Fractured Moon 4/4
Title: Fractured Moon 4/4
Rating: PG13/R (Gen)
Fandom: SGA
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As good as it felt having his team back with him and no longer waiting in a cage for the cooking pots, Sheppard was still feeling out of it, the buzz and charge not diminishing at all. Teyla kept shooting concerned glances at him, no doubt trying to judge his frame of mind or physical ability. Rodney was still talking a-mile-a-minute but was following Ronon without too much prodding.
They were back together but hardly home and they were weaponless and had two groups of potential enemies between them and the Gate.
Their journey through the Jungle was fast paced but John missed his earlier speed and the rush of the treetop s, and for a split second John thought he caught a glimpse of Githian hunters on his trail, Freak’s face clear in a break of trees and undergrowth. Wondering if they should take to the trees again, Sheppard sped up, watchful for potential pursuit and his team, feeling a tremor in his heart at the thought of being in Freak’s village again.
“John, wait!”
Bemused and a little concerned that their delay would let Freak catch them, John slowed, turned and let Teyla and Ronon catch up. Rodney’s face was red, and he was puffing hard, so hard in fact that he couldn’t talk. “We have to move, Teyla.”
“I know John, but if we lose you... please stay in sight.”
He nodded, smiled reassuringly and motioned for them to follow. The sunlight was now golden and orange, warm in colour. The trees were not as dense this close to the village, so broader, brighter beams of sunlight pierced the gloom of the jungle floor, stabbing into the dark like slanted spears. The urge to run was growing again, but Sheppard fought the need by upping the pace again and pulling away, despite Teyla’s hiss.
It wasn’t much further to the Gate, and by the time they arrived John was hunkered behind a stiff bush and Ronon had gagged Rodney with the remains of his shirt. Rodney hadn’t stopped talking, a muffled stream of indignation barely audible. But Rodney wasn’t trying to take the gag out, so maybe he was aware on some level of just how odd the non stop talking was and that they needed to be quiet. Just as John knew that the thrumming urge to run and leap and maybe fight was not entirely him, but hopefully Carson would be able to fix that.
Because it looked like getting through the gate was going to be a pretty tough task. The Heskets had cleared the Gate, but were still milling around, getting the DHD to work. Rodney’s muffled tirade was sounding a lot like a running criticism of their efforts. The clearing for the Gate was small, the earth bare and upturned, as it was likely a frequent battleground between the Githians and Heskets. There weren’t too many villagers, maybe about ten, but reinforcements were a shout away, and his team was unarmed.
“Atlantis should be trying to dial in by now. If we can get the Gate working...” Teyla was interrupted by Rodney’s vigorous nodding but Ronon forestalled removing the gag and said, “Look.”
It seemed that his glimpse of Freak and the Githian hunters was not his imagination. In the shadows of the Jungle across the clearing the Gate stood in, several dark figures lurked. The Heskets had not noticed yet, but Sheppard whispered nonetheless, “They’ll try and stop us going through the Gate.”
“Who?”
“Both groups, but mostly the Githians. But maybe....”
Teyla looked worried, Rodney constipated in the effort to be quiet, and Ronon delighted at the prospect of a fight.
“I have an idea.”
His team looked at him and he coolly gazed back and smiled, “Just follow my lead. You’ll know when.”
And Sheppard turned and ran straight at the nearest tree, wide of girth and smooth of bark, but by now it was easy to climb and he was soon running along the branch above his team, their faces upturned in astonishment and then there was a handy vine and he opened his mouth and shouted, “Aaaaahhahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
The Heskets turned as one when he landed not too far from them, smiled broadly and said, “Githa eats you for breakfast!”
And as one, they yelled and screamed and John took off, straight towards the hidden Githians. At first there was no reaction from the hidden hunters, but John was pulling away from the Heskets and he stooped to pick up a rock and tossed it straight at the closet Githian. It landed with an audible exclamation, and the Githians broke cover, the Heskets paused and hefted their sticks and shovels and charged.
Blinking in the sudden gloom after the bright unobscured sunlight, John nearly didn’t see Freak leap out at him, but he was so high strung that even belatedly he was able to dodge. Freak twisted and came after him, growling menacingly, but Sheppard was tired of running. One second his feet were pounding on the ground and the next, he spun and launched himself at Freak.
Caught by surprise, Freak staggered under the onslaught and John landed three or four solid blows before bringing his knee up and smashing it into Freak’s face as the guy crumpled over the blows. Spilt nose streaming with blood, Freak roared in pain but did not go down. Instead he grabbed Sheppard and slammed him in the broad trunk a tree, and the deep bruises on his back screamed in agony.
Staggering with the pain, Sheppard barely dodged the next blow, and slammed a fist into Freak’s solar plexus, which dropped the guy. Freak fell with a thud, but only for a few moments, before he started to his feet again. The sounds of battle surrounded them, villagers and natives at eachother’s throats, and as John watched Freak shake off a blow that should have kept him down, he finally got it.
Freak probably had enough happy fruit juice in him and if John was feeling invincible, so was Freak. No doubt his team were already at the Gate, waiting for him, so Sheppard decided to leave off revenge for now and make for home. He swung one last blow at Freak, a neat round house kick that knocked him on his ass, and the Sheppard was off. A couple of nearby Githians tried to grab John as he ran past but Sheppard’s goal was closer and he was scrambling up a tree before they had a chance to correct and come after him.
The two groups were a flurry of movement and shouts, spears and shovels clashing together. The Hekets and Githians seemed evenly matched when night time and surprise were removed as factors, but the Githians were over muscled and hefty, and the Heskets were numerous and fanatical. Sheppard didn’t stick around to see the latest round of religious difference sorted out and ran through the trees, ignoring the growing collection of scratches and cuts from the branches and ache in the small of his back, his feet thundering loudly on the branch.
Through the leaves, he could see that Ronon and Teyla had dealt with the few guards left at the Gate while Rodney fixed the DHD. His team had wasted no time in moving in on the Gate. Another handy vine presented itself and John swung out, landed a little off catching his ankle, but ran on regardless of the pain.
“You half-brained, over movie-d and half-witted moron! An actual Tarzan yell! I am so mocking you forever.”
“Keep working, Rodney.”
The guards were unconscious and Ronon joined Sheppard in watching the fight across the clearing, just in case they decided to forget their differences and chase the Offworlders.
“You’re crazy, you know that.”
“Only on Tuesdays.”
“Today’s Wednesday.”
“Actually, its Friday, you nincompoops and as usual, I have saved the day!” Rodney exclaimed.
The Gate blossomed into life and that was definitely enough to draw the attention of the combatants. Several Githians broke away and ran towards them, Freak being one of them, his face still a mess of blood.
“Where did you dial, Rodney?”
“New Athos, I may be drugged, but even at a lesser capacity I can outthink all of you combined, especially Captain Hair right now.”
Teyla laughed and dragged Rodney towards the Gate, while Ronon shoved John was well. Sheppard however felt a real urge to stay and fight Freak again and even as he said, “Its Colonel Hair, McKay,” he was fighting Ronon absentmindedly, trying to dodge past his friend’s bulk to get at Freak.
Ronon however seemed prepared for a tussle and body checked him and then tossed him through the wormhole. The icy rush of wormhole travel was enough of a sobering dunk that when Sheppard landed on the other side in a heap, he didn’t immediately get up and run. But as the Athosians drawn by the Gate’s activation and Teyla’s shout ran over, Sheppard clambered to his feet unsteadily.
The Gate disengaged as Ronon stepped through and Sheppard took a step backwards, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to run, run, run. The adrenalin of the fight and chase and rescue was still surging and the sudden break, the knowledge that they were safe had the opposite effect. He felt a real tremble and compulsion to run.
“Shep?”
“John?” Teyla was helping Rodney to his feet, and Halling was nearly by her side, but Sheppard shoved aside her worry and Ronon’s concern and smiled brightly. “Sorry.”
And then he took off, running full out, muscles screaming. The trees on New Athos were different but more familiar, and John quickly lost Ronon in the forest. He was not able to climb the trees and run like before on Githa, but his headlong rush actually outpaced his friend and he yelled back, knowing Ronon would be able to track him, “Get Carson.”
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It took three hours to find Colonel Sheppard. Ronon and Major Lorne had spotted him several times, but the moment they got close, he’d run and lose them. Somehow his transmitter wasn’t working and Ronon had to use old fashioned tracking techniques, but still, it took three hours.
Teyla eventually left Rodney in the Atlantis infirmary and returned to New Athos to find out why it was taking so long to find John. As she stepped through the Gate, Carson was yelling on the radio at Lorne and Ronon, “Well then stop letting him spot you. Every time he runs, he just pushes his body more! Damnit, man!”
Quietly, but making sure he heard her anyway, Teyla joined him and said softly, “No luck then.”
“No, and if the Colonel is as chockfull of the same damn toxins as Rodney, then he will collapse and die before they find him. Damn fools!” Dr. Beckett looked tired and stressed, as did most of the emergency team. They had been trying to reach Githa for hours after all, fearing the worst, hoping for the usual luck that went along with Team Sheppard. And now, even with the Athosians helping Ronon and the Marines, Sheppard was eluding them all.
As it turned out Githa, or MXC-333 as Woolsey was still calling it, was chockfull of toxins and by chockfull, Carson meant truly and utterly laced right down to the ground water. Whatever cataclysm had rocked that world millennia ago and destroyed a moon had left Githa with astronomical levels of toxicity. The plant life and few creatures that remained had adapted to the toxins and then thrived in the reduced ecology. And the human population? Exposed to toxins on so many levels, their culture had disintegrated and fractured and with the only sources of food essentially poison had chosen very ‘alternative’ lifestyles.
After Carson’s combined medical and xeno-biology team with Marine escort had returned from Githa with samples, crazy natives on their tail and more questions than answers, Woolsey had ordered the gate address removed from the database and locked. Archaeology and Anthropology had been irate, their curiosity piqued at the idea of the remains of a sophisticated society in tatters, different tribes addicted to toxic fruit or practicing cannibalism. Dr. Green had launched into his hypothesis about the moons and devolving religions and survival mechanisms right in the Gate Room, but Woolsey had remained firm.
Archaeology and Anthropology were collectively escorted from the Gate Room so that more Marines could be sent to New Athos to track down Sheppard and give Carson space and time to work on analysing the samples and make comparisons to Rodney’s bloodwork.
Fairly certain he knew how to help Sheppard, Carson had joined the teams searching for him but so far, he’d done more shouting and channelling an absent McKay than anything else.
“Stop chasing him,” Teyla said firmly.
“What?” Carson snapped as he turned around, paled and then said apologetically, “Sorry, lass. What?”
“Perhaps he runs because he must. But if they stop chasing him, maybe he will run towards us. He was aware enough of the drug’s or toxin’s influence to ask for you and come for us despite it. So maybe... let him come to us.”
Carson thought about it, mused and hummed and then nodded, “Can’t hurt, I suppose. He seemed lucid, right?” Teyla nodded.
He tapped his radio and said loudly, “Everyone pull back to the Gate and let the Colonel come to us.”
There was a chorus of ‘Yes, sirs.’ and a ‘You sure, doc?’ from Lorne but it didn’t take long for the hunters to come in. Ronon was nodding as he walked in and said outright, “Sheppard was running in a circle, around the Gate. I think he’s trying to lose us, but also stay close. Would have got him on the next pass, but he’s damn fast - bug fast.”
“Ronon.”
Carson however couldn’t help the start of guilt at the reference and said glumly, “Well, hopefully he’ll be able to come in now. I have more samples and toxin combinations than I like but if I can just test his blood and isolate the exact chemicals...”
And, fortunately, it didn’t take too long, about 30 minutes. Ronon’s head snapped up first, a proverbial bloodhound scenting the trail and everyone looked around to see the stiff silhouette of Colonel Sheppard in New Athos’ sunset. He was on the very edge of the forest, dimly perceived, a silent creature of the forest in the light of dusk.
“Everyone, back off.”
And as the Athosians and Marines did so, Sheppard slowly advanced, the twitching and trembling in his muscles visible, as were the cuts and bruises and smeared paint, dirt and blood. “Ah, lad. You’re a right mess. Come on.”
Exhausted, but still on edge, Sheppard limped closer but couldn’t seem to close the last hundred metres. Teyla smiled reassuringly and said, “Rodney is recovering on Atlantis and Carson has studied the toxins John, he can help.”
“Aye, lad. I can. You just have to let me.”
John’s eyes were wide and dark, his feet bloody and black, and as much as he looked ready to drop, he also looked ready for a fight. “You got anything to drink, Doc?”
“Sure, sure.”
Lorne tossed his CO a canteen, which Sheppard gulped down and then dropped. The smile was sudden, a relief, a break in the storm, and he said, “Thanks.” And promptly collapsed.
“Dial Atlantis!”
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Sheppard awoke from a strange dream, of a large snake curling around him and pressing, pressing until he couldn’t breathe. So it was a great relief to wake and see the clear blue skies of Atlantis through the window near his bed.
He was in the Infirmary, as expected, and further to his expectations, everything was coloured in the soft haze of morphine and pain relief. The privacy curtains weren’t drawn and he could see a Rodney shaped pile of blankets on the bed opposite with copious amounts of tubes and drips. And he had the same, if not larger collection of drips and tubes attached to him.
Teyla was sitting next to him, Torren sleeping in her arms, his chubby toddler limbs flung out and lax in the exuberant slumber of a child. She smiled and then that smile deepened as Sheppard retuned it, groggily. He felt... wrung out -yeah, that was a good term - and the ache from his muscles, even with the morphine and drugs, promised a litany of stiffness and bed rest.
“You’re awake, John.”
“Seems so. You ok?”
Teyla nodded serenely, her smile wide, “Yes, as is Ronon and everyone else. Only you and Rodney remain as ‘concerns’.”
“Good.”
The quiet of the Infirmary and, well, Atlantis hung over them, and it was a wonderful sort of quiet, far away from angry emotions and desperate situations. “That was a close one, I guess?”
Teyla nodded, her smile fading. “I fear so. Carson said you were close to collapse, a heart attack even. You had pushed yourself to the extreme, John. You will need to stay for observation, he is worried about damage to your heart.”
“Yeah, just couldn’t stop running. Felt... so good.”
“Nonetheless, you are now safe, and we are eager... when you are ready, to hear of your experiences with the Githians. Your bruises were... impressive.”
Sheppard grimaced and muttered, “Stuff of nightmares, really.”
Teyla sat back, settling in and said, “I am sure, but we have time - you will be on sick leave for some while, John. Plenty of time for you to heal.”
And even as Sheppard smiled back and said, “Yeah,” he felt a sharp jab of elation at the memory of running wild and free through the trees, heart and feet pounding in unison, blood surging through him. It still felt... so right.
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Fin
Prompt: Gen. John injured, sick and weakened but still able to escape and outsmart the people he's escaping from. His escape can be from bad guys or even his own team. I like hurt and comfort equally, and have a major thing for delirious, skittish and feral Sheppard. I'm also a big fan of creative whump - for example, John is hit with a poison-tipped arrow that causes seizures as opposed to just an arrow (not my request, just an example, but you can use it if you want). Team friendship and concern is love. Weight loss is a bonus but not a must.
Any and all feedback would be appreciated as I was/am really nervous about this story - one of the most graphic ones I have posted and I have never debated so with myself on a story before, mostly because I wanted to give Kriadydragon the story she wanted... hope I did a half way decent job.
Thanks for reading