SGA Fic - Night Watch
Title: Night Watch
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon, Teyla, Rodney
Warnings: Mentions of off-screen violence, attempted molestation (non-explicit)
Summary: After being rescued Sheppard is forced to recover in an alien hospital, and his team is there to help. Ronon POV.
A/N: Just a little something that had been sitting on my harddrive for a while. I hadn't planned on postig it, but after giving it a reread decided it wasn't too bad after all. Edited but not beta'd.
Night Watch
They found Sheppard chained to a wall and altered by a month's worth of interrogation: bloody, bruised, broken and so weakened by hunger he could barely lift his head. But he did lift his head. He gave them a red-stained toothy smile and said, punch-drunk-off-his-ass, “hey, guys, what took you so long?” as if this were a party and they'd all been invited.
Sheppard kept asking the name of the “new” nurse currently sticking a needle into his vein, and why she was dressed like an Amish woman who liked to over-bleach her clothes. The IV bag was a glass bottle, but it hung from a metal pole like the Earth-made bags. Ronon consider the existence of any kind of IV reason enough to think Sheppard in good hands. Most worlds weren't that kind of advanced.
Rodney, as usual, wasn't as appeased. He kept demanding whether or not they tossed the needles out when done or washed them with the dishes to reuse.
“Maybe you should shut up and be happy they've got the means to keep Sheppard alive,” Ronon said.
Sheppard's kidnappers hadn't been local and their scavenging had made them unwelcome. The Koloians had chased them off, but had been too superstitious about the caves the scavengers had been using to enter them. They felt bad about not getting Sheppard out of that place; offered medical help and a place to stay until the storm died down. The storm wasn't anything a jumper couldn't handle. The lightning was a different story according to McKay and his precious readings. Too ionized and other big words that had no relevance in Ronon's opinion. What it eventually translated to, after much long-windedness, was that the storm was capable of dropping a jumper like a rock. It was why they hadn't come in a jumper in the first place. The gate was also ten miles out, and Sheppard in too bad a shape to be transported by stretcher.
Ronon tried not to wonder if Rodney had a point about the needles. The hospital was cozy, more like an inn, with wooden walls painted white and naked beams criss-crossing the ceiling. Ronon had been so relieved that Sheppard was getting fluids into him that he hadn't noticed the string-thin cracks in the wall, the cobwebs in the beams, the patches of pale wood in the ceiling where repairs had been made.
All in all, it didn't mean anything. Or maybe it did. Ronon asked Sheppard's doctor, dressed in the white lab coat of a physician, if his world had seen an attack recently.
“Three months back, the Wraith came. We are slowly beginning to rebuild.” The doctor sounded defensive about it, as though he expected Ronon to be just as judgmental as McKay. Teyla cooled the situation by offering man-power from Atlantis to help with any repairs as payment. The doctor and nurses were both awed and grateful.
Too awed. Ronon half-expected them to drop to their knees and start muttering prayers at Teyla's feet.
The team was given a room near the main ward. It was possible for patients to have private rooms, but the doctor felt those should be saved only for Koloians. The rooms were blessed or something, and for a stranger to use one, even a stranger from the Ancestor city, would mean having to rebless the room. And Ancestors forbid if a patient were in a guest room, where a nurse might not be able to get to him in time.
Ronon wasn't happy about it. Teyla had to keep reminding him that they were guests on this world, a world offering their meager supplies to right a wrong. The Koloian nurses brought them food and games to pass the time - mostly cards and something called Bintal that Rodney said was like back gammon.
The storm beat against the hospital, rattling the windows as if trying to get inside. The second day was worse, louder, like the windows were barely holding on by a nail. The sun might as well have not risen; the clouds were so thick, none of the team had awoken until a nurse came in with breakfast.
Sheppard woke, still punch drunk but not as bad.
“What did they want?” Ronon asked. They sat around his bed, Ronon and Rodney on one side, Teyla on the other.
Sheppard's tongue peeked out from between cracked and swollen lips, a sliver of pink, there and gone. Ronon handed him a glass of water, held it while Sheppard sipped. When he took it away, Sheppard spoke in a gritty rasp.
“Information.”
“The usual 'where is Atlantis because it belongs to Pegasus people you bastard' or did they go original for once?” Rodney asked with his usual post-kidnap tone of 'people are idiots.'
“Wanted... weapons...” Sheppard breathed.
Rodney tossed up his hands. “Of course.”
Sheppard pulled in a breath that made his bare chest shudder. He was naked beneath the blanket; Ronon realized this when he'd checked on Sheppard the other night while a nurse was changing his blanket. The current blanket was pulled up to his collarbones. He was patched and dotted with bruises, some fading to yellow and others fresh, some finger-shaped and others fist-shaped. One eye was swollen shut and the side of his face was purple and black. Ronon had seen the rest of the bruises in that brief moment when Sheppard had lost all dignity - fist and boot-shaped. He had broken ribs, a broken arm, broken fingers of his left hand, and a broken ankle.
A nurse interrupted their brief reunion when she had to chase them off. It was time for John to eat, she told them. Teyla offered to help feed John, saying it would make him feel more comfortable, but the nurse wouldn't have it.
“It's my job. And I know what to do, you do not. Now please leave.” She refused to feed Sheppard the bowl of porridge until they did.
They left, reluctantly, caught between Sheppard's poorly concealed look of misery that they were leaving so soon and his raw look of hunger. They couldn't even hover in the doorway to the main ward.
“These people are nuts,” Rodney said.
“These people are helping us,” Teyla replied.
That night, Ronon snapped awake to echoing screams. He didn't waste time with his boots, bolting from the room, down the hall and into the ward where Sheppard struggled and three nurses struggled harder.
Sheppard cried out.
The nurse cried louder.
“Stop screaming!” wailed the nurse pinning his shoulders. Another had his legs, the third was fighting to inject him with something. “Stop screaming and lie down, now!”
Ronon didn't know who was louder, a frantic, wild-eyed Sheppard or the sobbing nurse. She yelled at him with desperation, begging, then demanding, then begging. She finally pulled him up...
And slapped him hard across his bruised face. It didn't mute Sheppard, it made him howl.
Ronon bellowed, “Leave him alone!” and rushed in. He threw the nurse who had slapped Sheppard onto the neighboring bed. The other two backed off.
Sheppard immediately calmed down. Not enough to Ronon's liking; he was still gulping in air like he couldn't get enough. But it did allow Ronon to place either hand lightly on either side of John's head.
He asked, “You with me, Sheppard?”
Sheppard blinked up at him. “Ronon?”
“Yeah, buddy. You okay?”
Sheppard's breathing slowed. He swallowed, so Ronon brought him the glass of water. After a sip, Sheppard said, “Bad dream.”
“I bet.”
“Tried to sit up, like I usually do when I... but someone was holding me down.”
Ronon glared over his shoulder at the nurse now sitting like a pouting child on the bed. Her eyes were blood-shot, her face flushed and wet. She scraped the moisture way with her hand, then sniffed.
“If he had stopped struggling and screaming, all would have been well.”
“Get out.”
The woman glared.
“Now!”
She did, eventually. While the other two scurried like mice, she sulked like a cat.
John, sighing, closed his eyes. “Whass her... problem?”
“Dunno.”
“You gonna... be here... for... while?”
“Sure.” Ronon made himself comfortable on the next bed, watching Sheppard slip off to sleep.
Ronon woke to the doctor bellowing at him. He mostly ignored the little man lecturing the hell out of him for scaring his poor little nurses. Ronon lectured back with a lot more bark about man-handling tortured patients with broken bones. The doctor demanded he leave. Ronon 'insisted' he stay until he knew Sheppard was well and truly awake.
“Am, buddy,” Sheppard slurred. Ronon still wasn't convinced, but the doctor wouldn't look John over until he was out of the room. Sheppard told him it was okay. Ronon left, reluctant.
He told Rodney and Teyla everything.
“Nuts! I'm telling you, these people are nuts!” Rodney squeaked.
After breakfast, they played Bintal with Sheppard. Sheppard won three games.
“Used to play back gammon all the time at McMurdo.”
The nurses hovered as though it were the team that was the threat. The one that had tried to inject Sheppard, showing more bravery than she had the other night, came and went doing what looked to be little more than busy work. She checked Sheppard's temperature using the back of her hand, the tightness of his bandages, the solidity of the flat wood splinting his arm and ankle. And with each check and poke and prod, Sheppard's face turned a little paler, his eyes a little darker.
He snapped, “Think that could wait!” The nurse scuttled off with a sour twist to her lips.
“She was simply doing her job,” Teyla said.
John glared at her, briefly. Teyla's reprimand had been light, as though for the sake of it, and it was easy to tell she hadn't bought it herself. But an injured Sheppard was an intolerant Sheppard, with patience thin as a the cobwebs on the ceiling, and they all knew it. Teyla took no offense.
Ronon stayed with John that night, whether the doctor liked it or not. The storm was a beast, howling and banging a thousand fists on the wall. Ronon could feel its assault's vibrations through the walls, floor, bed. He heard dripping from somewhere, smelled the mildew of wet aging things that made the air stale. He watched Sheppard lying on his stomach. The damage on his front was bad but the damage on his back was worse. You knew when the pain medication was wearing off when Sheppard had to lay on his front. You knew it was gone when he started moaning in pain. The nurses refused to give him his next dose until he could no longer stand it. Supplies were limited, they always said; a stern reminder that Sheppard was lucky he was getting any medication at all.
Sheppard groaned, shifting. Ronon moved from the bed to the chair next to Sheppard. He sat and placed the flat of his hand on Sheppard's back, above the bandages where the least damage was and where skin could meet skin. He felt backbone, and the arch of ribs when Sheppard's breathing increased.
This wasn't common-place, this kind of contact. Sheppard was a man who burned bridges like he could make a living off of it. Life threw him in the mud, he pulled himself from it, shook himself off and continued forward. It was what he did, it was how he survived, and he only ever looked back when he had no other choice.
But it didn't happen over night. There was a moment, in between, like twilight, when the bad was too fresh to bury. The body was weak, the mind was caged by drugs and pain, and reality was malleable. In that moment, it was possible for Sheppard to be fragile.
But in that moment, Sheppard was usually home among what was familiar, surrounded by a protective wall of friends. If the team couldn't be there to remind Sheppard of where he was, there was Carson to do it, or one of his nurses. Hell, anyone could do it since it was only a matter of using soft words and few touches. Sheppard might be confused, but he was quick, and as soon as he realized where he was - that he was safe - he was out like a light.
The few times Sheppard had needed lingering touches, he'd been off-world.
Ronon didn't remove his hand until he was sure Sheppard was still. He went back to his bed.
He woke up to soft whispers, and his eyes about popped right out of his head.
A nurse had crawled into Sheppard's bed, holding him upright as she kissed his shoulders, neck, head. She was under the covers with Sheppard. The covers slipped enough for Ronon to know that she was naked.
Sheppard was struggling, pushing away. She struggled in return, too busy pulling him back to take her affections beyond kissing. His breaths were fast, his voice slurred as he demanded to know what hell they were doing to him now, and in-between the demands Ronon could hear Sheppard's growled pleas to stop.
Ronon bolted from the bed roaring louder than the perpetual thunder. The girl shrieked like a bird and took off in a flash of white flesh, taking the blanket with her, leaving Sheppard bare and freezing and disoriented. Ronon grabbed the blanket from his bed and threw it over him.
Sheppard continued to shake. When Ronon touched his shoulder, Sheppard flinched away.
“What the hell are you doing to me!”
“Easy, it's just me.”
“Ronon?”
“Yeah.” He touched John's shoulder a second time. John let him.
The nurse must have given him pain meds, because when John turned his head Ronon's way his eyes rolled bright and glassy in his skull.
“Think... they were try'n to molest me or somethin'. Thasss a new one.”
Rodney was right. These people were nuts. To hell with them all, then. Ronon hooked the I.V. pole against his arm, bundled Sheppard in the blanket and carried him to the guest room. He was met with Rodney's “What the hell!” because the guy was a light sleeper. Teyla woke next. Ronon explained the situation and when the doctor showed up the next day bellowing like a dry wind, Ronon knew it was all Teyla could do not to kick his ass.
The moron said 'it happened.' Nurses undressing, molesting patients happened.
“We refuse to treat him until he is returned to the main ward,” The doctor said.
“How much longer this storm going to last?” Ronon asked. He thought there might be a little less thunder today.
The doctor refusing to answer was all the answer they needed. With a huff, the doctor turned on his heels and stomped from the room.
“What is wrong with these people?” Rodney said, white-faced.
“They were culled,” Ronon said.
The nurses continued to bring them all food, Ronon wasn't sure why. Rodney stuck to MREs, certain that whoever cooked the food was probably spitting in it. Just in case, they gave Sheppard the pudding cups Rodney sometimes liked to bring.
Sheppard was even more snappish when he woke up, cursing the hospital under his breath and barking at whoever made a noise he didn't like. When they played Bintal, Sheppard lost for the first time. Rodney gloated, so Sheppard threw the game against the wall.
“What the hell is his problem?” Rodney hissed when Teyla took him to the other side of the room, giving both men space enough to cool off.
“He's ill and he hurts,” Teyla said. “His pain medication is wearing off.”
That wasn't it. Ronon knew it, and knew Teyla knew it.
The thing about Sheppard was that, for him, you were only well and truly screwed when you couldn't fight back. You shot until you could shoot no more, making every second count, opening window after window of opportunity for a miracle or really good timing. Only when you ran out of ammo could say you were screwed.
Sheppard sat there against a mound of pillows, still without clothes because the hospital refused to give him any so they didn't have to bless them again. He was thin, he was hurt, could barely move or stay awake with the drugs like a weight on his brain.
If he'd been by himself, he'd be out of ammo. But he wasn't by himself; he had Ronon, and Teyla, and Rodney. He had his ammo. He couldn't shoot, but they could shoot for him.
Ronon positioned himself by the bed. “Wanna sleep?”
John rubbed the bruise-free side of his face. He pulled his mouth in a grimace of a smile.
“Not if it means waking up to another attempted...” he bit the word off hard.
“It won't happen,” Ronon said, with emphasis, short of swearing on his own blood.
Sheppard dropped his hand and said on a weary exhale,”That'd be great.”
Ronon helped get Sheppard settled, easing him onto his stomach because his back hurt, then covering him to his neck with two blankets. They set up a watch. People came throughout the night: the hysterical sobber, the molestor, and patients who claimed to be lost, or claimed nothing at all. They simply opened the door, stared, then wandered off forcing who ever was on watch to close the door back shut.
Ronon felt bad for them. Didn't like them all that much, but still managed to feel bad for them.
The storm was gone in the morning. Blue skies and birds had replaced it. An hour later a jumper arrived with a gurney, but Ronon wouldn't let them remove Sheppard's blanket. The Koloian doctor was armed with a verbal tirade over his patient being taken. He protested vehemently, threw a rock at Lorne, and that was it.
In Atlantis, they put John's arm and ankle in a cast and his body in scrubs. Nurses spoke kindly to him, he spoke kindly back, even smiled.
But he flinched when they touched him, and he continued to lose sleep, waking up gasping, wild-eyed and shivering. For that reason, Ronon stuck around.
He, Teyla and Rodney set up another watch.
The End
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon, Teyla, Rodney
Warnings: Mentions of off-screen violence, attempted molestation (non-explicit)
Summary: After being rescued Sheppard is forced to recover in an alien hospital, and his team is there to help. Ronon POV.
A/N: Just a little something that had been sitting on my harddrive for a while. I hadn't planned on postig it, but after giving it a reread decided it wasn't too bad after all. Edited but not beta'd.
Night Watch
They found Sheppard chained to a wall and altered by a month's worth of interrogation: bloody, bruised, broken and so weakened by hunger he could barely lift his head. But he did lift his head. He gave them a red-stained toothy smile and said, punch-drunk-off-his-ass, “hey, guys, what took you so long?” as if this were a party and they'd all been invited.
Sheppard kept asking the name of the “new” nurse currently sticking a needle into his vein, and why she was dressed like an Amish woman who liked to over-bleach her clothes. The IV bag was a glass bottle, but it hung from a metal pole like the Earth-made bags. Ronon consider the existence of any kind of IV reason enough to think Sheppard in good hands. Most worlds weren't that kind of advanced.
Rodney, as usual, wasn't as appeased. He kept demanding whether or not they tossed the needles out when done or washed them with the dishes to reuse.
“Maybe you should shut up and be happy they've got the means to keep Sheppard alive,” Ronon said.
Sheppard's kidnappers hadn't been local and their scavenging had made them unwelcome. The Koloians had chased them off, but had been too superstitious about the caves the scavengers had been using to enter them. They felt bad about not getting Sheppard out of that place; offered medical help and a place to stay until the storm died down. The storm wasn't anything a jumper couldn't handle. The lightning was a different story according to McKay and his precious readings. Too ionized and other big words that had no relevance in Ronon's opinion. What it eventually translated to, after much long-windedness, was that the storm was capable of dropping a jumper like a rock. It was why they hadn't come in a jumper in the first place. The gate was also ten miles out, and Sheppard in too bad a shape to be transported by stretcher.
Ronon tried not to wonder if Rodney had a point about the needles. The hospital was cozy, more like an inn, with wooden walls painted white and naked beams criss-crossing the ceiling. Ronon had been so relieved that Sheppard was getting fluids into him that he hadn't noticed the string-thin cracks in the wall, the cobwebs in the beams, the patches of pale wood in the ceiling where repairs had been made.
All in all, it didn't mean anything. Or maybe it did. Ronon asked Sheppard's doctor, dressed in the white lab coat of a physician, if his world had seen an attack recently.
“Three months back, the Wraith came. We are slowly beginning to rebuild.” The doctor sounded defensive about it, as though he expected Ronon to be just as judgmental as McKay. Teyla cooled the situation by offering man-power from Atlantis to help with any repairs as payment. The doctor and nurses were both awed and grateful.
Too awed. Ronon half-expected them to drop to their knees and start muttering prayers at Teyla's feet.
The team was given a room near the main ward. It was possible for patients to have private rooms, but the doctor felt those should be saved only for Koloians. The rooms were blessed or something, and for a stranger to use one, even a stranger from the Ancestor city, would mean having to rebless the room. And Ancestors forbid if a patient were in a guest room, where a nurse might not be able to get to him in time.
Ronon wasn't happy about it. Teyla had to keep reminding him that they were guests on this world, a world offering their meager supplies to right a wrong. The Koloian nurses brought them food and games to pass the time - mostly cards and something called Bintal that Rodney said was like back gammon.
The storm beat against the hospital, rattling the windows as if trying to get inside. The second day was worse, louder, like the windows were barely holding on by a nail. The sun might as well have not risen; the clouds were so thick, none of the team had awoken until a nurse came in with breakfast.
Sheppard woke, still punch drunk but not as bad.
“What did they want?” Ronon asked. They sat around his bed, Ronon and Rodney on one side, Teyla on the other.
Sheppard's tongue peeked out from between cracked and swollen lips, a sliver of pink, there and gone. Ronon handed him a glass of water, held it while Sheppard sipped. When he took it away, Sheppard spoke in a gritty rasp.
“Information.”
“The usual 'where is Atlantis because it belongs to Pegasus people you bastard' or did they go original for once?” Rodney asked with his usual post-kidnap tone of 'people are idiots.'
“Wanted... weapons...” Sheppard breathed.
Rodney tossed up his hands. “Of course.”
Sheppard pulled in a breath that made his bare chest shudder. He was naked beneath the blanket; Ronon realized this when he'd checked on Sheppard the other night while a nurse was changing his blanket. The current blanket was pulled up to his collarbones. He was patched and dotted with bruises, some fading to yellow and others fresh, some finger-shaped and others fist-shaped. One eye was swollen shut and the side of his face was purple and black. Ronon had seen the rest of the bruises in that brief moment when Sheppard had lost all dignity - fist and boot-shaped. He had broken ribs, a broken arm, broken fingers of his left hand, and a broken ankle.
A nurse interrupted their brief reunion when she had to chase them off. It was time for John to eat, she told them. Teyla offered to help feed John, saying it would make him feel more comfortable, but the nurse wouldn't have it.
“It's my job. And I know what to do, you do not. Now please leave.” She refused to feed Sheppard the bowl of porridge until they did.
They left, reluctantly, caught between Sheppard's poorly concealed look of misery that they were leaving so soon and his raw look of hunger. They couldn't even hover in the doorway to the main ward.
“These people are nuts,” Rodney said.
“These people are helping us,” Teyla replied.
That night, Ronon snapped awake to echoing screams. He didn't waste time with his boots, bolting from the room, down the hall and into the ward where Sheppard struggled and three nurses struggled harder.
Sheppard cried out.
The nurse cried louder.
“Stop screaming!” wailed the nurse pinning his shoulders. Another had his legs, the third was fighting to inject him with something. “Stop screaming and lie down, now!”
Ronon didn't know who was louder, a frantic, wild-eyed Sheppard or the sobbing nurse. She yelled at him with desperation, begging, then demanding, then begging. She finally pulled him up...
And slapped him hard across his bruised face. It didn't mute Sheppard, it made him howl.
Ronon bellowed, “Leave him alone!” and rushed in. He threw the nurse who had slapped Sheppard onto the neighboring bed. The other two backed off.
Sheppard immediately calmed down. Not enough to Ronon's liking; he was still gulping in air like he couldn't get enough. But it did allow Ronon to place either hand lightly on either side of John's head.
He asked, “You with me, Sheppard?”
Sheppard blinked up at him. “Ronon?”
“Yeah, buddy. You okay?”
Sheppard's breathing slowed. He swallowed, so Ronon brought him the glass of water. After a sip, Sheppard said, “Bad dream.”
“I bet.”
“Tried to sit up, like I usually do when I... but someone was holding me down.”
Ronon glared over his shoulder at the nurse now sitting like a pouting child on the bed. Her eyes were blood-shot, her face flushed and wet. She scraped the moisture way with her hand, then sniffed.
“If he had stopped struggling and screaming, all would have been well.”
“Get out.”
The woman glared.
“Now!”
She did, eventually. While the other two scurried like mice, she sulked like a cat.
John, sighing, closed his eyes. “Whass her... problem?”
“Dunno.”
“You gonna... be here... for... while?”
“Sure.” Ronon made himself comfortable on the next bed, watching Sheppard slip off to sleep.
Ronon woke to the doctor bellowing at him. He mostly ignored the little man lecturing the hell out of him for scaring his poor little nurses. Ronon lectured back with a lot more bark about man-handling tortured patients with broken bones. The doctor demanded he leave. Ronon 'insisted' he stay until he knew Sheppard was well and truly awake.
“Am, buddy,” Sheppard slurred. Ronon still wasn't convinced, but the doctor wouldn't look John over until he was out of the room. Sheppard told him it was okay. Ronon left, reluctant.
He told Rodney and Teyla everything.
“Nuts! I'm telling you, these people are nuts!” Rodney squeaked.
After breakfast, they played Bintal with Sheppard. Sheppard won three games.
“Used to play back gammon all the time at McMurdo.”
The nurses hovered as though it were the team that was the threat. The one that had tried to inject Sheppard, showing more bravery than she had the other night, came and went doing what looked to be little more than busy work. She checked Sheppard's temperature using the back of her hand, the tightness of his bandages, the solidity of the flat wood splinting his arm and ankle. And with each check and poke and prod, Sheppard's face turned a little paler, his eyes a little darker.
He snapped, “Think that could wait!” The nurse scuttled off with a sour twist to her lips.
“She was simply doing her job,” Teyla said.
John glared at her, briefly. Teyla's reprimand had been light, as though for the sake of it, and it was easy to tell she hadn't bought it herself. But an injured Sheppard was an intolerant Sheppard, with patience thin as a the cobwebs on the ceiling, and they all knew it. Teyla took no offense.
Ronon stayed with John that night, whether the doctor liked it or not. The storm was a beast, howling and banging a thousand fists on the wall. Ronon could feel its assault's vibrations through the walls, floor, bed. He heard dripping from somewhere, smelled the mildew of wet aging things that made the air stale. He watched Sheppard lying on his stomach. The damage on his front was bad but the damage on his back was worse. You knew when the pain medication was wearing off when Sheppard had to lay on his front. You knew it was gone when he started moaning in pain. The nurses refused to give him his next dose until he could no longer stand it. Supplies were limited, they always said; a stern reminder that Sheppard was lucky he was getting any medication at all.
Sheppard groaned, shifting. Ronon moved from the bed to the chair next to Sheppard. He sat and placed the flat of his hand on Sheppard's back, above the bandages where the least damage was and where skin could meet skin. He felt backbone, and the arch of ribs when Sheppard's breathing increased.
This wasn't common-place, this kind of contact. Sheppard was a man who burned bridges like he could make a living off of it. Life threw him in the mud, he pulled himself from it, shook himself off and continued forward. It was what he did, it was how he survived, and he only ever looked back when he had no other choice.
But it didn't happen over night. There was a moment, in between, like twilight, when the bad was too fresh to bury. The body was weak, the mind was caged by drugs and pain, and reality was malleable. In that moment, it was possible for Sheppard to be fragile.
But in that moment, Sheppard was usually home among what was familiar, surrounded by a protective wall of friends. If the team couldn't be there to remind Sheppard of where he was, there was Carson to do it, or one of his nurses. Hell, anyone could do it since it was only a matter of using soft words and few touches. Sheppard might be confused, but he was quick, and as soon as he realized where he was - that he was safe - he was out like a light.
The few times Sheppard had needed lingering touches, he'd been off-world.
Ronon didn't remove his hand until he was sure Sheppard was still. He went back to his bed.
He woke up to soft whispers, and his eyes about popped right out of his head.
A nurse had crawled into Sheppard's bed, holding him upright as she kissed his shoulders, neck, head. She was under the covers with Sheppard. The covers slipped enough for Ronon to know that she was naked.
Sheppard was struggling, pushing away. She struggled in return, too busy pulling him back to take her affections beyond kissing. His breaths were fast, his voice slurred as he demanded to know what hell they were doing to him now, and in-between the demands Ronon could hear Sheppard's growled pleas to stop.
Ronon bolted from the bed roaring louder than the perpetual thunder. The girl shrieked like a bird and took off in a flash of white flesh, taking the blanket with her, leaving Sheppard bare and freezing and disoriented. Ronon grabbed the blanket from his bed and threw it over him.
Sheppard continued to shake. When Ronon touched his shoulder, Sheppard flinched away.
“What the hell are you doing to me!”
“Easy, it's just me.”
“Ronon?”
“Yeah.” He touched John's shoulder a second time. John let him.
The nurse must have given him pain meds, because when John turned his head Ronon's way his eyes rolled bright and glassy in his skull.
“Think... they were try'n to molest me or somethin'. Thasss a new one.”
Rodney was right. These people were nuts. To hell with them all, then. Ronon hooked the I.V. pole against his arm, bundled Sheppard in the blanket and carried him to the guest room. He was met with Rodney's “What the hell!” because the guy was a light sleeper. Teyla woke next. Ronon explained the situation and when the doctor showed up the next day bellowing like a dry wind, Ronon knew it was all Teyla could do not to kick his ass.
The moron said 'it happened.' Nurses undressing, molesting patients happened.
“We refuse to treat him until he is returned to the main ward,” The doctor said.
“How much longer this storm going to last?” Ronon asked. He thought there might be a little less thunder today.
The doctor refusing to answer was all the answer they needed. With a huff, the doctor turned on his heels and stomped from the room.
“What is wrong with these people?” Rodney said, white-faced.
“They were culled,” Ronon said.
The nurses continued to bring them all food, Ronon wasn't sure why. Rodney stuck to MREs, certain that whoever cooked the food was probably spitting in it. Just in case, they gave Sheppard the pudding cups Rodney sometimes liked to bring.
Sheppard was even more snappish when he woke up, cursing the hospital under his breath and barking at whoever made a noise he didn't like. When they played Bintal, Sheppard lost for the first time. Rodney gloated, so Sheppard threw the game against the wall.
“What the hell is his problem?” Rodney hissed when Teyla took him to the other side of the room, giving both men space enough to cool off.
“He's ill and he hurts,” Teyla said. “His pain medication is wearing off.”
That wasn't it. Ronon knew it, and knew Teyla knew it.
The thing about Sheppard was that, for him, you were only well and truly screwed when you couldn't fight back. You shot until you could shoot no more, making every second count, opening window after window of opportunity for a miracle or really good timing. Only when you ran out of ammo could say you were screwed.
Sheppard sat there against a mound of pillows, still without clothes because the hospital refused to give him any so they didn't have to bless them again. He was thin, he was hurt, could barely move or stay awake with the drugs like a weight on his brain.
If he'd been by himself, he'd be out of ammo. But he wasn't by himself; he had Ronon, and Teyla, and Rodney. He had his ammo. He couldn't shoot, but they could shoot for him.
Ronon positioned himself by the bed. “Wanna sleep?”
John rubbed the bruise-free side of his face. He pulled his mouth in a grimace of a smile.
“Not if it means waking up to another attempted...” he bit the word off hard.
“It won't happen,” Ronon said, with emphasis, short of swearing on his own blood.
Sheppard dropped his hand and said on a weary exhale,”That'd be great.”
Ronon helped get Sheppard settled, easing him onto his stomach because his back hurt, then covering him to his neck with two blankets. They set up a watch. People came throughout the night: the hysterical sobber, the molestor, and patients who claimed to be lost, or claimed nothing at all. They simply opened the door, stared, then wandered off forcing who ever was on watch to close the door back shut.
Ronon felt bad for them. Didn't like them all that much, but still managed to feel bad for them.
The storm was gone in the morning. Blue skies and birds had replaced it. An hour later a jumper arrived with a gurney, but Ronon wouldn't let them remove Sheppard's blanket. The Koloian doctor was armed with a verbal tirade over his patient being taken. He protested vehemently, threw a rock at Lorne, and that was it.
In Atlantis, they put John's arm and ankle in a cast and his body in scrubs. Nurses spoke kindly to him, he spoke kindly back, even smiled.
But he flinched when they touched him, and he continued to lose sleep, waking up gasping, wild-eyed and shivering. For that reason, Ronon stuck around.
He, Teyla and Rodney set up another watch.
The End