SGA Fic - The Good Fight
Title: The Good Fight
Rating: PG-13 for violence, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, McKay
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis.
Summary: Sheppard and McKay must journey home after an incident leaves them stranded on a hostile world. Sheppard has amnesia, and as if that wasn't bad enough, has been branded a wanted criminal. Action, adventure, wierd alien creatures lots of friendship, and best of all - Sheppard and McKay whumping ;).
A/N: Written for the Jumper Two Zine (published by Agent With Style) back yonder in 2007, and a big hearty thanks to them for letting me participate. It was a blast!:D
The Good fight
Prologue
The wind built ripples in the sand like ridges on a great reptile, capped in the white of moonlight and dark of sharp shadows. The ripples remained fixed, but the sand was always flowing. It rose off the peaks of the ridges like ocean spray, then trickled down the dunes in cloudy, undulating drifts. Sand always moved. One minor disturbance created an avalanches that never went very far. Sand was its own hindrance. Too heavy to go a great distance unless picked up by stronger winds, and too weak to stay in one place for long.
The hunting party of eight in their heavy cloaks and animal skull masks flowed like the sand over the dunes, down the other side. They moved in a procession, not caring for the tattling light of the moon or secretive shadows that hid the smaller creatures far more lethal than the larger. Those creatures always knew better than to attack. They threatened with their stingers or fangs, only to become content and curl back beneath the sand when the intruders moved on.
Leave them alone; they leave you alone.
The hunting party was in no hurry. Tonight was a simple run that had nothing to do with finding food. In this night, in this land, sound carried far. They'd heard the clank of a gate being drawn up, then being lowered. They'd been waiting weeks to hear it, since the slave wagons had trundled into the fortress, so packed with living bodies, the caged wagons seemed to writhe.
The fortress was its own night, dotted with pale, guttering stars created by torchlight. Weak, pathetic light that did not even extend beyond the great black walls with turrets spiked like teeth. Silhouetted forms moved behind the teeth, but the party had no care for them. Scaling down the dune, slipping into its shadow, the party was too far out of range and too deep in the darkness to be noticed.
It was what the hunting party did, how they lived, in complete anonymity. Ghosts attracted more attention than they did.
Motionless bodies littered the sand beyond the walls like scattered trash, many steps from the now-closed west gate. Another gust of wind picked up tendrils of sand and whipped the ends of ragged, filthy shirts. The wind also carried the stench of death: unwashed, rotten, blood-stained death. The clean air of evening now reeked of rot, urine, and burnt meat.
The party pulled their cloaks tighter around themselves and moved among the bodies. Some bodies were nudged, others were felt for life beats. There was almost no hop of finding anyone alive. The party knew this, but that had never stopped them from trying. There were always exceptions.
The exception was attempting to crawl away now. The darkness hid nothing from the party. As one, they stilled, turned their heads, then also as one rose and moved toward the one body still retaining a soul. They surrounded this single exception, and he stopped struggling, not out of fear, but because his energy was gone.
The smallest and slowest of the party knelt beside the form. A heavily tanned and weathered hand reached out, placing its fingertips to the filthy neck - over the life beat - and feeling its weak struggle.
The old man removed his hand to drape over his knee. “He lives,” he said in his high, rough voice, like the rustling of dry parchment. He looked the exception up and down, brushed the dark, lank hair from the bruised face, then ran his gnarled fingers over the long, emaciated body. Through the ragged cloth of the shirt he felt bone, and the heat of fever. He pressed his hand against the man's, side feeling the shallow pulsation of the protruding ribcage.
The man's fingers twitched and curled into the sand like claws.
The old man was speechless. This young, dark-haired man was fighting to live.
“We must bring him back,” the elder finally said and rose, gritting his teeth against aching limbs that creaked. The rest of the party converged on the dark-haired man. The old man stepped back as the party rolled the man onto a blanket and lifted it to carry him over the sands, away from the stench of death and the place where death bred.
The old man cast one last, pensive glance over his shoulder at the fortress.
“You did not win,” he said. He chuckled softly, caustically, and slowly followed after the party and their precious find.
----------------------
“How does he continue to live?”
“He is determined.”
“The night may still defeat him.”
He was flying, wrapped in warmth with a cool wind tugging his hair. He tilted his head back into the wind to feel it on his face, caressing his head, pushing through the collar of his shirt to tumble across his chest. He absorbed the feel of the wind and breathed it in to the point where his chest caught with pain.
“We must hurry.”
The voices were of no consequence in the sky. The wind carried him away from everything, above worlds and people with blood staining their hands.
Then the wind stopped. Its quiet whisper in his ear became a hollow echo. He smelled water, and rock, felt cold moisture on exposed skin, making him shiver. He grew cold, confused, lost. This wasn't the sky. Where was the wind?
“Set him here.”
He descended onto a solid, uneven surface that dug into his bones. There were hands on him everywhere; neck, back, legs, arms. The remaining warmth was taken away for the cold to pour in like a flood. He shivered and tried to curl, but the hands wouldn't let him. They pulled him straight, held him down, peeled the shirt from his body. Gnarled hands, dry as old wood, touched him on his chest, then pressed into his ribs that grated and gave.
Pain made him scream, desperation made him fight. Terror and fury gave him the strength to move and lash out with his arms and legs. The hands, however, were stronger, and held him down for the old hands to grope and pet. He choked on a sob.
They were doing it again.
The worn hand covered the area of charred flesh right beneath the tip of the sternum and in the hollow of the ribcage. The hand was cupped, not pushing into the burn as that it pressed gently down, avoiding bone.
“Release him,” said the rough voice of someone deep in their years. The hands vanished from his limbs, and he was allowed to curl into himself. The old, dry hand remained, covering the mark. Another old, dry hand brushed through his dirt and blood-matted hair.
“You are safe,” the old man croaked. “You will not be harmed here. You are no longer theirs, no matter their claim.” The cupped hand flattened lightly over the mark without aggravating the marred skin. “You are free, young man. You are free now.”
He had no reason to trust the old man, believe his words, and yet he did. He wanted to believe, and didn't have the energy left to do otherwise. All bad things must come to an end, and there was nothing left to lose.
He relaxed, and let the old hands carefully roll him onto his back.
“Rest, young man,” said the old man. “ You can rest now.”
And he did.
-----------------------
The old man could walk as quickly as the young when he needed to, but stairs had always been a burden for him. Stairs carved from the slick rock of the caves were even more troublesome, the constant moisture making them slippery. He wore shoes with roughened soles to tread the stairs, and that was the only time he opted to use a cane to help haul his weathered body up.
The stairway was long, uneven, winding upward and curving toward the different caves of the upper level. He was near the top before he turned onto another, shorter set of stairs that took him into the healing cave where the young man with the dark hair rested. Clay pots the color of sand were stacked along the walls and on shelves. The fire in the pit still crackled and burned, licking the air with writhing tongues of orange. Blankets were crumpled around this fire. What was lacking was the starved and injured body of the young man.
The old man was not worried. He entered the cave and moved to the other side and the opening leading onto the wide ledge facing the open desert and eternal sky. It was evening, and the stars were bright against the blue-black heavens. The elder hobbled out onto the ledge, where the winds ran wild, tugging at the ends of his cloak. With a small grimace when his knee twinged, the old man eased himself down beside the younger sitting against the rock face with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped loosely around them. The blanket around his shoulders would have fluttered away if it hadn't been pressed between his back and the rock. Before adjusting the blanket to cover more of the youth, the aged man looked the bandages over for flecks of blood or loosening ties. Bandages of scrap-cloth covered most of the young man's body to his collarbones, with more bandages around his arms. The old native saw nothing to worry over, so he tugged at the end of the blankets, tucking them under the young man's hands to hold in place.
The stranger's thin body was more susceptible to cold, even with the evening still warm before the frigid winds arrived. The old man said nothing of this, not yet. There was still time. He sat with the youth, watching him stare into the sky.
“You are not of our world,” the elder said after a time, when he grew tired of listening to the wind. The newcomer's origins were known as far as that. The pants he had worn had been of a make none of the people had ever seen.
The young man neither acknowledged nor denied this. He kept his gaze to the sky as though attempting to see beyond the night to the small candle-pinpricks of light. The older man focused on the younger's eyes. In them, he saw turmoil that was breeding fear, as though the stranger were trying to count the stars and becoming overwhelmed, yet kept trying for reasons that were important as life or death.
“What do you long for?” the old man finally asked.
One hand lifted unsteadily for a thin finger to point to the sky.
He nodded in understanding. “You are a star wanderer. A sky wanderer. This much you know.” And this much the old man had determined on coming out onto the ledge. His people wandered the upper and lower caves, and scaled the rocks without hesitation. But the ledges and precipices they normally tried to avoid. This man had come out onto the ledge without any regard for heights. In all his long years, the elder had never encountered anyone who showed no signs of fear when coming out onto the ledges.
“Do you know,” he man asked, “what star you wandered from?”
Their guest's shaky hand lowered to his knee and gripped it until the knuckles turned white. His bruised throat corded when he swallowed, and he shook his head.
“What of your name?” the healer asked, although he already knew what the answer would be.
The man turned to the him, and the lost eyes shimmered with water.
“I don't know,” he whispered. “ I don't...” His breath caught, and the water finally rained down his pale, bruised face. He man lowered his forehead to his knees and pulled in a shuddering breath. The old man placed his hand on the younger man's back, feeling his trembling.
“Do not think yourself lost, star wanderer,” the native said. “The answers you need have buried themselves within your own mind. They are there, waiting for you. No destination is reached without a journey, and a journey does not begin until you step onto the path. The path is before you, and your foot has been placed upon it. You are a star wanderer; this much you know. Next will come the second step, but only when you are ready to take it. So do not lose hope. The path will still be there. For now, rest and let your body heal so that you can take your journey.”
The young man lifted his face back toward the sky and the stars.
TBC...
Ch. 2
Rating: PG-13 for violence, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, McKay
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis.
Summary: Sheppard and McKay must journey home after an incident leaves them stranded on a hostile world. Sheppard has amnesia, and as if that wasn't bad enough, has been branded a wanted criminal. Action, adventure, wierd alien creatures lots of friendship, and best of all - Sheppard and McKay whumping ;).
A/N: Written for the Jumper Two Zine (published by Agent With Style) back yonder in 2007, and a big hearty thanks to them for letting me participate. It was a blast!:D
The Good fight
Prologue
The wind built ripples in the sand like ridges on a great reptile, capped in the white of moonlight and dark of sharp shadows. The ripples remained fixed, but the sand was always flowing. It rose off the peaks of the ridges like ocean spray, then trickled down the dunes in cloudy, undulating drifts. Sand always moved. One minor disturbance created an avalanches that never went very far. Sand was its own hindrance. Too heavy to go a great distance unless picked up by stronger winds, and too weak to stay in one place for long.
The hunting party of eight in their heavy cloaks and animal skull masks flowed like the sand over the dunes, down the other side. They moved in a procession, not caring for the tattling light of the moon or secretive shadows that hid the smaller creatures far more lethal than the larger. Those creatures always knew better than to attack. They threatened with their stingers or fangs, only to become content and curl back beneath the sand when the intruders moved on.
Leave them alone; they leave you alone.
The hunting party was in no hurry. Tonight was a simple run that had nothing to do with finding food. In this night, in this land, sound carried far. They'd heard the clank of a gate being drawn up, then being lowered. They'd been waiting weeks to hear it, since the slave wagons had trundled into the fortress, so packed with living bodies, the caged wagons seemed to writhe.
The fortress was its own night, dotted with pale, guttering stars created by torchlight. Weak, pathetic light that did not even extend beyond the great black walls with turrets spiked like teeth. Silhouetted forms moved behind the teeth, but the party had no care for them. Scaling down the dune, slipping into its shadow, the party was too far out of range and too deep in the darkness to be noticed.
It was what the hunting party did, how they lived, in complete anonymity. Ghosts attracted more attention than they did.
Motionless bodies littered the sand beyond the walls like scattered trash, many steps from the now-closed west gate. Another gust of wind picked up tendrils of sand and whipped the ends of ragged, filthy shirts. The wind also carried the stench of death: unwashed, rotten, blood-stained death. The clean air of evening now reeked of rot, urine, and burnt meat.
The party pulled their cloaks tighter around themselves and moved among the bodies. Some bodies were nudged, others were felt for life beats. There was almost no hop of finding anyone alive. The party knew this, but that had never stopped them from trying. There were always exceptions.
The exception was attempting to crawl away now. The darkness hid nothing from the party. As one, they stilled, turned their heads, then also as one rose and moved toward the one body still retaining a soul. They surrounded this single exception, and he stopped struggling, not out of fear, but because his energy was gone.
The smallest and slowest of the party knelt beside the form. A heavily tanned and weathered hand reached out, placing its fingertips to the filthy neck - over the life beat - and feeling its weak struggle.
The old man removed his hand to drape over his knee. “He lives,” he said in his high, rough voice, like the rustling of dry parchment. He looked the exception up and down, brushed the dark, lank hair from the bruised face, then ran his gnarled fingers over the long, emaciated body. Through the ragged cloth of the shirt he felt bone, and the heat of fever. He pressed his hand against the man's, side feeling the shallow pulsation of the protruding ribcage.
The man's fingers twitched and curled into the sand like claws.
The old man was speechless. This young, dark-haired man was fighting to live.
“We must bring him back,” the elder finally said and rose, gritting his teeth against aching limbs that creaked. The rest of the party converged on the dark-haired man. The old man stepped back as the party rolled the man onto a blanket and lifted it to carry him over the sands, away from the stench of death and the place where death bred.
The old man cast one last, pensive glance over his shoulder at the fortress.
“You did not win,” he said. He chuckled softly, caustically, and slowly followed after the party and their precious find.
----------------------
“How does he continue to live?”
“He is determined.”
“The night may still defeat him.”
He was flying, wrapped in warmth with a cool wind tugging his hair. He tilted his head back into the wind to feel it on his face, caressing his head, pushing through the collar of his shirt to tumble across his chest. He absorbed the feel of the wind and breathed it in to the point where his chest caught with pain.
“We must hurry.”
The voices were of no consequence in the sky. The wind carried him away from everything, above worlds and people with blood staining their hands.
Then the wind stopped. Its quiet whisper in his ear became a hollow echo. He smelled water, and rock, felt cold moisture on exposed skin, making him shiver. He grew cold, confused, lost. This wasn't the sky. Where was the wind?
“Set him here.”
He descended onto a solid, uneven surface that dug into his bones. There were hands on him everywhere; neck, back, legs, arms. The remaining warmth was taken away for the cold to pour in like a flood. He shivered and tried to curl, but the hands wouldn't let him. They pulled him straight, held him down, peeled the shirt from his body. Gnarled hands, dry as old wood, touched him on his chest, then pressed into his ribs that grated and gave.
Pain made him scream, desperation made him fight. Terror and fury gave him the strength to move and lash out with his arms and legs. The hands, however, were stronger, and held him down for the old hands to grope and pet. He choked on a sob.
They were doing it again.
The worn hand covered the area of charred flesh right beneath the tip of the sternum and in the hollow of the ribcage. The hand was cupped, not pushing into the burn as that it pressed gently down, avoiding bone.
“Release him,” said the rough voice of someone deep in their years. The hands vanished from his limbs, and he was allowed to curl into himself. The old, dry hand remained, covering the mark. Another old, dry hand brushed through his dirt and blood-matted hair.
“You are safe,” the old man croaked. “You will not be harmed here. You are no longer theirs, no matter their claim.” The cupped hand flattened lightly over the mark without aggravating the marred skin. “You are free, young man. You are free now.”
He had no reason to trust the old man, believe his words, and yet he did. He wanted to believe, and didn't have the energy left to do otherwise. All bad things must come to an end, and there was nothing left to lose.
He relaxed, and let the old hands carefully roll him onto his back.
“Rest, young man,” said the old man. “ You can rest now.”
And he did.
-----------------------
The old man could walk as quickly as the young when he needed to, but stairs had always been a burden for him. Stairs carved from the slick rock of the caves were even more troublesome, the constant moisture making them slippery. He wore shoes with roughened soles to tread the stairs, and that was the only time he opted to use a cane to help haul his weathered body up.
The stairway was long, uneven, winding upward and curving toward the different caves of the upper level. He was near the top before he turned onto another, shorter set of stairs that took him into the healing cave where the young man with the dark hair rested. Clay pots the color of sand were stacked along the walls and on shelves. The fire in the pit still crackled and burned, licking the air with writhing tongues of orange. Blankets were crumpled around this fire. What was lacking was the starved and injured body of the young man.
The old man was not worried. He entered the cave and moved to the other side and the opening leading onto the wide ledge facing the open desert and eternal sky. It was evening, and the stars were bright against the blue-black heavens. The elder hobbled out onto the ledge, where the winds ran wild, tugging at the ends of his cloak. With a small grimace when his knee twinged, the old man eased himself down beside the younger sitting against the rock face with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped loosely around them. The blanket around his shoulders would have fluttered away if it hadn't been pressed between his back and the rock. Before adjusting the blanket to cover more of the youth, the aged man looked the bandages over for flecks of blood or loosening ties. Bandages of scrap-cloth covered most of the young man's body to his collarbones, with more bandages around his arms. The old native saw nothing to worry over, so he tugged at the end of the blankets, tucking them under the young man's hands to hold in place.
The stranger's thin body was more susceptible to cold, even with the evening still warm before the frigid winds arrived. The old man said nothing of this, not yet. There was still time. He sat with the youth, watching him stare into the sky.
“You are not of our world,” the elder said after a time, when he grew tired of listening to the wind. The newcomer's origins were known as far as that. The pants he had worn had been of a make none of the people had ever seen.
The young man neither acknowledged nor denied this. He kept his gaze to the sky as though attempting to see beyond the night to the small candle-pinpricks of light. The older man focused on the younger's eyes. In them, he saw turmoil that was breeding fear, as though the stranger were trying to count the stars and becoming overwhelmed, yet kept trying for reasons that were important as life or death.
“What do you long for?” the old man finally asked.
One hand lifted unsteadily for a thin finger to point to the sky.
He nodded in understanding. “You are a star wanderer. A sky wanderer. This much you know.” And this much the old man had determined on coming out onto the ledge. His people wandered the upper and lower caves, and scaled the rocks without hesitation. But the ledges and precipices they normally tried to avoid. This man had come out onto the ledge without any regard for heights. In all his long years, the elder had never encountered anyone who showed no signs of fear when coming out onto the ledges.
“Do you know,” he man asked, “what star you wandered from?”
Their guest's shaky hand lowered to his knee and gripped it until the knuckles turned white. His bruised throat corded when he swallowed, and he shook his head.
“What of your name?” the healer asked, although he already knew what the answer would be.
The man turned to the him, and the lost eyes shimmered with water.
“I don't know,” he whispered. “ I don't...” His breath caught, and the water finally rained down his pale, bruised face. He man lowered his forehead to his knees and pulled in a shuddering breath. The old man placed his hand on the younger man's back, feeling his trembling.
“Do not think yourself lost, star wanderer,” the native said. “The answers you need have buried themselves within your own mind. They are there, waiting for you. No destination is reached without a journey, and a journey does not begin until you step onto the path. The path is before you, and your foot has been placed upon it. You are a star wanderer; this much you know. Next will come the second step, but only when you are ready to take it. So do not lose hope. The path will still be there. For now, rest and let your body heal so that you can take your journey.”
The young man lifted his face back toward the sky and the stars.
TBC...
Ch. 2