At His Fingertips
Title: At His Fingertips
Author: Kriadydragon
Rating: PG+, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon
Summary: The world isn't as lost to Sheppard as Ronon thinks.
A/N:
jackfan2 mentioned wanting to read more Sheppard/Ronon friendship fics and a while ago
parisindy made a request for a blind and deaf Sheppard. Or maybe she said blind and I said blind and deaf (either way, the initial story I had thought out ended up sucking so bad I scrapped it). Anyways, the two came together to form this story.
kodiak_bear, just so you know, I had this story partially written when you'd posted your story, so I promise I have not lowered myself to stealing ideas or anything.
At His Fingertips
They'd put padding on the collar and called it humane. Ronon stood there keeping the doctor in his peripheral awareness but ninety-percent of his attention on Sheppard.
“He kept trying to get out,” the tiny little medical man explained. “Sometimes he would jump the guards. It had to be done, for his own safety. The guards like it when he fights back and they're not gentle.”
Ronon didn't care. A collar and a tether tied to a hook in the wall was a prison within a prison, and Ronon would bet all his knives the guards had a hell of a lot more fun with their quarry all chained up.
But there was a depressing necessity to it.
Ronon moved closer to the metal-frame bed tucked into the corner of the white room with its peeling paint, stained walls, and sickly light spilling through a grimy window. Sheppard looked like he was relaxing - legs drawn up and arms draped loosely over the knees for the hands to hang. His head was cocked slightly up, almost pensive, even content. He was too still, like a bird listening into the silence for a sound they thought they'd heard. Except Sheppard wasn't listening for anything because he couldn't hear, and wasn't staring at anything because he couldn't see. Ronon couldn't make out any of the hazel, let alone a black pupil, behind the silver-gray film covering the man's eyes.
“The Munkullin's was particularly aggressive in him,” the doctor said. “We were not able to head it off and prevent the sight and hearing loss.”
Ronon felt his skin heat but didn't dare dignify the naïve comment with a response. Blindness and deafness were inevitable with Munkullin's disease. There was no preventing it, which meant that these people who called themselves healers knew nothing about what they were doing.
Ronon decided against kindly revealing to the doctor that the affects were, in the vast majority of cases, temporary. It's not the sensory loss needing to be headed off, but the insanity of believing it was all forever.
Sheppard wasn't as still as Ronon first thought. The long sleeves of the gray-white shirt were vibrating, muscles twitching under the thin cloth. The Munkullin's had all but devoured Sheppard's body, stripping it to skin and bones. The shirt molded to the back like a second skin around ribs and spine. Sheppard's actual skin was waxy and white compared to all the pallid gray. Except around the eyes. The skin there was darker, the right eye freshly bruised.
Ronon reached out intent on removing the collar. His fingertips barely brushed the colorless skin of the neck and Sheppard snapped in a heart-beat long movement, throwing himself into the corner in a quaking huddle, growling his displeasure and scowling at thin air. His body was defensive but his expression offensive, not wanting to fight but very willing to.
“It is the guards,” the doctor said. “They will run forward, touch him, upset him, then run back. They enjoy watching him hit and kick out at nothing. There is a drug I can give him that will make him more cooperative. It may be the only way you will be able to get him home.”
Ronon didn't even give it a moment's thought. “No.” Sheppard didn't need it, deserve it, and would hate it if he knew.
“It would be more humane,” the doctor pressed.
Ronon snorted a derisive laugh. “You even know what that word means?” Munkullin's took the eyes and ears, then the mind. It was solitary confinement within one's own skull, then the only world that existed. Even with the door closed, Ronon could still hear the other victims of the disease droning in wordless groans and whimpers, incoherently begging for the world to come back, denied by ignorance of the peace of knowing that it eventually would.
Ronon had once walked with Melena past the rooms where the ones suffering Munkullin's were kept, all silent and content in the knowledge that the muted darkness wasn't forever, because the doctors of the medical facility had known what they needed to in order to prepare the sick. As long as the patients knew, they were at peace. As long as there was hope, they held out and healed faster. Under stress, the healing could take months. When calm, it took weeks, sometimes even days.
Sheppard was silent and defiant, chest pulsating with heaving breaths flicking saliva from his lips on the sharp exhales. Ronon eased himself onto the edge of the bed. The shifting mattress made John flinch, flinching harder when Ronon inched closer.
“Are you sure you do not want the drug?” the doctor seemed to beg.
“I'm sure,” Ronon replied. He reached out wrapping his fingers around Sheppard's fragile wrist and holding tight. John's strength was too feeble to pull the limb free but Ronon's grip would still leave a mark what with the fight the man was putting up. Dex leaned forward, close enough to bring the rigid, squirming hand to his hair, forcing the fingers to dig into the mass of thick ropes. Sheppard bucked, kicking out, grunting like a pinned animal. Ronon reached out with his other hand to start rubbing John's shoulder blade in small circles.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” he whispered. The words were useless but it was hard not to say them.
Sheppard struggled for a moment longer until Ronon forced his hand to follow a single rope of hair. His team leader stilled, cocking his head to one side - an inquisitive bird instead of a startled one. Fingers rolled the hair between his thumb and forefinger on their own accord. Ronon released John's wrist, red from the fighting and already starting to bruise. Claw-like digits followed the single weave back up to the mass, pressing and plucking before wandering away from hair to encounter the skin of the forehead. Cool fingertips traced Ronon's features, touching his eyelids, sliding over his nose to his mouth, mouth to cheek and cheek-bone, then neck until coming to the cord holding wraith finger-bones. Sheppard lifted the trophies in one hand to feel them out with the other.
John's breathing increased, the fingers stilling. “Rn'n?”
Ronon took John's hand, placed it against his face, and nodded.
Sheppard's breath caught on a strangled gasp. He scrabbled to clutch the shoulder of Ronon's coat with his free hand, gripping like he had no intentions of ever letting go. “Ron'n, I wanna g'home. I wanna... g'home, please.”
Ronon, still pressing John's hand to his face, nodded again. He then turned to the doctor. “We're leaving now. Get him some shoes.”
The doctor stepped nervously forward with wringing hands. “But, he's barely over the fever.”
Ronon narrowed his eyes, which was all it ever took. The doctor stiffened in alarm before finally scurrying off to get Sheppard some footwear.
-----------------------------------
Ronon hadn't suspected Munkullin's but he had suspected Sheppard's health to be on the decline. Four days helping the sick and wounded migrate from a culled world to what should have been a safe world - diseases breeding fast and various - even the healthy weren't going to escape unscathed. Ronon hadn't been feeling all that up to his usual strengths himself. Then the supposedly safe world wasn't so safe when the rains and floods started, people trampling each other to escape, taking Sheppard with them through the gate before Ronon or anyone else had a chance to reach him. Ronon had managed to memorize the address. Another team went to fetch him while Ronon battled his own sickness. Except Sheppard wasn't on that world and no one knew where he had gone.
Ronon was through the gate the moment he was out of the infirmary against Beckett's orders. He knew it wasn't a matter of where to look, but how. If Sheppard's illness had worsened, then he had gone to where ever the sick of the refugees had gone. Two and a half weeks and four worlds later brought him to Cavaln and its ruined city of paranoids. Most called it an oppressive world. Ronon called it a terrified world. The soldiers at the gate harassed him, stalled him, but didn't try to stop him for the sake of their own hides. They were soldiers for the pay, not for the honor of lord and planet.
Which was why the hospital guards only harangued and jeered rather than do anything that might lead to physical violence. They weren't happy about Ronon taking their favorite toy, so followed him down the long corridor of more stained walls and tiled-floors chipped and cracked. The cajoling added to the underworld-like wailing of the suffering. Ronon kept his right hand on his still-holstered weapon and his left on Sheppard's wrist ensuring the thin hand maintained its weak grip on his belt. Some of the braver guards rushed forward to slap John on the shoulder or head, or tug on his shirt, like a game to see who could make the sick man lose his grip first. Sheppard flinched, jumped back, lurched forward colliding into Ronon, but never let go. Neither did he say anything beyond grunts and growls. Not much point to words in the silence.
The next guard to brave sending the sick man into a tizzy Ronon knocked flat on his ass with a well-timed jab to the face. He finally pulled his weapon from his holster, flipping the setting.
“Screw stun. Anyone touches him again, you're dead.” He'd avoided the threat until now in case some harbored a little more courage beyond tormenting the weak and ill. He was pretty sure such a man did not exist among these who called themselves guards but acted like children.
Ronon slowed pulling John in closer when they reached the hospital entrance opening up onto wide, cracked steps. They moved from artificial warmth to natural chill, pale yellow light to the sickly gray of an overcast sky and air smelling of smoke and dust. Cavaln was such an easy world to cull that the inhabitants found no reason to rebuild. It was said there were fires on this world still burning from the day the planet was first culled.
Ronon nudged Sheppard's knee with his own before setting foot down on the first step. He waited as Sheppard inched his own foot hidden in a too-large boot forward until it found the edge of the step, sliding against that edge to find the next step. Ronon held onto John's arm while his left foot followed. They repeated the process for each step until finally reaching level ground.
Debris was everywhere but swept and shoved aside, out of the way so it wouldn't have to be dealt with since there was no point to it. It still didn't mean the going could be fast. Sheppard stumbled, sometimes on cracks in the street, sometimes on open air. Ronon could feel the man's racing pulse in the skinny wrist, and twitching, quaking muscles beneath gossamer skin. It had occurred to Ronon that Sheppard might be afraid, but he hadn't truly realized it. It was something Ronon could only scratch the surface of in terms of imagining what it was like. There would be no adjusting to it, not over night nor within weeks, trapped on a alien world among strangers that chose self-amusement over the well-being of their fellow man.
Melena had once talked of a man, a former sufferer of Munkullin's, and how he had told her that the only sound to exist for him had been the muffled beating of his own heart. Touch, sensation, had been his connection to the world beyond his skull. No matter the assurances, he had confessed to being afraid, and to possibly going mad had the lingering affects of the illness not cleared up.
By the Ancestors, it had to be like being buried alive - buried alive in one's own body.
Ronon glanced at Sheppard and his milky, vacant eyes. Eyelids blinked, facial muscles twitched, but there was no expression.
Like looking into the face of the dead.
Ronon gently squeezed the fragile wrist in silent reassurance.
They walked passed broken buildings like old bones. Gray light flashed off cracked windows and sometimes Ronon would catch the fleeting presence of a pale face peeking out in curiosity. He did not stop, even when Sheppard leaned against him to stay upright, wheezing like an old man. He had no intentions of stopping until the city was behind them.
The buildings and debris eventually thinned out, broken paved road giving way to smooth, packed dirt. Ronon pushed the journey well into twilight, when the only reason John was still standing was because Dex was holding him up, before finally steering off the road into the woods. He set up camp in a small clearing while holding John up one-handed, spreading one blanket on the ground in front of a tree and setting the second folded one beside it. He then eased John gently down, upright against the tree, covering his legs with the second blanket. Ronon dropped down beside him, shoulder to shoulder, his thicker arm pressed against John's thinner one. He pulled two MREs from his pack. One he set on the ground, the other he placed in John's hand.
Sheppard's fingers roamed over the smooth package, pressing it, bringing it close to his nose for a sniff. When he pulled it away, Ronon jumped in to rip off the top. John sniffed again before reaching inside to feel out the contents. He pulled out a sandwich - ham, Ronon believed it was called. Sheppard felt it out - squeezing, rubbing and poking - then brought it to his mouth to touch it with his tongue. He finally took a cautious bite, chewed, and perked with a tepid smile curling his lips. Ronon patted him lightly on the shoulder.
Sight and sound deprivation made eating slower for John. Or maybe he was savoring it. He felt, sniffed, and tasted each food out before putting it in his mouth, but only ate half of what was in the packet. When he was done, he touched the ground with his free hand to set the packet where his fingers had brushed.
Sheppard pressed his hands into the ground, one on the blanket, the other the mossy soil. His fingers curled into both, cloth bunching and soft soil giving. With a curious tilt of his head he flexed his fingers digging tiny runnels into the earth until his fingers were partially buried. He patted the ground, rubbed it, pinch soil between his thumb and finger to bring it to his nose and smell. He had enough of that after a moment so slid his hand backward along the ground until contacting the moss-fuzzed bark of the tree. He pressed his fingertips into the grooves of the tree-skin and followed them to the next groove. The right hand picked at the scales of bark until a flake gave that he brought to his nose to smell. It all amounted to bringing a tiny, crooked smile to his face - the knowing one that Sheppard sometimes wore when he'd solved a problem that resulted in an amusing answer.
Ronon watched Sheppard map out the world with his fingertips. It was hard not to watch as a pinch of dirt or flake of bark seemed to expand in existence when handled in Sheppard's hands. Mundane details becoming the center of attention, the minuscule suddenly larger than life.
Ronon's own hand strayed from the blanket onto cool earth. He closed his eyes, inhaling deep wood and soil and the antiseptic stench of the hospital still lingering on Sheppard's clothes. The soil could have been anything - wet sand, finely ground gravel, plain dirt in an unclean room. The tree a long dead creature or moss-covered rock. Smell and further exploration made all the difference. Ronon only had to turn his head to inhale wood-scent that pushed images of running through forests into his mind. Memories alone, however, apparently weren't enough for Sheppard. He was going for everything his surroundings had to offer, letting it fill in too many blanks.
It was starting to make sense why John didn't wail and lament like the others in that hospital. Survival did not simply constitute the physical. The mind mattered as much as the body if not more. Ronon could feel the once taught muscles of Sheppard's arm soften and the quakes mellow as his reality expanded beyond four walls, cold metal, and a thin, useless mattress. It was like a game, one of Sheppard's number-puzzle books, a preoccupation filling his head with each twig, leaf, branch or bit of moss he handled as delicate as new life in his hands.
The effort, or maybe the joy, exhausted Sheppard until he slumped heavy against the tree, listing sideways. Ronon caught him and maneuvered him to the ground on the blanket, placing the pack beneath his head. He then stretched himself out beside his leader, adjusting the blanket to cover them both. Sheppard needed the combined warmth since the doctor hadn't thought to provide a coat. He could also use the proximity.
---------------------------------
Sheppard was like a small child when all he was doing was being himself. The moment Ronon stopped, even so much as slowed, John's free hand was in the air groping until Dex started off again or something solid was encountered. It was merely being tactical, Sheppard orienting himself to any new changes in their surroundings, yet too much an innocent action to seem like it. But that was Sheppard. He didn't cower in a corner when the world went black, he felt his way - not necessarily to the light - but where he could at least remain standing on his own two feet.
Ronon couldn't begin to grasp what it must be like. Sheppard didn't know about this disease, how it was temporary. At some point he would have to consider - or maybe even already had until Ronon showed up - what it meant to be both deaf and blind, what his future would hold - or would no longer include - and that his existence was limited to what his hands encountered. If he hadn't considered it yet then he would eventually. Ronon tried to imagine all of it, the darkness and silence and how it might never end, but couldn't get past the idea of a perpetual starless night without his stomach going sour.
It scared him. It made death a more savory prospect since death was a limit. He already knew John was frightened. He also had to be angry because that's what Ronon would be - furious enough to mutilate anything within reach. Yes, Sheppard wasn't him, but they weren't that different. Maintaining control was their strength while losing it was their weakness. Loss was their weakness. What John lost wasn't his eyes and his ears, but the means to keep from losing what really mattered to him.
Teyla had told Ronon what John had said about them, how they were his family. Not like his family, but were, which meant they meant more to him than anything else in any galaxy.
Just one more thing they had in common.
So Sheppard had to be angry, because Ronon was angry that he had to go through any of this to begin with.
They were nearing the gate, Ronon could tell by the increase of people on the road. Most were too busy staring at the compact mud contemplating their own misery to take notice of the man clinging like a needy child to another man's belt. The ones that did notice were more fixated on the milky white eyes and keeping their distance. Munkullin's wasn't highly contagious, but it was contagious. Ronon was the only one without a reason to worry being from a society that had developed a vaccine months before that society was completely wiped out, taking the vaccination with it except for what still lingered in any surviving Satedan's blood.
The populace thickened the closer they got until they were forced to blend into a line forming several meters from the gate. The moment Ronon stopped, Sheppard's hand wandered colliding into rag-covered bodies of the depressed and nervous. Most ignored the touching except to back away. Others swatted at Sheppard's hands, and it was making him nervous. So he turned to start groping in another direction.
John's hand eventually encountered the tangled nest of dark hair belonging to a man who looked as though he'd been surviving in the wilds most of his life; his thick body buried under mass of animal furs. He didn't slap John's hand away like it was an annoying insect, he shoved him hard enough to lay him flat on his back. “Keep your diseased hands off me you little puke!”
Pissed, Ronon surged forward and shoved back just as hard. “Don't touch him!” then knelt to retrieve Sheppard, only to have Sheppard scrambling out of reach trying to find some kind of purchase to get back to his feet. The man's frantic hands encountered only legs and coat hems of panicking people who gave Sheppard the briefest glance before twisting their faces in disgust and shoving him away. Hands and even feet pushed, slapped, or kicked him to the ground, and each time Sheppard scurried farther from Ronon's reach.
“Ack! Get off me!”
“He has that Munkullins!”
“Don't touch me you diseased piece of filth!”
“Get him off me!”
“Just kick him!”
“Someone get him out of here!”
“No!” Ronon bellowed. He went from squeezing his way through to pushing people over, letting them know what it was like to be treated like something less than what they were. He reached Sheppard in time to see a man grab him by the back of the neck and toss him off the road into a tree.
Ronon staggered at the dull thud of a body impacting both trunk and earth. Rage burned hot in his blood, his heart pounding in heavy ferocity. With a snarl, he slammed his fist into the face of John's attacker, ecstatic over the feel and sound and sight of collapsing bone and spurting blood. “I said don't touch him!”
The man, clutching his bloody face, stumbled back wide eyed and terrified. Ronon ignored him and went straight for John trying to use the tree to pull himself to his feet. He managed to climb half-way up when his legs gave out dropping him back to the loamy ground. Ronon crouched next to him, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his face, letting him know who it was touching him. Sheppard's hands fumbled over the ground to Ronon's leg, following it up to grip his shoulder.
“Wha..? What h'ppn'd? You 'kay?” John slurred.
“Yeah...” Ronon began, stopped himself with a tight swallow, took John's hand to place on his face and nodded. Before hauling Sheppard upright, he checked his team leader over for possible broken bones; running his hand down each limb, shoulders, across John's chest and down his ribs and backbone. Sheppard winced at the touch to his wrist, cheek, and right side. Ronon patted the man's shoulder-blade in assurance and apology, then pulled him gently to his feet. Nothing to be done about the injuries until they were home.
This time, Ronon did the holding on with one arm across John's shoulders. John's hand tried to wander again almost of its own volition until Ronon grabbed it, placing the dirt-caked hand to his face and shaking his head no. Sheppard folded his arms to keep them from roaming.
The line was long but moved fast, the people more interested in simply getting off the planet than where they were going. Ronon and John were next. It would have to be the Alpha site in case anyone followed or was curious to see what world he dialed. Once the numbers were locked and the event horizon established, he guided John into the rippling puddle.
They didn't so much step out as stumble when they emerged on the other side, John gasping and shaking in alarm. Sight and sound was never an issue when being hurled across the stars but Ronon supposed that it was a hell of a lot less pleasant a ride when taken unawares.
They stood by the DHD until Ronon was sure no one was going to follow. No surprise, considering. Obviously the need to leave wasn't that urgent if the people weren't willing to follow after a sick man and his violent guardian.
Smart people.
Ronon shut the ring down and dialed Atlantis. He waited until the event horizon established, then brought Sheppard forward, took his hand, and pressed it to the ring. Sheppard's thin fingers crawled across symbols, a single finger tracing their outline that couldn't possibly make any sense.
Ronon became curious. He closed his own eyes, touching his own fingers to the gate, feeling it cool and rough against his fingertips, then warm and smooth when he slid a single finger through the maze of indentions that held no meaning to him in the darkness.
He opened his eyes and watched Sheppard furrow his brow in deep concentration as he let his fingers do the talking. Ronon would have liked to have given him all the time in the world to figure out what it was he was touching, but he'd already sent the IDC through and received approval to come home. Wait too long and the others would get anxious for no reason, distract him with their chatter over what was going on, ask questions there was no reason to answer. He took John's hand and thrust it into the event horizon. As soon as Sheppard's fingers slid through the puddle, his eyebrows shot up in sudden illuminating recognition. Sheppard pretty much ended up pulling Ronon through this time around.
Then stepped out into home, and Ronon knew that John knew, because one did not have to see it to know it. There was a smell and feel to the air that one did not have to be hyper-sensitive to be intimate with. John's breathing increased and his hands twitched longing to feel, to embrace - take in his city through his hands. Ronon looked up to see Weir and Teyla and Rodney, followed by Carson, Lorne, and many others trotting down the stairs.
“You found him!”
“John!”
“Welcome back.”
“You guys all right?”
“We were so worried...”
Hands reached toward them, toward John, and the first brush of fingers to reach Sheppard caused him to leap back in alarm with a whimper instead of a grunt. Ronon pulled him away before anyone else had the chance to do the same.
“What the hell happened to his eyes!” Rodney shouted, and it was loud enough to silence and still everyone. Ronon took the opportunity to move John away to the nearest wall and place his hand against it. John flinched, pressing himself against the wall, holding on with the same relentlessness as when he'd clung to Ronon's coat the day the runner had found him. The whimper that escaped John's throat was a child-like sob of both relief and joy.
He was home. He was holding Atlantis in his hands.
Ronon wanted him to bask in this for as long as desired but sensed more than saw the anxiety of those standing behind him. With a kind tug, he guided John toward the stairs. With a nudge to his leg, they took the steps one at a time. The moment they were at the top Sheppard veered to the nearest wall so he could keep his hand pressed to it as they moved. He didn't let go until they reached the infirmary strong with the scent of cleaning chemicals.
Ronon steered him to the nearest gurney, let him feel it out before helping him pull himself onto the edge. Ronon looked at Carson hovering almost uncertainly in the entrance of his own infirmary with the others gathered behind. One nod from the Satedan and Carson timidly approached.
Beckett took Sheppard's wrist to check his pulse. Sheppard pulled his wrist free to reach out and touch Carson's face, searching it. Carson was about to take the wrist back until Ronon shook his head.
“Just wait.”
John's fingers danced over Beckett's features - face, hair, facial hair - but a smile didn't split John's thin face until he felt out the stethoscope around the doctor's neck.
The process was repeated as Carson checked John over. Rodney, then Teyla, then Elizabeth. The people he knew best and trusted the most he painted in his mind through his hands. Rodney was the least comfortable with it, but Ronon was impressed by his fight not to pull away. Elizabeth was amused, and Teyla accepting as always.
Carson was eventually forced to chase them out in order for Sheppard to stay still just so blood could be taken. Only Ronon was allowed to stay, maintaining his role as Sheppard's guide from bed to scanner then back to bed. John remained trusting, even when they changed him into white scrubs, attaching wires and needles and other healing apparatuses. He did not fight any of it though Ronon knew he wanted to. Tension vibrated in John, solidifying what was left of his muscles, twitching his skin, cording his neck. When John swallowed it was tight and convulsive, and Ronon could feel John's blood fluttering like frantic wing-beats. The battle against fight or flight raged until Sheppard was finally settled with covers pulled up to his chest and a gentle pat to the shoulder.
“There's still a bit of fever left,” Carson said. “But it looks like the illness has nearly run its course. The sight and hearing loss should clear up within weeks, maybe even days. Being a one-time disease like you said, he won't even need the vaccine.”
Ronon heard the snap of flexible gloves being removed before a hand settled lightly on his shoulder. “He's going to be all right, lad.”
As soon as Carson walked away, Ronon grabbed a chair and pulled it in close to the bed, dropping himself into it and propping his feet up on the mattress. There was a hot meal and a bath to be had, but they could wait. Other than that, Ronon didn't really have any place he needed to be.
Sheppard's head turned in the direction of the mattress' shift and closed his eyes.
----------------------------------
Bruise-colored eyelids slid back like a curtain opening up to hazel and a pure black pupil. The eye lids fluttered and blinked trying to clear the lingering blur Carson said would be sticking around for a few days. When blinking obviously proved useless, Sheppard squinted in Ronon's general direction.
This was the first time Ronon was present for Sheppard having his eyes open. The rest of the time he'd been too late. The fever was gone but John's body was still weak, exhausted, so the eye-opening really wasn't that big of a deal seeing as how it barely lasted a minute. It was simply chance that Ronon was here, now, to be able to witness it.
It was progress Ronon was happy to see, but he'd been wanting to be around for it beyond obvious reasons. Sight was the last to return, hearing the first.
Ronon sprawled on the padded rolling chair that had replaced the plastic one about two weeks ago. He scooted the chair closer, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I wanted to tell you,” he said.
John nodded, skin and hair whispering against the cloth of the pillow. “I know.” Of course he knew. A man would have to be heartless to leave another man, a friend, lost in that kind of torment by choice.
Carson had devised a clever way to convey to Sheppard what needed to be known above all else. A very simple method that Ronon was still kicking himself over even now. Using a piece of soft wood, Beckett had gouged out one word in thick, capital letters - temporary. Wood and a single word because Beckett had wanted to make Sheppard as aware as soon as possible to prevent any kind of depression from hindering the healing process, and the doctor was without doubt there would be feelings of hopelessness. Also anger, but mostly hopelessness. It had taken a moment for Sheppard to feel the letters out, then understand the purpose of the word, but picked up the meaning pretty fast when tension Ronon hadn't even known was their drained from the man's body, practically melting it into the bed. A small smile had followed seconds after.
Ronon looked down at his hands pressing his fingertips together, the skin paling around the edges of where they touched. They were stuck in a moment of awkward silence because Ronon wanted to, more than anything, ask what it had been like. Being blind, deaf, the world narrowed to textures and smells. He still had yet to imagine it. He couldn't. He'd go so far only to turn back like a child running from the deepening darkness. He wanted to know how one found the means to continue clinging to the world when most of it was gone. But like trying to imagine such loss, he couldn't get his mind to come up with the right words to find out.
It also wasn't right to ask just for the sake of knowing. Words would be useless, anyways. Experiences are earned, not given.
But that didn't change his mind about wanting to ask, so he opted for saying nothing until he had something else to say.
“You all right?” John asked.
Ronon flinched, startled. That should have been his line. He nodded.
“You were too quiet even for you,” Sheppard said. “Me and silence,” he scrunched his face in a minor wince, “not so tight anymore.”
Ronon gave him a short-lived grin. “Sorry.” He drummed his fingers together. One more thing he hadn't been able to bring himself to consider. The sound of the birds, running water, and the wind through the trees he would have mourned, no doubts there. People's voices, words... he wasn't sure, but could easily assume it one of those things you'd end up missing once it was gone.
It now felt very necessary to say something, just for there to be some sound.
“Were you scared?” Ronon blurted. He'd never been one to balk at anything he wanted to say, but he had to admit it was a pretty pathetic question.
John just smiled wanly. “You have no idea.”
Then, it was out of Ronon's mouth as though spoken by someone else. “How did you do it?”
Sheppard's eyelids moved in a tired, ponderous blink. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't really remember much of it, not until you showed up.” He fell momentarily silent staring at some unseen point over Ronon's shoulder. “Wasn't so bad when you got there.” He curled and straightened his fingers, still feeling out the world. “Kind of like waking up.”
“Still in the dark,” Ronon said.
John dropped his gaze to his hand and smiled. “But knowing the world was still there.”
Ronon smiled back.
The End
Author: Kriadydragon
Rating: PG+, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, Ronon
Summary: The world isn't as lost to Sheppard as Ronon thinks.
A/N:
jackfan2 mentioned wanting to read more Sheppard/Ronon friendship fics and a while ago
parisindy made a request for a blind and deaf Sheppard. Or maybe she said blind and I said blind and deaf (either way, the initial story I had thought out ended up sucking so bad I scrapped it). Anyways, the two came together to form this story.
kodiak_bear, just so you know, I had this story partially written when you'd posted your story, so I promise I have not lowered myself to stealing ideas or anything.
At His Fingertips
They'd put padding on the collar and called it humane. Ronon stood there keeping the doctor in his peripheral awareness but ninety-percent of his attention on Sheppard.
“He kept trying to get out,” the tiny little medical man explained. “Sometimes he would jump the guards. It had to be done, for his own safety. The guards like it when he fights back and they're not gentle.”
Ronon didn't care. A collar and a tether tied to a hook in the wall was a prison within a prison, and Ronon would bet all his knives the guards had a hell of a lot more fun with their quarry all chained up.
But there was a depressing necessity to it.
Ronon moved closer to the metal-frame bed tucked into the corner of the white room with its peeling paint, stained walls, and sickly light spilling through a grimy window. Sheppard looked like he was relaxing - legs drawn up and arms draped loosely over the knees for the hands to hang. His head was cocked slightly up, almost pensive, even content. He was too still, like a bird listening into the silence for a sound they thought they'd heard. Except Sheppard wasn't listening for anything because he couldn't hear, and wasn't staring at anything because he couldn't see. Ronon couldn't make out any of the hazel, let alone a black pupil, behind the silver-gray film covering the man's eyes.
“The Munkullin's was particularly aggressive in him,” the doctor said. “We were not able to head it off and prevent the sight and hearing loss.”
Ronon felt his skin heat but didn't dare dignify the naïve comment with a response. Blindness and deafness were inevitable with Munkullin's disease. There was no preventing it, which meant that these people who called themselves healers knew nothing about what they were doing.
Ronon decided against kindly revealing to the doctor that the affects were, in the vast majority of cases, temporary. It's not the sensory loss needing to be headed off, but the insanity of believing it was all forever.
Sheppard wasn't as still as Ronon first thought. The long sleeves of the gray-white shirt were vibrating, muscles twitching under the thin cloth. The Munkullin's had all but devoured Sheppard's body, stripping it to skin and bones. The shirt molded to the back like a second skin around ribs and spine. Sheppard's actual skin was waxy and white compared to all the pallid gray. Except around the eyes. The skin there was darker, the right eye freshly bruised.
Ronon reached out intent on removing the collar. His fingertips barely brushed the colorless skin of the neck and Sheppard snapped in a heart-beat long movement, throwing himself into the corner in a quaking huddle, growling his displeasure and scowling at thin air. His body was defensive but his expression offensive, not wanting to fight but very willing to.
“It is the guards,” the doctor said. “They will run forward, touch him, upset him, then run back. They enjoy watching him hit and kick out at nothing. There is a drug I can give him that will make him more cooperative. It may be the only way you will be able to get him home.”
Ronon didn't even give it a moment's thought. “No.” Sheppard didn't need it, deserve it, and would hate it if he knew.
“It would be more humane,” the doctor pressed.
Ronon snorted a derisive laugh. “You even know what that word means?” Munkullin's took the eyes and ears, then the mind. It was solitary confinement within one's own skull, then the only world that existed. Even with the door closed, Ronon could still hear the other victims of the disease droning in wordless groans and whimpers, incoherently begging for the world to come back, denied by ignorance of the peace of knowing that it eventually would.
Ronon had once walked with Melena past the rooms where the ones suffering Munkullin's were kept, all silent and content in the knowledge that the muted darkness wasn't forever, because the doctors of the medical facility had known what they needed to in order to prepare the sick. As long as the patients knew, they were at peace. As long as there was hope, they held out and healed faster. Under stress, the healing could take months. When calm, it took weeks, sometimes even days.
Sheppard was silent and defiant, chest pulsating with heaving breaths flicking saliva from his lips on the sharp exhales. Ronon eased himself onto the edge of the bed. The shifting mattress made John flinch, flinching harder when Ronon inched closer.
“Are you sure you do not want the drug?” the doctor seemed to beg.
“I'm sure,” Ronon replied. He reached out wrapping his fingers around Sheppard's fragile wrist and holding tight. John's strength was too feeble to pull the limb free but Ronon's grip would still leave a mark what with the fight the man was putting up. Dex leaned forward, close enough to bring the rigid, squirming hand to his hair, forcing the fingers to dig into the mass of thick ropes. Sheppard bucked, kicking out, grunting like a pinned animal. Ronon reached out with his other hand to start rubbing John's shoulder blade in small circles.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” he whispered. The words were useless but it was hard not to say them.
Sheppard struggled for a moment longer until Ronon forced his hand to follow a single rope of hair. His team leader stilled, cocking his head to one side - an inquisitive bird instead of a startled one. Fingers rolled the hair between his thumb and forefinger on their own accord. Ronon released John's wrist, red from the fighting and already starting to bruise. Claw-like digits followed the single weave back up to the mass, pressing and plucking before wandering away from hair to encounter the skin of the forehead. Cool fingertips traced Ronon's features, touching his eyelids, sliding over his nose to his mouth, mouth to cheek and cheek-bone, then neck until coming to the cord holding wraith finger-bones. Sheppard lifted the trophies in one hand to feel them out with the other.
John's breathing increased, the fingers stilling. “Rn'n?”
Ronon took John's hand, placed it against his face, and nodded.
Sheppard's breath caught on a strangled gasp. He scrabbled to clutch the shoulder of Ronon's coat with his free hand, gripping like he had no intentions of ever letting go. “Ron'n, I wanna g'home. I wanna... g'home, please.”
Ronon, still pressing John's hand to his face, nodded again. He then turned to the doctor. “We're leaving now. Get him some shoes.”
The doctor stepped nervously forward with wringing hands. “But, he's barely over the fever.”
Ronon narrowed his eyes, which was all it ever took. The doctor stiffened in alarm before finally scurrying off to get Sheppard some footwear.
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Ronon hadn't suspected Munkullin's but he had suspected Sheppard's health to be on the decline. Four days helping the sick and wounded migrate from a culled world to what should have been a safe world - diseases breeding fast and various - even the healthy weren't going to escape unscathed. Ronon hadn't been feeling all that up to his usual strengths himself. Then the supposedly safe world wasn't so safe when the rains and floods started, people trampling each other to escape, taking Sheppard with them through the gate before Ronon or anyone else had a chance to reach him. Ronon had managed to memorize the address. Another team went to fetch him while Ronon battled his own sickness. Except Sheppard wasn't on that world and no one knew where he had gone.
Ronon was through the gate the moment he was out of the infirmary against Beckett's orders. He knew it wasn't a matter of where to look, but how. If Sheppard's illness had worsened, then he had gone to where ever the sick of the refugees had gone. Two and a half weeks and four worlds later brought him to Cavaln and its ruined city of paranoids. Most called it an oppressive world. Ronon called it a terrified world. The soldiers at the gate harassed him, stalled him, but didn't try to stop him for the sake of their own hides. They were soldiers for the pay, not for the honor of lord and planet.
Which was why the hospital guards only harangued and jeered rather than do anything that might lead to physical violence. They weren't happy about Ronon taking their favorite toy, so followed him down the long corridor of more stained walls and tiled-floors chipped and cracked. The cajoling added to the underworld-like wailing of the suffering. Ronon kept his right hand on his still-holstered weapon and his left on Sheppard's wrist ensuring the thin hand maintained its weak grip on his belt. Some of the braver guards rushed forward to slap John on the shoulder or head, or tug on his shirt, like a game to see who could make the sick man lose his grip first. Sheppard flinched, jumped back, lurched forward colliding into Ronon, but never let go. Neither did he say anything beyond grunts and growls. Not much point to words in the silence.
The next guard to brave sending the sick man into a tizzy Ronon knocked flat on his ass with a well-timed jab to the face. He finally pulled his weapon from his holster, flipping the setting.
“Screw stun. Anyone touches him again, you're dead.” He'd avoided the threat until now in case some harbored a little more courage beyond tormenting the weak and ill. He was pretty sure such a man did not exist among these who called themselves guards but acted like children.
Ronon slowed pulling John in closer when they reached the hospital entrance opening up onto wide, cracked steps. They moved from artificial warmth to natural chill, pale yellow light to the sickly gray of an overcast sky and air smelling of smoke and dust. Cavaln was such an easy world to cull that the inhabitants found no reason to rebuild. It was said there were fires on this world still burning from the day the planet was first culled.
Ronon nudged Sheppard's knee with his own before setting foot down on the first step. He waited as Sheppard inched his own foot hidden in a too-large boot forward until it found the edge of the step, sliding against that edge to find the next step. Ronon held onto John's arm while his left foot followed. They repeated the process for each step until finally reaching level ground.
Debris was everywhere but swept and shoved aside, out of the way so it wouldn't have to be dealt with since there was no point to it. It still didn't mean the going could be fast. Sheppard stumbled, sometimes on cracks in the street, sometimes on open air. Ronon could feel the man's racing pulse in the skinny wrist, and twitching, quaking muscles beneath gossamer skin. It had occurred to Ronon that Sheppard might be afraid, but he hadn't truly realized it. It was something Ronon could only scratch the surface of in terms of imagining what it was like. There would be no adjusting to it, not over night nor within weeks, trapped on a alien world among strangers that chose self-amusement over the well-being of their fellow man.
Melena had once talked of a man, a former sufferer of Munkullin's, and how he had told her that the only sound to exist for him had been the muffled beating of his own heart. Touch, sensation, had been his connection to the world beyond his skull. No matter the assurances, he had confessed to being afraid, and to possibly going mad had the lingering affects of the illness not cleared up.
By the Ancestors, it had to be like being buried alive - buried alive in one's own body.
Ronon glanced at Sheppard and his milky, vacant eyes. Eyelids blinked, facial muscles twitched, but there was no expression.
Like looking into the face of the dead.
Ronon gently squeezed the fragile wrist in silent reassurance.
They walked passed broken buildings like old bones. Gray light flashed off cracked windows and sometimes Ronon would catch the fleeting presence of a pale face peeking out in curiosity. He did not stop, even when Sheppard leaned against him to stay upright, wheezing like an old man. He had no intentions of stopping until the city was behind them.
The buildings and debris eventually thinned out, broken paved road giving way to smooth, packed dirt. Ronon pushed the journey well into twilight, when the only reason John was still standing was because Dex was holding him up, before finally steering off the road into the woods. He set up camp in a small clearing while holding John up one-handed, spreading one blanket on the ground in front of a tree and setting the second folded one beside it. He then eased John gently down, upright against the tree, covering his legs with the second blanket. Ronon dropped down beside him, shoulder to shoulder, his thicker arm pressed against John's thinner one. He pulled two MREs from his pack. One he set on the ground, the other he placed in John's hand.
Sheppard's fingers roamed over the smooth package, pressing it, bringing it close to his nose for a sniff. When he pulled it away, Ronon jumped in to rip off the top. John sniffed again before reaching inside to feel out the contents. He pulled out a sandwich - ham, Ronon believed it was called. Sheppard felt it out - squeezing, rubbing and poking - then brought it to his mouth to touch it with his tongue. He finally took a cautious bite, chewed, and perked with a tepid smile curling his lips. Ronon patted him lightly on the shoulder.
Sight and sound deprivation made eating slower for John. Or maybe he was savoring it. He felt, sniffed, and tasted each food out before putting it in his mouth, but only ate half of what was in the packet. When he was done, he touched the ground with his free hand to set the packet where his fingers had brushed.
Sheppard pressed his hands into the ground, one on the blanket, the other the mossy soil. His fingers curled into both, cloth bunching and soft soil giving. With a curious tilt of his head he flexed his fingers digging tiny runnels into the earth until his fingers were partially buried. He patted the ground, rubbed it, pinch soil between his thumb and finger to bring it to his nose and smell. He had enough of that after a moment so slid his hand backward along the ground until contacting the moss-fuzzed bark of the tree. He pressed his fingertips into the grooves of the tree-skin and followed them to the next groove. The right hand picked at the scales of bark until a flake gave that he brought to his nose to smell. It all amounted to bringing a tiny, crooked smile to his face - the knowing one that Sheppard sometimes wore when he'd solved a problem that resulted in an amusing answer.
Ronon watched Sheppard map out the world with his fingertips. It was hard not to watch as a pinch of dirt or flake of bark seemed to expand in existence when handled in Sheppard's hands. Mundane details becoming the center of attention, the minuscule suddenly larger than life.
Ronon's own hand strayed from the blanket onto cool earth. He closed his eyes, inhaling deep wood and soil and the antiseptic stench of the hospital still lingering on Sheppard's clothes. The soil could have been anything - wet sand, finely ground gravel, plain dirt in an unclean room. The tree a long dead creature or moss-covered rock. Smell and further exploration made all the difference. Ronon only had to turn his head to inhale wood-scent that pushed images of running through forests into his mind. Memories alone, however, apparently weren't enough for Sheppard. He was going for everything his surroundings had to offer, letting it fill in too many blanks.
It was starting to make sense why John didn't wail and lament like the others in that hospital. Survival did not simply constitute the physical. The mind mattered as much as the body if not more. Ronon could feel the once taught muscles of Sheppard's arm soften and the quakes mellow as his reality expanded beyond four walls, cold metal, and a thin, useless mattress. It was like a game, one of Sheppard's number-puzzle books, a preoccupation filling his head with each twig, leaf, branch or bit of moss he handled as delicate as new life in his hands.
The effort, or maybe the joy, exhausted Sheppard until he slumped heavy against the tree, listing sideways. Ronon caught him and maneuvered him to the ground on the blanket, placing the pack beneath his head. He then stretched himself out beside his leader, adjusting the blanket to cover them both. Sheppard needed the combined warmth since the doctor hadn't thought to provide a coat. He could also use the proximity.
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Sheppard was like a small child when all he was doing was being himself. The moment Ronon stopped, even so much as slowed, John's free hand was in the air groping until Dex started off again or something solid was encountered. It was merely being tactical, Sheppard orienting himself to any new changes in their surroundings, yet too much an innocent action to seem like it. But that was Sheppard. He didn't cower in a corner when the world went black, he felt his way - not necessarily to the light - but where he could at least remain standing on his own two feet.
Ronon couldn't begin to grasp what it must be like. Sheppard didn't know about this disease, how it was temporary. At some point he would have to consider - or maybe even already had until Ronon showed up - what it meant to be both deaf and blind, what his future would hold - or would no longer include - and that his existence was limited to what his hands encountered. If he hadn't considered it yet then he would eventually. Ronon tried to imagine all of it, the darkness and silence and how it might never end, but couldn't get past the idea of a perpetual starless night without his stomach going sour.
It scared him. It made death a more savory prospect since death was a limit. He already knew John was frightened. He also had to be angry because that's what Ronon would be - furious enough to mutilate anything within reach. Yes, Sheppard wasn't him, but they weren't that different. Maintaining control was their strength while losing it was their weakness. Loss was their weakness. What John lost wasn't his eyes and his ears, but the means to keep from losing what really mattered to him.
Teyla had told Ronon what John had said about them, how they were his family. Not like his family, but were, which meant they meant more to him than anything else in any galaxy.
Just one more thing they had in common.
So Sheppard had to be angry, because Ronon was angry that he had to go through any of this to begin with.
They were nearing the gate, Ronon could tell by the increase of people on the road. Most were too busy staring at the compact mud contemplating their own misery to take notice of the man clinging like a needy child to another man's belt. The ones that did notice were more fixated on the milky white eyes and keeping their distance. Munkullin's wasn't highly contagious, but it was contagious. Ronon was the only one without a reason to worry being from a society that had developed a vaccine months before that society was completely wiped out, taking the vaccination with it except for what still lingered in any surviving Satedan's blood.
The populace thickened the closer they got until they were forced to blend into a line forming several meters from the gate. The moment Ronon stopped, Sheppard's hand wandered colliding into rag-covered bodies of the depressed and nervous. Most ignored the touching except to back away. Others swatted at Sheppard's hands, and it was making him nervous. So he turned to start groping in another direction.
John's hand eventually encountered the tangled nest of dark hair belonging to a man who looked as though he'd been surviving in the wilds most of his life; his thick body buried under mass of animal furs. He didn't slap John's hand away like it was an annoying insect, he shoved him hard enough to lay him flat on his back. “Keep your diseased hands off me you little puke!”
Pissed, Ronon surged forward and shoved back just as hard. “Don't touch him!” then knelt to retrieve Sheppard, only to have Sheppard scrambling out of reach trying to find some kind of purchase to get back to his feet. The man's frantic hands encountered only legs and coat hems of panicking people who gave Sheppard the briefest glance before twisting their faces in disgust and shoving him away. Hands and even feet pushed, slapped, or kicked him to the ground, and each time Sheppard scurried farther from Ronon's reach.
“Ack! Get off me!”
“He has that Munkullins!”
“Don't touch me you diseased piece of filth!”
“Get him off me!”
“Just kick him!”
“Someone get him out of here!”
“No!” Ronon bellowed. He went from squeezing his way through to pushing people over, letting them know what it was like to be treated like something less than what they were. He reached Sheppard in time to see a man grab him by the back of the neck and toss him off the road into a tree.
Ronon staggered at the dull thud of a body impacting both trunk and earth. Rage burned hot in his blood, his heart pounding in heavy ferocity. With a snarl, he slammed his fist into the face of John's attacker, ecstatic over the feel and sound and sight of collapsing bone and spurting blood. “I said don't touch him!”
The man, clutching his bloody face, stumbled back wide eyed and terrified. Ronon ignored him and went straight for John trying to use the tree to pull himself to his feet. He managed to climb half-way up when his legs gave out dropping him back to the loamy ground. Ronon crouched next to him, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his face, letting him know who it was touching him. Sheppard's hands fumbled over the ground to Ronon's leg, following it up to grip his shoulder.
“Wha..? What h'ppn'd? You 'kay?” John slurred.
“Yeah...” Ronon began, stopped himself with a tight swallow, took John's hand to place on his face and nodded. Before hauling Sheppard upright, he checked his team leader over for possible broken bones; running his hand down each limb, shoulders, across John's chest and down his ribs and backbone. Sheppard winced at the touch to his wrist, cheek, and right side. Ronon patted the man's shoulder-blade in assurance and apology, then pulled him gently to his feet. Nothing to be done about the injuries until they were home.
This time, Ronon did the holding on with one arm across John's shoulders. John's hand tried to wander again almost of its own volition until Ronon grabbed it, placing the dirt-caked hand to his face and shaking his head no. Sheppard folded his arms to keep them from roaming.
The line was long but moved fast, the people more interested in simply getting off the planet than where they were going. Ronon and John were next. It would have to be the Alpha site in case anyone followed or was curious to see what world he dialed. Once the numbers were locked and the event horizon established, he guided John into the rippling puddle.
They didn't so much step out as stumble when they emerged on the other side, John gasping and shaking in alarm. Sight and sound was never an issue when being hurled across the stars but Ronon supposed that it was a hell of a lot less pleasant a ride when taken unawares.
They stood by the DHD until Ronon was sure no one was going to follow. No surprise, considering. Obviously the need to leave wasn't that urgent if the people weren't willing to follow after a sick man and his violent guardian.
Smart people.
Ronon shut the ring down and dialed Atlantis. He waited until the event horizon established, then brought Sheppard forward, took his hand, and pressed it to the ring. Sheppard's thin fingers crawled across symbols, a single finger tracing their outline that couldn't possibly make any sense.
Ronon became curious. He closed his own eyes, touching his own fingers to the gate, feeling it cool and rough against his fingertips, then warm and smooth when he slid a single finger through the maze of indentions that held no meaning to him in the darkness.
He opened his eyes and watched Sheppard furrow his brow in deep concentration as he let his fingers do the talking. Ronon would have liked to have given him all the time in the world to figure out what it was he was touching, but he'd already sent the IDC through and received approval to come home. Wait too long and the others would get anxious for no reason, distract him with their chatter over what was going on, ask questions there was no reason to answer. He took John's hand and thrust it into the event horizon. As soon as Sheppard's fingers slid through the puddle, his eyebrows shot up in sudden illuminating recognition. Sheppard pretty much ended up pulling Ronon through this time around.
Then stepped out into home, and Ronon knew that John knew, because one did not have to see it to know it. There was a smell and feel to the air that one did not have to be hyper-sensitive to be intimate with. John's breathing increased and his hands twitched longing to feel, to embrace - take in his city through his hands. Ronon looked up to see Weir and Teyla and Rodney, followed by Carson, Lorne, and many others trotting down the stairs.
“You found him!”
“John!”
“Welcome back.”
“You guys all right?”
“We were so worried...”
Hands reached toward them, toward John, and the first brush of fingers to reach Sheppard caused him to leap back in alarm with a whimper instead of a grunt. Ronon pulled him away before anyone else had the chance to do the same.
“What the hell happened to his eyes!” Rodney shouted, and it was loud enough to silence and still everyone. Ronon took the opportunity to move John away to the nearest wall and place his hand against it. John flinched, pressing himself against the wall, holding on with the same relentlessness as when he'd clung to Ronon's coat the day the runner had found him. The whimper that escaped John's throat was a child-like sob of both relief and joy.
He was home. He was holding Atlantis in his hands.
Ronon wanted him to bask in this for as long as desired but sensed more than saw the anxiety of those standing behind him. With a kind tug, he guided John toward the stairs. With a nudge to his leg, they took the steps one at a time. The moment they were at the top Sheppard veered to the nearest wall so he could keep his hand pressed to it as they moved. He didn't let go until they reached the infirmary strong with the scent of cleaning chemicals.
Ronon steered him to the nearest gurney, let him feel it out before helping him pull himself onto the edge. Ronon looked at Carson hovering almost uncertainly in the entrance of his own infirmary with the others gathered behind. One nod from the Satedan and Carson timidly approached.
Beckett took Sheppard's wrist to check his pulse. Sheppard pulled his wrist free to reach out and touch Carson's face, searching it. Carson was about to take the wrist back until Ronon shook his head.
“Just wait.”
John's fingers danced over Beckett's features - face, hair, facial hair - but a smile didn't split John's thin face until he felt out the stethoscope around the doctor's neck.
The process was repeated as Carson checked John over. Rodney, then Teyla, then Elizabeth. The people he knew best and trusted the most he painted in his mind through his hands. Rodney was the least comfortable with it, but Ronon was impressed by his fight not to pull away. Elizabeth was amused, and Teyla accepting as always.
Carson was eventually forced to chase them out in order for Sheppard to stay still just so blood could be taken. Only Ronon was allowed to stay, maintaining his role as Sheppard's guide from bed to scanner then back to bed. John remained trusting, even when they changed him into white scrubs, attaching wires and needles and other healing apparatuses. He did not fight any of it though Ronon knew he wanted to. Tension vibrated in John, solidifying what was left of his muscles, twitching his skin, cording his neck. When John swallowed it was tight and convulsive, and Ronon could feel John's blood fluttering like frantic wing-beats. The battle against fight or flight raged until Sheppard was finally settled with covers pulled up to his chest and a gentle pat to the shoulder.
“There's still a bit of fever left,” Carson said. “But it looks like the illness has nearly run its course. The sight and hearing loss should clear up within weeks, maybe even days. Being a one-time disease like you said, he won't even need the vaccine.”
Ronon heard the snap of flexible gloves being removed before a hand settled lightly on his shoulder. “He's going to be all right, lad.”
As soon as Carson walked away, Ronon grabbed a chair and pulled it in close to the bed, dropping himself into it and propping his feet up on the mattress. There was a hot meal and a bath to be had, but they could wait. Other than that, Ronon didn't really have any place he needed to be.
Sheppard's head turned in the direction of the mattress' shift and closed his eyes.
----------------------------------
Bruise-colored eyelids slid back like a curtain opening up to hazel and a pure black pupil. The eye lids fluttered and blinked trying to clear the lingering blur Carson said would be sticking around for a few days. When blinking obviously proved useless, Sheppard squinted in Ronon's general direction.
This was the first time Ronon was present for Sheppard having his eyes open. The rest of the time he'd been too late. The fever was gone but John's body was still weak, exhausted, so the eye-opening really wasn't that big of a deal seeing as how it barely lasted a minute. It was simply chance that Ronon was here, now, to be able to witness it.
It was progress Ronon was happy to see, but he'd been wanting to be around for it beyond obvious reasons. Sight was the last to return, hearing the first.
Ronon sprawled on the padded rolling chair that had replaced the plastic one about two weeks ago. He scooted the chair closer, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I wanted to tell you,” he said.
John nodded, skin and hair whispering against the cloth of the pillow. “I know.” Of course he knew. A man would have to be heartless to leave another man, a friend, lost in that kind of torment by choice.
Carson had devised a clever way to convey to Sheppard what needed to be known above all else. A very simple method that Ronon was still kicking himself over even now. Using a piece of soft wood, Beckett had gouged out one word in thick, capital letters - temporary. Wood and a single word because Beckett had wanted to make Sheppard as aware as soon as possible to prevent any kind of depression from hindering the healing process, and the doctor was without doubt there would be feelings of hopelessness. Also anger, but mostly hopelessness. It had taken a moment for Sheppard to feel the letters out, then understand the purpose of the word, but picked up the meaning pretty fast when tension Ronon hadn't even known was their drained from the man's body, practically melting it into the bed. A small smile had followed seconds after.
Ronon looked down at his hands pressing his fingertips together, the skin paling around the edges of where they touched. They were stuck in a moment of awkward silence because Ronon wanted to, more than anything, ask what it had been like. Being blind, deaf, the world narrowed to textures and smells. He still had yet to imagine it. He couldn't. He'd go so far only to turn back like a child running from the deepening darkness. He wanted to know how one found the means to continue clinging to the world when most of it was gone. But like trying to imagine such loss, he couldn't get his mind to come up with the right words to find out.
It also wasn't right to ask just for the sake of knowing. Words would be useless, anyways. Experiences are earned, not given.
But that didn't change his mind about wanting to ask, so he opted for saying nothing until he had something else to say.
“You all right?” John asked.
Ronon flinched, startled. That should have been his line. He nodded.
“You were too quiet even for you,” Sheppard said. “Me and silence,” he scrunched his face in a minor wince, “not so tight anymore.”
Ronon gave him a short-lived grin. “Sorry.” He drummed his fingers together. One more thing he hadn't been able to bring himself to consider. The sound of the birds, running water, and the wind through the trees he would have mourned, no doubts there. People's voices, words... he wasn't sure, but could easily assume it one of those things you'd end up missing once it was gone.
It now felt very necessary to say something, just for there to be some sound.
“Were you scared?” Ronon blurted. He'd never been one to balk at anything he wanted to say, but he had to admit it was a pretty pathetic question.
John just smiled wanly. “You have no idea.”
Then, it was out of Ronon's mouth as though spoken by someone else. “How did you do it?”
Sheppard's eyelids moved in a tired, ponderous blink. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't really remember much of it, not until you showed up.” He fell momentarily silent staring at some unseen point over Ronon's shoulder. “Wasn't so bad when you got there.” He curled and straightened his fingers, still feeling out the world. “Kind of like waking up.”
“Still in the dark,” Ronon said.
John dropped his gaze to his hand and smiled. “But knowing the world was still there.”
Ronon smiled back.
The End