SGA Fic - In Memoriam
Title: In Memoriam
Rating: PG-13
Characters: John, Wraith queen, some team
Warnings: found at the end of the story
Summary: And here John thought if you've been interrogated by one queen, you've been interrogated by them all. Thanks as always to my beta wildcat88.
In Memoriam
When John was seven, his dad forgot to pick him up from golf practice. At that age and in that moment, it had been a big deal, leaving him to wonder if he'd been forgotten. Or, worse, sucked into another dimension where he was the only human left alive. That theory was squashed when Mike Devlin and two of his little thugs had passed John on their way home from soccer practice.
“They thought,” John gasped, “they thought I thought I was too good for soccer.” They'd taunted him while Mike pounded his fist into his palm, because it was what all the tough guys did on TV. They were going to bloody him up, they said, and Daddy would have to pay a fortune to fix him.
Crap, they'd been stupid. John had realized it even at the tender age when he'd believed alternate dimensions existed.
“And isn't it a bitch that they do exist after all.” John laughed between gritted teeth. “S-s-still s-s-scared the hell out of me.”
Mike and his friends hadn't gotten around to the beating.
“M-mom showed up.” John sucked air through those same teeth still trying to grind themselves into dust. He screamed, “She was my damn hero!”
The Wraith queen pulled her lips back from her serrated teeth, hissed, then released John to collapse in a panting, shivering heap on the polished stone floor.
“Mom said...” He coughed, spraying the floor with saliva. “Mom said... Dad hadn't forgotten. Was working late... again... that was all. He'd made sure to call Mom.” Pain ripped through his brain as though the queen had decided to stick a giant railroad spike through his skull. He sucked in a breath, clenched his head in both hands and did the only thing he could do, the only thing he'd been doing since he'd been unceremoniously dumped in this place - ride it out.
When the pain eased off from brain-shredding to brain-pounding, his mouth said on automatic, “Thing is,” he swallowed, “he didn't call her soon enough or she would've been there sooner. He'd waited too long to tell her, or she'd figured it out on her own.”
Weird thing was, hero or not, it had always been his mom that he'd felt irritated toward whenever Dad forgot to pick him or Dave up from somewhere. Dad lamented over not spending more time with the family, so Mom suggested he take part in the pick up and drop off of their sons to and from their various activities. John had overheard the discussion more than once. Dad often fluctuated on what he forgot - the pick up or drop off - leaving Mom to swoop in and save the day. Neither of them had done it on purpose; it was just one of those really obnoxious things that happened, and both Dave and John had learned to live with it.
John rolled onto his back with a groan, making the mistake of trying to rub his face with both hands. His right hand felt like it was being broken all over again, so he cradled it to his chest. But the pain had at least ended the momentum of his thoughts. He rolled his head toward the queen, attempted to glare at her and paid for it with another invisible spike to the brain.
The queen stood there with her back to him, tall and white and wispy, like a specter you only ever see at midnight out of the corner of your eye. The light in this place wasn't strong, and all she had to do was take four steps to the right or left and she would vanish into the dark. Except she never did. Two steps, maybe, or three but never more as though she secretly feared that the darkness would make her disappear for good. Or she just liked staying as close as possible to the breeding chair, ready and waiting for whatever signal that would let her know when to sit and open her veins for extraction.
“Funny thing,” John said, voice hoarse. “I had everything I needed to play the negligent parent card, but I never did.” He liked to think because he was the better person, but knew it was because being perpetually pissed took energy, and John didn't like to waste energy on what didn't really matter in the long run. It was also hard to stay mad surrounded by harried guilt and promises to make things right (usually via a new toy).
John shifted slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible. He started the arduous climb upward into a sitting position, keeping his busted hand to his chest, his arm against his ribs and biting his lip to keep from crying out. This queen was a contradiction, the exception to the rule, the end of continuity and that made her not only dangerous but scary as hell. Five times she'd brought him to his knees with the demand that he talk. But because the demand didn't come with a specific topic, John talked about anything that came to his mind and that had absolutely nothing to do with Atlantis. He would talk for as long as she forced him to until she released him so that she could go stand and stare at her throne. She had yet to feed on him.
Which was all fine and dandy as far as John was concerned, but the interrogations hurt. He'd been at the wrong end of a Wraith queen enough times to have everything it entailed memorized, and there wasn't a single moment to his recollection in which the interrogations sawed through his brain with the intensity this queen was pushing on him. It honestly amazed him that she hadn't split his skull open yet, because it sure as hell felt like she was.
But as long as he talked, she was satisfied long enough for him to regroup, even if it was getting harder each time around.
“My mom...” John began when the queen turned her head enough for him to see her profile, and hissed. He snapped his mouth shut. Sometimes she preferred silence. John gladly let her have it.
With a shuddering sigh, John climbed to his feet, swaying under the assault of a lesser spike. The room tilted, propelling his body sideways, his feet kicking through the remains of previous meals that clattered across the floor, until his reaching hand found the rough rock wall and steadied him. He leaned his shoulder against it, taking a moment to just breathe, grateful that this time he wasn't dry heaving.
John's stomach turned. He always did speak too soon. Doubling over, hand back to the wall, his guts purged him of nothing until it was his ribs that felt like they were being split in two.
It was a funky life in the Pegasus Galaxy. Same old missions with the same damn results that should have made them predictable by now, but with enough room to toss in a new twist - like a mentally shattered Wraith queen. One of Atlantis' allies had called in about Wraith squatters, and John, his team, and several marines went to investigate. They found a cloning facility under construction, and where there was a cloning facility there were baby Wraith and ZPMs. They went in. It was the same song and dance of finding out the ZPM was where they couldn't get to it, leaving the only option of blowing the place to hell. Alarms went off, Wraith showed up, fighting ensued and the last thing John remembered was being tackled by a peckish Wraith pissed about losing its stunner. It had broken John's hand to make him drop his gun, broken his ribs to get him to stop struggling. It would have fed, too, if one of the head Wraith hadn't dropped by, hissing and spitting and saying something about how John wasn't theirs to feed on. Then they'd tossed him down a hole.
It had been nothing but tea and crumpets since.
There was just too much in John's life that he never saw coming. No, strike that. He'd seen this one coming the moment Rodney had announced the ZPM buried too deep and the codes to bring it up too complicated for them to have their cake and eat it, too - i.e. to get the ZPM and get out alive.
Crap, he hoped his team had gotten out alive. He was alone in this pit, so that had to mean something. A small, spiteful voice whispered that it meant the rest of the Wraith were dining well tonight. John told the voice to shut up.
The dry heaves ended. John straightened and turned with the intent of leaning his back against the wonderfully cold rock.
The queen was in front of him, gaunt and wild eyed. With a sneer full of teeth and a hiss, she grabbed him by the shirt front and dragged him back to the center of the cave.
“Kneel,” she breathed, passing one clawed finger down alongside his face. John dropped to his knees like a rock.
“Speak,” she said, caressing his cheek with that same claw. The spike buried itself somewhere behind John's eyes.
“What... do you... w-want to talk... about?” he gasped.
The queen shrieked, grabbed his collar and ripped open the front of his shirt - outer shirt and T-shirt - all the way to the tip of his sternum. She did so with the aggression of the mindlessly furious, careless of her claws that cut three ragged, bleeding lines into his chest. John's braced himself for what he knew was coming next, breathing hard and fast to keep up with his racing heart.
The queen froze, staring at John's chest with what he could have sworn was an almost childlike fascination, as though it were something she had never seen before. For a moment, the pain in John's skull ebbed.
“What was her name?” the queen asked.
Chill after chill climbed John's spine like it was an escape ladder.
She sounded so human.
The queen made to touch one of the cuts, only to snatch her hand back as though afraid the blood might bite. John felt that blood drawing hot lines down his chest.
“What was her name?” the queen asked again.
John opened his mouth, about to ask who, when the pain returned sharper and deeper than before.
“What was her name!”
“Who!” John screamed.
The queen leaned in close, inches between them, her rotten breath tumbling over his face.
“Speak,” she said, arrogantly calm, certain of victory.
John's lungs demanded air and he complied with a cough that painted the queen's face in spittle.
The control of a queen was like having a fish hook caught in your brain and the queen was the one doing the fishing. She pulled information from you, but when you pulled back, though it hurt, it didn't make the fight impossible. With this queen, it was a meat hook attached to a chain, and when she pulled, you complied because you had no other choice.
John talked according to what his brain provided, and what his brain provided took its cues from what came before. John talked, and couldn't stop, no matter how much he begged himself to.
“Mom always came when Dad couldn't.” He sucked in another breath that felt like sucking air through a straw. When he released the breath, it came with a whimper. “Which is... ironic 'cause... I left her behind.”
The pain stepped back now that he was talking, giving the queen what she wanted, allowing him to breathe.
John felt snot and tears slick up his face. “I was eight and she got sick. Really sick.” The meat hook tugged when he paused for too long. John winced. “She was in bed a lot. Couldn't get around. Needed help, sometimes. Except she didn't like it.” Always stubborn, his mom, refusing any hired help dad tried to offer her until it got so bad she had no choice, but John knew he was one to talk. “I asked if I could go to a friend’s and she said yes. But I knew... I had a bad feeling... It was so bad I felt sick and didn't stay long. When I got home, I heard Mom calling for help. I found her on the floor. She couldn't get up. I started bawling, I felt so bad. Got her up, back to bed. Mom said we shouldn't tell Dad, that this was her own fault and she was fine. She died a month later...”
The hook vanished, the queen turning in a billow of ragged white and marching back to her chair to stare at it. John dropped in another boneless heap to the floor, too occupied with the pain in his head to acknowledge the pain in his ribs. He rolled enough to accommodate the dry heaves in case something did come up this time, but nothing did. He wiped his face with his good hand. When he brought it away, the back was smeared with blood.
“Bitch,” John said, but was so spent, his voice so hoarse, it was nothing more than an exhale trying to be words.
John lay there staring at the queen's rigid back. The spike slid from his skull and the blood from his nose stopped pat, pat, patting on the ground. The queen hissed at her chair, pacing three steps to the right, then the left, stopping, then doing it again.
“Didn't know Wraith could go insane,” John said to himself, his voice still a breath but with just enough strength for him to hear the words. “They dump you down here out of loyalty?” He grinned at the concept, but he did have to wonder. Wraith queens weren't just queens; they were also mommy dearest.
You know nothing of the Wraith, Todd always liked to say, like a motto, whenever they happened to cross paths. He liked to remind John of his frail human naivety, as though that above everything else was what made the Wraith so superior. You know nothing of the Wraith, but we Wraith know everything about you.
As far as John was concerned, he knew everything he needed to know. Wraith eat people, end of story.
But he just had to go and wonder, because his brain was turning to liquid in his skull...
How much was mommy dearest loved by her cloned children? The answer was staring him in the face. Here was the queen, stuck in a hole with no way out. There was the breeding chair, waiting to receive. And here was John, her only company, meant to be eaten when she got that fact through her own liquefied brain.
After his mom's spill down the stairs, John had placed himself on an invisible tether. He never left home, not for friends, not for golf, and going to school meant suffering a constant sick feeling in his gut. The idea of his mom being alone, with no one around in case she fell or something worse, had made him want to puke.
But when she finally did pass, she hadn't been alone. That was all that had mattered to him, that she wasn't alone.
John closed his eyes. The meat hook was out of his head but it had punctured a hole in his memories, pouring them out one after the other. He saw, behind his eyelids with the sharp clarity as though it had only happened yesterday, that final moment as John held his mom's hand. Her breathing had convulsed, her body shuddered, her hand shook.
On a sigh, she was gone.
John opened his eyes to the queen's back. He glared at her.
“You bitch.”
The queen shuddered. She walked right, left. She turned her head, just a fraction and just for a moment, and John could have sworn she looked lost.
Possibly even scared.
And to his great horror, John felt a twinge of something in his chest and realized it wasn't a broken rib trying to dislocate.
It was pity.
He felt sorry. For a Wraith. For a damn Wraith queen. John buried his face in his bicep and groaned.
Clawed fingers dug into his hair, cutting his scalp, and yanked him hard to his knees then to his feet.
“Kneel!” the queen shrieked. John did as told, hitting the floor with a force that made his shins vibrate. The queen bent John's head back, his spine, his ribs spreading and contending with the agony ripping through his skull.
“What is her name!” the queen screamed, and John screamed above her. She threw him to the ground, disgusted, and walked swiftly away like a predator about to run down invisible prey. But when she got to the chair, she slowed, throwing her head back and gripping her skull, moaning piteously as if she wanted to burst into tears but couldn't. And because she couldn't, she turned, staggering back to John who she then clawed across the back with one well-aimed swipe from shoulder blade to waist. John arched back with a howl and the queen howled with him.
Then she shrieked, “What is her name!” The spike was joined by another spike, then another and another until John finally, thankfully, passed out.
When John woke up, the first thing he did was try to recall the license of the truck that had run him down. He blinked at the hazy lights, shivering in the chill. Both actions made his head crack and he grabbed his skull one-handed, his other hand making too many complaints of its own.
He saw a blurred figure, slumped in a blurred chair. John blinked rapidly to clear the blur.
The figure coalesced into the Wraith queen, sagging dejectedly, her dress stained in something dark and viscous.
John guessed, according to the stump at the end of her arm where her hand should have been, that the stuff was blood. The hand in question was lying on the floor. John's brain was swimming through a miasma of leftover pain, making it slow on the uptake. It took him a moment to remember that the chamber didn't offer much in the way of anything sharp, to notice that some of the blood was also on her face, dripping from her mouth, staining her teeth. John's brain slowly but surely put it all together...
And he dry heaved.
Then passed out.
John woke up to a pair of boots blocking his sight of the queen. Someone with a deep voice asked, “Sheppard?” Then dropped to their hands and knees to the floor, ducking their head to be at eye level.
“Sheppard,” Ronon said, both relieved and frantic, smiling until he pulled his head out of sight, calling, “Get the damn medics down here, now!”
John winced, groaning. It made Ronon apologize, a pretty awesome accomplishment since Ronon rarely apologized for anything. A voice echoed distant but shrill from somewhere far away, “We're working on it!” John would know that panicked petulance anywhere: Rodney.
What felt like seconds later had people lowering themselves into the cave using climbing gear, carrying bags and one carrying a stretcher. A woman with copper hair joined Ronon on the floor, reaching out to brush back John's hair: Teyla. Then a whole bunch of people were around him, cutting his shirts to get to the injuries, slapping on gauze to stop the bleeding and splints to minimize the pain. Teyla provided assurances that John would be out of here and Ronon providing intel that they had brought enough reinforcements to keep the Wraith busy while they rigged the place to blow.
“Wouldn't let them leave without you though, buddy,” Ronon said, all smiles.
John was given morphine for the trip up, putting him back into a haze, one he liked this time. They wrapped him in blankets and strapped him into the stretcher. As he rose, he saw various medics move to the Wraith queen, keeping their distance, perhaps curious or perhaps disgusted, because even dazed John could see that she had chewed off her other arm.
-----------------------
The first time John woke up, it was with the mother of all headaches, a blinding pain that wouldn't allow him to orient himself. He felt touches on his head, chest, arm and freaked, flailing until something cool flowed into his veins, sending him back to his happy place.
The next time he woke, the headache wasn't so blinding, more an obnoxious pressure ache. Nothing a few Tylenol couldn't cure. He opened his eyes, wincing at the light, and squinted and blinked until his vision cleared. He'd already guessed he was in the infirmary by the smell and the beeping next to his head, so this time he knew not to panic.
“About time you woke up,” came his customary greeting for these very situations from McKay. “Sane, this time.” Which, sadly, had been said enough on previous occasions to be just as customary.
Rodney was there, obviously, but so were Teyla and Ronon. It was all relief and smiles, and as Keller came over to make her customary checks that included stabbing his eyes with a pen light, a story. The facility hadn't been overrun with Wraith; it had just seemed that way. A few extra marines and a little extra scouting had determined this.
“Not that Conan over here was happy about it,” Rodney said, jerking his thumb at Ronon. “The time it took to get back in there, I mean.” Rodney sniffed, looking anywhere but at John. “Not that I blame him.”
Maybe it was just John, the medication, and having been assaulted by the pen light, but he thought he'd heard a catch in Rodney's voice. Teyla was not so covetous with her reaction, letting tears fall. This wasn't quite so customary, only on those occasions when the call had been that close.
“Jennifer thought there might be brain damage,” Rodney said, and there was that catch again. Then he added after clearing his throat, “Not that she would be able to tell, I say.”
Keller responded with a light elbow to his belly.
Rodney glared at her, rubbing his stomach. “So,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back. “You look remarkably the same age as when we last saw you.”
“Rodney,” Teyla chastised.
“What? He is. Either queens no longer find him all that edible or...” He let the sentence hang in order to swallow repeatedly. “She didn't...” he said. “I mean, did she... are you... are there, you know, enzyme addiction issues?” Everyone looked at him expectantly, worriedly. It was a valid question.
“No,” John said, his voice still hoarse. “Something was wrong with her.” He tapped the side of his head. “Up here.” It was hard to talk, like rubbing his throat with a coarse cloth. A sip of water provided by Teyla made it slightly better.
“I'm not surprised,” said Keller. She didn't elucidate until after she listened to John's heart. “Her body was brought back for study. Because, you know, how often do we have that kind of opportunity? Carson did the autopsy and found a piece of shrapnel in her head. Our guess is that she healed before it could be removed, and it couldn't be removed or else it would have killed her or made matters worse - we're still determining which.”
John frowned severely. “So all that crap she put me through was because she had brain damage?”
“At least it kept her from feeding off you,” Ronon pointed out.
“No, but it sure as hell amped up her mind control.” John massaged the side of his head with the heel of his hand. When he dropped his hand to his lap, he stared at it. “She chewed off her hands.”
Rodney blanched. “Yeah, I noticed when they wheeled the body in.”
“What kind of questions did she ask you?” Ronon asked, looking morbidly fascinated. But by then Keller had decided that John wasn't going to have any of that. She declared visiting hours over with the usual “John needs his rest” and left, expecting her order to be followed... eventually.
But John must have looked worse than he felt, because after further declarations of being glad he was back, his team started to leave. Ronon hesitated, still waiting for that answer but torn by Teyla's backward glance complete with a raised eyebrow. Everyone knew you didn't question the raised eyebrow.
Ronon started to leave.
“I actually felt bad for her,” John blurted, all the fault of the drugs, of course. Ronon turned, looking at John with a raised eyebrow of his own.
“Seriously?”
John grimaced, nodded, and braced himself for a slap to the back of the head. Because he'd felt sorry for a damn Wraith.
“Okay,” Ronon said with a shrug, as though it didn't matter. “She did chew her own arms off.” He edged in closer, leaning in. He asked, voice lowered, looking rather giddy, “Seriously, what did she ask?” Like a teenage girl looking for gossip, because an insane Wraith was a new concept.
John shrugged. “She asked who 'she' is.”
“Who who is?”
John tossed up his hand, shaking his head.
“Oh,” Ronon said, dissatisfied, and left.
John's hand returned to his head, rubbing gently. He remembered how his mom used to rub his head, even when she was sick and could barely lift her hand.
“Anna May Sheppard,” he answered.
The end
Warnings: Violence, injury, self-mutilation (not Sheppard).
Rating: PG-13
Characters: John, Wraith queen, some team
Warnings: found at the end of the story
Summary: And here John thought if you've been interrogated by one queen, you've been interrogated by them all. Thanks as always to my beta wildcat88.
In Memoriam
When John was seven, his dad forgot to pick him up from golf practice. At that age and in that moment, it had been a big deal, leaving him to wonder if he'd been forgotten. Or, worse, sucked into another dimension where he was the only human left alive. That theory was squashed when Mike Devlin and two of his little thugs had passed John on their way home from soccer practice.
“They thought,” John gasped, “they thought I thought I was too good for soccer.” They'd taunted him while Mike pounded his fist into his palm, because it was what all the tough guys did on TV. They were going to bloody him up, they said, and Daddy would have to pay a fortune to fix him.
Crap, they'd been stupid. John had realized it even at the tender age when he'd believed alternate dimensions existed.
“And isn't it a bitch that they do exist after all.” John laughed between gritted teeth. “S-s-still s-s-scared the hell out of me.”
Mike and his friends hadn't gotten around to the beating.
“M-mom showed up.” John sucked air through those same teeth still trying to grind themselves into dust. He screamed, “She was my damn hero!”
The Wraith queen pulled her lips back from her serrated teeth, hissed, then released John to collapse in a panting, shivering heap on the polished stone floor.
“Mom said...” He coughed, spraying the floor with saliva. “Mom said... Dad hadn't forgotten. Was working late... again... that was all. He'd made sure to call Mom.” Pain ripped through his brain as though the queen had decided to stick a giant railroad spike through his skull. He sucked in a breath, clenched his head in both hands and did the only thing he could do, the only thing he'd been doing since he'd been unceremoniously dumped in this place - ride it out.
When the pain eased off from brain-shredding to brain-pounding, his mouth said on automatic, “Thing is,” he swallowed, “he didn't call her soon enough or she would've been there sooner. He'd waited too long to tell her, or she'd figured it out on her own.”
Weird thing was, hero or not, it had always been his mom that he'd felt irritated toward whenever Dad forgot to pick him or Dave up from somewhere. Dad lamented over not spending more time with the family, so Mom suggested he take part in the pick up and drop off of their sons to and from their various activities. John had overheard the discussion more than once. Dad often fluctuated on what he forgot - the pick up or drop off - leaving Mom to swoop in and save the day. Neither of them had done it on purpose; it was just one of those really obnoxious things that happened, and both Dave and John had learned to live with it.
John rolled onto his back with a groan, making the mistake of trying to rub his face with both hands. His right hand felt like it was being broken all over again, so he cradled it to his chest. But the pain had at least ended the momentum of his thoughts. He rolled his head toward the queen, attempted to glare at her and paid for it with another invisible spike to the brain.
The queen stood there with her back to him, tall and white and wispy, like a specter you only ever see at midnight out of the corner of your eye. The light in this place wasn't strong, and all she had to do was take four steps to the right or left and she would vanish into the dark. Except she never did. Two steps, maybe, or three but never more as though she secretly feared that the darkness would make her disappear for good. Or she just liked staying as close as possible to the breeding chair, ready and waiting for whatever signal that would let her know when to sit and open her veins for extraction.
“Funny thing,” John said, voice hoarse. “I had everything I needed to play the negligent parent card, but I never did.” He liked to think because he was the better person, but knew it was because being perpetually pissed took energy, and John didn't like to waste energy on what didn't really matter in the long run. It was also hard to stay mad surrounded by harried guilt and promises to make things right (usually via a new toy).
John shifted slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible. He started the arduous climb upward into a sitting position, keeping his busted hand to his chest, his arm against his ribs and biting his lip to keep from crying out. This queen was a contradiction, the exception to the rule, the end of continuity and that made her not only dangerous but scary as hell. Five times she'd brought him to his knees with the demand that he talk. But because the demand didn't come with a specific topic, John talked about anything that came to his mind and that had absolutely nothing to do with Atlantis. He would talk for as long as she forced him to until she released him so that she could go stand and stare at her throne. She had yet to feed on him.
Which was all fine and dandy as far as John was concerned, but the interrogations hurt. He'd been at the wrong end of a Wraith queen enough times to have everything it entailed memorized, and there wasn't a single moment to his recollection in which the interrogations sawed through his brain with the intensity this queen was pushing on him. It honestly amazed him that she hadn't split his skull open yet, because it sure as hell felt like she was.
But as long as he talked, she was satisfied long enough for him to regroup, even if it was getting harder each time around.
“My mom...” John began when the queen turned her head enough for him to see her profile, and hissed. He snapped his mouth shut. Sometimes she preferred silence. John gladly let her have it.
With a shuddering sigh, John climbed to his feet, swaying under the assault of a lesser spike. The room tilted, propelling his body sideways, his feet kicking through the remains of previous meals that clattered across the floor, until his reaching hand found the rough rock wall and steadied him. He leaned his shoulder against it, taking a moment to just breathe, grateful that this time he wasn't dry heaving.
John's stomach turned. He always did speak too soon. Doubling over, hand back to the wall, his guts purged him of nothing until it was his ribs that felt like they were being split in two.
It was a funky life in the Pegasus Galaxy. Same old missions with the same damn results that should have made them predictable by now, but with enough room to toss in a new twist - like a mentally shattered Wraith queen. One of Atlantis' allies had called in about Wraith squatters, and John, his team, and several marines went to investigate. They found a cloning facility under construction, and where there was a cloning facility there were baby Wraith and ZPMs. They went in. It was the same song and dance of finding out the ZPM was where they couldn't get to it, leaving the only option of blowing the place to hell. Alarms went off, Wraith showed up, fighting ensued and the last thing John remembered was being tackled by a peckish Wraith pissed about losing its stunner. It had broken John's hand to make him drop his gun, broken his ribs to get him to stop struggling. It would have fed, too, if one of the head Wraith hadn't dropped by, hissing and spitting and saying something about how John wasn't theirs to feed on. Then they'd tossed him down a hole.
It had been nothing but tea and crumpets since.
There was just too much in John's life that he never saw coming. No, strike that. He'd seen this one coming the moment Rodney had announced the ZPM buried too deep and the codes to bring it up too complicated for them to have their cake and eat it, too - i.e. to get the ZPM and get out alive.
Crap, he hoped his team had gotten out alive. He was alone in this pit, so that had to mean something. A small, spiteful voice whispered that it meant the rest of the Wraith were dining well tonight. John told the voice to shut up.
The dry heaves ended. John straightened and turned with the intent of leaning his back against the wonderfully cold rock.
The queen was in front of him, gaunt and wild eyed. With a sneer full of teeth and a hiss, she grabbed him by the shirt front and dragged him back to the center of the cave.
“Kneel,” she breathed, passing one clawed finger down alongside his face. John dropped to his knees like a rock.
“Speak,” she said, caressing his cheek with that same claw. The spike buried itself somewhere behind John's eyes.
“What... do you... w-want to talk... about?” he gasped.
The queen shrieked, grabbed his collar and ripped open the front of his shirt - outer shirt and T-shirt - all the way to the tip of his sternum. She did so with the aggression of the mindlessly furious, careless of her claws that cut three ragged, bleeding lines into his chest. John's braced himself for what he knew was coming next, breathing hard and fast to keep up with his racing heart.
The queen froze, staring at John's chest with what he could have sworn was an almost childlike fascination, as though it were something she had never seen before. For a moment, the pain in John's skull ebbed.
“What was her name?” the queen asked.
Chill after chill climbed John's spine like it was an escape ladder.
She sounded so human.
The queen made to touch one of the cuts, only to snatch her hand back as though afraid the blood might bite. John felt that blood drawing hot lines down his chest.
“What was her name?” the queen asked again.
John opened his mouth, about to ask who, when the pain returned sharper and deeper than before.
“What was her name!”
“Who!” John screamed.
The queen leaned in close, inches between them, her rotten breath tumbling over his face.
“Speak,” she said, arrogantly calm, certain of victory.
John's lungs demanded air and he complied with a cough that painted the queen's face in spittle.
The control of a queen was like having a fish hook caught in your brain and the queen was the one doing the fishing. She pulled information from you, but when you pulled back, though it hurt, it didn't make the fight impossible. With this queen, it was a meat hook attached to a chain, and when she pulled, you complied because you had no other choice.
John talked according to what his brain provided, and what his brain provided took its cues from what came before. John talked, and couldn't stop, no matter how much he begged himself to.
“Mom always came when Dad couldn't.” He sucked in another breath that felt like sucking air through a straw. When he released the breath, it came with a whimper. “Which is... ironic 'cause... I left her behind.”
The pain stepped back now that he was talking, giving the queen what she wanted, allowing him to breathe.
John felt snot and tears slick up his face. “I was eight and she got sick. Really sick.” The meat hook tugged when he paused for too long. John winced. “She was in bed a lot. Couldn't get around. Needed help, sometimes. Except she didn't like it.” Always stubborn, his mom, refusing any hired help dad tried to offer her until it got so bad she had no choice, but John knew he was one to talk. “I asked if I could go to a friend’s and she said yes. But I knew... I had a bad feeling... It was so bad I felt sick and didn't stay long. When I got home, I heard Mom calling for help. I found her on the floor. She couldn't get up. I started bawling, I felt so bad. Got her up, back to bed. Mom said we shouldn't tell Dad, that this was her own fault and she was fine. She died a month later...”
The hook vanished, the queen turning in a billow of ragged white and marching back to her chair to stare at it. John dropped in another boneless heap to the floor, too occupied with the pain in his head to acknowledge the pain in his ribs. He rolled enough to accommodate the dry heaves in case something did come up this time, but nothing did. He wiped his face with his good hand. When he brought it away, the back was smeared with blood.
“Bitch,” John said, but was so spent, his voice so hoarse, it was nothing more than an exhale trying to be words.
John lay there staring at the queen's rigid back. The spike slid from his skull and the blood from his nose stopped pat, pat, patting on the ground. The queen hissed at her chair, pacing three steps to the right, then the left, stopping, then doing it again.
“Didn't know Wraith could go insane,” John said to himself, his voice still a breath but with just enough strength for him to hear the words. “They dump you down here out of loyalty?” He grinned at the concept, but he did have to wonder. Wraith queens weren't just queens; they were also mommy dearest.
You know nothing of the Wraith, Todd always liked to say, like a motto, whenever they happened to cross paths. He liked to remind John of his frail human naivety, as though that above everything else was what made the Wraith so superior. You know nothing of the Wraith, but we Wraith know everything about you.
As far as John was concerned, he knew everything he needed to know. Wraith eat people, end of story.
But he just had to go and wonder, because his brain was turning to liquid in his skull...
How much was mommy dearest loved by her cloned children? The answer was staring him in the face. Here was the queen, stuck in a hole with no way out. There was the breeding chair, waiting to receive. And here was John, her only company, meant to be eaten when she got that fact through her own liquefied brain.
After his mom's spill down the stairs, John had placed himself on an invisible tether. He never left home, not for friends, not for golf, and going to school meant suffering a constant sick feeling in his gut. The idea of his mom being alone, with no one around in case she fell or something worse, had made him want to puke.
But when she finally did pass, she hadn't been alone. That was all that had mattered to him, that she wasn't alone.
John closed his eyes. The meat hook was out of his head but it had punctured a hole in his memories, pouring them out one after the other. He saw, behind his eyelids with the sharp clarity as though it had only happened yesterday, that final moment as John held his mom's hand. Her breathing had convulsed, her body shuddered, her hand shook.
On a sigh, she was gone.
John opened his eyes to the queen's back. He glared at her.
“You bitch.”
The queen shuddered. She walked right, left. She turned her head, just a fraction and just for a moment, and John could have sworn she looked lost.
Possibly even scared.
And to his great horror, John felt a twinge of something in his chest and realized it wasn't a broken rib trying to dislocate.
It was pity.
He felt sorry. For a Wraith. For a damn Wraith queen. John buried his face in his bicep and groaned.
Clawed fingers dug into his hair, cutting his scalp, and yanked him hard to his knees then to his feet.
“Kneel!” the queen shrieked. John did as told, hitting the floor with a force that made his shins vibrate. The queen bent John's head back, his spine, his ribs spreading and contending with the agony ripping through his skull.
“What is her name!” the queen screamed, and John screamed above her. She threw him to the ground, disgusted, and walked swiftly away like a predator about to run down invisible prey. But when she got to the chair, she slowed, throwing her head back and gripping her skull, moaning piteously as if she wanted to burst into tears but couldn't. And because she couldn't, she turned, staggering back to John who she then clawed across the back with one well-aimed swipe from shoulder blade to waist. John arched back with a howl and the queen howled with him.
Then she shrieked, “What is her name!” The spike was joined by another spike, then another and another until John finally, thankfully, passed out.
When John woke up, the first thing he did was try to recall the license of the truck that had run him down. He blinked at the hazy lights, shivering in the chill. Both actions made his head crack and he grabbed his skull one-handed, his other hand making too many complaints of its own.
He saw a blurred figure, slumped in a blurred chair. John blinked rapidly to clear the blur.
The figure coalesced into the Wraith queen, sagging dejectedly, her dress stained in something dark and viscous.
John guessed, according to the stump at the end of her arm where her hand should have been, that the stuff was blood. The hand in question was lying on the floor. John's brain was swimming through a miasma of leftover pain, making it slow on the uptake. It took him a moment to remember that the chamber didn't offer much in the way of anything sharp, to notice that some of the blood was also on her face, dripping from her mouth, staining her teeth. John's brain slowly but surely put it all together...
And he dry heaved.
Then passed out.
John woke up to a pair of boots blocking his sight of the queen. Someone with a deep voice asked, “Sheppard?” Then dropped to their hands and knees to the floor, ducking their head to be at eye level.
“Sheppard,” Ronon said, both relieved and frantic, smiling until he pulled his head out of sight, calling, “Get the damn medics down here, now!”
John winced, groaning. It made Ronon apologize, a pretty awesome accomplishment since Ronon rarely apologized for anything. A voice echoed distant but shrill from somewhere far away, “We're working on it!” John would know that panicked petulance anywhere: Rodney.
What felt like seconds later had people lowering themselves into the cave using climbing gear, carrying bags and one carrying a stretcher. A woman with copper hair joined Ronon on the floor, reaching out to brush back John's hair: Teyla. Then a whole bunch of people were around him, cutting his shirts to get to the injuries, slapping on gauze to stop the bleeding and splints to minimize the pain. Teyla provided assurances that John would be out of here and Ronon providing intel that they had brought enough reinforcements to keep the Wraith busy while they rigged the place to blow.
“Wouldn't let them leave without you though, buddy,” Ronon said, all smiles.
John was given morphine for the trip up, putting him back into a haze, one he liked this time. They wrapped him in blankets and strapped him into the stretcher. As he rose, he saw various medics move to the Wraith queen, keeping their distance, perhaps curious or perhaps disgusted, because even dazed John could see that she had chewed off her other arm.
-----------------------
The first time John woke up, it was with the mother of all headaches, a blinding pain that wouldn't allow him to orient himself. He felt touches on his head, chest, arm and freaked, flailing until something cool flowed into his veins, sending him back to his happy place.
The next time he woke, the headache wasn't so blinding, more an obnoxious pressure ache. Nothing a few Tylenol couldn't cure. He opened his eyes, wincing at the light, and squinted and blinked until his vision cleared. He'd already guessed he was in the infirmary by the smell and the beeping next to his head, so this time he knew not to panic.
“About time you woke up,” came his customary greeting for these very situations from McKay. “Sane, this time.” Which, sadly, had been said enough on previous occasions to be just as customary.
Rodney was there, obviously, but so were Teyla and Ronon. It was all relief and smiles, and as Keller came over to make her customary checks that included stabbing his eyes with a pen light, a story. The facility hadn't been overrun with Wraith; it had just seemed that way. A few extra marines and a little extra scouting had determined this.
“Not that Conan over here was happy about it,” Rodney said, jerking his thumb at Ronon. “The time it took to get back in there, I mean.” Rodney sniffed, looking anywhere but at John. “Not that I blame him.”
Maybe it was just John, the medication, and having been assaulted by the pen light, but he thought he'd heard a catch in Rodney's voice. Teyla was not so covetous with her reaction, letting tears fall. This wasn't quite so customary, only on those occasions when the call had been that close.
“Jennifer thought there might be brain damage,” Rodney said, and there was that catch again. Then he added after clearing his throat, “Not that she would be able to tell, I say.”
Keller responded with a light elbow to his belly.
Rodney glared at her, rubbing his stomach. “So,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back. “You look remarkably the same age as when we last saw you.”
“Rodney,” Teyla chastised.
“What? He is. Either queens no longer find him all that edible or...” He let the sentence hang in order to swallow repeatedly. “She didn't...” he said. “I mean, did she... are you... are there, you know, enzyme addiction issues?” Everyone looked at him expectantly, worriedly. It was a valid question.
“No,” John said, his voice still hoarse. “Something was wrong with her.” He tapped the side of his head. “Up here.” It was hard to talk, like rubbing his throat with a coarse cloth. A sip of water provided by Teyla made it slightly better.
“I'm not surprised,” said Keller. She didn't elucidate until after she listened to John's heart. “Her body was brought back for study. Because, you know, how often do we have that kind of opportunity? Carson did the autopsy and found a piece of shrapnel in her head. Our guess is that she healed before it could be removed, and it couldn't be removed or else it would have killed her or made matters worse - we're still determining which.”
John frowned severely. “So all that crap she put me through was because she had brain damage?”
“At least it kept her from feeding off you,” Ronon pointed out.
“No, but it sure as hell amped up her mind control.” John massaged the side of his head with the heel of his hand. When he dropped his hand to his lap, he stared at it. “She chewed off her hands.”
Rodney blanched. “Yeah, I noticed when they wheeled the body in.”
“What kind of questions did she ask you?” Ronon asked, looking morbidly fascinated. But by then Keller had decided that John wasn't going to have any of that. She declared visiting hours over with the usual “John needs his rest” and left, expecting her order to be followed... eventually.
But John must have looked worse than he felt, because after further declarations of being glad he was back, his team started to leave. Ronon hesitated, still waiting for that answer but torn by Teyla's backward glance complete with a raised eyebrow. Everyone knew you didn't question the raised eyebrow.
Ronon started to leave.
“I actually felt bad for her,” John blurted, all the fault of the drugs, of course. Ronon turned, looking at John with a raised eyebrow of his own.
“Seriously?”
John grimaced, nodded, and braced himself for a slap to the back of the head. Because he'd felt sorry for a damn Wraith.
“Okay,” Ronon said with a shrug, as though it didn't matter. “She did chew her own arms off.” He edged in closer, leaning in. He asked, voice lowered, looking rather giddy, “Seriously, what did she ask?” Like a teenage girl looking for gossip, because an insane Wraith was a new concept.
John shrugged. “She asked who 'she' is.”
“Who who is?”
John tossed up his hand, shaking his head.
“Oh,” Ronon said, dissatisfied, and left.
John's hand returned to his head, rubbing gently. He remembered how his mom used to rub his head, even when she was sick and could barely lift her hand.
“Anna May Sheppard,” he answered.
The end
Warnings: Violence, injury, self-mutilation (not Sheppard).