ‘it’s fine, don’t worry’. Then, one night, everyone on the mainland had to leave and get taken to the City and as soon as we got there we had to run through the Gate, with Ronon yelling, yelling at us to go quick, and we spent four days in a meadow on the other side, mostly in the rain. The adults cried a lot.
I don’t know what happened to all of you in Atlantis. I guess it was horrible. When we came back we saw all the burnt patches and broken walls and gun-marks.
On the mainland some of the homes were destroyed and the school had been wrecked and even the land round it had tunnels like something burrowing, open earth scarred across the ground. The tree-house was completely gone, like it had never even been there.
Did you know about that? Why didn’t you come and fix it?
As it was, it took months to sort out. I was kind of bored because everyone had stopped coming to the mainland and because of they told me not to go to school any more. Gregon’s mother, who was being my Mama too, was angry and hugged me and Gregon’s father said “We can’t go against the others’ wishes, we can’t make them endanger their children” and she said “No one knows where that rumour came from! No one knows why the Wraith came!” and he said “Can’t blame people for hedging their bets. Our house, Betta, our old house was worse torn up than any other, do you think that was chance?”
She hugged me tight. I didn’t ask why. This was because when people talk about the Wraith they never, ever want you to ask questions and if you do all they ever say is ‘it’s fine, don’t worry’.
The doctor started doing my checks again, which I had thought were finished. He asked me how long my skin had been turning blue and I couldn’t say. I never went back to the City because they carted all the equipment over in the Puddle jumpers. Otherwise I’d have tried to find you and say hi and stuff.
I tried to help out round the settlement but they were always telling me to run off and play so I wandered a lot. I walked along the river bank to the sea over and over. That was how I found the monster.
It was on the beach where there’s old dry seaweed and little crabs live and there are pools of water you can paddle in. There are some scrub bushes there down close to the shore and when I turned around he was lying there on the ground, watching me.
He was mostly man-shaped and wearing rags. There were things wrong with his face and skin and there was blood on his arms. One of his eyes was a lump.
He held out his hand to me and it was very rough and twisted, run over with scratches. He said “I need water, I need water and I need…” and he stopped. His voice was dry. I didn’t have any water and I was scared of him so I said I’d go and get some and then I just turned and walked to the settlement and stayed there.
All through the next day I thought about him and his hand and the water. I thought about how I had said I’d take him some and I thought that maybe he was dying out there, every minute I didn’t help him might be when it was too late.
Towards evening I ran back to the shore with a bottle of juice I should have had for lunch and he was still there, but he was sitting leaning on the bushes trying to eat the insides of a tiny crab - his twisted hand kept skidding. He had taken off his top and there were cuts and insect-bites and little circles all over his arms and up his neck and on his stomach. He was even more scary like that, but his skin looked so nasty it made me feel tingles all over my own arms and so I gave him my juice-mix by throwing it at him from the next rock along. He held it upside down over his mouth and drank it all in one go, and smiled and whooped and threw up all of it and the crab and horrible black lumps. It went all over his legs and he didn’t seem to care.
Monsters can’t eat ordinary food. That’s one way to tell.
“Do you want more food tomorrow?” I asked. He bared his teeth at me, then said “I might be dead tomorrow.”
I said “Do you want to be dead?”
He said nothing for a bit. Then he said “Yes.”
Then he said “I already am.”
Which sounds like a monster too.
The next day I took him a separate lunch bag with water and some bread and an apple.
The monster took his shoes off when I saw him that third time and he had a foot where the skin had gone completely black, and yellow around the toes, and some of them had fallen off. It smelt really, really bad and was all swollen and also shiny like it had been painted in tar.
I was half-hoping he wouldn’t be there but he was in the exact same place even though he’d been to the toilet there. I sat down two rocks away and hugged my knees and waited to see if he’d do anything. He moved towards the water first, slow and careful like it hurt to move, and poured it into him again, then he put the bread in his mouth in two shoves and was chewing the apple when he was sick again.
I’ve seen kids get sick after too much sun or too many biscuits and this wasn’t like that at all. He moved with his whole body, and breathed in pants and started crying. His sick was partly the things he’d just swallowed but also more black lumps.
He looked me in the eye, and one of his eyes was a black lump too, like what he was throwing up were eyes. The other eye was angry.
“You’re stupid” he said, sleepily. “You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
He started yelling at me, words I didn’t know, things I didn’t understand. He called me names that weren’t mine. He yelled until he coughed. He was like a crab that has fallen on its back and is waving its legs in the air, and you know that unless you do something it will just die, just there.
I sat on my rock a while, watching him. He watched me back and then slept a little. He seemed to be breathing easier.
When he woke up he took the rest of the apple and ate it a bit more slowly. He wasn’t sick even by the time I left which was when it was getting dark.
I tried to tell about the monster. I really did. I told Gregon’s mother and she said “Don’t be silly” and Gregon’s father said “The city folk have machines, Jeannie, they searched this place time and again before they let us back, there’s nothing here.”
I told the doctor. He wrote it down on his piece of paper where he writes my height and weight and whatever part of me he measures with all the other equipment. I thought that meant he’d do something but no one ever said anything about it.
When you brought Dr McKay to the mainland, I tried to tell him. I was happy you both were there but also sad because no one had told me about what had happened to Dr McKay when the Wraith came so it was a shock. I didn’t mean to stare and I’m sorry if I did - I just wanted to tell him about the monster but by the time you’d got back from your puddle jumper flight and talked in the elder hut I suppose you were both tired and didn’t really want to see kids.
He did beckon me over and he said “Hey, Jeannie” and that was when you came and said “What do you reckon?” and he said “Well, I don’t want to think so, I really don’t want to, John” and you said “But we need to know” and he said “How are you, Jeannie?” and held a bleeping, flashing thing near my head, and I was going to ask about the monster but you said you both had to leave.
You pushed the wheelchair away over the bumps in the ground and he turned in it and looked back at me and waved and smiled and it was really weird.
So I don’t really know if I upset him but I’m sorry if I did. I know you’re sad about his legs. I’m sad too.
That evening the monster looked different. He wasn’t in the same dirty spot any more and he had bandages on his cuts and a wrapped cotton thing on his foot. He wasn’t sick at all with the food.
“I found my supplies” he said, after I’d sat watching him a while.
I nodded. Monsters don’t have supplies, I thought.
“So, you’re not freaked out at all?” he asked, like he was angry. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.
I guess it was nice to visit him. He talked to me more than other people had had time for, lately.
On the day Ronon came I was playing hopscotch by myself near where the tree house was. There’s still some boards there, and you have to be careful because of there’s still a few nails in the ground too. When he said my name he was almost right next to me and I was so surprised I tripped and my knee grazed right then on a nail. He rubbed spit on it quickly and said I was brave, then he knelt next to me so we were face to face, even though I was mostly interested in my bleeding, my red blood on my almost-all blue skin.
He said “Jeannie, do you remember anything odd happening before the attack?” and I didn’t know what he meant and he said “You remember the first week the film was cancelled at Colonel Sheppard’s? Do you remember any odd dreams, or hearing voices, about that time?”
He had other questions too about dreams and hearing things and feeling like bad things were near. It didn’t make any sense to me at all.
I said, “Ronon, I think I found a monster” but he didn’t hear.
He said: “And how are you feeling now?”
I said “I’m fine, don’t worry”.
He stood up and looked at me, then he frowned and said, “Your skin wasn’t blue when we watched that movie about skeletons, were you? And you were going blue on the evacuation day - I thought you had frostbite.”
I said “I don’t want to be blue.”
He ran a hand over his face and said: “It could be sweat. It could be a genetically programmed hormone signal in the sweat. A homing beacon” but it wasn’t like he was talking to me, and he walked quickly up and down and then said goodbye and went.
I have tried to wash off the blue, you know, but it won’t. I tried real hard.
For a while the only City person we saw was Teyla, who came to have meetings and elder-dinners and stuff. I snuck round and I heard some of the meetings, but not many because they were so dull. Lots of numbers, lots of old songs. Teyla talked about it being hard in the City, and having problems getting through the Gate because the Wraith were everywhere, but adults are always talking about stuff like that so mostly I went and counted things and played hopscotch.
When it was Teyla’s funeral, I wished so hard I’d listened more, to have got more of her before it was too late.
The singing was still going on when they put the box with the body in the ground and then you made the men fire guns in the air. You were pushing Dr McKay’s wheelchair and Dr Weir was crying. Ronon had only come for like five minutes at the very beginning and then he walked off and once he’d gotten about a mile away he screamed. No one else heard it - I don’t think he wanted anyone to hear.
I don’t know what had happened between you two. You weren’t hugging any more. I’m sorry about that. I guess you’ve had a pretty bad time recently.
At the funeral I missed Teyla so bad I wanted to scream too, and I ran and hid behind the food tent. I was looking for you and Dr McKay. You were so nice to me about the tree house and I’ve never forgotten.
The doctor passed me, but he didn’t see me, just went into the tent. He had a package in his hand and he found you in the crowd and gave it to you. You walked up near the wall of the tent, near where I was, and he said “Are you sure? We could bring her to the City, watch her…” and you said “Teyla’s in the fucking ground, do I look like I want to split hairs? The last thing we need is the focus drawn onto the City. This ends now” and then Dr McKay came up and you held the package behind your back and talked about cream cake and how there wasn’t any.
I was so close I could read the label on the package that said: Pancuronium Bromide 100mg
You set off walking, after a while, when it was dark. You were walking along the path that leads to the beach. I was wishing, crossing fingers, that you could find the monster and tell everyone and help him, but you came back by yourself.
I couldn’t sleep the night of Teyla’s funeral. There were still drunken people singing funeral songs and torches burning and smelling bad. No one saw me leave the village and I ran to the monster, that’s how well I knew the way.
I have a tiny electric torch but I didn’t really need it in the full moon. I could see quite soon as I came closer that he was different again. He had something in his hand and he was poking it into his other arm. I think it was a syringe like for vitamin shots. He also had a new belt, with bulky pockets on it.
He looked up real quick when he heard me coming, and he dropped the syringe like he was a boy in school with a flip-catapault and teacher had come in. He looked at me differently, more like he was looking at me and less like his eyes were just open and his head pointed in my direction.
He blinked: “You’re fucking blue” he said.
“I have been this whole time” I said back. I didn’t like it when he picked up his syringe again. I don’t know why, because I’ve seen loads, but I didn’t like this one at all.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, to make him stop. I knew he must have found it when he found the other supplies (except where were they? I couldn’t figure that out).
“Ask and it shall be added unto you” he said. I have no idea at all what that means but he laughed and then he coughed but there wasn’t any blood.
“So are you a human being?” I asked, “Not a monster after all?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that” he said, after a few moments when he was quiet and just staring at me. He looked at the syringe and then he looked down real quick at his belt.
We were quiet for a bit.
“So, Jeannie” he said, “How many times do you think a person gets to be saved?”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“What I said. How many times can you be saved?”
“I don’t understand when adults talk like that” I said, “but if you want me to help save you I will because you’ve been nicer to me than most anyone these past weeks and I think it’s sad that you’re dead and I don’t think you’re a monster at all.”
I was kind of crying at the end but it was stupid to be because I wasn’t even sad any more, just kind of used to it.
“Jeannie,” he said, slowly, “isn’t that McKay’s sister’s name?”
“You know Dr McKay?” I asked.
“Used to, real well. I owe him a favour. Sheppard? I owe him about a million favours” he leant forward and held up the syringe “and still he keeps giving me what I want, and only asks me for one thing in return, one favour back again.”
He looked at me. He was quiet again. His fingers rubbed over his thumbs and he stared.
“Your eye got better” I said, after a while. Both his eyes were white and brown now, no more black lumps.
“I was sick” he said, “sick really badly. I couldn’t go home. But now I’m better - every time I see you I get better - and I could walk right to the City on the water itself if I had to. I could walk through that Gate and right back to my Nana. I could be there before the sun rises over this forsaken beach.”
He didn’t sound happy.
“And I want to protect my friends” he said, as if that made sense with what he’d just said, “my friends are getting hurt and I want to help stop that but…”
I waited. He tore up some grass and dropped it and then some more and then he smashed his hand down on the syringe and there was more blood. I’m so tired of blood.
“…but I…I know I can’t trade to get my humanity back” he said, “I can’t fake my way back in on this kind of ticket.” And he stood up so quickly I fell back in surprise and he took off his new belt and took something out of it, something that looked like the package you had had in the tent, and he hurled it into the riverbed.
“Seems you have the devil’s own luck, little girl” he said, sitting down, panting.
And then of course Ronon ran up.
He shoved his gun in my monster’s face and I had to explain very fast to both of them that no one had hurt me, which for some reason they were both very worried about.
My monster said: “Sheppard send you to finish the job?”
And Ronon said: “How long have you been here, Ford? How have you avoided capture? Have you done anything, anything, to Jeannie?” He grabbed my monster by the neck and it was horrible because he was choking when he spoke.
My monster said: “I was hitchhiking one of the attack darts. Been crashed here almost a month now. As for Jeannie, none of this was my plan, OK? And no freaking way am I going through with it. But you know all that.”
And Ronon said: “No I don’t.” Then he sat down fast, like his legs folded, and he said “Sheppard.” And his face went all…like it had been wrenched.
He bit his lip and took a huge breath and said “But you... You’re…you look different.”
“I think it’s in her sweat, her, um secretions” my monster said, rubbing at his neck. “She gave me one of her water bottles, and a few days ago some of her blood got onto me. It helps. I can’t think why. And why is she blue, anyway?”
Ronon said: “Well, you are part wraith. You were, anyway, and she…” He stopped and turned to me: “Jeannie, we’re going to go talk. Stay here.”
They walked away together for a while, and I couldn’t hear anything they said beyond the odd yelled word. But after a while the shouting stopped and they sat on some rocks, talking slow and intent and just looking back to check on me every now and again as I waited on the cold rocks near where my monster had lain so long.
When they came back they were walking in step. Ronon opened up his arms and lifted me; like it was a year ago and nothing had changed.
I asked if everything was OK. I was worried - I still am worried - that this is about the blue thing.
I have tried to get it off.
“Don’t worry” Ronon said, into my hair, “Me and Ford have decided we’re going to make sure you’re safe.”
So I guess everything isn’t OK. But I guess maybe it’s going to be.
He carried me all the long way towards his Puddle-jumper, and I fell asleep on his shoulder.
When I woke up I was here, in the jumper bay. They’d wrapped me in a grey blanket and put me in the corner, and both of them were doing things inside the belly of the jumper, moving wires and swearing.
Dr McKay came in, silently - he oils his wheels I guess.
He said: “Ford?” Then he wheeled real quickly towards the comm. panel on the wall, but Ronon rushed over and said “Did you know about this?”
Dr McKay said, “What?” and then “Why is Jeannie here? What on earth?”
Ronon knelt down so they were eye-level and spoke real quick, but whispered, and Ford - the monster’s name is Ford - came and stood behind him, and when McKay exclaimed and looked at him, Ronon said, more loudly: “But he didn’t, McKay. He didn’t.”
I don’t know exactly if this is what happened. I kept dozing. Even when I’m awake I don’t know half the words they say, or what they’re talking about.
When I woke up again Dr McKay was twiddling wires as well. “I still say you’re insane” he was saying, “Where are you going to go? She’ll bring them onto you, wherever you are.”
“Well she can’t stay here” Ronon said. “And we’re all agreed that we don’t much care for the other ways of getting rid of her.”
He put his hands on his hips, stepped back.
“I’ve run once. I can run again. But Sheppard…oh…” and he bent over, wilting.
“He’s taken it all so hard” Dr McKay said, softly. “My legs, even. I think he really thinks he should be able to stop bad things happening, and I think he’s lost track of how he’s going about it. But he’s a good man - he’s trying to be.”
“He wasn’t happy about the lethal injection plan” Ford said, softly. “The more I think about it, the more I think maybe this is the best way I can repay him - heal him, I guess - to take this decision away from him.”
“You don’t think you’ll kill each other? You two? In space for days on end with a child to look after?” Dr McKay sounded more like himself again.
“I’ll guess we’ll just have to not” Ronon said, then; “We’ll tie you up, after. You have to say that we made you help us at gun-point make this thing long-term space-worthy.”
So we’re going into space, I guess. I’m pretty excited.
I was hungry - I hadn’t eaten since before the funeral, which is hours and hours ago now - so I found the rations box in the jumper and ate three and a half biscuits and a vanilla Powerbar. There was a pad of paper in it, so I decided I’d write to you because in books people always leave a note and besides they say it’s going to be another two hours before the batteries are charged so I have plenty of time, unless of course you actually turn up and stop them.
They’re worried you’re going to come, I can tell.
I don’t understand any of it, Colonel Sheppard. I trust Ronon better than Gregon’s Mama, the only person I ever trusted more was Teyla and she’s gone, but she trusted Ronon.
But I trust you too, and I don’t understand at all.
I don’t know where we’re going, but when they let you know please write to me, and tell me what happened to you. And let Gregon have my skipping rope, which will annoy him because of it’s girls toy but he knows I know he likes it.
Love and best wishes, Jeannie.