Aftermath – Finding His Way Again
Chapter 1
John couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. A primitive terror seeped cold and fast through his chest, paralyzing his throat and sending his heartbeat roaring into his ears. Unknown forces grabbed at his legs and arms. They held on hard and kept him deathly still. Sweat drenched John, sickening in its cold and clammy dampness. He had to-
"John!" Gasping, he rolled over and opened his eyes. Lydia was leaning over him, softly bathed in light from the nightstand. Her pretty red hair formed a tousled curtain around her face, partially obscuring her features but unable to hide her green eyes and the deep concern which filled them. His room, his bed – that's where he was. Not on Earth, not with Nash, not helpless, desperate, and terrified. In the throes of his nightmare John had tossed and turned, twisting the bed linens tight around his legs. He had buried his face deep into the pillow. He had effectively bound and gagged himself, echoing the conditions of his imprisonment and making his awful dream even worse. As he looked up at his lover, his sweat-slicked dark hair was plastered to his neck and face, stark against the paleness of his skin that he couldn't see but which was all too apparent to Lydia.
John slowly sat up and leaned against the headboard, physically and mentally exhausted. Lydia pulled him towards her and he let her, resting his head against her breasts and taking comfort in her steady breathing and murmured assurances. He didn't talk, not about his terrors. She had already witnessed them many times since they had started sleeping together several weeks ago. Their flirting during golf lessons and his unannounced visits to her lab had quickly led to sex, quite gladly on her part, and rather desperately on his. She knew what had happened to him. John had returned to Atlantis a changed and damaged man. Nash's experiment had isolated him, if only for a few days, from virtually all emotional and physical contact with another human being. In its place, he had had only the coerced entanglement of his mind and body with a cold, horrific machine, along with the loss of much of his free will. John was starved for the most basic of human affections and had found in Lydia a warm and caring nature. So far, they expected nothing more from each other than friendship, comfort and sexual release. Jennifer and Carson wanted him to talk to a member of the psychiatric staff but, being stubborn John Sheppard, he wouldn't do it, at least not yet. For now, he wanted to lose himself in his work and in the arms of this beautiful woman. He needed an escape – or, really, the illusion of escape – from the memories, from the shock of what had happened to him and to so many others.
John's stay at SGC after his rescue had been difficult. He was badly injured, sick with fever and too many drugs, and in emotional shock. Relief over being freed and fury over the harm and death that had come to others clashed in his mind. John's memories of those first few days in the infirmary were hazy; he remembered the comings and goings of the doctors and the steady presence of his friends. Mostly, he slept. But as soon as he could make sense of his surroundings, and of himself, he went to the others. Nancy was Nancy Fessler, now a real, flesh and blood woman instead of a vague and terrified presence on the fringes of his mind. She was poor, divorced and lived alone. She had gone to a free clinic and had come under the scrutiny of Nash's blood-testing crusade. Terrence Washington, the man who taken Kevin's place in the chair, had lost his factory job. He had sold blood for some quick cash and, as simple as that, had fallen into Nash's trap. Terrence and Nancy would recover physically but were deeply traumatized psychologically. John had requested, demanded, that SGC provide them with the best care possible, and that they find them new homes and new jobs. John was willing to spend his own money to help, if he had to.
Kevin Louden was a homeless, out of work construction worker. Doctors visiting the shelter he stayed at had drawn blood and then sent it to a lab Nash owned. Kevin had died of a brain aneurysm while attached to the Ancient device. So far, SGC hadn't been able to find any family. But then, that was why Kevin (and Nancy and Terrence, and all of Nash's other 'inventory') had been so valuable – people that supposedly no one cared about, that no one would ever miss.
Nash really should have paid more attention to his own rules when he went after Sheppard.
John had been devastated by what had happened to the businessman and the union official. He hadn't learned about it until after he had been rescued. That surprised him; Nash had destroyed – literally and figuratively – his targets while John was a prisoner. Perhaps he and the others had been too far gone at that point, and Nash hadn't wanted to gloat if they were too sick and drugged to appreciate it.
There was one more victim, so easily forgotten amongst all the others: Lt. Daniels, the soldier in his own command who had kidnapped and delivered him to his tormentors. Nash had murdered him once he had served his purpose. John couldn't yet forgive Daniels for betraying him, and perhaps he never would. But he realized that Nash had played upon the greed and anger of an impressionable young man who might otherwise not have done what he did. And John certainly could not, would not ever take satisfaction in the fact that the lieutenant was now dead.
John felt responsible for so much of what had happened. His friends kept assuring him that it wasn't his fault, that they had all been trapped in an impossible, tragic situation. John wasn't blind to the cold logic of their argument but, with the trauma so painfully fresh, his heart refused to accept it. He knew he had been the crux of Nash's diabolical plan and that the bastard probably couldn't have succeeded without his gene. Because of his physical and mental strength, John had convinced himself that he should have been able to stop him. Never mind that John had been heavily drugged, bound hand and foot, and that others would have died if he dared to fight back. As far as he was concerned, he had failed, and he didn't know how to live with that fact.
Lydia did her best to draw him out of the black moods which still plagued him, weeks after his return. But ultimately, only John could heal himself.
In his restlessness and pain, John had started to take long walks alone at night, wandering Atlantis's seemingly endless corridors. As much as he had needed human contact after he came home, in his most troubled moments he craved solitude. Lydia knew not to follow. John would become lost in the sound of his own footsteps and the soothing sameness of the hallways and rooms. One evening, far from his quarters, he felt himself drawn to a door. He entered…and the room instantly knew him. Consoles came alive, light traced along the floor, and the walls glowed with the gentle blue-green that was Atlantis. Before his time with Nash, John was still amazed at his ability to do such a thing, even after all these years. But now…at times he couldn't bear it. He couldn't reconcile the wonders of his genetic talent with the suffering and death it had caused. And he couldn't escape; the City always knew how to find him.
The place he found that night had ended up being important – a medical lab of some kind. But for all the good it might do, John didn't really care. He had reluctantly told McKay what he had discovered, and then prayed he wouldn't need his help to study it. The thought of touching something unknown, of giving himself over to it, frankly, it scared him to death. Ironically, his fear, the 'fight or flight' response, came from his limbic system, the part of the brain Nash's machine had corrupted in his enemies. John had killed Nash, but he could not yet free himself from the man's evil grip.
TBC…
