Title: Bitter
Author: Chokolaj
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Angst/Action/Adventure
Summary: Never hold a grudge. Sheppard and team get entangled in the collapse of a society ten thousand years in the making. Shep whump!
Disclaimer: I don't even own a single damn chocolate bar right now so just go right ahead and try to sue me. (Now please don't take that literally!)
Author's Notes: Wow, this fic went in a completely different direction than planned and I nearly gave up on it countless times. It may not be technically, medically, or Stargate Universe inaccurate, but, hey I'm only human, after all.
Special thanks to Titan5 for reviewing each chapter and giving me the support to finish this darn thing.
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PROLOGUE
John Sheppard opened his eyes to a wall of green blades...grass, his mind supplied. Focusing his bleary vision, he observed a tiny little bug scurrying up one of the blades before it took flight into the sea of blue above him. It hurt his eyes to follow its track so he allowed his gaze to fall back upon the grass. A vague memory of pain erupting throughout his body clung to his consciousness briefly before flitting away as the bug had.
He observed his hand pressed firmly to the ground before him, really seeing it before feeling it. It was then he finally noticed he was lying on his stomach, his cheek pressed firmly to the slightly cool ground beneath him.
The little bug returned then, landing on the tip of his nose. Sheppard would have batted it away, but found himself too weak to do so. The green and white striped little bug, the size of a ladybug really, scurried with miniature legs across his skin, tickling each pore as it meandered about.
Every muscle in his body seemed to buzz in tempo with the insect. The soft ground beneath him lulled him; a gentle breeze ruffled his hair and the grass nearby. He felt content on lying here for an eternity. He was exhausted.
And his nose itched. The little bug crawled along the bridge of his nose, inspecting each of his pores as if looking for a new home to burrow into. The itching began to spread like tendrils across his nose, around his nostrils, lacing its way upward to his sinuses. Oh how he wanted to relieve that itch. But he couldn't even twitch a finger at the moment.
Where the hell was he anyway? How had he gotten here? Desperately scanning his memories, he struggled to pull up images and conversations to organize them into some kind of timeline. He remembered Atlantis...that was good. No apparent long-term memory loss, he confirmed. He remembered just this morning berating Rodney for eating the last supply of power bars. Short-term memory: intact.
Now the itch was so unbearable it became a demand for a sneeze. Sheppard's eyes began to water as he could do nothing more than be tortured by one very tiny little bug. It reminded him of McKay. Speaking of which…where was his team?
Grunting, Sheppard willed his uncooperative body to shift so he could lie on his back. The insect took the hint and flew off into the breeze. He was on the verge of that sneeze but it refused to come. Damn bug. He hated bugs.
After what seemed like an eternity of struggle, he finally accomplished his goal by rolling slowly onto his back. He gazed up into the nearly blinding sky of midday. Above him hovered a nearly full sphere of pale white off to the right accompanied by two much smaller spheres to its lower left. Three moons. Ok, so he wasn't on the mainland. Not even the same planet. His wandering gaze fell to the towering jungle of green swaying gently all around him. Was he still in the Pegasus Galaxy? He sure as hell hoped so. It seemed a lot of planets they visited in the past two years looked disturbingly alike.
He shifted his head ever so slightly to the left. He cleared his achingly dry throat, licked his chapped lips, and croaked out a pathetic call to his teammates.
"McKay?"
The twittering chatter of a flock of birds passing by overhead broke the otherwise serene stillness about him.
"Teyla? Ronon?"
A sudden breeze picked up, tossing the upper branches of the trees. The motion would have been soothing if it weren't for his suddenly racing heart. The beating pounded in his ears, above the whispering of the leaves. The breeze settled down just as suddenly as it had began and oddly enough, so did his heart. Where the hell was everyone?
He was alone, as far as he could determine. He finally realized that he was dressed in only his basic BDUs, sans the shirt. His thigh holster, along with his trusted 9 mil and P90 were missing. But not the knife concealed in his boot…he could still feel its reassuring presence against his ankle. A shiver passed through his body, starting from his chest and radiating outwards through his limbs. Not so much from the lack of a chill in the rather suffocating heat of this new place than from his unsettled nerves.
With extreme effort, he finally pulled himself upwards into a rather hunched over position, his legs bowed out before him and his arms resting upon them. His body was beginning to tell him stories of abuse. He felt like he had battled 20 Wraith. He smirked. If he was still in the here and now...hell, he must've won. That battle would have made a killing on pay-per-view. Tilting his neck from side to side, he heard little cracks and felt little twinges of pain accompany them.
As he took in more of his surroundings, he realized he was in an open clearing covered in a soft blanket of wavering grass. The grass was tall, nearly a foot in height. The jungle of trees surrounding him were spindly, with tufts of green sprouting only from the swaying tops high above him. He blinked still bleary eyes, focusing them to search the depths of the darkened jungle around him. No sign of his team. No sign of civilization for that matter. He couldn't shake a feeling of uneasiness. He was sitting prone in a sunny opening. An enemy could be easily observing him from the shadows of the trees, ready to perhaps finish its job.
And suddenly, he felt odd. Tiny shimmering spots of light danced across his vision as a rush of blood roared through his ears. Shaking his head to rid of the discomfort, he came to realize that his lungs felt constricted, and if anything, his heart had begun to race even harder. It actually hurt, pounding with such ferocity that he felt it would surely burst.
His muscles began to tremor and he unwillingly collapsed back onto the soft surface of the grassy clearing. His vision faded and he blinked his eyes in a fight to stay conscious. His heart hammered. Beads of sweat rolled down his face from the exertion tolled upon his body. Panic threatened to overwhelm him.
And then eerie calm blanketed him. His heart began to slow. His breathing steadied. A flow of adrenaline washed through his veins, gifting him with renewed strength. He bolted upright, senses coming to such clarity and alertness it felt as though someone had tossed a bucket of ice-cold water over him. Something had happened to him. He was different somehow.
He narrowed his eyes and a devilish smile twisted upon his sweat-drenched face. Flitting along in the lazy breeze was that tiny little bug not twenty yards away in the shadows of the trees. The gentle buzzing of its wings resonated loudly in his ears, just as if the bug were mere inches from him. His hands curled into fists.
In a fleeting moment, he was racing through the underbrush with the stealth of a wild cat. Not a whisper on the wind announced his advance.
The pitch of the buzz dipped and heightened as the unsuspecting bug made its way from blade to blade of undergrowth. A shadow passed overhead. The buzzing ceased. SMACK! An unseen creature spooked from its perch in the trees above rustled further into the shadows.
Lowering his chin and grinning in victory, Sheppard gazed at the small mess of green and white remains now smeared across his palm. A shift in the wind caused him to drop his hands to his side, tilting an ear up to listen more intently. Footsteps splashing through water…he counted the beats and detected ten potential hostiles. They were far from his position but gaining ground fast. Sheppard whipped his head around to look back to the clearing from whence he had originated. It was time for a hasty retreat.
He had one final fleeting thought before his mind clouded into darkness…just what the hell had happened to him?
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