TITLE: In the Pale Moonlight
AUTHOR: Jersey13
RATING: T
WARNINGS: DarkFic/Torture, Violence, Hurt/Comfort, and some slightly naughty language.
A/N: When I was thinking about what to write for my next fic, I wasn't really sure that I had any decent ideas. But then nebbyJen wrote her nice little Halloween one-shot called "The Highlander", which was simply too cute for words, and I could not resist delving more into that wonderful imagery of Carson as a werewolf! So now he as well as Rodney and Shep are gonna get whumped nicely by werewolves and Wraith in this one! Angst and genetic manipulation on par with 'Conversion' (season 2, Shep nearly transforms into an Iratus bug, now airing in syndication on a TV station near you) are such lovely concepts, aren't they?
Anyway, I gotta warn you guys. I don't plan to hold much back on this, but I'll try to keep it at a T rating. This fic is gonna be freaky and weird. I'm just in one of those moods lately.
Dr. Carson Beckett woke slowly, eyes blinking and then clenching shut against the harshness of the phosphorescent lighting that hummed above his head and shone brightly in the windowless room. Disorientation gripped his mind in a blank haze, and as he tried to shift himself from his stomach onto his back, his limbs felt leaden and stiff. He was not in his own room, and the lighting was too bright to be someplace else on Atlantis. Looking around with confusion, he could not remember where he was or how he'd gotten there. Taking some time to inspect his prison, he saw only the three bleak off-white walls and a locked steel door that made up the tiny cell in which he was being kept.
This is certainly not Atlantis, he thought. Upon glancing down at himself, though, he noticed that he was not wearing his jacket or vest any more. Carson wracked his brain in an effort to remember what had happened, but he could remember nothing of how he'd gotten there. His mind was a blank slate. As he brought up his arm to look at his watch, he saw that he was no longer wearing a watch and that there were patterns of cuts and contusions ringing his wrists, both of them, as if he'd been shackled in restraints and had been struggling against them. But the injuries were at least a couple of days old, possibly older. What the hell happened?
Carson pushed himself to his feet, biting back a wave of nausea that threatened to overcome him in the process. What the hell was going on? What was he doing here? The last thing he remembered… Willing himself to bring an image of the infirmary back into his mind, he struggled to recall anything of value. Yes, something was finally coming back to him.
Images flashed before his mind's eye…
He'd been wrapping a fresh cold pack around a nasty sprain belonging to one of the newer members of Atlantis' security force who had been injured in a sparring match with Ronon Dex. As eager as the young man had been to test his ability against the city's top fighter, he was not a sore loser, opting instead to ask Ronon and endless stream of questions about his tactics. Even as Ronon had helped him limp to the infirmary, the questions never ceased, and it was all the Satedan could do not to knock the man upside the head to shut him up.
Colonel John Sheppard, who seemed to think it was funny, had also helped him into the infirmary and had an amused grin plastered on his face. "Just hold still, Lieutenant. I'm sure Beckett will give you something for the pain in just a minute."
With a heavy sigh, Carson went to fetch a bottle of aspirin, grateful that the young man's attention was still fixed on Ronon and not himself. He wasn't sure how much more complaining he could take today after Rodney McKay had stopped by earlier to have a tiny cut on his hand cleaned. He'd whined like a two-year old at the sting of the disinfectant, and so that was when his bad mood had first made itself apparent. A headache had been plaguing him most of the day since then, and the aspirin he'd taken for it an hour or so ago just hadn't helped.
Carson fast-forwarded in his mind to the briefing that Dr. Weir had arranged that afternoon. His headache had still been throbbing, and he'd watched with mild disinterest as Rodney, who had been fidgeting restlessly up until that moment, jumped up from his chair and prepared to make his presentation. It was easy for Carson to zone out during these presentations, which were always long-winded, overly informative, and almost never had much to do with him or his department.
He was talking incessantly about a planet from which a MALP had just sent a video feed back to the city, and Rodney was excited because of a veritable treasure trove of technology that looked to have been left behind by its former inhabitants. The scene of carnage was certainly the result of a Wraith culling, which had left the area around the Stargate relatively deserted. A UAV had been dispatched not long after, confirming that the planet was indeed no longer inhabited. The Wraith had done a thorough job of claiming every single living person from the planet, leaving only a few dead bodies and the husks of their victims behind, having taken most of the population with them on their hive ships.
Members of the expedition from various different departments were planning to be dispatched on a salvage mission that very afternoon, including Carson himself apparently, and the thought made him groan inwardly. He didn't really care to for going off-world most of the time, but with his headache getting worse by the minute, the task of having to examine the bodies left behind by the Wraith was even less appealing. It was just too damn depressing. As excited as Rodney was, he didn't have to deal with all the death.
When it had finally come time to step across the event horizon of the Stargate as it shimmered before them, Carson tried to mentally prepare himself for the stench of death and decay. Even being placed in the first group to go off-world with Colonel Sheppard and the rest of his team did not make him feel better about it. But upon arriving, he hadn't even had a chance to look around before a bright light had swept over all five of them, and he could remember nothing more of what happened afterward.
His prison was quiet and lonely, and no matter how loud he shouted or banged on the heavy steel door, no one answered. He sat for hours without end, which could very well have been days for all he knew, and neither heard nor saw any sign of anyone. Thirst began to gnaw at him eventually, and it soon became far more overpowering than his hunger.
Suddenly, the lights of his prison went out, plunging him into complete darkness. It remained silent for a while longer, broken only by the sound of his ragged breathing. The click of the locking mechanism beyond the steel door resounded through the tiny room, startling him, and he heard a creaking noise as the door was slowly opened. Hands grasped at his arms in the dark, trying to drag him from the room. When he struggled against them, he felt something sharp prick his neck. Within moments, his entire body was uncontrollable and limp. He had lost all control of his muscles, all except for his breathing.
He was dragged through a series of corridors and eventually set down and laid out on a hard surface. When a bright light flickered into existence above him, he found that his eyelids were still half open, but he could neither open nor close them. Whoever his captors were, they seemed careful not to take any chances with him as they strapped him down. Carson could hear the faint clink of what sounded like surgical instruments being brought over, and panic was sparked in him as he saw the vague shape of a syringe just within his field of vision. They injected something into his arm, and a few seconds later his vision faded.
His senses were deprived and filled only with blackness, but he knew somehow that he was still awake and that it was not a dream. He felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, and continued suffering in this manner for a long time before an inkling of sensation finally began to return to his fingertips. A minute later, he managed to pry his eyes open with great effort, but the sight that greeted him was hardly comforting. He'd been brought back to that lonely cell, and the bright light and hum of the phosphorescent lighting were filling his senses once more.
Eventually, he was able to move like before, and his muscles once again felt stiff and leaden. Time passed. Despair and depression began to set in, and he no longer desired to eat; his stomach felt too twisted and knotted for it anyway, but he was still thirsty, desperately thirsty. And upon glancing down at his wrists to inspect the progression of his healing, he discovered new cuts and bruises. He had no recollection of having been able to move at all, but the pattern still seemed to indicate that the injuries were self-inflicted. Other than the condition of his wrists, a few bruises on his chest and legs, and the now noticable and numerous needle marks on his arms, he had no other injuries that he could detect. It was the fact that he had not been aware of when it had happened that frightened him the most.
Who are they? What did they do to me? What do they want from me? He could not even guess. There were no clues and no indication of their intentions. More endless hours passed. Thirst burned at his throat, and his tongue began to feel swollen with his worsening dehydration. When they came for him again, he was once again struck by the numbing drug and this time could not see anything. They dragged him back to that hard surface, strapped him down, and this time he thought it strange when his mind did not fall out of awareness upon being injected with the unknown drug. He could do nothing by lay there silently while they seemed to observe him, and he could not be sure what they were waiting for, but he soon found out.
There was a rustling of movement around him before pain began to wrack his entire body, and he somehow managed to let loose a feral and bloodcurdling scream. His fingers tingled, not yet free of the numbing drug's influence, but he could feel them moving. He felt himself grinding his teeth together against the pain, and finally, after several agonizingly and excruciatingly slow minutes, it began to slowly ebb and diminish. It was becoming more clear to him now how he had managed to injure his wrists, at least. He had to have yanked them in the restraints, struggling against them because of the pain, despite the fact that he remembered none of it. Blood flowed freely from new cuts on his abused wrists, but he didn't care. He'd say anything or do anything that they wanted of him. All he wanted was for them to stop torturing him for no god-damned good reason.
But as he managed to catch his breath, he still heard nothing except his own breathing. They hadn't moved and were still watching and observing him. It had been agony, burning him alive, and the last remaining licks of flames moved over him completely, right from the tips of his toes to his ears. He almost wished that they had drugged him into that state of blissful ignorance the same as they had before, and would have been tempted to ask if he'd had the ability to beg them for it. Tears rolled down his face, mixing with rivulets of a cold, pain-induced sweat. Carson was afraid that it would never end, that these drug treatments would send him into insanity before his captors finally allowed him to die from his thirst.
They waited a few more moments as his struggling ceased, and then the hands of his captors reached for the restraints to release him. Carson was in no shape to try to fight them off, much less try to escape. He was carelessly dragged off what appeared to be an examination table and taken back through a maze of corridors where he fully expected to be brought back to the same cell as before. But, when they dropped him, his hands landed on a soft carpet of what felt like grass. It was certainly not the hard floor of his cell.
Crickets chirped in the distance, a frigid breeze rustled the leaves in the grove of trees that surrounded him, and his vision was blurry and disorienting in the darkness around him. He managed to find enough strength to turn around and watch as his captors left him and saw that they were not human as they strode back to the heavy door that parted and closed behind them.
Carson did not have the strength to lift himself up from where they'd dropped him. It took all the effort he had left in him to look around for something, anything, that would reassure him that it had all been just a bad dream.
He could not decide if it was a blessing or a curse when Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard somehow appeared from of the shadows of the trees, and were quietly sneaking over toward him. He could not be sure of what was actually happening, but it felt quite surreal as they dragged him away from the door to that place of hell he had just been ejected from. Exhaustion was taking its toll, and the darkness enveloped him in its cold embrace. Carson knew no more.