A/N: This was written for the LJ Sheppard H/C Secret Santa challenge, it is cross posted over there.
Skipping the Angles
Hamel Durrah whittled away one last curl from the haft of the knife he was balancing, and tossed it into the air with a practiced flip. When the haft returned to his palm with a satisfying slap, he slipped the knife into his pocket and stood. He had only made it as far as the first lantern when he heard the scuffle of feet and murmuring voices on the wet street outside of his apartment. Three, he thought, automatically counting the potential threat. Three, and they're in a hurry. And hurry meant he wasn't going to damn bed after all.
He didn't startle when the door to his apartment was flung open. He did shove his hands into his pockets and turn away from re-lighting the lamp to face the intruders who entered as hastily as they'd walked. He took a step to the right, hiding his knife hand in the shadow of the gloomy corner. The room was large, considering he lived by himself - Hamel had visited families of six and eight crowded into much smaller rooms - but Hamel had a special arrangement with the clans that controlled the city. He was allowed the extra space in return for his services. Times such as now.
"Are you a doctor?!" The intruder's query was breathy with exertion and loud with emotion.
Hamel remained silent, but his hand gripped the hilt of his new throwing knife a little more tightly; he didn't recognize any of them and they wore no colors. When the last figure turned and shut the door behind...her?...he took a moment longer to assess the group. There were four - three men and one woman, all armed (although not obviously), dressed in a mix of peculiar clothing styles. One of the men was suspended between the other two. He was the reason they were here, and the reason he'd miscounted.
The wounded man hung limply by arms held over the shoulders of his supporters. His feet dragged behind him making no steps of their own, but Hamel saw his eyes glint in the lamplight, gauging the room from behind shrouded eyelids. He was wounded but conscious - and calm. They usually came in either screaming like a pig on the chopping block, or so far gone that yelping was too much effort. Interesting.
"Hey! I asked you a question. Are you a doctor or aren't you? Because if you are, he needs help and you really need to get started."
The red-faced and shorter of the two - (5'10", 180) seemed to be squealing enough for all four of them. Hamel shifted slightly to get a better angle on the larger man (6'3", 210) who was gauging the space as thoroughly as Hamel was gauging him. The big man shifted in response, skipping Hamel's angle, and he felt his lips twitch. This one knows the dance. He would be the one to watch out for, Hamel guessed.
"Can't answer if I don't know what the stang you're talking about. Doctor is no word that belongs around here."
The woman stepped in front of the men, interrupting a bellow from her noisy companion with a gentle touch as she passed. "We seek a healer. Our friend is badly injured. He needs help and...shelter."
Hamel heard her hesitation over the last word, although the woman had fought to keep it out of her voice. The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle with warning.
"You've come to the wrong place. Nobody can heal someone else. That's up to him that's got a hole in him."
He shifted again and realized why he felt so uncomfortable. He couldn't get an angle on any of them. They moved wrong - too confident, their range was off. They danced different and all of them did it. Even the woman had set her feet in such a way that he was sure she could block or dodge his throw. The loud one was clueless, but the woman stood just within his guardian spot, protecting him as the big man protected the wounded one. It'd been a long time since Hamel had been out-danced in his own home. He shifted his grip from throwing to cutting.
"Teyla, would you tell the redneck thesaurus that Sheppard doesn't have time for pedantics. Is he going to help or not?"
Hamel tensed at the sharpness. "I don't help 'til I know your allegiance. What colors do you wear?" Not that Hamel really cared, but he needed to know who he was dealing with, and who might be pissed at him for doing so. He needed to know who the hell these people were.
"We are visitors, outsiders. We do not swear allegiance to any local clan. We will leave when we have finished our business here. We will trouble you no further once our friend is no longer in danger."
"Mercenaries?"
The woman looked like she was about to argue but the big man whom he still had no name for spoke up abruptly, "Yeah. Something like that."
Hamel curled his lip into a sneer. "You stupid mercenaries? Or just slow." He jutted his chin at the wounded man - Sheppard? - who was sagging lower with each passing minute. The taunt was deliberate. He wanted to find these people's angles quickly.
The big man snarled back and thrust his chest out. Hamel tensed, already judging the motion: Closer, depends on his strength, probably prefers fists over blades, weak to attack from the center...
"Ronon!"
Hamel blinked. He'd thought the one called Sheppard was too far gone to follow the lip dance.
"Stand down, Chewie. We're the strangers here," he breathed instead, the words hardly louder than a hum and to Hamel's shock, Ronon checked his angle. Sheppard was a Prime? The wounded man? Hamel flicked a look at Ronon - what Second would pass a chance as obvious as this? Sheppard slid his feet under himself and lifted his chin higher. "Reema sent us here. She...said...you'd...help..."
Sheppard's faint words jibbed him, and he gasped around a deep growl of pain. The loud one paled to the color of curds and Ronon left himself wide open to grab for Sheppard's shoulders in a steadying embrace. That prickle of unease returned to Hamel's neck. Hamel was used to strangers - many street whelps found their way to his door, from all clans of the city - but these people were more than strangers, they were...strange.
"Reema sent you," Hamel managed at last. "Reema has her reasons. Lay him down there." Hamel flung a careless hand at the bunk in the corner of the room, then stayed put, watching, gathering his composure.
Ronon heaved and wrestled Sheppard to the corner where, together with the loud one, he lowered the wounded man gently onto the cot. Sheppard sat on the edge for perhaps a handful of heartbeats, then slumped sideways onto the blankets. Ronon lifted his feet and clucked at the loud one to help him remove the man's boots, all under the watchful eye of the woman. When she turned and approached him, Hamel startled and gripped his knife tightly. Teyla's eyes narrowed, noticing the attempt at an angle even as she adroitly skipped it. She seemed puzzled by the dance. No, she seemed puzzled by the need for it.
"Thank you," she said simply, but the words were not simple in meaning. She was pushing him to commit his services and seal the bargain.
"I don't heal," he repeated. "I only mask the pain so he can do it himself. Nobody can save him if he's too shredded."
"We are grateful for any assistance," she answered distantly. Sheppard writhed on the bed and Teyla's look of entreaty was cold.
Who are these people and why are they here?
Hamel walked to the polished cupboard by the small stove and began to rummage for his cloths, hardly noticing what his hands were doing. He couldn't shake a premonition of fear or change - like something more than four strange strangers had walked through his door. If he had any sense, he'd slip out and leave before they noticed he wasn't there anymore. They were careless in their concern, they left themselves open to comfort their Prime. They were either fools or...something that he'd never seen before and didn't have a word to go with it. He could get out, leave. He'd survived many a dark night by turning and walking away from a scuffle that a hotheaded whelp would have taken up.
Instead, he gathered his bandages and went to Sheppard's side, too. And he put his knife back in its pocket.
Earlier:
The breeze from the invisible jumper ruffled John's hair and he followed the tiny ship's hum skyward with his eyes. The engine noise vanished among thick gloomy clouds to be replaced by the steady drip of rainwater off clogged gutters. He took a deep breath and a cloud of condensation floated around his head when he blew it out abruptly. They'd dropped the jumper into a vacant lot that was surrounded by windowless brick buildings. The bare patch was cluttered with trash, discarded industrial-era junk, and weeds. Although it wasn't raining at the moment, everything was wet and slick in the chilled humidity.
"Stinks here," Ronon rumbled, first to speak after they'd all taken a quick look around.
"And Ronon wins the understatement of the year award," Rodney grumbled. John watched him wrinkle his nose then rub at it as if to scrub away the sour, rotted scent that saturated the place.
"We'll plant flowers later. Let's find someone who will talk to us."
John headed down a narrow alley towards a broad main street within the dysfunctional city. From the jumper, he'd noticed a few shops and 'establishments' that looked like promising places to start a conversation. Teyla joined him, a comforting presence at his shoulder. He felt naked without his P-90 clipped to his chest. The M11 pistol in its shoulder holster rubbed reassuringly against his armpit underneath his leather jacket, but the smaller weapon (smaller and fewer rounds than his Berretta even) was no substitute for the raw stopping power of his preferred PDW.
They were all geared subtly. What little intel they had on this planet was that it was post-industrial but in a state of anarchy. Like so many of the cultures that the wraith messed with, this one had been humming along, building coal and steam factories, figuring out the mysteries of Newton's physics when - bam - along comes the spider and permanently sets them back 400 years. The buildings and machines, largely inoperative, were still around, but the people lived like tribal thugs.
Tribal thugs without guns. John's mission dossier suggested that either they hadn't developed projectile weapons before the period of anarchy or that they'd run out of bullets and didn't know how to make them any more. It hadn't kept them from finding ways to kill each other, though. Considering the trouble their other teams had encountered, they'd decided that displaying superior firepower would only draw the wrong kind of attention. They were here for answers, not a rumble.
Rodney also wore a leather jacket and a shoulder holster. Teyla had opted for civvies - Athosian civvies - and carried her bantu sticks tucked into her belt. Ronon had been the hardest to convince. He'd pitched a fit at the suggestion to leave his blaster behind. In the end they'd compromised by pinning a holster on the inside of his long leather coat and the big gun was carefully tucked away out of sight. His short sword was in it's scabbard at his back in plain view, though. As was John's combat knife within its usual sheath, hanging off his belt. He'd read enough of the dossier to clue into the fact that, while calling attention wasn't a good idea, neither was looking like an unarmed geek. He shot a look over his shoulder at Rodney with the thought. This whole planet was on the wrong side of the tracks.
They left the alley and regrouped on the wide main street. It had once been paved with cobblestones, or primitive bricks - John couldn't tell which in their current crumbled state. More brick buildings lined both sides as far in each direction as he could see. What windows there were were boarded up or left open and gaping. It was the open ones that bugged him and John had to force himself to remember he wasn't in Qandahar with snipers leaning out of every dark hole. There were a few people moving about. Most were walking hurriedly, eyes to the ground, looking like they were desperate not to be noticed. The ones that seemed to swagger down the street were male, young and all wore colorful strips of cloth around their upper arms over whatever clothing they happened to have on. Interesting.
One of these young men crossed their path on his way to a shop that displayed images of knives on its hand-painted sign. John's frank curiosity drew a frown from the boy and he hesitated over a step.
"Watch your angles, old-timer," the youth snarled, flexing the arm with the ribbons. Some kind of rank designation, John guessed by the way the man flaunted them. John just lifted an eyebrow.
"Ouch," he muttered sarcastically once the kid was out of earshot. Rodney snickered.
They wandered a bit further, completely ignored. It was bizarre. He'd walked into countless villages in the Pegasus Galaxy and, while not always met with enthusiasm, they were at least...noticed. He waved Teyla closer.
"So, is it just me, or did we do the incognito thing a bit too well?"
"These people are quite unsociable," she agreed. She gestured discreetly to a woman with a young boy in tow. The woman was pointedly avoiding them and tugged the child towards the opposite side of the street to pass. "The boys with the colors generate much fear among the general population." She gestured again and John stiffened at the sight of two thugs harassing another woman. The woman kept her eyes down and clutched tightly at the net bags of groceries in her arms. One of the boys pushed at her until she dropped one of the bags and scuttled away, leaving her tormentors to laugh over their spoils.
"Zander said this place was unpleasant," John sighed, moving on with difficulty. He did spare a glare at the men. They seemed confused by his disapproval but too pleased with themselves to ask him about it. Too bad. He looked at the gloomy, overcast sky.
"We got here late. It'll be dark soon. I can't imagine how much more unpleasant it must get at night. We either need to find out what we came to find out, or we need to find something to do for the night. I don't want to get ourselves in the situation Zander's team did."
"Agreed." Teyla's voice was hard.
They walked for a few more blocks past empty or closed buildings in tense silence. The civilians on the street were moving even more hastily towards doors and side streets and there was a steady increase in the number of banded men about. John was brooding over their situation when Teyla touched his arm. "I have learned that, even in the most unstable communities, shop keepers make an effort to remain neutral."
He followed her nod towards a sprawling single-story building that boasted a marvelous iron sign depicting a tankard and a loaf of bread.
"A bar?" He stopped, considering. Teyla just lifted an eyebrow and John elaborated. "I don't know what kind of bars you've been in, Teyla, but I've been in some that were more dangerous than a Hive ship at lunch time."
"Then you will know how to handle this one." She grinned. "You have survived both."
John thought about it. She was right that a local joint was probably their best bet for news. It was also likely their best bet for trouble.
"Ronon?" he asked.
"I can handle it."
John chewed his lip for another round of mental coin flipping. "OK. Watch yourselves. We stay together. Teyla and I will ask the questions. Ronon, you look scary. Rodney, I want you to scan that place as thoroughly as you can without letting on. I want you to know every nook and cranny, every exit, entrance, secret tunnel and hidden passageway behind the bookcases. If we have to get out of there fast, you're the tour guide. Got it?"
Rodney's answer was more of a "meep" than genuine acknowledgment, but John took it. "Let's hit the pub, gents. And Lady." He gestured gallantly towards the door that spilled warm yellow light out into the dusky street, then followed Teyla's confident steps. He also reached inside his jacket and snapped the holster strap off his M11 and scooted his knife along its belt to the optimal quick-draw position.
"Let's hope it's not lunch time," he muttered to himself and stepped through the door.
Now:
Hamel stood beside the bed holding his small bottle of antiseptic and torn rags, looking down at the man called Sheppard, sizing him up as he did everyone. His features were strong but not rugged. There were creases around his eyes that spoke of experience and hardship, but his (unusually) short black hair was only just beginning to show signs of silver. The contradiction made his age tough to judge. Hamel guessed that he had maybe half a dozen years on the man, but that was still old to be a street player. Most men either burned out on the streets or faded into the arms of a woman to try to raise a family before they even got to Sheppard's age. He was about Hamel's height, but thinner and lighter. When Hamel did think to look in the mirror, he saw an old street whelp that had softened and widened on the outside as much as he had toughened and shrunken on the inside. Hamel's own hair had turned a dirty grey with age and worries many years ago.
He grunted and the strangers moved further away to allow him access, though none of them yielded their angles on him. The woman, Teyla, stayed at the head of the bed, the loud one planted himself firmly at the foot and Ronon began to pace the perimeter behind him. Hamel had decided that Ronon was Second and he still wondered why the big man, clearly ripe for Prime himself, hadn't acted.
Sheppard was on his side, his knees drawn into a protective curl. Belly wound, then. There were slashes cut into Sheppard's right arm and across the chest of the jacket the man wore; a matching tear crossed the black undershirt between the unzipped flaps. A shallow scratch into pale skin was visible through the torn fabric and oozed little bubbles of blood. Hamel suspected that the arm had been scored, too, but Sheppard had use of it so the blade had missed the tendon.
"Nice jacket," Hamel grumbled approvingly, he tossed the bottle and cloth onto the blankets. "Thick. Probably saved your arm."
"Lucky me," Sheppard whispered. Hamel was still surprised each time the man responded. Sheppard was hurting - that was obvious in the tension of his jaw and the way he defended the belly wound - but he watched Hamel with keen wariness.
"Want to take it off?"
"No."
"Suit yourself. You ready?"
"For what? What are you going to do?" This was bellowed by the loud one and Hamel finally got a name when the woman snapped at him in rebuke.
"Rodney, let him do his work."
"S'Okay, Teyla," Sheppard growled. "I had the same question."
Hamel shrugged. "Mask the pain."
"And how is that supposed to help? He needs an IV and replacement fluids, probably a transfusion. Lots of stitches. Lots and lots of antibiotics..." Rodney-the-loud-one's voice trailed off, leaving challenge behind.
"I don't have none of that. But a body fighting pain uses all its energy for that. Sometimes masking the pain gives the guy a chance to do the rest on his own like I already said. Sometimes, masking the pain gives the guy a chance to cross the big angle in peace."
"Cross the...?!" Rodney threw a look of entreaty at the woman, his voice gritty. "Teyla, he needs a doctor."
The woman was clearly troubled and her eyes held little trust. Hamel didn't care. They could stay or they could leave. Sheppard was studying him ferociously. He could almost feel the intensity of the man's scrutiny.
"A little less pain sounds pretty good about now." Sheppard didn't release him from the glare until he nodded.
"A little less pain," Hamel repeated. No mercy numbing for this man. Rodney threw up his hands and turned his back. Hamel had expected him to continue arguing. He threw a look at Teyla and received the barest nod. "You ready?" he repeated to Sheppard.
"Sure."
Hamel concentrated. With the squealers he would mumble nonsense words and wave his arms to distract them while the pressure worked. With the boys who were too far gone he'd start the pressure the second they were dragged in. Most of the time, the companions thought they died before Hamel got to them. Helped him keep his reputation that way. This man didn't need any fake incantations. Hamel began the pressure and sought the pain. He didn't know how it worked or why. He just knew he could push away pain from another mind that was hurting. The harder he pushed, the more the mind was numbed.
Sheppard's eyes went wide and he lurched upright. The motion was excruciating, he could see it in the man's mind. Hamel startled and lost his concentration for an instant and Sheppard yelled, the angry cry ending in another agonizing gasp. Hamel pushed at the flaring pain, angry at Sheppard for jumping and at himself for letting the pain get away from him. He lifted his hand, fingers tensed into a claw and shoved with all his might. Sheppard writhed against the wall, twisting up the blankets under him. Then he slowly collapsed to bury his face in the bedding.
The woman rushed to press her fingers into Sheppard's neck. "What did you do?" she demanded.
"He fought me!" Hamel was spinning from the man's bizarre reaction.
"Answer my question." Teyla faced him and Hamel realized that he was crossing angles with all three of the strangers. He gulped down anger, forced himself to answer calmly.
"I pushed the pain from his mind. He fought the touch and jibbed himself sitting up like that."
"Do you have the Gift? Do you sense when Wraith are nearby?" Teyla jabbed a finger skyward.
"I...yes." The question surprised him more than anything these people had said so far. The truth was that he wretched like a poisoned dog when the Wraith were nearby. He grew so sick at their presence he saw visions of hell that no madman, poet or violent whelp could ever dream up. Teyla took a step closer and peered into Hamel's face with a concentration that was all too familiar. He felt her mind touch his, saw a flash of himself through her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and her expression turned thoughtful.
"You can push minds, too," he said softly. It wasn't an unknown gift, but it often went unrecognized. He'd suspected his ability had to do with his weakness around the wraith, but he'd never met anyone else with the trait that would recognize it in another, much less ask them to their face about it.
"I can sense the presence of Wraith and have even connected my mind with theirs. But I have never known anyone with the Gift to be able to affect another person." She shot a look at Rodney who was sitting on the edge of the bed, also checking Sheppard's pulse. Sheppard hadn't moved. Rodney shrugged.
"We know that Wraith Queens can probe a human mind. Since the Gift is a side effect of Wraith DNA, then maybe this guy got some combination that allows a more direct psychic connection. Can you only alleviate pain, or can you also tamper in other ways with a person's mind?"
"I can see things sometimes, see what someone else sees. But pain is the only thing loud enough in a person's mind that I can push on. How the hell do you people know anything about a Wraith Queen?" He'd answered their damn questions. They owed him a few.
"We are strangers from farther than you have imagined. We travel through the Ring of the Ancestors that orbits your world in a space craft that the Ancestors themselves built. We have encountered Queens several times during our travels," Teyla answered. Hamel bristled at her placating tone; and at the nonsense she'd spooned him.
"And him?!" He jabbed his finger at Sheppard who'd begun to grunt softly and was rolling himself onto his back with Rodney-the-loud-one's help. It was Rodney who answered sounding proud.
"Oh, yeah. Sheppard's been interrogated by Queens a few times. Not a fun experience the way he tells it."
Hamel just stared dumbfounded. These people were liars worthy of a performance troupe. They had to be lying because if they weren't, then they were the most terrifying people he'd ever met. No one came from the sky except the Wraith. No one met the Wraith face to face and survived.
Rodney was still talking as if Wraith Queens and spaceships were everyday conversation, "If your Gift resembles a Queen's probe, then it's no wonder he freaked out."
"Did...not...freak...out," Sheppard mumbled, drawing the attention back to himself. He scrubbed his face with his hand. "Caught...me by...surprise."
"Yeah, well, you say po-tay-to... Did it work?"
Sheppard flopped his arms at his side. He blew out a wheezy breath.
"Yeah. Still feel like crap, but the pain is better. Lots better. "
"I still don't know how this is really going to help. Morphine kills the pain too, but it doesn't mean you're not still bleeding to death."
Hamel flung a hand at his bottle of antiseptic and cloths. "I can dress the wounds now."
Even if Sheppard had faced a Queen and lived to tell about it (Hamel almost allowed himself to feel amused at the ridiculous thought) Sheppard was bleeding now and infection was the angle you could only skip with cleansing and a lot of luck.
Rodney rolled his eyes, but heaved himself off the bed to stand at a distance with Ronon who had remained on sentry by the door, silent through the conversation but watching. Together, Hamel and Teyla spread open Sheppard's jacket and tugged it off the drowsy and bemused man. He was wearing a set of straps that held a leather pouch under his arm. Teyla hastily unfastened the device and handed the entire thing to Rodney before Hamel got a look at what the pouch held. He'd caught a glimpse of wood and black metal - a short club perhaps? The Green clan had experimented with a similar design for knives, once. He strongly suspected that Rodney wore the same contraption. The loud one's posture betrayed the bulky weapon despite its attempt at stealth.
The shirt under the jacket was a bloody mess. Hamel frowned at the slashes in the fabric. He spilled some of the plain alcohol disinfectant onto a rag while the woman cut off the shirt to reveal the wounds underneath. There was an unusual bandage of thick cotton and long strips of gauze wrapped all the way around Sheppard's lower waist. Teyla cut the strips with a deft swipe of her own blade, then lifted the sopping, bloody bandage away to reveal the hole underneath.
Hamel had seen more sliced flesh in his violent life than he cared to dwell on, so it wasn't the purple, puckered edges of the knife wound, or the crust of blood and fluid oozing out of Sheppard's gut that drained the blood from his own face and set his heart thrashing in his chest. He recognized that wounding pattern, spread out before him on the man's pale torso like graffiti on a brick wall: a single, ascending slash across both arm and chest, left to right, a second across the belly, right to left, deeper at the hip and getting shallower as it tracked towards the naval. He'd soothed more than one mouthy whelp with those wounds into the big sleep. It took a strong arm and a particularly vicious nature to inflict that kind of killing strike. If the attack was meant to be an assassination, the third stroke was always at the throat.
Hamel grabbed for Sheppard's face and forced his chin up to reveal a small scratch.
"Bloody Ancestors! Who did you fight? Who did this to you?" He yelled the question, but he already knew. Fear was twisting through his gut like the knife through Sheppard's. The woman and the loud one just stared at him in mild surprise. He bent over Sheppard and spat the question into his face, "Who?!"
Sheppard narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin.
"WHO!?"
