A/N: I have re-edited chapter 1 and 2 (August 8, 2007) because I just felt it needed it. Not too much has changed but I would still recommend re-reading it. Chapter 3 will be posted this week.
Title: Burden (Still a working title)
Author: Lady Valmar
Genre: Emotional/Science Fiction
Rating: MatureArchive: SGAHC, FB, FF etc.
Beta: None (Feel free to volunteer)
Pairings: None. Team fic with focus on Sheppard.
Prequel: Going Commando
Spoilers: Stargate Atlantis - Season 2 and with subtle and not so subtle connections to Season 3. Stargate - Episode 407 Watergate.Summary: After a time he'd seemed back to his old self but there were warning signs all around. There was just something not right about the Colonel. It didn't help the way he sometimes eyed the room he was in or avoided a group of women chattering away in the mess hall. Sequel to Going Commando
Warnings: You must have read Going Commando in order to understand this story. Contains male sex slave/domination, torture, some rape though not much and lots of whumping in other forms. Also Sheppard does cutting. If you find this uncomfortable to read in any way turn back now. Also please read the notes.
Disclaimer: I have no association, affiliation with the show or its sponsors. I do not own Stargate Atlantis and can only claim this fic as my own. Therefore, please, do ask me before posting this elsewhere and do not steal any of my original themes, concepts or ideas.
Note 1: If you've ever read Clive Cussler, I'm going to use a few techniques indicative of his work. A character will be introduced and we will see through his/her's eyes and once one or two scenes has ended we will never see their perspective again. Just felt I should explain in advance to those who might feel turned off by this fic because of the beginning. Oh yes…in case you were wondering its Goa'uld. That's the proper spelling.
Note 2: Request fic for denise-42.
… .LV. …
Burden
By Lady Valmar
Preceding Demise
- Introduction -
Her eyes roamed the settlement. Dead bodies were littered everywhere, she wrinkled her nose at the scent of burning flesh. There was burning houses and rubble that muddied the clear view she had of her surroundings.
Well that hadn't taken long, she thought.
The hive had turned on her.
It was of little importance compared to her need to feed but she felt sad to lose the power she'd gained. After all she'd gone through to get Atlantis and then now her current host, she wasn't so sure the trouble had been worth the gain.
Her lips quivered as she sensed something nearby. A human…
Grinning, she stalked into one of the burning houses. It stank of death. The decorations ranged from burnt flesh to pretty paintings and some pottery that had melted or blackened. She frowned, she'd always had a soft spot for art and the loss made her shake her head. When she first joined Apophis's ranks back in Milky Way, she'd found an appreciation for art and even after so many years of being alive she continued to be fascinated by it.
Sniffing, she felt the first of her hunger settle in. The wound she'd taken from the crash needed healing and the body needed sustenance. She tisked through her sharp teeth.
When will I find the right body? Someday when I find the right host. I will surrender life as a symbiot finally. Mother will be proud. She thought before striding to an untouched painting in the corner of the room, near some stairs.
It was one of the most beautiful she'd ever seen and relatively untouched, save for the scorch mark near a corner of it. The artist had used eggshell porcelain as their canvas. On it was a painting in fine colors of a man with half a face of a Wraith and half a face of a human. His human eye was painted gold. She could see the edges of the frame were also decorated in gold filigree. Her heart warmed at the site of such a beautiful piece.
When she had fled Atlantis, a part of her had missed the opportunity at not having taken some of its finer art pieces. Not that there was much left of it.
Back on the hive ship her personal room, had been decorated with some beautiful pieces she'd managed to procure but now…
Her lip twisting sourly and she reached for the piece. She could always start again. Feeling the floor give way, she hissed and gripped the ledge at the last minute. Below her she could see a caved in cellar that had been built above an underground entrance.
Foolish humans. She thought, as she tried to pull herself up. At the last minute when her torso touched the floor, the entire roof began to shake. She shook her head, and smiled as the art piece landed on a burnt basket of blankets.
Reaching for it, she nestled it under her braided leather vest and swung herself back and forth a few times. Once she felt confident enough, she released her Wraith hand, flinging herself onto a piece of the original cellar floor.
Just as she saw the ceiling collapse above her, she hopped down into the tunnel and raced toward another tunnel, sloping downwards and adjacent to the one she was in. Curling her lips in dismay she saw only darkness as the tunnel lead farther down.
Times like these she wished she'd packed a safety bag. One in which it contained night goggles. Only the trackers used them but some Queen's kept one or two for themselves. If for nothing else, the thrill.
Feeling her wound begin to bleed again, Serket, put her hand on it. The blood oozing between her fingertips and palm. Looking down at her Wraith slit, she sighed. How she longed for human flesh. Anything to take the edge off the hunger and the pain.
Hissing, Serket, patted her chest gently, mindful of the artwork there. She only had so much time before her hunger would overwhelm her.
If only that wonderful John Sheppard were here. I would have my way with him one more time and then eat him. She smiled at the wishful thinking, treading onward into darkness. I fooled him so well. He hates me but pities me. Shame I did that. Stupid me.
2:30 am - Nightmares
John awoke in a sweat, his heart ramming into his chest. Damn…another nightmare, that was the third one so far this week. He ran his eyes over his sheets then let his hand wander his body checking for wounds that were already healed.
Still… He thought. I should be over this by now. I know…but …
The whole denial thing lasted about a two days and then it had hit him like a rock. My god it made him sick just to think about it and there was the flinching. He'd be damned if he was going to let that continue but it was kind of a subconscious thing he couldn't control.
Dr. Heightmeyer had told him that it might take awhile before he would be able to get over it. John snorted. Get over it? Like that was going to make things easier.
If only they had known what he'd done… was doing to himself. John punched his pillow. It was the fourth week since that…incident and he should be over this by now. Why the hell was it so hard to get over? It wasn't like he'd been taken for days only mere hours.
Sitting up he thought the lights on and twitched when a towel from his hamper fell. He slowly pulled the covers off himself.
Four weeks and he still hadn't gotten over it. How could he? He'd gone through countless hours in sessions with Dr. Heightmeyer and well there was that cut Teyla had seen… and he'd been put on observation for. Darn her for making him see Beckett anyways.
How the hell had she'd known that he'd done the cut himself. Oh that's right, he thought, Dr. Heightmeyer must have briefed his team for signs of self abuse or bad coping mechanisms.
So that meant progress wasn't going so well for him…
He'd tried to explain the wood from the sticks that Teyla and him used, had splintered and had been sharp enough to cup open his skin. Teyla told Beckett otherwise…she'd looked his cut over and knew it wasn't from the sticks.
And as well Beckett hadn't believed him either and so the sessions had grown weary with Heightmeyer after that.
At least he was better at hiding the flinches. The sessions, according to Dr. Heightmeyer were improvements since he'd been found dying in a pool of blood and since his denial of the wound he'd inflicted on himself.
John laughed. That didn't provide him much comfort because he knew better. They just couldn't understand that the more he tried to talk about the more it brought bile to his lips even thinking about…
Serket. His lips twisted in disgust. They still couldn't explain her escape…they'd found Beckham and another, Charleston, two of the patrol guards, dead in one of the corridors to an underwater jumper bay. She'd somehow escaped from her cell, killed both guards and used a submerged jumper to escape. How they hadn't picked up her signature…
Stretching and then standing up, John moved to his laptop. After it had booted up he reviewed the material Rodney had sent him. It was about the escape route she'd taken after fleeing the infirmary. He scanned the report, his finger stopping at page 2.
"She must have charted this particular path ahead of time as is evident from the white chalk found on the doorway label. She must have known where to look. Conveniently a research vessel and several other test ships had been stashed there. One just happening to be a type of puddle jumper that could cloak itself and block all tracking signals both from Wraith and Atlantean technology…though I would think that would have proved to be a bad idea…"
How appropriate. John shook his head, as he scanned the specs on the ship. Damn shame we didn't learn of it sooner but then again it was only experimental. Still it would have been nice…between Rodney, Radek and all the other scientists, they could have gotten it to work.
John rubbed his neck. It was too early in the morning to pester Rodney, even though he wanted to and it was too early for his run with Ronon. He guessed reading Star-crossed by Marilynn Byerly could pass his time, a book he'd borrowed from Lt. Alyssa Hill. He could have asked someone else but she'd been complaining about lack of good books to her friend near him in the mess hall.
It'd had been nice to converse with someone who didn't feel pity for him or try to shy away. She'd conversed about her love for books and then she'd traded books with him later on in the day. He had to admit he still wasn't ready to get close to anyone but she'd been kind to him.
Sadly, she was apparently dating Lorne. Well not sad for Lorne, he thought, as he remembered her blush when he'd asked her about the rumors.
Withdrawing from his thoughts, he went back to Rodney's email. "…Extremely convenient isn't it? Well I can't give you much more because I've got to get back to the running projects we've procured from our latest run on the Planet Devoid. Get it? Planet Devoid? Devoid of human life. Anyways, don't go blabbering to Elizabeth about this. She's the one whose been convinced by Dr. Heightmeyer you'd get better not having to focus on things you can't do. – Rodney."
John sighed. He swore the next session with that woman he was going to convince her he was okay for active duty. Having his team sub with Major Lorne's was bad enough but to then be told he shouldn't bother with anything from the missions since he couldn't go on them anways was frustrating.
Hell, he was going to tell her that, the next time he saw her.
Scanning the next email, which he'd gotten from Beckett, it detailed all of his research on the woman and the signature he'd missed before her escape.
Another shame, we didn't catch this sooner. Thought John, as he looked at the scanned imaging of Serket and the barely visible liquid form of something moving up her spine.
Another Goa'uld.
He knew Rodney and Beckett both had discouraged his interest in the whole thing but they still gave him what he'd requested. The research was no longer being conducted as there were other more important missions. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla had gone with Major Lorne's team three days this week so far. They'd found discouraging results from the worlds they'd visited.
His fists clenched at the thought of them roaming grassy hills and forestry. Why couldn't he'd have just gone along once. Just once. It had been four stinking weeks of this nonsense. True for the first two weeks he'd been injured and recovering… He figured another week wouldn't have hurt to see Dr. Heightmeyer convince her that he was fine and then back to missions.
John hated that Elizabeth was agreeing with Dr. Heightmeyer but then the shrink always had the last say…well that and the medical doctors.
John kicked his bedy. Why the hell had he been so stupid? And then why had he tried to deny it even after Teyla had confronted. Hell she'd seen it just minutes after he'd done it with his pocket knife!
He needed to do something. Anything. Then a thought occurred to him. Pulling the drawer out of his desk, he felt around for a few moments until he found a small sharpened object.
To be honest he still didn't understand why he was doing it, hurting himself. He'd done it when he was a young adult a little, mainly because he'd seen those help shows featuring cutters which made him curious so he'd tried it out. Then he'd thought about doing it when he'd broke it off with his first wife but he'd been able to resist it and then after the black mark he'd gotten…
To be honest he'd never understood how cutting yourself could be helpful, pleasurable or releasing in any way.
Now somehow he'd ended up liking it and doing it. Maybe that made him a sadist or was it masochist?
Dr. Heightmeyer had lectured him about reactions rape victims had and this is one of the topics she'd stressed above all others. Then he'd been given a couple of pamphlets from her after their first session.
He'd read the pamphlets and they'd given a brief explanation why cutters do it, what it's about. He didn't figure that anyone knew his full past history but then it was on the record for the one time he'd done it after his black mark in Afghanistan.
Right after he'd come back to his room from the shrink, he'd pulled his sweatband down and. before he'd been able to think clearly about what he was doing, his hand was reaching for a knife, and he was drawing it across his skin.
God it was like a drug and it made him sick to his stomach but he'd not stopped there. It had been awkward and painful but the second smaller cut next to it had sent chills up to his brain and back down. Not pleasurable but it had for a brief moment made him feel better. It took focusing on the pain of the incident away and onto the pain from his wrist.
He'd shook his head. It had been a stupid thing to do but the next day he found himself doing it again near the same area.
He figured it was just something weird that everybody went through at one time or another, despite what Beckett and Dr. Heightmeyer had told him. Beckett would never remove his band and Dr. Heightmeyer would never know. From there on when ever he'd woken up in a sweat from a particularly bad nightmare or had a bad day he'd reached for his small knife. It had taken the edge off everything. He knew he was slipping but he didn't care.
Standing up he kicked his bed frame again then he'd had to go stupid and cut himself right before he was to spar with Teyla. He'd cut high above, near his elbow. Regrettably Teyla had seen the band aide and then she'd found the knife after she'd made him see Beckett.
She'd done the right thing in sending him to Beckett who had removed his band and seen two or three scars of cuts on the back of his wrist but those he could explain away more easily.
Now he would have to be more careful. John pulled his sleeve up. He couldn't risk a cut on his arms. That would be too obvious. No…but he couldn't cut anywhere else either. It just felt right that it should be his arms.
He decided then he'd wear long sleeve for the next couple days until the wound healed. They wouldn't think anything of it. The ocean had gotten colder the past two days and even though Atlantis had temperature controls, sometimes it just felt colder indoors when the ocean was chilly.
Cocking his head, he couldn't explain the in-difference he felt. Picking up his small pocketknife, he drew it slowly across his left arm on the outside. The pain sizzled and burned but his thoughts were drawn away from the dreams. Standing still, he watched as blood congealed from the superficial wound he'd caused.
He watched for awhile as the blood shimmered its inky hue under the Atlantean lights. Drawing a finger up to it, he touched it and cringed as his arm reverberated pain up and down. He eyed the wet fingertip and wondered why he found it so fascinating.
God this is gruesome. Thought John, he reached for his desk drawer and put a band-aid on. He turned off his laptop and flopped back into bed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this was going to catch up to him sooner or later.
He just hoped he wouldn't be sent back to Earth, to some mental ward or lose his career over this. God that's right, he thought, I could lose my job over this…this stupid obsession but I'll only do this for a little longer, just until I'm back to going off-world, fighting Wraith and keeping my mind off of this.
Nodding to himself, he pushed back into his pillow and sheets. They will never know. Just have to be more careful.
Groaning, Serket stopped as the hunger pains rolled over her. She clutched the wall in anticipation as her stomach lurched and she let a growl ripe from her throat. She was going to die down here.
Alone, in pain and lost. Mother would be shamed.
Wiping the spittle that had worked its way out of her pointy teeth to her lips, she sniffed. Was it human she smelled? Human down here? Her heart pounded. Food.
Serket picked up her sluggish walk to follow the scent. It led to a wide cavern dripping with water. She felt joy filling her. There was two humans. A male and female. She hissed and wasted no time, climbed up through the carved trail, she watched as he caressed the young woman. The smell of pine trees and greenery filled her nostrils.
She was close to the surface. Looking down, she could see a small trail leading down the craggy rocks hidden behind rubble, it stopped just at the edge of a small underground pond in which the man was leading the woman to. Licking her dry lips, she hefted herself around the rubble and pulled the painting from underneath her shirt. She sat it aside and slid into the pond. Its inky blackness disturbed only by several torches, the two humans and her gentle rush in.
Swimming toward them she slipped in-between the two and slapped her hand against his chest, while gripping the woman's wrist. The woman's pale brown eyes widened as she screamed watching the man being feed upon. Serket didn't stop until he was just shrivels of bones and stringy flesh then she turned on the woman.
She hissed with ecstasy. Finally her wound was healed and she her stomach had stopped rolling. She waded out of the water and shook her herself off. Then grabbed the painting before she stalked up the pathway leading out of the cave.
Upon exit, Serket raced to the trees. To freedom. Her heart hammering in her chest she scaled down a small hill and followed a cold icy river down into a small clearing. She could see something standing there. The Stargate…
Finally after all this trouble she was actually going to make it. Now all she had to do was find another hive ship or at least a place to stay until she could gain back the power she'd lost. Smiling, she strode to it.
Before she could reach it a woman dressed in what Serket could only describe as Amazonian clothing leapt out at her. In fact a crowd of women had encircled her. Serket hissed at the ring leader and was about to take this fight for her life when the woman's eyes widened and she dropped to her knees.
"Belehsi Suri darsi dal. My Goddess," The woman said, while yanking off her feather headdress. After that, all the other women dropped to their knees as well.
Serket hissed at them all and sniffed. "Goddess?"
"Yes. For only a goddess could be you. Great ones of the Stars."
Serket circled the leader, she could smell the scent of something odd about the woman. Why hadn't she'd sensed her before?
"We've longed for when you would come to us. Our people have continued to following your teachings as you told us."
"Why?"
The woman lowered her head even further. "My lady. We drink the blood of our prey in the spirit of you, Goddess. One day we'd hoped you would come to us and now you are here. Please male sacrifices will be prepared for you and at anytime you request it."
Serket growled then quirked her head. She didn't care…maybe a hive ship had convinced these people that they were gods. Now the sacrifices… "Male sacrifices?"
She stood up and bowed. "Of course…men are only here to serve us. To feed us."
Serket smiled. Well forget the hive ship for now. "Please lead the way."
The woman bowed again and led her through a patch of trees onto a trail. Behind her, the other women strode, eyeing her with admiration. Serket was pleased. This was how humans should behave and who knew maybe she'd even find a better body…or she could just stick with this one. Although she couldn't say but something was almost non-human at least about the leader with her feather headdress. Maybe she was just getting confused or something. Eh...
It was worth it if she had worshippers, why should she bother with things that didn't concern her? At another clearing, her eyes rose up to meet a fenced in structure, it had only one thing about its structure that caught her eye. It was Atlantean in design. She smiled and followed the leader through the entrance.
A/N: Well well I wonder how Shep's demise shall come? From Serket, the structure or these women. Find out next chap. Also - For denise-42 who wanted to have more whumping of Shep, this time as a slave to women. I decided to use her request as the sequel of Going Commando. I hope this lives up to your request.