Supporting Character, Week 3: Shadows Follow Where He Walks
Title: Shadows Follow Where He Walks
Author: naye
Prompt: Self-sacrifice (Supporting Character Appreciation Day)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,700
Spoilers: Through the end of season 4.
Summary: A young man must take a dark and twisted path to save everything he loves.
Author's note: Once again I'm lucky enough to have had the brilliant, sharp-eyed xparrot as my beta.
The creature Michael does not make Runners, not the way the Wraith were known to do. He does something much worse.
Jinto does not know what it is. Not exactly. He knows that his people are being taken, one by one. Some are seen again--changed, horribly transformed. Some are returned to them, to be burned on what pyres they can build. And others simply disappear.
When Michael's guards come for them, Jinto's father tries to stop them. Again. His father is still weak. He has been giving too much of his food to the children, has stepped in to catch too many blows. He is too slow to stop Jinto, this time.
"I am sorry, father," Jinto says. He wants to cry, at the look in his father's eyes. But he does not. He follows the guards, and they leave his father alone. They leave the children alone.
Jinto does not know how he could protect the children like his father does. Now he has lived through too much to be a child himself, but he is not yet the man his people need him to be. He does not know the songs that will lead the dead to peace; he cannot prepare the tea that will let mothers bring their babies safely into the world.
Brought to Michael's vile laboratory, Jinto trembles. His childhood nightmares all fade to nothing in the presence of the creature before him. He would rather face the Wraith. Their darkness has touched the lives of all his friends and kin, but the Wraith they know. There are words for them, words to guard against them and bring the courage to fight them. There are no words for this pale, unnatural creation.
Jinto hears his own racing pulse. He clenches his teeth and balls his fists. Not to fight--to keep from whimpering. He wants to close his eyes, but he cannot. He cannot move, when Michael approaches. He has seen this happen to small animals hunted by predators. He knows how it ends.
But it does not end. It only grows more frightening. Michael is talking--explaining something. There is a deep sadness in his voice. It is wrong. Predators do not pity their prey. It is a lie--Jinto can feel it. The words Michael speaks, about terrible wrongs done to him, about inevitability and regret--they may be human words, but Michael is not human. He twists the meanings of the words. In his mouth, they are leeched of any warmth, and carry strange, dark undercurrents of pain and death.
Jinto feels rage, then, rage that he has been too frightened to feel--too hungry, too tired. But when Michael uses the words that belong to them, the humans, his face heats with anger. Fury fills him, provoking him to remember his training. His body flows into one of the basic stances. His eyes flash. He will meet his fate as the warrior he wished to be, and not the victim Michael expects.
"Calm down, lad." The voice is not Michael's. It is too soft, too human. There is real sadness in it, and Jinto knows this voice. His heart pounds painfully in his chest. His balance shifts, off now, not a warrior after all. Only a child, remembering cool, gentle hands on his fevered brow.
"Doctor Beckett?" Jinto whispers. He has seen nightmares before, but never a ghost.
The ghost nods, too solid, too real. "Aye. I'm sorry we have to meet again like this, Jinto."
A ghost that knows Jinto's name, and is too thin, too haunted. A ghost should not look haunted. Doctor Beckett is trailed by a guard, and he carries a small case.
"What is happening?" Jinto's voice fails him, making him sound very young.
Michael is watching. Doctor Beckett, somehow not a ghost, shakes his head. "Terrible things." The sadness in his blue eyes drowns the last spark of Jinto's anger.
Michael speaks again, and Doctor Beckett listens, nodding curtly. Many of their words, Jinto does not understand. But he understands that the doctor is trying to protest. Jinto knows it is futile even before the gray-clad shoulders slump. He knows the doctor's gentleness, and he has seen this monster's brutal strength. Michael's twisted words will be enough--are enough, in the end.
Jinto does not blame Doctor Beckett. He hears the words Michael speak, with their terrible truth, with their rotten core. The creature's promises of death and pain are poison to the healer. Jinto is afraid, but he is his father's son. He does not wish to add to the man's burden. He does not flinch even when the doctor's needles pierce his skin.
The doctor's hands are gentle, and warmer than Jinto remembered them. The hands of a living man, even though Teyla carried the message of his death to New Athos. Even though they have mourned him.
Doctor Beckett examines Jinto, and Jinto thinks that the doctor would have done well to stay dead. For whose sake, he cannot say.
"He is in excellent health for someone who's been through what these people have," Doctor Beckett tells Michael. The words are reluctant, and spoken with reproach.
"And the analysis confirms that he is compatible?"
Doctor Beckett consults a small device. It looks very much like the hand-held game Colonel Sheppard once shared with the children of Athos, but this is no game. It is tasting Jinto's blood. Jinto shudders at the sight of it.
"Yes." The answer is clipped.
"Prepare him," Michael orders. "I want him among those who leave tomorrow."
"Tomorrow--that's not enough time to allow him to recuperate!"
"It will be sufficient," Michael says. The creature is confident. He leaves.
Doctor Beckett closes his eyes, giving Jinto a brief respite from the tortured emotions he sees in them.
Jinto wishes his father were here to hold his hand. He did this to save his father, but his heart betrays him. He aches for the comfort and safety he always found hiding behind the tails of his father's long coat.
"Right, lad." The doctor is looking at him again. "I'm sorry--this is going to get a little uncomfortable."
This time, it is Jinto who closes his eyes.
* * *
Michael does not create Runners. He creates something far worse. Jinto still does not understand why, or how. All he knows is what he feels happening to him.
It is in his body, it is making it impossible to feel anything else, think anything else. There is only the need, the drive to move forward. The desperation to get some relief from the pain he can never truly escape.
Water helps, a little. It quenches some of the thirst. But other things set it off--the sun of one world, shining too brightly overhead. Clouds on another, cooling the air too fast. On yet another world, it is the strange melody of an alien wind through fossilized trees. It pushes him recklessly onwards, through ring after ring, in search of--something.
A place where he can be at peace, for just a little while. A place to lie down and die, a small part of him thinks. He refuses to acknowledge that. He is sick, but not dying. He cannot be dying. He refuses to die--he still has his father, and his people.
His blood boils again. The air becomes too thin to breathe, or too thick. The night around him is too dark, or the shadows too translucent.
Through the ring lies the promise of relief. Through the ring, he will find what he is looking for.
Find comfort through the ring. The words are in his head, along with the pain. Michael's words, maybe. Jinto does not know anymore.
He knows many places to go through the ring. He thought one of them might be the right place--the right people.
He wants to find people. Needs to find people. But he cannot. Cannot let himself--what he has become, what he carries--touch them.
Other people could help him. Could take him in. Could offer him shelter from the pitiless alien worlds.
He knows places.
He returns to Athos. It is deserted--dangerous. The Wraith come here often. The large city across the lake seems to call to them, now. Jinto only stays long enough to plunge his head into the clear, cool water. To feel the wet sand under his hands, until every grain of it stings his palms like needles.
He wants to return to his new home, the new Athos. He is desperate to. It is a place of respite and sanctuary. It was, before Michael came. If the people of Atlantis come, it will be again.
He could go with them.
He remembers Atlantis. The tall spires, where the wind in his hair would make him feel as if he was flying. The quarters where they lit candles to keep the dark away. Major Sheppard, coming to find him when he was lost. Doctor Weir, and her indulgent smile. Even Doctor McKay, who they would dare each other to approach.
He could never go with them.
When his thoughts are clear enough, he imagines the beautiful towers in ruins. The Ancestors' city, broken. This curse he carries, spreading to extinguish the people of the smiles and kind words. His own arrival would put an end to those who are already legends.
He thinks of Teyla, and he knows that she would save him. Would save any of her people, no matter the cost to herself.
And that is why he must stay away. To save her. To save her people--her new people, and Jinto should have been jealous of them, but he never was. They were his friends, too.
Jinto knows other places. None burn as clear in his memory as Atlantis, but they flash before him--the world where the bread is dark and spicy; the world where they ride beautiful, horned beasts; the world where that girl with sun-gold hair shared sweet, sticky fruit with him. He could go to any of them, and be protected by their walls, have his thirst quenched by their cool water.
But Teyla has been there. They know her. Might call her. She might come, like Sheppard came to find him when he was lost.
That time, Lieutenant Ford got hurt, because of Jinto. Sometimes, the wounded Lieutenant said, stuff happens. Jinto understands that. But he also knows that whatever this is--he cannot stop it from happening to himself, but he can stop it from happening to others.
If he does that, Michael's plan will have failed.
If he does that, Jinto will win. Like heroes do. Like a warrior does.
When darkness falls on the alien planet, Jinto uses his knife to kill a talqua, attracted by the heat of his body. He eats. He drinks from a gentle stream. He remembers his ten days alone in the forests of Athos. He remembers his father's pride as he returned, and Teyla's glowing smile of praise. He remembers the triumph. He knows he can win.
Jinto sleeps restlessly, but he sleeps. When he awakens, he cannot wait long before plunging through the ring, seeking fresh water. He goes to Orin's planet, still abandoned after the last culling. The ruins here offer little comfort, but their well is deep, even if the water tastes of moss.
He lies back, looks at the great moon in the sky. He is thinking. It is easier now.
A warm wind scatters clouds across the moon. He knows where he cannot allow himself to go. He knows that his father is still a prisoner. That his people are still prisoners. That they need rescuing. He knows that Teyla is looking for them. And they all know that she would never give up.
Jinto cannot contact Teyla through the ring. Atlantis only answers those with a key, and he has none. He cannot contact their allies, because he knows that is what Michael wants. And because Michael wants it, he will not do it.
Abandoned worlds might be good enough if he wanted to give up and die, but he will not die. He remembers Doctor Beckett's voice, speaking urgently, whispering through Jinto's own cries. Telling him to live--an encouragement, Jinto had thought. Now he is not so sure. Maybe it was more than that.
There is fruit in the wilding orchards around him. Jinto eats, and drinks more water. His hands fist in the tough, green grass where he sits. He can still resist the call of the ring.
He listens to his own thoughts, holds on to the important ones. He knows where he cannot go, what he cannot do--he cannot go to safety, and he cannot find people who would be sure to help.
His father started sharing his knowledge with Jinto early. That is why Jinto knows how much he still has left to learn. His father shared the places to go to trade, to speak to the wisest of all herb women, to hunt. His father also shared the forbidden worlds. The ones they never speak of, but know to avoid.
A slow smile spreads across Jinto's face--it feels unfamiliar, like the first warm rays of the sun after a long winter. At a time when he cannot turn to the comfort of allies or friends, when he must avoid any world where he would be safe--when everything he knows has been twisted and broken, the unnatural begins to seem natural.
He can go to the dark places. He can go to where they always suspect enemies. He can find them. Not for his own sake--he doubts that they will offer him any solace. But they will want to know what he knows. The creature Michael has no friends in this galaxy. No friends at all.
Michael has enemies. Powerful enemies--unusual enemies. Major Sheppard, when he was still a major, went into a Hive ship and brought Jinto's father and Teyla back. Sheppard does not fear any enemies. Teyla does not speak much about it when she visits, but Jinto has heard tell of a Wraith on Atlantis.
Sheppard's Wraith.
If Jinto goes to one of the worlds where they never trust anyone, if he goes there and tells them about Michael's prisoners...
Jinto once again remembers being lost. Remembers when he was alone in the dark, frightening halls of the dormant city, and could not find his way back. There was nobody there, nobody at all--but he called out, and Sheppard answered. Sheppard came to find him, and kept the frightening creature of darkness away.
Jinto has faith that Sheppard can do it again. If Jinto finds the right place to call out, the way he did when he was younger, on Atlantis--Sheppard will hear, or Teyla, or one of their friends.
He must move again. But this time, it is easier. This time, Jinto has a goal. He is frightened, and alone, but someone will hear him.
He walks to the shimmering ring, and he can almost hear Sheppard's voice answering already, the way he did back then. Jinto hesitates. He is almost a man grown now, and he should not call out in the way of a lost child. But the pain is bad, and his mind turns hazy.
Then Jinto remembers gentle hands, and terribly sad eyes, and he thinks that Sheppard would probably want to find his lost friend. His friend who needs rescuing, just as Jinto's own people do. He can help Sheppard find the doctor--can do that much for the two of them.
Jinto smiles, and steps through the ring.
-end-
Author: naye
Prompt: Self-sacrifice (Supporting Character Appreciation Day)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,700
Spoilers: Through the end of season 4.
Summary: A young man must take a dark and twisted path to save everything he loves.
Author's note: Once again I'm lucky enough to have had the brilliant, sharp-eyed xparrot as my beta.
The creature Michael does not make Runners, not the way the Wraith were known to do. He does something much worse.
Jinto does not know what it is. Not exactly. He knows that his people are being taken, one by one. Some are seen again--changed, horribly transformed. Some are returned to them, to be burned on what pyres they can build. And others simply disappear.
When Michael's guards come for them, Jinto's father tries to stop them. Again. His father is still weak. He has been giving too much of his food to the children, has stepped in to catch too many blows. He is too slow to stop Jinto, this time.
"I am sorry, father," Jinto says. He wants to cry, at the look in his father's eyes. But he does not. He follows the guards, and they leave his father alone. They leave the children alone.
Jinto does not know how he could protect the children like his father does. Now he has lived through too much to be a child himself, but he is not yet the man his people need him to be. He does not know the songs that will lead the dead to peace; he cannot prepare the tea that will let mothers bring their babies safely into the world.
Brought to Michael's vile laboratory, Jinto trembles. His childhood nightmares all fade to nothing in the presence of the creature before him. He would rather face the Wraith. Their darkness has touched the lives of all his friends and kin, but the Wraith they know. There are words for them, words to guard against them and bring the courage to fight them. There are no words for this pale, unnatural creation.
Jinto hears his own racing pulse. He clenches his teeth and balls his fists. Not to fight--to keep from whimpering. He wants to close his eyes, but he cannot. He cannot move, when Michael approaches. He has seen this happen to small animals hunted by predators. He knows how it ends.
But it does not end. It only grows more frightening. Michael is talking--explaining something. There is a deep sadness in his voice. It is wrong. Predators do not pity their prey. It is a lie--Jinto can feel it. The words Michael speaks, about terrible wrongs done to him, about inevitability and regret--they may be human words, but Michael is not human. He twists the meanings of the words. In his mouth, they are leeched of any warmth, and carry strange, dark undercurrents of pain and death.
Jinto feels rage, then, rage that he has been too frightened to feel--too hungry, too tired. But when Michael uses the words that belong to them, the humans, his face heats with anger. Fury fills him, provoking him to remember his training. His body flows into one of the basic stances. His eyes flash. He will meet his fate as the warrior he wished to be, and not the victim Michael expects.
"Calm down, lad." The voice is not Michael's. It is too soft, too human. There is real sadness in it, and Jinto knows this voice. His heart pounds painfully in his chest. His balance shifts, off now, not a warrior after all. Only a child, remembering cool, gentle hands on his fevered brow.
"Doctor Beckett?" Jinto whispers. He has seen nightmares before, but never a ghost.
The ghost nods, too solid, too real. "Aye. I'm sorry we have to meet again like this, Jinto."
A ghost that knows Jinto's name, and is too thin, too haunted. A ghost should not look haunted. Doctor Beckett is trailed by a guard, and he carries a small case.
"What is happening?" Jinto's voice fails him, making him sound very young.
Michael is watching. Doctor Beckett, somehow not a ghost, shakes his head. "Terrible things." The sadness in his blue eyes drowns the last spark of Jinto's anger.
Michael speaks again, and Doctor Beckett listens, nodding curtly. Many of their words, Jinto does not understand. But he understands that the doctor is trying to protest. Jinto knows it is futile even before the gray-clad shoulders slump. He knows the doctor's gentleness, and he has seen this monster's brutal strength. Michael's twisted words will be enough--are enough, in the end.
Jinto does not blame Doctor Beckett. He hears the words Michael speak, with their terrible truth, with their rotten core. The creature's promises of death and pain are poison to the healer. Jinto is afraid, but he is his father's son. He does not wish to add to the man's burden. He does not flinch even when the doctor's needles pierce his skin.
The doctor's hands are gentle, and warmer than Jinto remembered them. The hands of a living man, even though Teyla carried the message of his death to New Athos. Even though they have mourned him.
Doctor Beckett examines Jinto, and Jinto thinks that the doctor would have done well to stay dead. For whose sake, he cannot say.
"He is in excellent health for someone who's been through what these people have," Doctor Beckett tells Michael. The words are reluctant, and spoken with reproach.
"And the analysis confirms that he is compatible?"
Doctor Beckett consults a small device. It looks very much like the hand-held game Colonel Sheppard once shared with the children of Athos, but this is no game. It is tasting Jinto's blood. Jinto shudders at the sight of it.
"Yes." The answer is clipped.
"Prepare him," Michael orders. "I want him among those who leave tomorrow."
"Tomorrow--that's not enough time to allow him to recuperate!"
"It will be sufficient," Michael says. The creature is confident. He leaves.
Doctor Beckett closes his eyes, giving Jinto a brief respite from the tortured emotions he sees in them.
Jinto wishes his father were here to hold his hand. He did this to save his father, but his heart betrays him. He aches for the comfort and safety he always found hiding behind the tails of his father's long coat.
"Right, lad." The doctor is looking at him again. "I'm sorry--this is going to get a little uncomfortable."
This time, it is Jinto who closes his eyes.
* * *
Michael does not create Runners. He creates something far worse. Jinto still does not understand why, or how. All he knows is what he feels happening to him.
It is in his body, it is making it impossible to feel anything else, think anything else. There is only the need, the drive to move forward. The desperation to get some relief from the pain he can never truly escape.
Water helps, a little. It quenches some of the thirst. But other things set it off--the sun of one world, shining too brightly overhead. Clouds on another, cooling the air too fast. On yet another world, it is the strange melody of an alien wind through fossilized trees. It pushes him recklessly onwards, through ring after ring, in search of--something.
A place where he can be at peace, for just a little while. A place to lie down and die, a small part of him thinks. He refuses to acknowledge that. He is sick, but not dying. He cannot be dying. He refuses to die--he still has his father, and his people.
His blood boils again. The air becomes too thin to breathe, or too thick. The night around him is too dark, or the shadows too translucent.
Through the ring lies the promise of relief. Through the ring, he will find what he is looking for.
Find comfort through the ring. The words are in his head, along with the pain. Michael's words, maybe. Jinto does not know anymore.
He knows many places to go through the ring. He thought one of them might be the right place--the right people.
He wants to find people. Needs to find people. But he cannot. Cannot let himself--what he has become, what he carries--touch them.
Other people could help him. Could take him in. Could offer him shelter from the pitiless alien worlds.
He knows places.
He returns to Athos. It is deserted--dangerous. The Wraith come here often. The large city across the lake seems to call to them, now. Jinto only stays long enough to plunge his head into the clear, cool water. To feel the wet sand under his hands, until every grain of it stings his palms like needles.
He wants to return to his new home, the new Athos. He is desperate to. It is a place of respite and sanctuary. It was, before Michael came. If the people of Atlantis come, it will be again.
He could go with them.
He remembers Atlantis. The tall spires, where the wind in his hair would make him feel as if he was flying. The quarters where they lit candles to keep the dark away. Major Sheppard, coming to find him when he was lost. Doctor Weir, and her indulgent smile. Even Doctor McKay, who they would dare each other to approach.
He could never go with them.
When his thoughts are clear enough, he imagines the beautiful towers in ruins. The Ancestors' city, broken. This curse he carries, spreading to extinguish the people of the smiles and kind words. His own arrival would put an end to those who are already legends.
He thinks of Teyla, and he knows that she would save him. Would save any of her people, no matter the cost to herself.
And that is why he must stay away. To save her. To save her people--her new people, and Jinto should have been jealous of them, but he never was. They were his friends, too.
Jinto knows other places. None burn as clear in his memory as Atlantis, but they flash before him--the world where the bread is dark and spicy; the world where they ride beautiful, horned beasts; the world where that girl with sun-gold hair shared sweet, sticky fruit with him. He could go to any of them, and be protected by their walls, have his thirst quenched by their cool water.
But Teyla has been there. They know her. Might call her. She might come, like Sheppard came to find him when he was lost.
That time, Lieutenant Ford got hurt, because of Jinto. Sometimes, the wounded Lieutenant said, stuff happens. Jinto understands that. But he also knows that whatever this is--he cannot stop it from happening to himself, but he can stop it from happening to others.
If he does that, Michael's plan will have failed.
If he does that, Jinto will win. Like heroes do. Like a warrior does.
When darkness falls on the alien planet, Jinto uses his knife to kill a talqua, attracted by the heat of his body. He eats. He drinks from a gentle stream. He remembers his ten days alone in the forests of Athos. He remembers his father's pride as he returned, and Teyla's glowing smile of praise. He remembers the triumph. He knows he can win.
Jinto sleeps restlessly, but he sleeps. When he awakens, he cannot wait long before plunging through the ring, seeking fresh water. He goes to Orin's planet, still abandoned after the last culling. The ruins here offer little comfort, but their well is deep, even if the water tastes of moss.
He lies back, looks at the great moon in the sky. He is thinking. It is easier now.
A warm wind scatters clouds across the moon. He knows where he cannot allow himself to go. He knows that his father is still a prisoner. That his people are still prisoners. That they need rescuing. He knows that Teyla is looking for them. And they all know that she would never give up.
Jinto cannot contact Teyla through the ring. Atlantis only answers those with a key, and he has none. He cannot contact their allies, because he knows that is what Michael wants. And because Michael wants it, he will not do it.
Abandoned worlds might be good enough if he wanted to give up and die, but he will not die. He remembers Doctor Beckett's voice, speaking urgently, whispering through Jinto's own cries. Telling him to live--an encouragement, Jinto had thought. Now he is not so sure. Maybe it was more than that.
There is fruit in the wilding orchards around him. Jinto eats, and drinks more water. His hands fist in the tough, green grass where he sits. He can still resist the call of the ring.
He listens to his own thoughts, holds on to the important ones. He knows where he cannot go, what he cannot do--he cannot go to safety, and he cannot find people who would be sure to help.
His father started sharing his knowledge with Jinto early. That is why Jinto knows how much he still has left to learn. His father shared the places to go to trade, to speak to the wisest of all herb women, to hunt. His father also shared the forbidden worlds. The ones they never speak of, but know to avoid.
A slow smile spreads across Jinto's face--it feels unfamiliar, like the first warm rays of the sun after a long winter. At a time when he cannot turn to the comfort of allies or friends, when he must avoid any world where he would be safe--when everything he knows has been twisted and broken, the unnatural begins to seem natural.
He can go to the dark places. He can go to where they always suspect enemies. He can find them. Not for his own sake--he doubts that they will offer him any solace. But they will want to know what he knows. The creature Michael has no friends in this galaxy. No friends at all.
Michael has enemies. Powerful enemies--unusual enemies. Major Sheppard, when he was still a major, went into a Hive ship and brought Jinto's father and Teyla back. Sheppard does not fear any enemies. Teyla does not speak much about it when she visits, but Jinto has heard tell of a Wraith on Atlantis.
Sheppard's Wraith.
If Jinto goes to one of the worlds where they never trust anyone, if he goes there and tells them about Michael's prisoners...
Jinto once again remembers being lost. Remembers when he was alone in the dark, frightening halls of the dormant city, and could not find his way back. There was nobody there, nobody at all--but he called out, and Sheppard answered. Sheppard came to find him, and kept the frightening creature of darkness away.
Jinto has faith that Sheppard can do it again. If Jinto finds the right place to call out, the way he did when he was younger, on Atlantis--Sheppard will hear, or Teyla, or one of their friends.
He must move again. But this time, it is easier. This time, Jinto has a goal. He is frightened, and alone, but someone will hear him.
He walks to the shimmering ring, and he can almost hear Sheppard's voice answering already, the way he did back then. Jinto hesitates. He is almost a man grown now, and he should not call out in the way of a lost child. But the pain is bad, and his mind turns hazy.
Then Jinto remembers gentle hands, and terribly sad eyes, and he thinks that Sheppard would probably want to find his lost friend. His friend who needs rescuing, just as Jinto's own people do. He can help Sheppard find the doctor--can do that much for the two of them.
Jinto smiles, and steps through the ring.
-end-