Not a Liability by Kriadydragon (Backstory Challenge)
Title: Not a Liability
Author: Kriadydragon
Rating: PG-13, gen
Characters: Sheppard, OCs, Team
Summary: John is not a liability, never has been.
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When John was seven, and being tall for his age, he slipped from the safety of his mother's hold on his hand and jumped into the open car of a Ferris Wheel. He had a thing for heights, the way the world opened up endless like arms wanting to welcome him. He liked looking down on all the tiny little people that couldn't reach him, pull him down, confine him in restrictive places that never let him wander. He liked the stronger breezes of the upper air, the way it ran straight, tugging at his hair and clothes, smelling faintly of cotton candy, funnel cakes, and a touch of pine and cedar from the nearby woods.
He liked the sky.
His mother was distraught when he returned to earth, and his father was pissed, going on and on about medical bills if John had gotten hurt, and for the boy to stop being such a liability (whatever that was). He'd been immediately grounded, confined to the cage that was his bedroom, wishing they'd just left him behind where he was happy. He made a vow never to speak to them again, only to completely forget about it after being called down to dinner.
******
They weren't insurgents. John wasn't sure what they were, but the fact that they seemed more panicked than superior said as much. Maybe wanna-bes. Maybe a new rebel fighting force that probably wouldn't last a week. Being a chopper pilot hadn't given Sheppard a lot of one-on-one time with the enemy, so he couldn't say squat. To him, they had always been faceless specks in the distance trying to force him back to earth.
A hit to the tail finally accomplished what the rest of the enemy couldn't. This was not John's first impromptu rescue mission, just the first one he failed at. The chopper went down hard and the impact snapped the bones in his right leg and slammed him into the stick, breaking ribs. The rest was a bloody haze of agony, of feeling himself being dragged into the stuffy, solid confines of some abandoned complex and shoved into a cramped room illuminated by sunlight pouring through the cracks of old walls. He was aware long enough to know he wasn't alone before he promptly passed out.
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He woke up to excruciating pain and Major Carlyle splinting his leg. Screaming couldn't be helped. Bones grated together and he arched his back while a gutteral shriek ripped from his parched throat.
“Will you shut him up! He's going to piss them off.”
Carlyle smiled, jerking the ties tight. Wooden sticks, rotten and weak, probably from an old chair, and a shredded jacket kept the bones of John's calf immobile. “If you know a way,” Carlyle said, “you're free to do it.”
The guy who spoke lunged forward, pressing a blood-stained hand to John's mouth and an arm around his throat. Enough pressure was applied to narrow the airway and decrease the scream into a choked squeak.
“Keep him quite, not kill him! Damn, Doyle, lay off the kid. He's hurt enough.”
Once the pain decreased to a level that made John want to cut off his leg rather than scream his lungs inside out, Sgt. Doyle released him. “He's gonna get us killed.”
Carlyle snorted. “He hasn't even done anything, yet. Seriously, Doyle, back off. The guy frikkin' outranks you.”
Doyle did. Carlyle didn't look like a guy who was safe to argue with. He was medium height, but broad, compact, all solid muscle and no fat. The desert and lugging pounds of survival gear did that to a body, stripping the fat and layering on muscle. John had gone from slender to wiry within the first month, but compared to Carlyle he was more like a toothpick. Doyle was somewhere in between. Then there was McCormick, Jefferson, and Jimenez. Jacobson, apparently, hadn't made it.
Jefferson had a cut on his head and Jimenez a broken wrist, making Sheppard the only heavily injured of the group. He heard Doyle whispering to the others, caught words like “liability” “will slow us down if we try to escape” “he'll probably crack the moment they slap his face” and crap like that. John couldn't be sure if they were right. Yeah, he could handle pain, but he'd heard from the grapevine some of the things these people did just to hear them scream.
“Leave the kid alone,” Carlyle growled. “You get your fingernails pulled off one at a time, then start throwing stones.”
John's eyes widened. “They do that?”
Carlyle shrugged. “Don't know. Knew a guy who was a POW in Nam. Told me what the Vietcong liked to do, and you gotta admit, they were pretty damn creative.” He said this with a bitter smile that looked pained and uneasy.
John shrank against his little corner but the motion turned the dull throb in his flank into a burning pulsation that got him shivering.
“Ah hell, he's shaking, he's freakin' shaking!” Doyle sneered. “No way in hell's he gonna make it. He's scares stupid!”
John glared, bracing his back against the wall to push himself up into sitting. “I'm hurt, you ass-hole. I'm not scared!”
“Don't you call me an ass-hole you little bastard!” Doyle made another lunge for John's throat but Carlyle and two others shoved and pulled him back.
“Stand down, Sargent!” the major hissed. “Of course he's scared, we're all scared. You'd be an idiot or screwed in the head if you weren't. Crap, Doyle, what the hell is your problem?”
The problem was the Sargent one freak-out away from wetting himself, so needing a scapegoat to unload some of that terror. Doyle being army and John Air Force plus new to the group meant no loyalties and a metaphorical punching bag. It didn't matter what John did, said, or proved otherwise, the Sargent was bound and determined to hate him just to have something harmless within the vicinity to hate. It was the story of Sheppard's life - always moving around, always the new guy, with no loyalties or anyone to have his back for the first few weeks or months, making him the wounded antelope that the lions always zeroed in on in those nature shows.
Doyle jerked his arms free from the restraining holds. “This damn zoomie almost killed us. Hell,” he coughed up a manic laugh, “he did kill us, we're just still moving!”
“We were shot down!” John snarled back.
“Because you can't fly...!”
Carlyle stood akimbo, spreading his arms and legs enough to come off as another size bigger. “Stand down, Sargent, now!”
Doyle backed up two steps but was far from finished. He jabbed a rigid finger in John's direction and let the spittle fly when he spat, “He's gonna crack. And when he does, I'm gonna kill him.”
“Doyle...”
“No, sir. With all do respect, I'm not letting him give those bastards the satisfaction. He says so much beyond name, rank, and serial, I'm breaking his skinny neck.”
Carlyle placed his hand against Doyle's chest and shoved, causing the Sargent to stumble back. “Like hell you are, Doyle. You lay one finger on him and I'll break it.”
John lowered his head to fight the need to smile in private. He didn't even know Major Carlyle that well, just in passing. Hell, he'd never had anyone, even people he did know, stick up for him like that. Maybe it was just Carlyle's way to keep the order and stamp down panic, but Sheppard couldn't help appreciate it. It was... nice. It made his fear manageable, made him feel that, no matter what happened, there was going to be someone there making sure he was all right afterwards. Or at least keep Doyle from killing him.
He decided to make it easy on Carlyle, and shove it in Doyle's and their captures' faces what he was capable of, by keeping his mouth shut.
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John screamed but he never spoke. Didn't even recite name, rank, and serial. Their captures babbled in a language John didn't understand, but Carlyle did and translated for the others. The men in ragged jackets, pants, and scarves hiding their faces wanted to know what the Americans had been doing, where they were going, if others were coming, what they had discovered, so on and so forth. They talked too loud, too fast, constantly shifting from foot to foot, glancing over their shoulders, or gripping their weapons so tight their hands paled. Whatever they hoped to learn was for the sake of staying alive, not advancing any cause.
Sheppard's injuries made him the favorite target. They stepped on his leg and pressed the butts of their rifles or automatics into his ribs. He moaned, grunted, even whimpered and uttered a few broken screams, but nothing that came out as articulate words. The others cussed, seethed, squirmed mouthed off and did name, rank, serial as though trying to incite a riotous chant.
The insurgents/rebels/whatever they were hustled John, Carlyle, and McCormick into the hottest room of the building and strung them up by the wrists to the rafters to hang and cook. Dehydration and the pain in his leg and chest made John pass out, missing most of everything until a fist hammered into his chest.
Water was a necessity if the prisoners were to live, so food was denied instead.
Jefferson's cut became infected and a fever developed. They didn't receive enough water to keep him hydrated so he died, but wasn't dragged out until two days later. The stench had made John retch bile and acid. Jimenez freaked out, muttering prayers meant to ward off the spirits of the dead. The words were drowned out by Doyle screaming at him to shut up.
Body heat worked with no ventilation to turn the small room into an oven turned way passed one-hundred degrees, and not even the night brought relief. The water was sucked from their bodies the moment it was digested. John developed a fever, not as bad as McCormick's but bad enough to make it impossible to keep down the one crust of bread they got every five days as a teaser. They'd shucked their shirts trying to scrounge for relief from the heat, making John witness to the progression of his own deterioration; his skin tightening around his bones, outlining his sternum, sinking into the spaces between his ribs. He shook from pain, then cold from the fever.
Their captors seemed annoyed by his condition. They kept trying to drag him out to die but Carlyle would let them, kept saying he was just tired and hungry. John was pretty sure their hosts simply didn't want to have to deal with another body, so let him stay.
John moaned and mumbled when the fever got bad, but he never said a word. Didn't even let Carlyle know when the pain was bad or if he needed a drink. He'd gotten used to his own silence, trusted it more than himself. He knew, he just knew, that the moment he opened his mouth and said real words, he would not be able to find the silence again. Then, whether from pain or delirium, he would say something, something their captors would want to hear, and that would prove Doyle right.
Like hell John was a liability.
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The pain and fever became one until John was writhing on the floor in silent agony. Sometimes he whimpered, moaned, but he was certain he'd forgotten how to speak. He didn't want to, anyways. Talking would just hurt.
Carlyle tried to help him, keep him cool with a rag moistened by a little water, and keep him calm by making promises he probably wouldn't be able to keep. But John knew, just knew, the major would try if he could.
“Just hang on, kid. We'll find a way out of here. We'll get you home, then you'll be all right.”
Carlyle also tried to distract him. “Got any family? Mom, dad, wife, kids, friends?”
John raked his nails across the floor pulling his fingers into a fist that he pressed into his chest. Heat cooked him and pain beat hammers on his leg and in his chest.
He had a wife he'd been ripped from two weeks after they were married. No kids, they weren't ready yet. Sometimes he wondered if she even wanted kids. She never looked particularly happy about it whenever he brought it up. His mom was dead - lung cancer. She'd smoked too much and the X-rays of a cancerous lung had provoked John into avoiding cigarettes like the plague. His dad... was hard to talk to. They didn't keep in touch. It was just easier that way. Friends - Mitch, Dex, Holland, Jordan... well, not Jordan, he was dead now. Sometimes he still got in touch with his one buddy from Highschool, Rick, the only guy with the decency to warn him not to take Angie Carmicheal to the prom. She'd accepted with the intent of ditching him to head off to some hotel with Mike Edwards. She had wanted, actually wanted, to get pregnant.
John had answers, but said nothing, and was a little startled by how easy it was. This was Carlyle, after all, and he trusted Carlyle. Carlyle wouldn't betray them, wouldn't hurt him...
Carlyle assured him that it was all right, blaming John's perpetual silence on the fever.
“He's not gonna make it.”
“Shut up, Doyle. He'll be fine.”
Sheppard trusted Carlyle, so knew he would be fine.
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John had passed out, he didn't know when or for how long, and woke up to silence. He opened sticky eyes to an empty room and complete silence. He lifted his head even though the motion made it pound and the world tilt. His heart jackhammered, increasing the rate of his breathing. He opened his mouth to call out but the only sound he could produce was a high-pitched croak.
There were cups of water within reach and a scratchy blanket puddled by his head. Attempting to crawl to the door sucked him dry of energy and he collapsed using the blanket as a pillow. When enough energy pooled, he crawled another few inches, then another. He didn't care about captors and vindication for making too much noise. He pounded on the door with the palm of his hand. He wanted to know if he really was alone, and just how alone he was.
No one came. He grew exhausted, rested, grabbing a cup in his shaking hand and sipping two swallows. He then resumed pounding. Pounding, resting, and drinking only when his tongue felt swollen and rough as old leather. He passed out when he tried to ignore his exhaustion, then woke up to more solitude. Silence pressed on him like a tangible weight until he thought it was going to crush him. His ragged breaths couldn't break it. Periodic whimpers pierced it only to have it congeal back into a single mass like thick, viscous mud.
No one was coming. They were gone, all of them, and the only explanation John had was that they were dead. It had been too long for it to be just another interrogation, and he was usually the favorite for the torture. The others were dead and their captors had fled for some inexplicable reason, leaving John to die since they didn't have time to kill him themselves.
John curled tight into himself and waited to die.
At least he hadn't talked.
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“Sheppard, hey Sheppard! Come on, pal, wake up. Don't do this to me.”
A soft pat on the cheek wasn't as effective as the familiar voice pleading for him to be okay. Hope surged like a tidal wave that jump-started John's heart into pounding. It hurt, the fight to open his eyes, but they did open to Mitch's face leaning in close, breaking out in a smile.
“Yeah, that's it, buddy.” He chuckled, but it sounded a little more like a sob. “That's it, come on, Shep, wake up for me, pal!”
“Sir, you're going to have to move, sir.”
Mitch didn't so much move as scoot a little to the side for a medic to lean in and place a stethoscope to John's bare, emaciated chest. He felt the pinch and burn of a needle in the back of his hand and saw the flash of wane light off the crystal fluid of an I.V. bag. John reached out with his decrepit, needle-free hand to grip the sleeve of Mitch's T-shirt. He wanted to say something, anything. Thank him, beg him to make the pain stop, ask him what the hell was going on. So many things, too many, yet he couldn't even make a squeak. So he just held on tight, trying to ignore the thought that he might get left behind if he didn't.
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The doctors understood his dehydration, starvation, infection, and broken bones, but they couldn't understand his silence. Neither did John. He wanted to say he'd forgotten how to speak, but he had to wonder if he'd finally just flat out became afraid to speak and wouldn't admit it even to himself. He wasn't a psychologist, and sure as hell didn't want to explore the issue. The doctors, the brass - they did. So real psychologists were brought in, the kind trained to produce quick results and the kind that got pissed and indifferent when the results didn't happen.
The lack of those results was the patient's fault, they said, out of stubborness, pride, inability to be helped, etc. John overheard them from his hospital bed as they discussed institutionalizing him.
Mitch wouldn't have it, and Dex was with him.
“Sons of bitches aren't giving him enough time,” John heard Dex snarl just outside the door. “He goes through hell just to come back and be put through it again? He doesn't need this crap.”
John wanted to talk, just to know if he still could, if he'd just forgotten how and not because he was afraid.
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Carlyle was alive. He came to visit John, sunburned, peeling, with a cast on his arm and a limp. John's shock made his heart stutter. There was joy, there was relief, all of it lasting less than three heartbeats when confusion and reality hammered home.
Carlyle was alive. Carlyle had escaped. Carlyle, who he'd trusted, had...
John spoke for the first time in over a month and a half. “You left me.”
Carlyle lifted his good hand, trying to placate. “Sheppard, let me explain...”
“You left me.”
“I didn't want to, it was the only way...”
John's eyes blurred, burning. “You... left me.”
“I made sure that they knew you were still out there. I sent men to find you...”
Sheppard started shaking, but not because of pain or cold. This was Carlyle. Carlyle had helped him. He'd trusted Carlyle. “I thought... I thought you wouldn't. I thought you were dead, I thought...”
Carlyle reach out with the intent to put his hand on John's shoulder. Sheppard flinched away, heart pounding, blood burning. He didn't understand. This was Carlyle and Carlyle wouldn't have left him. “You left me.”
The Major pulled his hand away, holding it as though he didn't know what to do with it, and moved his gaze everywhere but on Sheppard. “I'm not your dad, kid. Or your brother. Hell, I barely knew you. We did what we had to do. Yeah, I left you, but I made sure someone went back for you.” His words would have been more convincing if he had, at least, attempted to make eye-contact with John. “You were injured, sick, and a liability.”
John shook his head. “I never talked.”
“No, but you would have slowed us down. We couldn't risk bringing you or we would have all died.” Then he added, “but we're alive, all of us.” He lingered, gaze wandering for a moment, until he finally, hesitantly, headed toward the door only to stop within the threshold. “I'm sorry, kid.” Then he left.
Everything Carlyle said rang loud and true. Yes, he would have slowed them down. Yes, he would have been the death of them all. So why did it still hurt?
“The guy's full of it, Shep.”
John looked up to see Mitch leaning in the doorway with his hands stuffed into his standard issue pants. He was supposed to head out in four hours, back to the front lines with Dex in tow. John wondered if he would ever see them again.
“It didn't take us long to find him and the rest,” Mitch went on. “Took forever to find you. They shouldn't have left you. You just don't do that, you don't leave a man, everyone knows that.”
“But he's right,” John countered. “I would have slowed them down.”
Mitch scowled in disgust. “So? Better trying than wondering. They could have brought you. I would have. Or stayed behind if I couldn't. I wasn't even supposed to go on the rescue mission, but I sure as hell wasn't going to trust anyone else to get you. I'd never leave a man behind.”
John felt his lip curl up in a smile. Promising wasn't the same as doing, but Mitch he knew, and neither him nor Dex had given him a reason to doubt anything they had to say. “I'll hold you to that.”
Mitch inclined his head. “Damn straight.” Then pointed a finger at John. “And I expect the same.”
John gave him a thumbs up. “You got it.”
******
Because Rodney was injured - bullet to the leg - John stayed with him while Ronon ran back to the gate and Teyla stood guard. When the cave they were hiding in was compromised, they ran kicking through thick underbrush and slapping palm-sized leaves from their face. They were almost to the gate that was a small, illuminated circle like a blue sun in the distance. A bullet slammed into John's shoulder blade and another in his thigh. He stumbled and fell face-first into the loam, bringing Rodney with him. Teyla took Rodney while Ronon ran back to help John up. Sheppard gritted his teeth against the pain slicing down his back and up his leg like knives.
Like hell he was a liability.
He fell again and Ronon picked him up, slinging him over his shoulder. The Satedan's pace was slowing so John opened his mouth, ready to say something he already knew was pointless to say.
“Don't even, Sheppard,” Ronon growled.
John clapped his mouth shut and stayed quiet the rest of the way until they were through the gate. He was lowered to the cool floor before being transferred to a gurney. Surgery was needed, his clothes removed and anesthesia administered that knocked him out cold.
John awoke to beeping, warmth, and momentary disorientation. The pain in his leg slapped him hard with deja vu and his eyes searched for a door where Mitch should be standing. Instead, he found Rodney in the bed next to his, and Ronon and Teyla in chairs talking to him. Rodney, more aware than most gave him credit for, took notice of John's return to consciousness.
“Took you long enough,” he said with mock reprimand marred by his relieved smile.
John smiled back, but couldn't speak, not quite yet. Then Teyla gave him an ice-chip and Carson came over to take vitals and replace the oxygen mask for a cannula. He told Ronon and Teyla to go to the mess for food so his patients could get some sleep. His two team members started to leave when John reach out, snagging the end of Ronon's coat.
“Wait,” he croaked.
Ronon stopped, turned, and grinned. “Yeah, I know. Disobey you again and...”
John eyes stung and blurred, but he wasn't sure why. “Thanks.”
Ronon's grin softened into a smile. He took John's hand and set it back on the bed. “It's just what you would have done for us.”
True. It's what he would always do for them. It was just nice to know that, even if he ordered them otherwise, they would always do the same for him.
The End
Author: Kriadydragon
Rating: PG-13, gen
Characters: Sheppard, OCs, Team
Summary: John is not a liability, never has been.
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When John was seven, and being tall for his age, he slipped from the safety of his mother's hold on his hand and jumped into the open car of a Ferris Wheel. He had a thing for heights, the way the world opened up endless like arms wanting to welcome him. He liked looking down on all the tiny little people that couldn't reach him, pull him down, confine him in restrictive places that never let him wander. He liked the stronger breezes of the upper air, the way it ran straight, tugging at his hair and clothes, smelling faintly of cotton candy, funnel cakes, and a touch of pine and cedar from the nearby woods.
He liked the sky.
His mother was distraught when he returned to earth, and his father was pissed, going on and on about medical bills if John had gotten hurt, and for the boy to stop being such a liability (whatever that was). He'd been immediately grounded, confined to the cage that was his bedroom, wishing they'd just left him behind where he was happy. He made a vow never to speak to them again, only to completely forget about it after being called down to dinner.
******
They weren't insurgents. John wasn't sure what they were, but the fact that they seemed more panicked than superior said as much. Maybe wanna-bes. Maybe a new rebel fighting force that probably wouldn't last a week. Being a chopper pilot hadn't given Sheppard a lot of one-on-one time with the enemy, so he couldn't say squat. To him, they had always been faceless specks in the distance trying to force him back to earth.
A hit to the tail finally accomplished what the rest of the enemy couldn't. This was not John's first impromptu rescue mission, just the first one he failed at. The chopper went down hard and the impact snapped the bones in his right leg and slammed him into the stick, breaking ribs. The rest was a bloody haze of agony, of feeling himself being dragged into the stuffy, solid confines of some abandoned complex and shoved into a cramped room illuminated by sunlight pouring through the cracks of old walls. He was aware long enough to know he wasn't alone before he promptly passed out.
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He woke up to excruciating pain and Major Carlyle splinting his leg. Screaming couldn't be helped. Bones grated together and he arched his back while a gutteral shriek ripped from his parched throat.
“Will you shut him up! He's going to piss them off.”
Carlyle smiled, jerking the ties tight. Wooden sticks, rotten and weak, probably from an old chair, and a shredded jacket kept the bones of John's calf immobile. “If you know a way,” Carlyle said, “you're free to do it.”
The guy who spoke lunged forward, pressing a blood-stained hand to John's mouth and an arm around his throat. Enough pressure was applied to narrow the airway and decrease the scream into a choked squeak.
“Keep him quite, not kill him! Damn, Doyle, lay off the kid. He's hurt enough.”
Once the pain decreased to a level that made John want to cut off his leg rather than scream his lungs inside out, Sgt. Doyle released him. “He's gonna get us killed.”
Carlyle snorted. “He hasn't even done anything, yet. Seriously, Doyle, back off. The guy frikkin' outranks you.”
Doyle did. Carlyle didn't look like a guy who was safe to argue with. He was medium height, but broad, compact, all solid muscle and no fat. The desert and lugging pounds of survival gear did that to a body, stripping the fat and layering on muscle. John had gone from slender to wiry within the first month, but compared to Carlyle he was more like a toothpick. Doyle was somewhere in between. Then there was McCormick, Jefferson, and Jimenez. Jacobson, apparently, hadn't made it.
Jefferson had a cut on his head and Jimenez a broken wrist, making Sheppard the only heavily injured of the group. He heard Doyle whispering to the others, caught words like “liability” “will slow us down if we try to escape” “he'll probably crack the moment they slap his face” and crap like that. John couldn't be sure if they were right. Yeah, he could handle pain, but he'd heard from the grapevine some of the things these people did just to hear them scream.
“Leave the kid alone,” Carlyle growled. “You get your fingernails pulled off one at a time, then start throwing stones.”
John's eyes widened. “They do that?”
Carlyle shrugged. “Don't know. Knew a guy who was a POW in Nam. Told me what the Vietcong liked to do, and you gotta admit, they were pretty damn creative.” He said this with a bitter smile that looked pained and uneasy.
John shrank against his little corner but the motion turned the dull throb in his flank into a burning pulsation that got him shivering.
“Ah hell, he's shaking, he's freakin' shaking!” Doyle sneered. “No way in hell's he gonna make it. He's scares stupid!”
John glared, bracing his back against the wall to push himself up into sitting. “I'm hurt, you ass-hole. I'm not scared!”
“Don't you call me an ass-hole you little bastard!” Doyle made another lunge for John's throat but Carlyle and two others shoved and pulled him back.
“Stand down, Sargent!” the major hissed. “Of course he's scared, we're all scared. You'd be an idiot or screwed in the head if you weren't. Crap, Doyle, what the hell is your problem?”
The problem was the Sargent one freak-out away from wetting himself, so needing a scapegoat to unload some of that terror. Doyle being army and John Air Force plus new to the group meant no loyalties and a metaphorical punching bag. It didn't matter what John did, said, or proved otherwise, the Sargent was bound and determined to hate him just to have something harmless within the vicinity to hate. It was the story of Sheppard's life - always moving around, always the new guy, with no loyalties or anyone to have his back for the first few weeks or months, making him the wounded antelope that the lions always zeroed in on in those nature shows.
Doyle jerked his arms free from the restraining holds. “This damn zoomie almost killed us. Hell,” he coughed up a manic laugh, “he did kill us, we're just still moving!”
“We were shot down!” John snarled back.
“Because you can't fly...!”
Carlyle stood akimbo, spreading his arms and legs enough to come off as another size bigger. “Stand down, Sargent, now!”
Doyle backed up two steps but was far from finished. He jabbed a rigid finger in John's direction and let the spittle fly when he spat, “He's gonna crack. And when he does, I'm gonna kill him.”
“Doyle...”
“No, sir. With all do respect, I'm not letting him give those bastards the satisfaction. He says so much beyond name, rank, and serial, I'm breaking his skinny neck.”
Carlyle placed his hand against Doyle's chest and shoved, causing the Sargent to stumble back. “Like hell you are, Doyle. You lay one finger on him and I'll break it.”
John lowered his head to fight the need to smile in private. He didn't even know Major Carlyle that well, just in passing. Hell, he'd never had anyone, even people he did know, stick up for him like that. Maybe it was just Carlyle's way to keep the order and stamp down panic, but Sheppard couldn't help appreciate it. It was... nice. It made his fear manageable, made him feel that, no matter what happened, there was going to be someone there making sure he was all right afterwards. Or at least keep Doyle from killing him.
He decided to make it easy on Carlyle, and shove it in Doyle's and their captures' faces what he was capable of, by keeping his mouth shut.
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John screamed but he never spoke. Didn't even recite name, rank, and serial. Their captures babbled in a language John didn't understand, but Carlyle did and translated for the others. The men in ragged jackets, pants, and scarves hiding their faces wanted to know what the Americans had been doing, where they were going, if others were coming, what they had discovered, so on and so forth. They talked too loud, too fast, constantly shifting from foot to foot, glancing over their shoulders, or gripping their weapons so tight their hands paled. Whatever they hoped to learn was for the sake of staying alive, not advancing any cause.
Sheppard's injuries made him the favorite target. They stepped on his leg and pressed the butts of their rifles or automatics into his ribs. He moaned, grunted, even whimpered and uttered a few broken screams, but nothing that came out as articulate words. The others cussed, seethed, squirmed mouthed off and did name, rank, serial as though trying to incite a riotous chant.
The insurgents/rebels/whatever they were hustled John, Carlyle, and McCormick into the hottest room of the building and strung them up by the wrists to the rafters to hang and cook. Dehydration and the pain in his leg and chest made John pass out, missing most of everything until a fist hammered into his chest.
Water was a necessity if the prisoners were to live, so food was denied instead.
Jefferson's cut became infected and a fever developed. They didn't receive enough water to keep him hydrated so he died, but wasn't dragged out until two days later. The stench had made John retch bile and acid. Jimenez freaked out, muttering prayers meant to ward off the spirits of the dead. The words were drowned out by Doyle screaming at him to shut up.
Body heat worked with no ventilation to turn the small room into an oven turned way passed one-hundred degrees, and not even the night brought relief. The water was sucked from their bodies the moment it was digested. John developed a fever, not as bad as McCormick's but bad enough to make it impossible to keep down the one crust of bread they got every five days as a teaser. They'd shucked their shirts trying to scrounge for relief from the heat, making John witness to the progression of his own deterioration; his skin tightening around his bones, outlining his sternum, sinking into the spaces between his ribs. He shook from pain, then cold from the fever.
Their captors seemed annoyed by his condition. They kept trying to drag him out to die but Carlyle would let them, kept saying he was just tired and hungry. John was pretty sure their hosts simply didn't want to have to deal with another body, so let him stay.
John moaned and mumbled when the fever got bad, but he never said a word. Didn't even let Carlyle know when the pain was bad or if he needed a drink. He'd gotten used to his own silence, trusted it more than himself. He knew, he just knew, that the moment he opened his mouth and said real words, he would not be able to find the silence again. Then, whether from pain or delirium, he would say something, something their captors would want to hear, and that would prove Doyle right.
Like hell John was a liability.
--------------------
The pain and fever became one until John was writhing on the floor in silent agony. Sometimes he whimpered, moaned, but he was certain he'd forgotten how to speak. He didn't want to, anyways. Talking would just hurt.
Carlyle tried to help him, keep him cool with a rag moistened by a little water, and keep him calm by making promises he probably wouldn't be able to keep. But John knew, just knew, the major would try if he could.
“Just hang on, kid. We'll find a way out of here. We'll get you home, then you'll be all right.”
Carlyle also tried to distract him. “Got any family? Mom, dad, wife, kids, friends?”
John raked his nails across the floor pulling his fingers into a fist that he pressed into his chest. Heat cooked him and pain beat hammers on his leg and in his chest.
He had a wife he'd been ripped from two weeks after they were married. No kids, they weren't ready yet. Sometimes he wondered if she even wanted kids. She never looked particularly happy about it whenever he brought it up. His mom was dead - lung cancer. She'd smoked too much and the X-rays of a cancerous lung had provoked John into avoiding cigarettes like the plague. His dad... was hard to talk to. They didn't keep in touch. It was just easier that way. Friends - Mitch, Dex, Holland, Jordan... well, not Jordan, he was dead now. Sometimes he still got in touch with his one buddy from Highschool, Rick, the only guy with the decency to warn him not to take Angie Carmicheal to the prom. She'd accepted with the intent of ditching him to head off to some hotel with Mike Edwards. She had wanted, actually wanted, to get pregnant.
John had answers, but said nothing, and was a little startled by how easy it was. This was Carlyle, after all, and he trusted Carlyle. Carlyle wouldn't betray them, wouldn't hurt him...
Carlyle assured him that it was all right, blaming John's perpetual silence on the fever.
“He's not gonna make it.”
“Shut up, Doyle. He'll be fine.”
Sheppard trusted Carlyle, so knew he would be fine.
-------------------------------
John had passed out, he didn't know when or for how long, and woke up to silence. He opened sticky eyes to an empty room and complete silence. He lifted his head even though the motion made it pound and the world tilt. His heart jackhammered, increasing the rate of his breathing. He opened his mouth to call out but the only sound he could produce was a high-pitched croak.
There were cups of water within reach and a scratchy blanket puddled by his head. Attempting to crawl to the door sucked him dry of energy and he collapsed using the blanket as a pillow. When enough energy pooled, he crawled another few inches, then another. He didn't care about captors and vindication for making too much noise. He pounded on the door with the palm of his hand. He wanted to know if he really was alone, and just how alone he was.
No one came. He grew exhausted, rested, grabbing a cup in his shaking hand and sipping two swallows. He then resumed pounding. Pounding, resting, and drinking only when his tongue felt swollen and rough as old leather. He passed out when he tried to ignore his exhaustion, then woke up to more solitude. Silence pressed on him like a tangible weight until he thought it was going to crush him. His ragged breaths couldn't break it. Periodic whimpers pierced it only to have it congeal back into a single mass like thick, viscous mud.
No one was coming. They were gone, all of them, and the only explanation John had was that they were dead. It had been too long for it to be just another interrogation, and he was usually the favorite for the torture. The others were dead and their captors had fled for some inexplicable reason, leaving John to die since they didn't have time to kill him themselves.
John curled tight into himself and waited to die.
At least he hadn't talked.
-----------------------------
“Sheppard, hey Sheppard! Come on, pal, wake up. Don't do this to me.”
A soft pat on the cheek wasn't as effective as the familiar voice pleading for him to be okay. Hope surged like a tidal wave that jump-started John's heart into pounding. It hurt, the fight to open his eyes, but they did open to Mitch's face leaning in close, breaking out in a smile.
“Yeah, that's it, buddy.” He chuckled, but it sounded a little more like a sob. “That's it, come on, Shep, wake up for me, pal!”
“Sir, you're going to have to move, sir.”
Mitch didn't so much move as scoot a little to the side for a medic to lean in and place a stethoscope to John's bare, emaciated chest. He felt the pinch and burn of a needle in the back of his hand and saw the flash of wane light off the crystal fluid of an I.V. bag. John reached out with his decrepit, needle-free hand to grip the sleeve of Mitch's T-shirt. He wanted to say something, anything. Thank him, beg him to make the pain stop, ask him what the hell was going on. So many things, too many, yet he couldn't even make a squeak. So he just held on tight, trying to ignore the thought that he might get left behind if he didn't.
----------------------------
The doctors understood his dehydration, starvation, infection, and broken bones, but they couldn't understand his silence. Neither did John. He wanted to say he'd forgotten how to speak, but he had to wonder if he'd finally just flat out became afraid to speak and wouldn't admit it even to himself. He wasn't a psychologist, and sure as hell didn't want to explore the issue. The doctors, the brass - they did. So real psychologists were brought in, the kind trained to produce quick results and the kind that got pissed and indifferent when the results didn't happen.
The lack of those results was the patient's fault, they said, out of stubborness, pride, inability to be helped, etc. John overheard them from his hospital bed as they discussed institutionalizing him.
Mitch wouldn't have it, and Dex was with him.
“Sons of bitches aren't giving him enough time,” John heard Dex snarl just outside the door. “He goes through hell just to come back and be put through it again? He doesn't need this crap.”
John wanted to talk, just to know if he still could, if he'd just forgotten how and not because he was afraid.
-----------------------------
Carlyle was alive. He came to visit John, sunburned, peeling, with a cast on his arm and a limp. John's shock made his heart stutter. There was joy, there was relief, all of it lasting less than three heartbeats when confusion and reality hammered home.
Carlyle was alive. Carlyle had escaped. Carlyle, who he'd trusted, had...
John spoke for the first time in over a month and a half. “You left me.”
Carlyle lifted his good hand, trying to placate. “Sheppard, let me explain...”
“You left me.”
“I didn't want to, it was the only way...”
John's eyes blurred, burning. “You... left me.”
“I made sure that they knew you were still out there. I sent men to find you...”
Sheppard started shaking, but not because of pain or cold. This was Carlyle. Carlyle had helped him. He'd trusted Carlyle. “I thought... I thought you wouldn't. I thought you were dead, I thought...”
Carlyle reach out with the intent to put his hand on John's shoulder. Sheppard flinched away, heart pounding, blood burning. He didn't understand. This was Carlyle and Carlyle wouldn't have left him. “You left me.”
The Major pulled his hand away, holding it as though he didn't know what to do with it, and moved his gaze everywhere but on Sheppard. “I'm not your dad, kid. Or your brother. Hell, I barely knew you. We did what we had to do. Yeah, I left you, but I made sure someone went back for you.” His words would have been more convincing if he had, at least, attempted to make eye-contact with John. “You were injured, sick, and a liability.”
John shook his head. “I never talked.”
“No, but you would have slowed us down. We couldn't risk bringing you or we would have all died.” Then he added, “but we're alive, all of us.” He lingered, gaze wandering for a moment, until he finally, hesitantly, headed toward the door only to stop within the threshold. “I'm sorry, kid.” Then he left.
Everything Carlyle said rang loud and true. Yes, he would have slowed them down. Yes, he would have been the death of them all. So why did it still hurt?
“The guy's full of it, Shep.”
John looked up to see Mitch leaning in the doorway with his hands stuffed into his standard issue pants. He was supposed to head out in four hours, back to the front lines with Dex in tow. John wondered if he would ever see them again.
“It didn't take us long to find him and the rest,” Mitch went on. “Took forever to find you. They shouldn't have left you. You just don't do that, you don't leave a man, everyone knows that.”
“But he's right,” John countered. “I would have slowed them down.”
Mitch scowled in disgust. “So? Better trying than wondering. They could have brought you. I would have. Or stayed behind if I couldn't. I wasn't even supposed to go on the rescue mission, but I sure as hell wasn't going to trust anyone else to get you. I'd never leave a man behind.”
John felt his lip curl up in a smile. Promising wasn't the same as doing, but Mitch he knew, and neither him nor Dex had given him a reason to doubt anything they had to say. “I'll hold you to that.”
Mitch inclined his head. “Damn straight.” Then pointed a finger at John. “And I expect the same.”
John gave him a thumbs up. “You got it.”
******
Because Rodney was injured - bullet to the leg - John stayed with him while Ronon ran back to the gate and Teyla stood guard. When the cave they were hiding in was compromised, they ran kicking through thick underbrush and slapping palm-sized leaves from their face. They were almost to the gate that was a small, illuminated circle like a blue sun in the distance. A bullet slammed into John's shoulder blade and another in his thigh. He stumbled and fell face-first into the loam, bringing Rodney with him. Teyla took Rodney while Ronon ran back to help John up. Sheppard gritted his teeth against the pain slicing down his back and up his leg like knives.
Like hell he was a liability.
He fell again and Ronon picked him up, slinging him over his shoulder. The Satedan's pace was slowing so John opened his mouth, ready to say something he already knew was pointless to say.
“Don't even, Sheppard,” Ronon growled.
John clapped his mouth shut and stayed quiet the rest of the way until they were through the gate. He was lowered to the cool floor before being transferred to a gurney. Surgery was needed, his clothes removed and anesthesia administered that knocked him out cold.
John awoke to beeping, warmth, and momentary disorientation. The pain in his leg slapped him hard with deja vu and his eyes searched for a door where Mitch should be standing. Instead, he found Rodney in the bed next to his, and Ronon and Teyla in chairs talking to him. Rodney, more aware than most gave him credit for, took notice of John's return to consciousness.
“Took you long enough,” he said with mock reprimand marred by his relieved smile.
John smiled back, but couldn't speak, not quite yet. Then Teyla gave him an ice-chip and Carson came over to take vitals and replace the oxygen mask for a cannula. He told Ronon and Teyla to go to the mess for food so his patients could get some sleep. His two team members started to leave when John reach out, snagging the end of Ronon's coat.
“Wait,” he croaked.
Ronon stopped, turned, and grinned. “Yeah, I know. Disobey you again and...”
John eyes stung and blurred, but he wasn't sure why. “Thanks.”
Ronon's grin softened into a smile. He took John's hand and set it back on the bed. “It's just what you would have done for us.”
True. It's what he would always do for them. It was just nice to know that, even if he ordered them otherwise, they would always do the same for him.
The End