Spoilers: This is set after the end of Die Me Dichotomy (i.e., it's set after the end of the second season), and therefore it spoils for that. I don't think there's any particular spoilers from particular episodes, but there may be spoilers for everything up to DMD. Be warned.
Rating: Shouldn't be R, because I'm not old enough to read R, much less write it, but it's not G, so it's gotta be PG or PG13. I'm saying PG13 to be safe.
Author's Note: As most things I write, I predict that this will be AU (alternate universe) within a month or two, but I'm posting it anyways. Oh, and be nice. This is my first fic posted here. And I'm not entirely sure why I chose this one and not one of my saner (No, this is not insane as in humorous) fics, but this is the one that I'm posting.
Revenge
Just as it had . . .
He shook his head, throwing off the memory. Ever since the surgeon had messed with his mind, he kept on having flashes of memory. He knew that it didn't used to be like this—a single action had never triggered a flood of memories, but it did now. But most of the memories slipped away into obedient silence by the time he got around to dealing with them. It was infuriating that he couldn't remember, and it was infuriating that he could remember. That surgeon had really frelled up his life by doing this.
Not that it mattered anymore. The only thing that mattered was getting Scorpy and killing him. Killing him so he stayed dead. Stabbing him, feeling the hot blood spilling out over his hands, feeling the surge of victory when he foe was finally defeated.
And taking off the bastard's head so that he wouldn't come back to life.
John walked further out over the lake, staring at the pure white snow and ice, lost in his blood-red thoughts of revenge. The sun was setting, providing with its eery light the perfect atmosphere for John's dark thoughts. Only the snow seemed to challenge that anger, telling him that the darkness wasn't right. Not that it mattered. Nothing could shake his thoughts of revenge.
The last rays of the sun were brushing the snow, tainting it with its red lights, as John's comlink came to life.
"John? We're leaving soon. Are you coming?" That voice . . . Zhaan. So familiar, and yet every memory of every nuance of her voice that he'd built up over two cycles was gone. He knew who she was, but he couldn't tell whether she was angry, or sad. It hadn't seemed that important, but the surgeon had had to remove it.
"John? Are you there?" D'Argo's voice, and again, all memories of the moods of his voice were gone. It was simply D'Argo. It wasn't an angry D'Argo, or a concerned D'Argo, or a happy D'Argo. It was D'Argo. Only his name and some memories of what he'd done. No emotions, no smiles, no laughter. It was gone.
The surgeon had said it wouldn't be permanent, but ever since the surgery, his memories had been slipping. Slowly, they slid away, like the last autumn leaves drifting away on the wind.
"John?"
They didn't know that he couldn't talk. He had never tried to speak, never tried to explain. They thought that he was simply choosing not to talk, out of anger, or pain, or loss. They didn't think that he physically could not talk.
He had a brief memory of being able to talk, and all the times he had slapped the coms and responded perkily, sarcastically, angrily, how ever, came back to him. He tried to hold onto them, tried to keep them from running away from his weak grasp, but they fled, leaving him alone with the snow and his coms yelling at him to respond.
With shaking hands, he hit the coms, turning it off, leaving him with blessed silence. The red malice was gone from the sunset, leaving the dark blue-gray of dusk. The snow wasn't a blazing, burning white, but rather a cool, dark blue, shimmering in the twilight. The blood-red was gone, replaced with darkness.
John walked further, following his feet wherever they would go. The darkness overtook the landscape, leaving him stumbling in the soft darkness, unable to see his feet, but he walked on. The bitter chill of the night slipped up against him, sliding through his clothes and leaving him shivering, but he walked on, just letting his feet take him. He often did that, now. He often couldn't remember where he was going, so he let his feet do the job, let his feet do the remembering and the thinking and take him where he needed to be.
He didn't know where he was going, but his feet knew. They stumbled through the dark, thirsting after their goal, finding for him the ways that he could not remember to follow. Most people led with their minds—he let his feet lead. He could barely remember it being any other way.
At last, his feet stopped. His feet had led him here, for some reason. It was deep dip in the snow, reaching five feet down. Somehow, he knew that there was only about six inches of ice and snow there, but he didn't know how he knew or why he'd want to know. His feet told him not to go any further, so instead, he sat down at the lip of the pit and looked down into it, trying to see what his feet might want him to see. What could there be that his feet would want him to see, or do, so badly?
He didn't know. So, although his feet told him not to, he carefully climbed down into the pit, taking his feet's advice and going slow. At last, he stood at the bottom, and he felt the ice groaning under him. His feet were screaming at him to get back, but he didn't care. His feet wanted him to do something here, and he was doing some. It probably wasn't the right thing, but ever since the surgery, right and wrong didn't matter so much any more.
And besides, he was fairly sure that he and his feet had different ideas of what was right and wrong.
So he sat down and waited for something to happen. And soon enough, something did. The ice began to crack, and he felt it melting slightly from the heat of his body, and then it cracked fully.
He plummeted into the water, and felt the ice-cold water beginning to envelope him. He idly wondered whether this was what his feet wanted to do, but before he could begin to think, his feet started kicking and his arms grabbed the edges of the ice. Obviously, this was not in the plans of his feet.
He sighed—it was quite a strange experience under the water—and decided to just let his feet do their thing. There wasn't much else to do, down in this cold, dark water. He felt his feet and arms pulling him over the rim of the hole in the ice, and then he felt them dragging him up the wall of the pit. Then he took control. His feet wanted to run away, but John sat down in the lip of the pit again. His feet had wanted him to come here, so he would come here and stay here. After a while of sitting like that, his feet grudgingly agreed, and then started hurting out of rebellion.
John stripped off his clothes, knowing that he would be warmer without wet clothes on in this cold, then just sat on the snow, freezing but not caring. Nothing really mattered that much any more. His feet told him what to do. Maybe things would be better when he killed—when he killed . . . Scorpius. Yes. Scorpius.
After a while, his feet started to get up. John didn't want to, but there wasn't really anything else to do, so he stood up and started putting his frozen clothes on.
While he was doing that, he noticed the bracelet that he'd had on since the surgery. He had taken it off without caring, but now he noticed it because it was the one item of clothing that wasn't stiff with ice. He picked it up and touched it.
It was of some soft, dark brown thread that had been divided into three portions and braided. Someone had put a clasp on it, a golden clasp. The highlights of the hair were silver, like the moon that shone hight in the sky, and the reflection of the moon's white light on the golden clasp matched them. He stroked the soft thread, and realized that it was finer than he had thought. It felt almost like some sort of hair . . .
A face appeared in his brain, only to be replaced by that same face in another memory. The memories of this beautiful woman washed over him, and he reveled in them, feeling happiness and joy although he had no idea when he had experienced these memories, or the words that had been said. She was so beautiful that he would have followed her to the ends of the Earth without even knowing her name.
All of a sudden, the memories stopped, but not because he had run out. He had thousands more memories of her just waiting to be tapped—
But there was something wrong. Something wrong with her.
He didn't know what was wrong, he didn't understand what was happening, but he screamed, and memories of this hellish wilderness came rushing back to him, but just brief images—and so much fear.
Wearing only his pants and carrying only this dainty bracelet, he started running, running from the cold, heartless snow, running from the white, pure innocence that had suddenly turned into a dark hell. All he could think of was getting away—and his feet were not leading him. For once, he knew where to go, and he knew why he had to go. Because this place was hell.
At last, he reached the safety of the city, of the small building that he lived in, now. He sat down on the bed, tears running down his cheeks, stroking the soft bracelet, crying without even knowing why.
And then, when the tears had passed, the anger returned a hundred-fold, pulsing red in the darkness of his heart, as the sun had pulsed red at sunset in the darkening sky.
He was going to kill that bastard.
He was going to get revenge.
And yet, he didn't even know why.
THE END
Disclaimer: Don't sue! I'm not doing this for profit or anything like that. I'm just doing this because, well, John's plight freaks me out, and I needed to write about it to settle down.