The Human Body IX: Delete (post-"Michael") Sheppard/Beckett
Title: The Human Body IX: Delete
Author: smallwaldo
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Words: 3562
A/N: This story was a bear to write for no reason I can readily understand. I knew what it was going to look like, but actually sitting down and writing was damn near impossible. Nonetheless, maisfeeka stepped up and did the beta, for which I am very grateful. This was written for the lyric_ficathon. Prompt lyrics are in bold below. Furthermore, I'm not even going to pretend that I'm writing "The Human Body" stories in the order of the episodes. Next will be "Grace Under Pressure" and then after that I should get back to where I am chronologically which is "Instinct"/"Conversion"... that'll be a novel... But anyway, here's this bit.
Summary: After staying up weeks, just to watch his experiment ultimately fail, Carson is in pretty bad shape.
“When your world breaks down and voices tell you turn around, when your dreams give out I will carry you.”
Carson sat staring at the screen. His resignation was typed, all he had to do was send it to Elizabeth. The Daedalus would be back in about a week. Enough time for him to put everything in order. He pushed the laptop to the edge of his desk without hitting send. He wanted to believe that if he got a few hours of sleep that things wouldn’t be such a disaster in the morning.
That the experiment would have worked… actually, the more he thought about it, the more he wanted it not to work as well as it did. Michael wouldn’t have found out about their deception, Teyla wouldn’t have been kidnapped, people wouldn’t be hurt or dead.
He wouldn’t hate himself.
He crossed his arms over the blank space he’d made on his desk and rested his head on them. In a few minutes he’d drag up the strength to head back to his quarters. There wasn’t anything left for him to do here tonight.
He spared one last glance around the office that had become his home for the past two weeks as they morphed the Wraith that John had dubbed Michael into a human. There were half-empty coffee and tea mugs, a rumpled tan t-shirt that he’d changed out of before going to the alpha site hanging off the edge of the couch, bits of medical equipment and computer data cards and whatnot scattered across every flat surface. He’d have to clean up at some point. But not tonight.
~~~***~~~***~~~
John wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Carson slumped over his desk, asleep. He stood at the top of the stairs, debating what to do. There was a small couch over by the wall, one of Carson’s shirts half on it, half on the floor. He could either try to get Carson to stay mostly asleep as he coaxed him over to the sofa. Or he could try and get him mostly awake and take him home.
He moved in a few steps, letting the door whoosh shut behind him. Carson didn’t stir. The black curtains were drawn and only the small desk lamp and the laptop screen illuminated Carson’s new office. The fact that the computer hadn’t gone into sleep mode meant that Carson couldn’t have been asleep for long. John decided to save whatever Carson had been working up and then wake him and get him back to his quarters. It had been a long couple of weeks since he and Ronon had dragged in a kicking, screaming Wraith - who had left a normal, if outraged human being.
John leaned over Carson’s shoulder to hit save when his eyes fell upon email Carson had been working on. He hadn’t meant to pry, but he had to hope that a subject line that read ‘Resignation’ didn’t mean what he thought it meant.
He scanned over the brief, polite words, feeling his frown deepen; his only relief coming from the fact that the ‘send’ button was still black. Not gray. Carson hadn’t actually sent the thing to Elizabeth yet. He closed the laptop with a quiet click, silently hoping that something would go wrong and it would delete the file.
Pretending he didn’t have a clue how bad things had gotten for Carson, John knelt at his side, gently brushing the backs of his fingers against Carson’s cheek. “Hey? Hey Carson, come on, wake up.”
Bleary-eyed and stiff, Carson rolled his head to see who was there. “Huh? What’s wrong?” He sat up slowly, looking alarmed.
John squeezed his shoulder. “It’s not a medical emergency. But you’re sleeping at your desk. It’s time to go home.”
Carson blinked a few times, trying to shove back cobwebs that seemed determine not to clear. All at once he remembered the past few days, remembered writing his resignation. He still wasn’t sure if he meant it, or if he’d just needed to blow off some steam, to put down the words even if no one ever knew about it. He couldn’t remember if he’d shut the laptop or not. He often left it running over night as it ran data for him or so the charts would be available for whoever came on after him. He risked a glance over to John.
He could tell by the short, sharp shake of John’s head and the extreme downturn of his mouth that John had seen it. He opened his mouth to try and explain, but a yawn that would have been comic at any other time cut him off.
“Not now,” John said softly, not sounding nearly as angry as Carson expected him to be. “We’ll talk after you’ve slept.”
Part of Carson prayed that by the time he’d had some sleep that he wouldn’t want to leave any more and there’d be nothing to talk about. But the rest of him knew that this wasn’t a snap decision made in a fit of pique after one bad day. What the sleep deprivation had kept him from realizing was that leaving Atlantis also meant leaving John. He had absolutely no romantic notions that John would give this up, give up the Air Force for him. He didn’t doubt that John loved him, but he knew that he couldn’t compete with a lifetime of military training and a military career. Not to mention the single biggest adventure the human beings of Earth had ever embarked on. And he would never ask him to.
“Come on,” John whispered, moving back just far enough to let Carson turn his chair. “You need to sleep. For a long, long time. Then you’ll tell me what’s going on in your head. And we’ll see what we can fix.”
Carson knew John was trying to be optimistic for him, trying to be patient and understanding of something he couldn’t have seen coming and couldn’t understand, but it sparked a flare of anger in him nonetheless. “There is no ‘fixing’ this!” he snapped. Cutting himself off, he dropped his head into his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve that.”
John put an arm around Carson’s shoulders and gently stroked his hair with his other hand. “It’s okay. But now you see why I want to wait to talk until after you’ve slept?”
Carson just nodded and decided to let John take command. John was good at that. When John did what he’d come to Atlantis to do people stayed safe, stayed alive. Unlike his own case. He shook himself from his increasingly downward spiral. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he could make John understand that as much as it pained him, he had to go.
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson was exhausted; he knew that. Not in the had-a-busy-day way or in the stayed-up-a-few-extra-hours exhausted, but truly beyond his physical capacity to function properly. He wasn’t sure if he was just periodically spacing out or if he’d truly started having periods of microsleep, but in any event, he’d pushed it too far this time. Thankfully he hadn’t started hallucinating yet - that he knew of - but he couldn’t focus his eyes and he was finding it damn near impossible to simply force them open. He leaned heavily on John as John maneuvered them through the deserted hallways.
John let them into Carson’s quarters and brought the lights up to half. “Come on,” he said quietly, steering Carson into the bathroom. He grabbed a cloth from the stack on the sink and ran it under warm water. “Look up,” he said quietly. When Carson complied, John quickly wiped off his face. He nodded to the commode. “You’re going to sleep for like a month. Might want to use the bathroom before you do.” John kissed his forehead and stepped out to give him some privacy.
A few minutes later Carson staggered out. He looked almost drunk, his half-closed eyes, his staggering gate, the way he frowned in concentration as he tried to navigate the familiar confines of his own quarters. John caught his arm and led him to the bed.
Carson stood passively, letting John strip him down to his boxers before tucking him in between the sheets. He sighed heavily and forcibly pushed the events of the past several days, hell, most of his time in the Pegasus Galaxy back out of his mind. He shifted over, wondering if John had left yet. He wondered if he asked him to stay if he would or if he’d be too upset over the fact that Carson hadn’t told him about his plans to leave. He was still trying to decide if he should try to find the energy to ask John to stay - to risk rejection on a night where he wasn’t sure he could handle one more disappointment - when the mattress dipped. The minor motion made him feel like he was being tossed on a ship in a storm, adrenaline shot through him and he reached out to steady himself.
John caught his hand. “Sorry,” he whispered sliding in next to him. “I thought you were asleep already.”
Carson felt himself start to shiver as John pulled him in and wrapped his arms around him. He was more confused about where he belonged than he’d ever been in his life.
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson slept for sixteen hours. When he finally opened his eyes, John was still there and had a tray with some soup and crackers and a glass of orange juice. He managed to stay awake long enough to eat it and to wonder when John would start with all the questions Carson was sure he had.
But he hadn’t. And as soon as Carson was done eating he found himself drifting back off. He slept another five and a half hours before he actually felt rested.
He looked around, but it was clear that John had gone. He wished he were more surprised by that than he was. He scrubbed his face with his hands and trudged off for a shower.
He was in the process of washing what felt like a weeks worth of sweat and grime out of his hair when he heard someone bang on the bathroom door. “I’ve got food when you get out.”
Carson sighed and let his head fall against the stall wall. This wasn’t helping. John being so solicitous and kind and understanding was running smack up against John turning into a bug because of him, thousands of Hoffans dying because of him and the look of betrayal and loathing in Michael’s eyes.
After another fifteen minutes of his thoughts running in circles, John was banging on the door again. “Get out of the shower and stop hiding from me. Your food’s getting cold.”
Carson couldn’t understand how John could sound like he was in such a good humor when he felt like nothing less than the entire universe had come crashing down around his shoulders, but he cut off the water and grabbed a towel.
~~~***~~~***~~~
John didn’t say anything as Carson pulled out a pair of jeans and a sweater. He gave him a cocky grin as Carson fell into his chair across from him at the small table where John had a tray from the mess with a large bowl of spaghetti and a small stack of bread rolls and two pieces of chocolate cream pie. Carson stared at the food, but didn’t move to take anything. John just gave a theatrical sighed and served them both. “Eat,” he commanded as he dug into his own.
Carson picked up his fork and poked at a strand of spaghetti that was looped off the edge of the plate.
“Feeling better?” John asked with his mouth half full.
“The ants have crawled out from behind my eyelids. It’s a start I suppose.” Carson admitted as he carefully twirled exactly one piece of spaghetti on his fork.
“That’s not eating, that’s playing, and this stuff does not get better with age, I promise you,” John said.
Carson wished he’d get on with the real interrogation. Not that he had any definitive answers, but the anxiety was starting to give him an ulcer. He began tearing up a roll, occasionally managing to eat a bit of the plain bread whenever John shot him a look and pointed at his untouched plate with his fork.
John’s plate was half cleared when he finally realized that Carson had no intention of eating. He shoved his plate aside. “Fine, let’s do this. What was that email about?”
“I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” Carson continued to shred the bread, more so he didn’t have to look at John than because he had any plans to eat it.
John realized that he’d been a tad harsh, but he was starting to become genuinely afraid that Carson would actually leave Atlantis, go back home on the Daedalus… leave him. He took a few deep breaths and calmed himself. “Doing what?” He’d had a day to contemplate what was going through Carson’s mind, and he had a few good guesses as to what was eating the other man. But he’d need Carson to tell him where this discussion would start.
“All of it,” Carson said quietly. “I can’t live with myself like this,” he finally glanced up and met John’s eyes. John sat there quietly, waiting for Carson to continue. He watched as Carson very slowly and deliberately put down the shredded roll and looked him in the eye. “I’m committing genocide.”
John scooted his chair over and took Carson’s hand in his. “You’re helping keep us safe,” he countered.
“By killing off an entire people!” Carson tried to get up and move away, but John wouldn’t let go of his hand.
“It’s them or us, Carson; you know that. I promise you, not one of them is losing sleep about much of anything other than where their next meal is coming from. And we’re that next meal.”
“So because they aren’t human, I’m supposed to forget my oath to do no harm and just help to wipe them all out?”
“You’ve given them a choice. They can live like we do - on plants and non-sentient animals - or me and my guys can blow them all to hell.”
Carson started to argue that point, but there was a small bit of logic there that he couldn’t deny. If he could get the retrovirus to work, there was a small chance that they could find a way to live in peace in the galaxy with a Wraith who were no longer a threat. He let his head fall forward to rest on the edge of the table. John squeezed the hand he held and reached over to rub between Carson’s shoulder blades with the other one.
Carson sat up and took the mug of water from next to his plate, toying with it before taking a drink. “But we’re not giving them a choice. There’s no consent here. You didn’t see Michael when he found out what he was. He was devastated, John.”
John rubbed his thumb over Carson’s hand for a few seconds, thinking. “I wonder how much of that was because of Elizabeth’s hair-brained scheme to set up this whole ‘normal’, human life for him. It’s one thing find out that you’re part of an experiment, it’s another to discover that you’ve been a victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome.”
Carson slumped in his seat. “Something tells me that they aren’t exactly going to line up to become breakfast for their own kind, even when I get it right. I don’t know if this is an answer.” He took a deep breath and finally said, “And even if it is, I’m not sure I can live with having to be the one to find it. I came here to patch up the lot of you when you tripped over your own boot-laces and to work on the ATA gene. This…” He toyed with his water, not finishing his sentence.
“I get that you’re the one doing the actual research, but it’s not your responsibility. Elizabeth and I will be the ones making the final determination for how this thing gets used. And neither of us take that responsibility lightly. If the Wraith would get behind the idea of ‘live and let live’ we’d never need anything like this, but they don’t. They want to eat us. I can’t let that happen. And this is the best chance we have a long-term solution. Even with Rodney, Zelenka and the Genii, we can only develop so many nukes. This is something we can do about it. About them.”
Carson’s eyes closed as he realized exactly why this was so important to John. Why he was so desperate to take any chance they could beg, borrow or manufacture to stop the Wraith. “You think this will counter the fact that the Wraith have woken up prematurely.” He was careful not to say ‘the fact that you woke up the Wraith’.
John stretched his neck. “The Genii are the most technologically advanced society we’ve met here and they haven’t even mastered atomic energy. We have the potential to save millions of lives. And yeah, if we hadn’t arrived here - if I hadn’t screwed up on that Hive ship… We’re the descendents of the Ancients. They sank Atlantis in the hope that their future generations could finish the work they couldn’t.”
Carson leaned over and laid his head on John’s shoulder. “It seems like too much responsibility for one or two people, or even three-hundred people. Save the universe from the Wraith… it seems like too awesome a responsibility.”
“Maybe,” John agreed. “But better your way - which really, if you think about it, is reversing a genetic mutation - the Wraith’s ancestors were humans. I’m guessing none of them wanted to be attacked by the Iratus bug or to be mutated by it. Anyway, better that we do it your way than the Ancient’s way. Because obviously, the Ancient’s way … not so successful. When you get this right… everyone lives.”
“Aye. They live. For about another 40 years if all goes well. They’ll be susceptible to disease and injury just as we are. They won’t heal the way they have, their bodies will begin to break down from old age literally centuries before a Wraith body would break down.”
John kissed the top of his head. “That can be your next project, then. Once you get them sustained on real food,” he poked at the congealed spaghetti on his plate, “you can work on reintegrating some of the cooler aspects of the Iratus bug. The healing thing, the long life thing. Just not the life-sucking thing.”
Carson gave him a half-smile. “Sure, and after that I’ll make sure we can all walk on water.”
John grinned in response. “Cool. Would go a long way to cutting down the number of taxi runs I have to make to the mainland and back.”
Carson chuckled softly.
John hugged him. “Feel better?” he asked again.
“Aye, a little.”
“Good, then come take a walk with me,” John pushed his chair back and stood up.
“Where?”
“A few places. First of all, back to your office so you can delete that damn email.” He cocked his head, waiting to see if Carson would argue. They’d never actually tackled Carson’s intent to leave Atlantis, but John hoped that it really was a matter of fatigue-induced depression and that now that he knew about it, he could help keep Carson from drowning in it. Which led him to the next point. “And… I sort of told Kate Heightmeyer that you’d probably be stopping by today.”
Carson made a definite face at that, but surprisingly, didn’t look completely pissed. “Oh, you told her that, did you?”
“Like you would have done anything different in my place? If I suddenly flipped out and said I was going to leave without telling anyone, if I stopped sleeping almost entirely and ate almost as rarely?” John raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to challenge his assertions.
Carson glared at him. “It was my experiment, I could hardly nip off for a catnap during it, now could I?”
John frowned at him. “Uh… yeah. I don’t care what it takes - bring someone else up to speed on this thing or whatever - but when something’s going to take weeks to run it’s course, yeah, you need to go to bed. And I don’t mean an hour at your desk or even a couple hours on the couch of your office.”
Carson just shrugged, not really feeling like arguing.
John knelt next to his chair. “I didn’t mean to get pissed. I just worry, you know?”
“I know,” Carson said reaching up to stroke John’s cheek. “I do. And I’m sorry I worried you.”
“It’s okay. I know I give you gray hairs on a regular basis. It’s the life we lead. But seriously, will you go delete that email?”
Carson nodded and leaned over the few inches he had to to kiss John softy. “Aye. And if it gets in my head to write another one like it, I’ll tell you first. Let you talk me out of it.”
John hugged him tight. “Good.”
The Human Body: the stories so far...
Somewhere in Season 1: HB I: A Pain in the Ass
The Siege (3): HB II: Put Your Head on My Shoulder
The Intruder: HB III: A Slip of the Tongue, Part 1, Part 2
Runner: HB IV: Getting Into Your Genes
Duet: HB V: Killing Off a Few Liver Cells
Condemned: HB VI: Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
Trinity: HB VII: Got Your Back
Instinct/Conversion
Aurora
The Lost Boys/The Hive
Epiphany
Critical Mass
Grace Under Pressure
The Tower: HB VIII: Do We Need a Rabbit?
The Long Goodbye
Coup d'Etat
Michael: HB IX: Delete
Inferno
Allies