Walking Away (1/1)
Title: Walking Away (1/1)
Author: Obsessed1
Character(s): John Sheppard and team.
Genre(s): Stargate Atlantis: H/C -Angst
Rating: T
Warnings: Dark. Some themes people may find disturbing.
Summary: Sometimes walking away is the only option.
AN/ This always happens. I lose my muse for about two months and then when it comes back it decides to assualt me with idea after idea!
Sheppard sat on the edge of his bed, fiddling with his dog tags and bobbing his knees up and down. The anger he had been supressing was beginning to manifest itself. He hadn’t slept in days, he’d barely eaten and he’d ignored his team-mates to the extent that they now knew something was wrong.
If they thought about it, they knew why as well.
The door chimed and he just stared at it as if it would make the person on the otherside go away. This wasn’t the first time he’d behaved like this and it wouldn’t be the last. Usually, he just needed to be a little distant for a while.
On a base of hundreds that hadn’t always been possible and so he’d just had to deal with it, compartmentalise and move on. This time he just wanted to snap. He wanted to tear his room apart, punch someone in the face, expend ridiculous and costly amounts of bullets in the firing range or drink himself into a stupor. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to act. Knowing he couldn’t do that, knowing he had to keep up the façade of being easy-going, always positive Colonel Sheppard, was making him bat shit crazy.
The door chimed again and then a familiar voice was calling him, “Sheppard?”
He swallowed thickly, tucked his dog tags under his t-shirt and straightened his shoulders before saying, “Come in Rodney!”
The door opened and admitted McKay. He crossed the short distance of his room and eased himself into his desk chair, leaning it back slightly so that the front legs came off the ground.
“Colonel Carter’s ready for you.”
“I’ll be up in a bit. I just needed a minute.”
McKay rocked back and forth lazily, “Are you okay?”
Sheppard forced himself to smile, “Sure.”
“Because…” and then McKay dropped forwards and the noise of that chair hurt Sheppard’s ears and made him flinch a little because he’d been sat in silence for so long, “…you realise there was nothing you could have done. Right?”
He nodded. McKay only wanted him to be alright. Hell, He wanted to be alright.
“There was nothing you could have done.”
There had been something. There had, but he’d been so preoccupied, so caught up in everything that wasn’t normal, he’d missed obvious pointers. There was something he could have done and if anybody else told him otherwise he’d scream.
“I don’t want to talk about this again,” he admitted, hating himself to think it was so convenient for him to want to forget, and that there were people that had paid for him not thinking about it.
McKay stood slowly, “You shouldn’t keep Sam waiting,” he said giving him a look of…….pity? Worry?
He hated it when something had McKay acting so un-McKay around him. He wanted the fire back. He wanted to bicker and argue and release some of his built up tension in a way that was normal for them.
“I wont,” he said, and then before McKay left, “And thanks.”
When the door to his quarters had slipped shut, he found himself making, not the first trip, to the toilet to retch miserably. He hadn’t eaten enough for it to be satisfying and instead his throat burned from bile. At least it was something. At least he could feel that.
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He entered the conference room with a deliberate bounce in his stride and casually leaned into the chair, elbow on the arm rest, other slung over the back, as if he was fine.
“John,” Carter smiled tightly and started leafing through the report in front of her. His report. “I thought, now you’ve had a few days to recuperate, that we could have another go at that debriefing.”
He leaned forwards, elbows digging into the table and nodded because they’d tried this once before, only he’d completely lost it and near thrown a chair out onto the balcony, via the window. He’d been unconsolible in an angry, no tears were shed, way.
“Yeah,” he cleared his throat, “Sorry about that.” Except he wasn’t.
“I understand that this is a difficult and upsetting situation,” she paused, looking uncomfortable even bringing it up again, “I realise that you and the boy-“
“Akif.”
“Akif,” she amended. Perhaps she hadn’t used his name because ‘boy’ was non-descript, a ‘boy’ had died and not a real person, “-were very close.”
“We rescued him from a wraith culling and helped him and his mother get settled onto a new world.” He told her by way of explanation.
“And she died…a few months back?”
“Yeah,” he could already feel the anger swelling in his gut, “-when she died, Akif continued to live with his step-father.”
Akif had instantly taken to Sheppard. When he first rescued him, he refused to let go of Sheppard’s leg until he promised to carry him everywhere. He’d had to prise him from around his neck when he had left him the first night. They’d revisited, not least because they had a formal trading agreement on their new world, but also Sheppard had wanted to make sure he and his mother were settling in. That kid, had never done anything in anger in his short life and yet an act of anger snubbed out his.
“So what happened?”
Sheppard tucked his hands under the table so he could twist them without being analysed.
“We’d bedded down for the night…..but I couldn’t sleep,” he readjusted his position in the chair, feeling as though he was sitting on a bed of nails, “I went for a walk and I heard a scream.” The shorter version would be easier, he decided.
“Akif?”
“Yeah,” he cleared his throat again, “When I got there…..to the house…..he was already-“ he stared Carter straight in the eyes because if he had to say it again, he wanted to be clear, he wanted her to know how much resolve it took for him to admit it, “He was already dead.”
There had been blood everywhere and his tiny frail body had been lying amongst it. He was used to seeing the bodies of men, even the occasional woman but a child…..he hadn’t seen many.
“He’d beaten him to death.”
“Okay,” Carter had paled a little, “And you-“
“I lost it,” he said with a casual shrug, as if punching somebody repeatedly in the face until their nose broke was a perfectly normal thing to do, “He beat seven shades of shit out of that innocent kid and then-“
“Colonel,” she warned.
“And they might have well have given the sonofabitch a pat on the back.”
“We’ve been trading with the Luridinuns for three years Colonel and-“
“So,” the word flew from his mouth and he didn’t care that Carter was supposed to be a superior, “they’re letting him walk around back there as if he didn’t do anything. As far as I’m concerned they’re not getting anything else from us.”
“We have to maintain the trading agreement, you know that and I can understand just how devestated you are but-“
He waited, posied to give her a verbal backlash.
“-We cannot dish out justice just because we know it’s wrong. It’s their job. Not ours.”
“If they’re not going to do it, somebody else should. He murdered a five year old Colonel. If we were back on Earth-“
“But we’re not. I’m as frustrated as you are but if we intervene we risk losing a valuable trading partner, not to mention the only Aplha site we have.”
If Atlantis was attacked at that moment, he’d go down with her. He would not, under any circumstance seek solace on a world that didn’t consider child beating a punishable offence.
“Now, I’m going to suggest that-“
“I want to keep working,” Sheppard told her, because she wasn’t taking that away from him as well. He needed that focus.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
He sat back and tried to relax his shoulders, “Look, I’m sorry for…..I’m just sorry okay. I’ll be fine. I just need to keep working.”
She stood, closed the report and gave him a look that told him she was still deciding, “Okay,” she said finally, “But I do want you to talk to somebody when you’re ready.” She touched his shoulder and it was strange and unfamilair, “It sounds like there was nothing you could have done about it. Please don’t torture yourself with this.”
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So this is what going insane feels like, he thought as he walked through the corridors.
He understood Carter’s position. She couldn’t be reactive any more. She had to tow the line, follow procedures, be diplomatic. He just hoped she wasn’t sat in her transparent office deluding herself that what she was saying was in anyway true.
“John?”
He’d walked passed Teyla and hadn’t even noticed.
“Teyla,” he leaned against the wall and tucked his hands into his pockets, “What’s up?”
Her hand was protectively wrapped around her stomach; if anybody understood the value of a child’s life then she would.
“How was your talk with Colonel Carter?”
“As I expected,” he told her, “She’s towing the line.”
Teyla twisted her lips, “I believe she must do so for the good of Atlantis,” and then to his, obivously disgusted expression, she said, “But it does not mean I agree.”
He stared at her, at a loss for words.
“I was going to perform a memorial tea ceremony and it is customary not to do it alone.”
“I’m not sure I….”
“It is not about forgetting John. It is about acknowledging existance.”
It was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to hide out in his room and put himself together again, but Teyla was reaching out, pulling his hand out of his pocket and tangling her fingers in his.
When they had entered her quarters, Sheppard was regretting his decision to come here. He didn’t feel at all comfortable being in her prescence when he was that angry. She was moving a tray from her bed and was going to put it on the floor, but Sheppard took it from her before she could drop it. Being top heavy wasn’t doing anything for her balance. She set about lighting candles and strong smelling incense sticks and then dimmed the lights.
“Please, sit,” she instructed, but again he had to help her down, reaching for a few cushions to make her a little more comfortable.
He joined her on the floor, rapping his fingers on his knees as she poured the tea.
“Rodney’s been acting kind of weird around me,” he told her, “Kind of normal actually.”
Teyla smiled softly, “You are supposed to be silent.”
“Sorry,” he told her.
She handed him a cup and saucer and he realised his hands were shaking. He had to grab the cup to stop it from making a horrendously loud jangling noise.
“The pouring of the tea,” she told him, “symbolises memory and to sip the tea is to consume that memory, to consolidate it, to make it part of us.”
She stared at him for a second and he wondered what she saw in him at that moment in time.
“Now what?” he asked, forgetting and then instantly remembering that he was supposed to be quiet.
“Now we drink,” she took a sip of her tea, “And we remember not to forget the ones we have lost.”
Sheppard stared at his tea. Remember not to forget the ones we have lost. There wasn’t enough tea in the world for the amount of people he’d lost over the years, counting the ones that were still alive.
The tea was heavily perfumed and his stomach protested the small amount that he sipped.
“I knew,” he said suddenly.
Teyla arched an eyebrow, but she didn’t speak. He needed her to say something because otherwise he might just have to admit to the truth.
“He was always covered in cuts and bruises,” he told her setting the tea down, “but I thought that was just kids. They climb trees and they pretend to have wars and………”
He swallowed down the bile that was rising. He wondered what was compelling him to tell her. Because she was safe? Because she wouldn’t tell the others? Because he thought she might already know? He suspected it was the result of four and a half years worth of mission time and down time. He had never intended to become close to any of them. He liked distance. Having real friends had been painful; he’d lost the best ones he’d ever had many years ago and still blamed himself for their deaths. Sometimes he hated being in that position again; because if anything ever happened to his team………
He realised he didn’t want her to hate him. If he told her the truth she would. Just as he hated himself.
“John?”
He shook his head and tried to look neutral, “Thanks for this,” he indicated to the tea and then left without looking back.
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He’d been on a routine mission with another team when he’d re-dialled to the Luridinun homeworld. An hour later and he was being escorted back to their gate, the leader was having a few choice words with Colonel Carter and he was being sent back through the gate.
When he emerged on the other side, he scanned the collection of faces, including his own team, who were watching him, handed his P90 off to one of the soldiers by the gate and without a word followed Carter up the stairs of the Gateroom and into her office.
She waited until the door was firmly closed before sitting behind her desk. He stayed standing, hands on his hips, feeling a sense of Déjà vu.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
Carter nodded, “You’re damn right you shouldn’t have done that. What posessed you to-“ she held her hands up, “No, don’t answer that….i know why you did it, I’m just wondering why you thought it was a good idea Colonel.”
Sheppard stared out the clear window to his left and at the many eyes looking his way.
“I just had to go back and talk to the guy.”
“The Counceller said you were harrassing him, following him around the square and shouting abuse-“
“He was just walking around like nothing had happened!” he told her, trying to keep his voice even and failing at that too.
“I told you, we cannot-“
“Intervene, yes I know.”
“It is embarassing enough for you to publicly disobey an order from me but it is an entirely different thing to have you escorted back to Atlantis by the Luridinuns. You are not to go back there.”
“I heard them.”
“Did you?” she stood up and leaned on the desk, “Please John. I need your support here.”
He wanted to laugh because where was his support. She was glossing over his report as if it was an issue of Cosmo.
“I want you to take some time off. I’m putting you on light duty until you’ve had some time to deal with this and I’m scheduling some appointments with Doctor Mead.”
Sheppard nodded dumbly. He knew he’d lost it.
“We’ve all lost people here. You’re not alone in being angry because a friend died.” And then she said, “I really think Doctor Mead can help you.”
“Can I go now Ma’am?”
Carter sat down and nodded tiredly. He left her office and avoided the looks coming his way.
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tbc