SGA: Falling

Response to BiteMeTechie's First Sentence Challenge- #307 She fell.

She fell. He had forgotten that she could fall. She was always so graceful, so quick, so alive. For a moment he just stood there. Then the blood came, and he fell to his knees, his hands reaching to close the wounds, stop the bleeding. She never fell.

"Telya, Telya hang on. You'll be okay, just… hang on." The last part of Sheppard's sentence came out like a sob of desperation. Five, no six holes peppered Telya's torso, blood spreading across the floor soaking his pant legs.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Telya gasped, he fingers clutching the edge of his sleeve as he put pressure on her wounds, trying futilely to stop the bleeding.

Sheppard chuckled darkly, "God, Telya, what are you sorry for?"

"I should have…" she stopped, choking wetly. Sheppard's face paled even further as he saw the blood ooze from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes opened blearily and she looked up at him.

"John?" she whispered.

"I'm here," he said quietly. Her fingers came up to brush his cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered, her eyes wide and moist, "Thank you for staying. Take… take care of Rodney."

"Telya, I…" he lost his words, eyes filling with unshed emotion.

"Good… goodbye, my friend," she sighed. Her eyes closed and her hand, still clutched around his sleeve, fell limply to the blood-covered floor.

Sheppard froze, his hands still pushing against her side, coated in her blood.

"No," he breathed, unmoving.

Before he could move, before he could absorb the fact that Telya, Telya!, was gone… the men who had shot her, the men that held him and his team captive, the men grabbed his blood-soaked arms, tied them behind him, and dragged him screaming from her body.

The men who had shot Telya, with his gun, his gun, dragged him back to their cell. Sheppard fought them, pulling against the metal restraints with bruising force, the blood from his wrists blending with her blood coating his hands, his arms. They threw him into the cell, the heavy metal bang of thick iron bars slamming shut echoed down the brickwork.

Ronan and Rodney had stood on his approach, hands firmly restrained by the same metal bands. The leaned over him now, Ronan's sharp eyes looking for injuries, Rodney's scared, wide eyes looking at the blood.

"My God, Sheppard! Are you okay? What did they do to you?" Rodney asked, his voice high in fear. Sheppard didn't respond, staring somberly towards the wall.

"It's not his blood," Ronan rumbled. His deep voice seemed to cut through the haze that surrounded Sheppard's brain, and Sheppard looked up.

"It's Teyla's. She's dead," Sheppard rasped, his voice sounded infinitely old.

Ronan's eyes closed involuntarily. Rodney just fell to the ground, making a quiet oomph as his legs refused to hold him up.

"D… Dead?" Rodney whispered, disbelieving. "She can't be. I just… she was just here! Why would they…"

Sheppard cut him off, "They shot her. Six times. With the P90."

"Six," Rodney sounded sick, as if the words vomited out of him, "six times."

"I couldn't stop the bleeding. There were too many, too much blood…" Sheppard's voice faded to a whisper, "so much blood."

The men came for Rodney next. They pushed back Ronan and Sheppard's weak defense with barely a struggle, grabbing a terrified and unusually silent Rodney and dragging him from the cell. The last thing Sheppard saw as Rodney was pulled out of the cell was the look of utter dread in his wide blue eyes.

-000-

The air was thick with accusing silence. Not that Ronan spoke much at the best of times, but his stony silence left little to be inferred. Sheppard had never realized how much he had relied on McKay to fill the silence, on Telya to soften it.

They returned with Rodney, dragging him, the blood leaving dark red streaks, swirled by the scraping artistry of his still intact boots. His boots were about the only things that were intact. His shirt was gone, his pants were in shreds. Ronan growled threateningly as the men dropped Rodney to the cell floor.

Sheppard could hardly bring himself to look, until a quiet moan broke the silence and Rodney turned painfully onto his back. His face was a mask of blood, a hundred tiny cuts along his cheeks, his eyes, down his neck. The cuts grew deeper as they went down, and Sheppard noticed, with a shudder, a particularly vicious slice on Rodney's right arm where a scar had once been. Koyla's scar.

Rodney opened bloodshot eyes, searching frantically for his friends. "Colonel?" his voice rasped, turning his head slightly. Sheppard moved closer.

"I'm here, Rodney." Sheppard said, leaning over his friend. There was nowhere to touch him that wasn't covered in blood, even had Sheppard's hands been freed.

"I tried… I tried not to tell them. It hurt…" his voice broke, "It hurt so bad. I'm… sorry.''

"What?" Sheppard asked quietly, fear in his voice, "What did you tell them?"

"Everything," McKay whispered, "I told them everything about Atlantis, how to use the stargate, our codes, everything. I couldn't…"

TBC