NOTES: I think this was another "give me a prompt" challenge. Except I've forgotten what the original prompt was.
Exile Of The Unforgiven
He scrapes the beard-bristles from his cheek with one of Ronon's knives and grimaces as the blade shaves him a little too close. Gillette is a far-distant memory, Remington only slightly less so.
The shave isn't completely smooth, but there's no-one here to care. There'll be someone here to care tomorrow, though, so John shaves a little closer, until it's smooth enough to his satisfaction.
Water bubbles over the rocks, moss-slippery and ice-cold. It numbs his fingers and shivers his skin as he rinses off the blade and splashes water on his face.
John crouches by the river a few moments after he's put away his wash things, his fingers balancing him on the ground as he stares across the broad river. For a moment, the far bank with it's clumped bushes and swaying eucalypts vanishes, and what he sees is a city, rising shining above the sunrise waters.
Atlantis no longer stands bright but broken, its inhabitants are scattered, destroyed, exiled from where once they called home. They haven't heard from Earth in years now and hope is gone and dying.
He folds his things up in the small blanket, woollen-soft with tiny balls of nap forming on the warp and weft. Then he goes back to the cave which is the only home he's allowed - John Sheppard, no longer a hero but hated and feared.
What he brought down upon Pegasus, once considered forgiveable, is no longer acceptable. There will be no more Wraith, say the Council of Pegasus, and not all Teyla's persuasion can convince them otherwise.
She'll come to him tomorrow - a fleeting visit of a few hours. His salvation and his sting.
"Hello?"
The stunner is in his hand, automatically pointed at the speaker, even though he instantly knows it's Teyla. "Hey," he says, and puts the weapon down. "Sorry about that."
Her gaze drifts over him, and what she sees of him saddens her. "It is nothing."
John's shoulders tense, an automatic reaction to those words, said too often, meant too much. "I thought you were coming tomorrow."
"I am here now," she says, and the pain and relief rises in him so swiftly that the embrace surprises him as much as her.
"Yeah," he murmurs in her hair as her arms come around him and he is welcomed back into forgiveness, "you are."
- fin -