My Brother's Keeper by kiku65 (First Aid Challenge)
Title: My Brother’s Keeper.
Pairing: Gen.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If it was mine, this would be canon.
Notes: Teamfic with Todd. Probably AU towards the end. And morbid *sigh*
Summary: Todd saved Sheppard during their escape from Kolya. He hadn’t realised it was a job for life.
*****
The first time Todd aided John Sheppard was after his escape from the Genii prisons.
Technically it was his fault the man needed saving, but he decided not to dwell on that.
They were lost, surrounded by soldiers and probably about to die. Sheppard was asleep and Todd was awake. And hungry. Naturally, he did what any other Wraith would have done.
Sheppard’s life was sweeter than freedom and more beautiful than the stars after decades underground. Afterwards, giving the Gift was like flying.
He should have taken it all, should never have given it back. But then, Todd had never been one to obey the rules.
Sheppard saved his life in return from his friends, and both of them tried to forget.
o.O.o
The second time Todd aided Sheppard was in the chambers of his queen.
He had returned to his hive - eventually - and stood before her, telling her who he had escaped with, saved and been saved by. When he walked from the chamber too many hours later, he wondered why he was still alive. Saving the life of their greatest enemy hadn’t been the smartest thing he had ever done. Offering him brotherhood was worse.
She wanted to hunt down Sheppard with his help, but brothers did not hunt each other. He persuaded her that allying with the Lanteans would benefit them more in the long term than incurring their wrath.
He didn’t tell Sheppard when they met again. If human leadership was anything like the Wraith’s, the man had enough to worry about.
o.O.o
The third time Todd aided Sheppard was during his period spent in Atlantis.
His home was destroyed. Evidently allying with the Lanteans held fewer benefits than he had thought.
Still, he had other hives to consider than the one he had been spawned in. The fact that stopping the Replicators would also save the Lanteans was in the way of a bonus, despite this situation being entirely their fault.
The codes to Midway were an added bonus as well. But those would not harm the Lanteans - Todd would make sure of that. And it was kinder to them than storming Atlantis and exterminating those that lived in her.
They succeeded in destroying the Replicators, naturally, although the Midway codes were stolen from him. Todd accepted this with the patience of one willing to wait for his food.
The Genii had taught him that much.
o.O.o
The fourth time was in the search for the human female Teyla.
Humans built such strange hives, but then they were odd creatures. John Sheppard only proved what Todd had long suspected about that. ‘Strange’ didn’t really do them justice.
Although it was Teyla’s life in danger, it was still Sheppard he was helping. He knew about brothers - and sisters. He knew about loss. Pain was not exclusive to physical injuries.
Eventually they found her, although the hybrid escaped yet again. Todd noted this and mentally resigned himself to keeping an eye on the Lanteans in the future.
Michael wanted revenge on Sheppard. But he would have a job trying to accomplish that.
o.O.o
The fifth time was on M3X-445.
Michael had holed up there, with his army. The Lanteans had gone in to dig them out and end the threat to them once and for all. It was a typically Wraithish mind-set, not that Todd would have been foolish enough to tell Sheppard if they had met beforehand.
The hybrid showed again his penchant for explosions, and the cave system collapsed just before the Lanteans entered.
Unhappily for Michael, he hadn’t counted on the hiveship in orbit while he tried to make good his escape.
Ronon Dex sulked over his lost kill. Todd tried not to be overly smug about this.
He was fully aware he didn’t succeed.
o.O.o
A long time passed before Todd had to aid Sheppard again, but eventually he did.
He had become an ambassador for a race that had no word for such a being, to a race that knew it. He was also the first to try out the newest retrovirus - refined and improved by the clone of a dead man. Feeding on humans was now a matter of choice, in a galaxy full of non-sentient food.
Ronon Dex objected to them being on the same team. Todd ignored him. So did Sheppard.
It was lucky for the human that this was so, considering the number of angry natives about.
Arrows were primitive. That did not mean they were not deadly.
Sheppard was skilled. That did not mean he was immortal.
Todd had never healed a being in his life. That did not mean he couldn’t.
When Sheppard was lying on the ground, clutching the feathered bolt sticking out of his abdomen, Todd was the only one nearby. Ronon Dex was pinned down; Teyla was on Atlantis nursing her son. Rodney McKay was stuck behind the DHD, trying not to die before he could dial out.
Todd had never noticed before how red human blood was, or how bitter it smelt. He could have lived without finding out.
He could have also lived without finding out how loud a human screamed when arrows were pulled out of their stomachs.
The Gift this time was a true gift, rather than the return of something stolen.
o.O.o
After that there were too many times to count.
The illness from M5V-447.
The wild pack-hunting rodents on M6X-976.
The attack from the re-emerged Replicators two years later.
Until eventually John Sheppard faced the enemy every human did in the end.
Teyla Emmagen, who Todd had spent so much time searching for all those years ago, was dead. Ronon Dex, who had hated him then merely disliked him as time went by, was dead. Rodney McKay, whom he had worked with as an unlikely equal, was dead, and as he had died he had murmured “Clear blue skies, Sheppard,” before turning to pure light as his friends had before him.
Samantha Carter was dead. Woolsey was dead. Caldwell was dead. Keller was dead.
The Old Expedition, as the other humans called them fondly, had been whittled down by old age and accident to one man.
John Sheppard was grey-haired now, and sometimes forgetful; he misplaced his glasses (which he was too vain to wear anyway), or misdialled a planet address when he went offworld. But he hadn’t forgotten his team.
“Remember that time on M6X... the planet with the carnivorous rats?” Sheppard would say when he visited Todd on his new hiveship. “Rodney screamed like a girl. So did, mhm, Ronon, surprisingly.”
“I remember,” Todd would say. It would be enough, because there was no-one else who did.
Sometimes Sheppard would chuckle. “Remember the Genii? When we escaped together? You got us lost.”
“I was not lost,” Todd would reply with mock-annoyance. “I knew exactly where I was.”
“Just not where, mhm, everywhere else was, heh?”
“That is entirely different,” he would say, and Sheppard would laugh.
The last time they met Todd took them down to the planet where they had buried Ronon and Teyla in a clear glade by a stream. Rodney had been buried with honours back on Earth, but he had a memorial here as well; a gleaming black obelisk carved with his name, besides those of his friends. At night, they held the stars.
John Sheppard lay down one last time in front of the three stones, under the shade of trees laden with blossom, and Todd knelt beside him. “I could cure this.”
“No,” Sheppard said. “It’s been too long.”
As his breathing started to slow he grew dreamlike, talking to people who weren’t there. He teased McKay again, told Ronon they could run around the pier that evening, asked Teyla how her baby was doing.
He smiled near the end and murmured to the air “I remember you called me brother.”
“I did,” Todd said, forcing his feeding hand to stay still. The Gift could cure this, the Gift could give Sheppard back his youth, his pride, his strength. He could save his brother one last time.
He didn’t.
Sheppard’s team was waiting for him.
Sheppard laughed softly, his skin starting to glow. “I’d say... with all this... a big brother.”
Todd tried to smile, but as the light grew he couldn’t. “Yes.”
John stared up at the sky and smiled, before he shivered to stardust. Todd remembered what he said just before, because there was now no-one left to do so.
“Clear blue skies, Rodney... clear blue skies”
“Clear blue skies, brother,” Todd said to the empty body beneath him, then set out to carve a new stone.