SGA fic - Faith (Sheps_Atlantis Ficathon)
Author: kriadydragon
For: Syble4
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Characters: John, some team
Prompt: John, H/C, Action
Summary: They're alive, and that's what keeps him going. Thank you Wildcat88 for the beta.
Faith
They're gone.
John Sheppard kicked through knee-high ferns, sloughing over mossy earth soft as a wet green sponge.
They're dead.
He stumbled into and pushed off from another tree, its bark salt and pepper and moss-slathered on the north side, the direction he was going against. The bark was soft, but pain still shot through his blistered hand to his elbow. Pain was everywhere, like clothing, like skin. Pain in his legs and feet that begged for him to take a load off. Pain in the gaping pit of his stomach that hadn't seen the likes of food in ten days. Pain in his scabbed hands and in an arm forced to lift a rock-heavy P-90. Pain in his brain that was desperate to dream, in his back that kept trying to bend, his throat rubbed raw to meat, ribs that had been snapped, lungs that burned, a chest forever constricting yet his heart still beat...
“I killed them. You forced me to.”
Like hell, like hell, like hell!
They weren't dead. The bastard was bluffing.
John's shoulder plowed into another tree, adding pain onto the pain. He was pain, and he couldn't remember what life had been like before the pain.
“I killed them, Sheppard. You forced me to. This is all you're doing.” Commander Owel, former buddy of Kolya's, said with a caricature of a rueful smile on his face and a smirk in his eyes.
John kicked at the iron bars with a force that made them ring. “You're lying!”
“Am I?” Owel said, moderately surprised. He held up three prizes for John to see - two ropes of Ronon's hair, a necklace, a PC tablet. He simpered. “Am I?”
It had been the wrong thing to say.
John took a sudden breath and gasped from the sharper pain rising above the rest of the pain then coughed. Somewhere in the misty distance, a twig snapped. John didn't think - his brain was too high among the clouds to think - and fired in the general direction of the sound. He smiled in satisfaction over the pained cry.
So they were hunting him. He figured as much but had kind of hoped they'd lost interest in him, thinking abuse, hunger, and the wilds a good enough combination to finish him off. Then again, if they really did underestimate him then it was through dumb luck they'd ever captured him and his team to begin with.
It was dumb luck Owel took hair from Ronon, an heirloom from Teyla, and a computer from Rodney.
Like hell! They're not dead. He was bluffing.
“You still don't believe me, Colonel? Let me provide you with further proof.”
They dragged him outside, his first breath of fresh air in nearly two weeks, and breathing half of it in made his ribs feel like they were puncturing every major organ. They marched him to the top of a hill and a hump of naked brown dirt covering a mass grave - big enough to hold three.
Owel smiled that plaster smile of his. “Now do you believe me, Colonel?”
It had been the wrong thing to do. You don't break a man by showing him trinkets and a filled grave. You show him bodies, fresh enough to still be warm and identifiable.
He was bluffing. They're not dead.
Owel was an idiot. A lucky idiot but still a friggin' moron.
John stumbled again, this time to his hands and knees, jarring his body and waking the pain from a growl to a roar. It caught the breath in his lungs and forced him to lose precious minutes remembering how to breathe. He lost more minutes to a stuttering heart locking more air inside his chest. He pressed his hand over his heart, wondering if he was having a heart attack or if his body had decided to call it quits. Then the tightness in his chest loosened a fraction, enough for him to inhale. He reached out to the nearest tree, hauled himself up then pushed himself back into his perpetual staggering.
The air smelled water sweet, moist and cool, soaking into his sweat-drenched skin and making him shiver.
Like a walk through the forests of Endor McKay might say with a look of whimsy on his face that would soon turn to panic when Ronon mentioned something about Ewoks. Ronon loved Star Wars. Go figure. Teyla would drop a line about Ewoks being adorable. She'd said as much the first time they'd watched the movies, wishing such creatures existed. Translated - she'd like one as a sort-of pet. Teyla was too polite and considerate to ever call a sentient being a “pet,” but, as the saying went, it was the thought that counted.
John snickered at the image of Teyla walking hand in hand with a little brown Ewok toting a spear and an infatuation. Then he remembered what a dead give-away giggling can be in a dead-silent forest full of hunters. Crap, he needed sleep. He made the mistake of picturing Rodney doing the handholding with a sentient teddy-bear. John clapped his hand over his mouth, stifling both howling laughter and the need to cough up a lung. There was an increase of pain in his lungs, a kind of burning itch rubbed raw by cool air, never a problem until he had to cough.
Whispering in the underbrush. John stopped, spun, and slammed his bruised back into the tree. Thankfully he still had his mouth covered, muting the grunt that declined into a whimper. He sank slowly into a crouch on trembling legs.
Fighting the need to sit, just for a second, was a worse hell than a dank cell and gray water that was supposed to be food but was nothing more than gray water.
The whisper of disturbed underbrush guided John's attention ten feet to his right. He squinted into the foliage and stared. And stared and stared...
A flash of storm gray. John didn't think - no room for thinking. He twisted around and fired, gritting his teeth against the explosion of pain throughout his body. The thunder of the P-90 swallowed his grunts and groans. When he stopped firing, he slumped back against the tree, panting, his wet breaths as noisy as the weapon.
A minute passed - or so John assumed - lacking in return fire which was good enough for him. He leaned his shoulder against the tree as support while getting back to his feet then pushed off and stumbled drunkenly over ground that kept trying to tilt out from under him. The entire world was tilting, but it was nothing new, and John knew what to do. He stopped, closed his eyes, and waited until the queasy churning in his stomach settled to a disquiet that was willing to cooperate. He still needed the help of another tree to push himself back into motion.
“I will leave you to mourn, Colonel,” said Owel.
That had been the wrong move. There had been a moment of shock - of believing what he was seeing - but the rest of John's pathetic display of lost hope had been an act. When the guards moved in, thinking him too weak to stand, he'd attacked. One of them had been carrying his P-90, the biggest mistake of all. One sweep of the weapon with his finger tight on the trigger and John was out of that hell hole.
He was bluffing.
Are you sure?
They're still alive.
Why haven't they come back for you then?
John's hand wandered to the cut hidden behind a crude bandage made from a dirty cloth tied around his bicep. He could feel it stinging, burning, infected just like all the other cuts slashed across his skin.
What if that's not the only reason?
John scowled. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Damn, he needed to sleep. He just wanted to sleep. A good eight hours and then he'd be able to fight logic with logic. He'd been shown a mass grave, personal items, not bodies. You don't show the man you're trying to torment circumstantial evidence. And that was all Owel's proof was - circumstantial.
I have got to lay off all those damn crime shows.
A man is broken when he has nothing left to hope for.
John had plenty left to hope for.
John felt a tickle at the back of his neck and slapped it away. He could almost hear Rodney's plaintive whine about forgetting his bug spray. Ronon would tell him to shut up. No, he would tell him to shut up, Rodney wouldn't, then Ronon would smear mud all over the back of Rodney's neck, telling him it's just as good as his damn spray. Teyla would try to hide an amused smile by wiping her mouth.
There was a bare patch of earth between two thick roots. John gritted, grunted, and groaned, kneeling and scooping a handful of mud that he slathered onto his neck and exposed arms. He grunted, gritted, and groaned his way back to his feet and nearly dropped back to the ground. The world didn't just tilt; it wobbled and spun, infuriating his stomach. He bent as much as his ribs would allow and puked, saliva and bile only.
It was a worse hell than crouching, like being impaled in the chest and flanks with fiery pokers. He leaned against the tree, gasping and shivering with pain greater than the pain he'd gotten used to. Minutes crawled, stretched like hours, before the pain stopped raging enough for him to breathe right. He still shook, but then he'd been trembling the moment he'd escaped.
He thought that might have been yesterday, but he wasn't sure.
Gunfire shredded the ferns near his feet. John dropped to his knees, swinging his P-90 in an arc across the forest. He ducked the return fire, but a bullet still tore another laceration by skimming across the skin of his shoulder. He fired again, never letting up until he thought he heard a surprised yelp.
John listened to the silence. He inched up slowly, searching the forest that was empty of everything and anything mobile. There was no return fire so he struggled to his feet.
The underbrush exploded, and a body slammed into John, knocking him to his side. Pain was like a supernova, erupting from the inside out. He screamed, thrashed, striking out against the source of the pain that left no room for rational thought. He was pain, and he wanted the pain to stop. He punched, kicked, twisted and, without even noticing it, flipped the source of the pain onto its own back. John saw the source's face, flesh-colored and dressed in gray. He knew that color, the color that had made him pain and told him lies that hurt worse than anything they could do physically.
They're not dead. They're not dead! And to say otherwise was a damn insult to his team.
No one insulted his team.
John lashed out with fists and a guttural cry of rage. Knuckles cracked bone, over and over and over again. Blood spurted like a fountain, and John still pounded until a second impact knocked him off. Pain still ruled, thought was still nonexistent, and when the two rolled apart John lunged with a howl, his eyes blinded by red fury and desperation.
Enemy two had pulled a gun. John grabbed it with one hand while swinging out with the other. The gun fired, scoring the skin of his side - a brief sting lost in a sea of agony. He ripped the gun from enemy two, jabbed it into enemy's side, and fired twice.
Enemy two stilled. Enemy one had yet to so much as twitch. John knelt there, shaking so hard his teeth clacked. Every breath was sandpaper to his throat, ice to his lungs, and a knife to his side. His heart fluttered too light and wild within the small space of his ribcage. It was so hard to breathe, and he wanted to sleep. Oh, how he just wanted to sleep, puke, run and run and run until he flew so high no one could touch him. He lurched to his feet and did just that - ran. Except it wasn't a run; it was wide, stuttering steps and the inebriated weaving of a punch drunk. He had to lean against every tree he came to or fall, every muscle twitching with the threat of it. He burned: his lungs, joints, heart being eaten alive by acid.
John just wanted to go home - where his team would be waiting.
Are you sure?
Yes. Hell yes, he was sure.
Why didn't they come back for you?
Did it really matter? They were alive. He knew it, knew it like his own name. Knew it like he knew how to fly. Knew they were alive just like he was alive. Owel had been bluffing.
They were alive. They were waiting for him.
John saw the edge of the forest ahead, bordering a small field of short grass where the 'gate stood tall and alien within all this earth-like nature. He saw two guards waiting for him, armed with P-90s. John shot them before he was out of the woods, using an alien weapon (where'd my P-90 go?) freeing him up to stagger and fall against the DHD. He dialed with a trembling hand, supporting himself with a trembling arm, his trembling legs fighting to give out. When the wormhole blossomed like diamond foam, he touched the radio at his ear that the guard with his P-90 had also been stupid enough to keep on his person.
“This is Colonel John Sheppard to Atlantis. Please respond,” he said, his voice wood rough and strange to his ears. He said his name again, gave his I.D., his IDC code in words instead of signals, and flat out begged to come home.
“Open the shield! Please!”
Silence… then, “Colonel Sheppard, the shield is down. Step through.”
John did so with a smile on his face, plunging head first like a diver into the sea. The rush home was nauseating, arctic, and a joyride that would never get old. He stumbled out of the event horizon, lurched a few inches then fell to his hands and knees where he puked up nothing, gagged, coughed, and dropped to his side in shuddering agony. There wasn't enough air on this planet or any planets combined to fill his heaving lungs, wasn't enough water to cool the burning in his muscles and bones, wasn't enough painkillers to make him remotely human again.
Then the world undulated. He heard voices distantly as though they were all under water and saw booted feet running toward him. It was all so slow, like a dream, and John watched their approach with a feather-light detachment. But when hands touched him, reality snapped back into place, and he freaked as much as his tired body would let him.
Mostly, he pulled away, shoving ineffectively at the nearest set of fingers. He could still smell water and earth and plant life. So maybe he wasn't home. Maybe this really was a dream and he was back at that place, about to be dragged away to another cell, told more lies. He tried getting to his feet, but every time ended up back on his hands and knees, gaining only inches when he wanted feet. The hands kept coming, hundreds of them boxing him in and blocking every escape route, forcing John back instead of forward. He swiped wildly with a hoarse cry of terror.
“Leave me alone!”
“Sheppard!”
John stopped and stared. Ronon stood on the bottom step, staring back.
Alive. Very much alive.
“Ronon!” John shouted. He pushed himself one more time into motion, a tripping hunchbacked run with enough momentum to get him right up to Ronon.
John fell. Strong arms caught him, lowering his suddenly boneless body to the floor then wrapping around him to keep him upright. John leaned into Ronon, letting him hold him up as he shook and fought for breath.
“Ronon...” John wheezed.
“I've got you,” Ronon said.
“Kn - knew... knew...”
Ronon shushed him. “Focus on breathing.”
John nodded, focused, and melted into the arms of sleep.
---------------------------------
He awoke to muted aches and pains, then beeps, hisses, and the manufactured smells of medicines and detergents. As sluggish and cotton-filled as his brain felt, smell was to memories like a lit match was to gasoline - there was no second guessing that he was in the infirmary. He rolled his head to the side.
Teyla was there, curled up on her side in the neighboring bed, her arm in a cast.
John rolled his head to the other side, and there was Rodney, snoring peacefully, his leg in a splint propped up on pillows. Ronon was also there, sprawled in a chair, arms folded and eyes open, staring intently at John as though to look away might cause John to disappear.
Ronon lifted his chin. “Hey.”
John lifted one lead-weighted finger and whispered, “Hey.”
“'Bout time you woke up. It's been four days.” Ronon shrugged. “But Keller said it would be a while. You were hurt bad and... she figures it's been a while since you slept.”
John nodded. “Busy... running.”
The Satedan smiled an “I hear that” smile. Then he dropped his gaze to the floor. “They took out our transmitters and, um...” He scratched the back of his neck. “I, um... I must have been out of it, or they moved the location, or I give stupid directions. Lorne's team couldn't find you. I wanted to help, but I was pretty sick, and Keller kept sedating me. She released me the day you came back. I was going to head out with Lorne and them...” He trailed off, looking from the floor to the monitor in blazing avoidance. The infirmary's lighting was twilight dim, enough to see shapes and vague details and still make the patients comfortable. So John couldn't be sure if the small wink of light off Ronon's cheek was a trick of the wan illumination or something else.
When Ronon looked at him, there was no mistaking the moisture that shimmered on the edge of his eyelids.
“We didn't leave you behind, Sheppard,” Ronon said. “Rodney and Teyla were hurt, and I was sick, and we had no idea where they'd put you... we would never leave you behind.”
Ronon never cried. When they'd brought him back from Sateda and again from friends who had betrayed him, he hadn't cried, and John felt them better things to cry over. It was odd, new, a little disconcerting...
And John shocked himself by laughing - a breathy chuff of a chuckle that his ribs didn't like but couldn't do much about thanks to the good stuff. It made Ronon furrow his brow.
“What?”
John gulped in a lungful. “He... told me you were dead.” He coughed but, after clearing his throat with the water Ronon held for him, kept on laughing. “Knew - knew he was... bluffing. Knew it. Stupid... bastard.”
Ronon smiled in return. “He was stupid, wasn't he?”
John nodded. Another few seconds of laughter and it finally petered out into a quiet smile. “Knew you were alive.”
Ronon reached out, clasping his arm. “Yeah. Knew you were alive, too. Your timing's just better.”
“I... have... no patience,” John said. He yawned as deep as his chest would let him and felt the covers being tugged further up. “Hey,” he rasped. “Wanna... watch Star Wars later?”
Ronon's grin went right to his eyes. “Cool.”
“Cool,” John echoed. He burrowed into the warmth and softness all around him and gave into sleep.
The end
For: Syble4
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Characters: John, some team
Prompt: John, H/C, Action
Summary: They're alive, and that's what keeps him going. Thank you Wildcat88 for the beta.
Faith
They're gone.
John Sheppard kicked through knee-high ferns, sloughing over mossy earth soft as a wet green sponge.
They're dead.
He stumbled into and pushed off from another tree, its bark salt and pepper and moss-slathered on the north side, the direction he was going against. The bark was soft, but pain still shot through his blistered hand to his elbow. Pain was everywhere, like clothing, like skin. Pain in his legs and feet that begged for him to take a load off. Pain in the gaping pit of his stomach that hadn't seen the likes of food in ten days. Pain in his scabbed hands and in an arm forced to lift a rock-heavy P-90. Pain in his brain that was desperate to dream, in his back that kept trying to bend, his throat rubbed raw to meat, ribs that had been snapped, lungs that burned, a chest forever constricting yet his heart still beat...
“I killed them. You forced me to.”
Like hell, like hell, like hell!
They weren't dead. The bastard was bluffing.
John's shoulder plowed into another tree, adding pain onto the pain. He was pain, and he couldn't remember what life had been like before the pain.
“I killed them, Sheppard. You forced me to. This is all you're doing.” Commander Owel, former buddy of Kolya's, said with a caricature of a rueful smile on his face and a smirk in his eyes.
John kicked at the iron bars with a force that made them ring. “You're lying!”
“Am I?” Owel said, moderately surprised. He held up three prizes for John to see - two ropes of Ronon's hair, a necklace, a PC tablet. He simpered. “Am I?”
It had been the wrong thing to say.
John took a sudden breath and gasped from the sharper pain rising above the rest of the pain then coughed. Somewhere in the misty distance, a twig snapped. John didn't think - his brain was too high among the clouds to think - and fired in the general direction of the sound. He smiled in satisfaction over the pained cry.
So they were hunting him. He figured as much but had kind of hoped they'd lost interest in him, thinking abuse, hunger, and the wilds a good enough combination to finish him off. Then again, if they really did underestimate him then it was through dumb luck they'd ever captured him and his team to begin with.
It was dumb luck Owel took hair from Ronon, an heirloom from Teyla, and a computer from Rodney.
Like hell! They're not dead. He was bluffing.
“You still don't believe me, Colonel? Let me provide you with further proof.”
They dragged him outside, his first breath of fresh air in nearly two weeks, and breathing half of it in made his ribs feel like they were puncturing every major organ. They marched him to the top of a hill and a hump of naked brown dirt covering a mass grave - big enough to hold three.
Owel smiled that plaster smile of his. “Now do you believe me, Colonel?”
It had been the wrong thing to do. You don't break a man by showing him trinkets and a filled grave. You show him bodies, fresh enough to still be warm and identifiable.
He was bluffing. They're not dead.
Owel was an idiot. A lucky idiot but still a friggin' moron.
John stumbled again, this time to his hands and knees, jarring his body and waking the pain from a growl to a roar. It caught the breath in his lungs and forced him to lose precious minutes remembering how to breathe. He lost more minutes to a stuttering heart locking more air inside his chest. He pressed his hand over his heart, wondering if he was having a heart attack or if his body had decided to call it quits. Then the tightness in his chest loosened a fraction, enough for him to inhale. He reached out to the nearest tree, hauled himself up then pushed himself back into his perpetual staggering.
The air smelled water sweet, moist and cool, soaking into his sweat-drenched skin and making him shiver.
Like a walk through the forests of Endor McKay might say with a look of whimsy on his face that would soon turn to panic when Ronon mentioned something about Ewoks. Ronon loved Star Wars. Go figure. Teyla would drop a line about Ewoks being adorable. She'd said as much the first time they'd watched the movies, wishing such creatures existed. Translated - she'd like one as a sort-of pet. Teyla was too polite and considerate to ever call a sentient being a “pet,” but, as the saying went, it was the thought that counted.
John snickered at the image of Teyla walking hand in hand with a little brown Ewok toting a spear and an infatuation. Then he remembered what a dead give-away giggling can be in a dead-silent forest full of hunters. Crap, he needed sleep. He made the mistake of picturing Rodney doing the handholding with a sentient teddy-bear. John clapped his hand over his mouth, stifling both howling laughter and the need to cough up a lung. There was an increase of pain in his lungs, a kind of burning itch rubbed raw by cool air, never a problem until he had to cough.
Whispering in the underbrush. John stopped, spun, and slammed his bruised back into the tree. Thankfully he still had his mouth covered, muting the grunt that declined into a whimper. He sank slowly into a crouch on trembling legs.
Fighting the need to sit, just for a second, was a worse hell than a dank cell and gray water that was supposed to be food but was nothing more than gray water.
The whisper of disturbed underbrush guided John's attention ten feet to his right. He squinted into the foliage and stared. And stared and stared...
A flash of storm gray. John didn't think - no room for thinking. He twisted around and fired, gritting his teeth against the explosion of pain throughout his body. The thunder of the P-90 swallowed his grunts and groans. When he stopped firing, he slumped back against the tree, panting, his wet breaths as noisy as the weapon.
A minute passed - or so John assumed - lacking in return fire which was good enough for him. He leaned his shoulder against the tree as support while getting back to his feet then pushed off and stumbled drunkenly over ground that kept trying to tilt out from under him. The entire world was tilting, but it was nothing new, and John knew what to do. He stopped, closed his eyes, and waited until the queasy churning in his stomach settled to a disquiet that was willing to cooperate. He still needed the help of another tree to push himself back into motion.
“I will leave you to mourn, Colonel,” said Owel.
That had been the wrong move. There had been a moment of shock - of believing what he was seeing - but the rest of John's pathetic display of lost hope had been an act. When the guards moved in, thinking him too weak to stand, he'd attacked. One of them had been carrying his P-90, the biggest mistake of all. One sweep of the weapon with his finger tight on the trigger and John was out of that hell hole.
He was bluffing.
Are you sure?
They're still alive.
Why haven't they come back for you then?
John's hand wandered to the cut hidden behind a crude bandage made from a dirty cloth tied around his bicep. He could feel it stinging, burning, infected just like all the other cuts slashed across his skin.
What if that's not the only reason?
John scowled. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Damn, he needed to sleep. He just wanted to sleep. A good eight hours and then he'd be able to fight logic with logic. He'd been shown a mass grave, personal items, not bodies. You don't show the man you're trying to torment circumstantial evidence. And that was all Owel's proof was - circumstantial.
I have got to lay off all those damn crime shows.
A man is broken when he has nothing left to hope for.
John had plenty left to hope for.
John felt a tickle at the back of his neck and slapped it away. He could almost hear Rodney's plaintive whine about forgetting his bug spray. Ronon would tell him to shut up. No, he would tell him to shut up, Rodney wouldn't, then Ronon would smear mud all over the back of Rodney's neck, telling him it's just as good as his damn spray. Teyla would try to hide an amused smile by wiping her mouth.
There was a bare patch of earth between two thick roots. John gritted, grunted, and groaned, kneeling and scooping a handful of mud that he slathered onto his neck and exposed arms. He grunted, gritted, and groaned his way back to his feet and nearly dropped back to the ground. The world didn't just tilt; it wobbled and spun, infuriating his stomach. He bent as much as his ribs would allow and puked, saliva and bile only.
It was a worse hell than crouching, like being impaled in the chest and flanks with fiery pokers. He leaned against the tree, gasping and shivering with pain greater than the pain he'd gotten used to. Minutes crawled, stretched like hours, before the pain stopped raging enough for him to breathe right. He still shook, but then he'd been trembling the moment he'd escaped.
He thought that might have been yesterday, but he wasn't sure.
Gunfire shredded the ferns near his feet. John dropped to his knees, swinging his P-90 in an arc across the forest. He ducked the return fire, but a bullet still tore another laceration by skimming across the skin of his shoulder. He fired again, never letting up until he thought he heard a surprised yelp.
John listened to the silence. He inched up slowly, searching the forest that was empty of everything and anything mobile. There was no return fire so he struggled to his feet.
The underbrush exploded, and a body slammed into John, knocking him to his side. Pain was like a supernova, erupting from the inside out. He screamed, thrashed, striking out against the source of the pain that left no room for rational thought. He was pain, and he wanted the pain to stop. He punched, kicked, twisted and, without even noticing it, flipped the source of the pain onto its own back. John saw the source's face, flesh-colored and dressed in gray. He knew that color, the color that had made him pain and told him lies that hurt worse than anything they could do physically.
They're not dead. They're not dead! And to say otherwise was a damn insult to his team.
No one insulted his team.
John lashed out with fists and a guttural cry of rage. Knuckles cracked bone, over and over and over again. Blood spurted like a fountain, and John still pounded until a second impact knocked him off. Pain still ruled, thought was still nonexistent, and when the two rolled apart John lunged with a howl, his eyes blinded by red fury and desperation.
Enemy two had pulled a gun. John grabbed it with one hand while swinging out with the other. The gun fired, scoring the skin of his side - a brief sting lost in a sea of agony. He ripped the gun from enemy two, jabbed it into enemy's side, and fired twice.
Enemy two stilled. Enemy one had yet to so much as twitch. John knelt there, shaking so hard his teeth clacked. Every breath was sandpaper to his throat, ice to his lungs, and a knife to his side. His heart fluttered too light and wild within the small space of his ribcage. It was so hard to breathe, and he wanted to sleep. Oh, how he just wanted to sleep, puke, run and run and run until he flew so high no one could touch him. He lurched to his feet and did just that - ran. Except it wasn't a run; it was wide, stuttering steps and the inebriated weaving of a punch drunk. He had to lean against every tree he came to or fall, every muscle twitching with the threat of it. He burned: his lungs, joints, heart being eaten alive by acid.
John just wanted to go home - where his team would be waiting.
Are you sure?
Yes. Hell yes, he was sure.
Why didn't they come back for you?
Did it really matter? They were alive. He knew it, knew it like his own name. Knew it like he knew how to fly. Knew they were alive just like he was alive. Owel had been bluffing.
They were alive. They were waiting for him.
John saw the edge of the forest ahead, bordering a small field of short grass where the 'gate stood tall and alien within all this earth-like nature. He saw two guards waiting for him, armed with P-90s. John shot them before he was out of the woods, using an alien weapon (where'd my P-90 go?) freeing him up to stagger and fall against the DHD. He dialed with a trembling hand, supporting himself with a trembling arm, his trembling legs fighting to give out. When the wormhole blossomed like diamond foam, he touched the radio at his ear that the guard with his P-90 had also been stupid enough to keep on his person.
“This is Colonel John Sheppard to Atlantis. Please respond,” he said, his voice wood rough and strange to his ears. He said his name again, gave his I.D., his IDC code in words instead of signals, and flat out begged to come home.
“Open the shield! Please!”
Silence… then, “Colonel Sheppard, the shield is down. Step through.”
John did so with a smile on his face, plunging head first like a diver into the sea. The rush home was nauseating, arctic, and a joyride that would never get old. He stumbled out of the event horizon, lurched a few inches then fell to his hands and knees where he puked up nothing, gagged, coughed, and dropped to his side in shuddering agony. There wasn't enough air on this planet or any planets combined to fill his heaving lungs, wasn't enough water to cool the burning in his muscles and bones, wasn't enough painkillers to make him remotely human again.
Then the world undulated. He heard voices distantly as though they were all under water and saw booted feet running toward him. It was all so slow, like a dream, and John watched their approach with a feather-light detachment. But when hands touched him, reality snapped back into place, and he freaked as much as his tired body would let him.
Mostly, he pulled away, shoving ineffectively at the nearest set of fingers. He could still smell water and earth and plant life. So maybe he wasn't home. Maybe this really was a dream and he was back at that place, about to be dragged away to another cell, told more lies. He tried getting to his feet, but every time ended up back on his hands and knees, gaining only inches when he wanted feet. The hands kept coming, hundreds of them boxing him in and blocking every escape route, forcing John back instead of forward. He swiped wildly with a hoarse cry of terror.
“Leave me alone!”
“Sheppard!”
John stopped and stared. Ronon stood on the bottom step, staring back.
Alive. Very much alive.
“Ronon!” John shouted. He pushed himself one more time into motion, a tripping hunchbacked run with enough momentum to get him right up to Ronon.
John fell. Strong arms caught him, lowering his suddenly boneless body to the floor then wrapping around him to keep him upright. John leaned into Ronon, letting him hold him up as he shook and fought for breath.
“Ronon...” John wheezed.
“I've got you,” Ronon said.
“Kn - knew... knew...”
Ronon shushed him. “Focus on breathing.”
John nodded, focused, and melted into the arms of sleep.
---------------------------------
He awoke to muted aches and pains, then beeps, hisses, and the manufactured smells of medicines and detergents. As sluggish and cotton-filled as his brain felt, smell was to memories like a lit match was to gasoline - there was no second guessing that he was in the infirmary. He rolled his head to the side.
Teyla was there, curled up on her side in the neighboring bed, her arm in a cast.
John rolled his head to the other side, and there was Rodney, snoring peacefully, his leg in a splint propped up on pillows. Ronon was also there, sprawled in a chair, arms folded and eyes open, staring intently at John as though to look away might cause John to disappear.
Ronon lifted his chin. “Hey.”
John lifted one lead-weighted finger and whispered, “Hey.”
“'Bout time you woke up. It's been four days.” Ronon shrugged. “But Keller said it would be a while. You were hurt bad and... she figures it's been a while since you slept.”
John nodded. “Busy... running.”
The Satedan smiled an “I hear that” smile. Then he dropped his gaze to the floor. “They took out our transmitters and, um...” He scratched the back of his neck. “I, um... I must have been out of it, or they moved the location, or I give stupid directions. Lorne's team couldn't find you. I wanted to help, but I was pretty sick, and Keller kept sedating me. She released me the day you came back. I was going to head out with Lorne and them...” He trailed off, looking from the floor to the monitor in blazing avoidance. The infirmary's lighting was twilight dim, enough to see shapes and vague details and still make the patients comfortable. So John couldn't be sure if the small wink of light off Ronon's cheek was a trick of the wan illumination or something else.
When Ronon looked at him, there was no mistaking the moisture that shimmered on the edge of his eyelids.
“We didn't leave you behind, Sheppard,” Ronon said. “Rodney and Teyla were hurt, and I was sick, and we had no idea where they'd put you... we would never leave you behind.”
Ronon never cried. When they'd brought him back from Sateda and again from friends who had betrayed him, he hadn't cried, and John felt them better things to cry over. It was odd, new, a little disconcerting...
And John shocked himself by laughing - a breathy chuff of a chuckle that his ribs didn't like but couldn't do much about thanks to the good stuff. It made Ronon furrow his brow.
“What?”
John gulped in a lungful. “He... told me you were dead.” He coughed but, after clearing his throat with the water Ronon held for him, kept on laughing. “Knew - knew he was... bluffing. Knew it. Stupid... bastard.”
Ronon smiled in return. “He was stupid, wasn't he?”
John nodded. Another few seconds of laughter and it finally petered out into a quiet smile. “Knew you were alive.”
Ronon reached out, clasping his arm. “Yeah. Knew you were alive, too. Your timing's just better.”
“I... have... no patience,” John said. He yawned as deep as his chest would let him and felt the covers being tugged further up. “Hey,” he rasped. “Wanna... watch Star Wars later?”
Ronon's grin went right to his eyes. “Cool.”
“Cool,” John echoed. He burrowed into the warmth and softness all around him and gave into sleep.
The end