Title: Shattered
Author: Laura (the artist formerly known as Cookie Monster)
Rating: PG13 for language
Feedback: Makes the world go round. Honest. Trust me, I do English. PLEASE REVIEW!!! or e-mail to trinity8889@hotmail.com.
Disclaimer: You may find this surprising, but I do not own Stargate SG1 or any of the characters associated with it! Sightings of Daniel locked in my wardrobe are sheer speculation, folks. Oh, and Sci-Fi? You can bite me. (Bitter about Farscape? Me? Nooooooo.)
A.N: The exchange in part 2 is, ahem, 'borrowed' from Farscape. Any references to albatrosses (living, or dead!) are taken from Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'
This story has been posted previously, but has had to be re-posted due to the fact that I am a techno-idiot! It has also been 100% reworked, so this is the brand spanking new version. Ooooo.
************
Number Twelve cannot remember a life outside of his four dark walls.
He lies curled in a corner, his thin arms wrapped around his thin legs, his eyelids twitching in a sleep that provides no escape, as he no longer has anywhere to escape to. Awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, every path leads back to this cramped cell and this life; the only one he knows.
He stirs, and his saucer-like blue eyes flicker open. They dominate his features, almost too large for a face that is still handsome, but haunted, so thin that his bones are covered by the merest whisper of flesh, so pale that it is almost luminous in the darkness. In his half-asleep state he reaches out a hand beside him, reaching for someone, something, anything, but like all the other nights, there is nothing there and all that meets his searching hand is the cold floor. His eyes drift shut and he sleeps again, not remembering what he was looking for, not remembering where to find it. Not remembering if it ever really existed at all.
His movement has exposed the skin on his stomach, the lines criss-crossing it barely visible in the darkness. His body is like a roadmap, the marks and lines can be read and followed by touch alone from one end to the other, torturous Braille, with every scar marking a different Test, a different story. The long, thin lines are the roads, justifiable in their precision, their narrow perfection. The hills are the burns on his chest and legs, raised and textured, red and angry. They were just to make him scream, and he did until he couldn't anymore, his mouth open, his vocal chords straining, something inside him, broken, crushed.
On this pitiful roadmap there is only one landmark that is truly his. It lies to the Southwest, and he told them once what it was for, but that was a long time ago, and the memory has faded, even if the scar has not, and now it is just another symbol of what he has become, of the thing they have made him. The man with no name, who doesn't need a name because it wouldn't mean anything, but to whom the number twelve means everything.
Loud footsteps echoing in the long corridor.
His eyes snap open, but he doesn't move, doesn't prepare to fight or run. There is nowhere for him to go, no life outside what they do to him, no desire to escape, because they are coming for him, just for him, and if he were still capable of it he would feel relief. If they come for him then they need him, and it's only when they Test him that he knows he isn't dead, even though he doesn't know if he wishes he was.
So he stays passive as they drag him from his cell, doesn't resist as they position him upright and strap him in, doesn't argue as they place the electrodes on his legs, arms, chest, testicles and on his shaven head. And when the current flows he doesn't even scream, because there is no one to help or hear him. Instead, with a voice that is brittle with disuse he repeats the one word that is the only untainted thing in his life, over and over again, his private mantra, his prayer for a life and time forgotten. He says it again and again until he feels unconsciousness beginning to claim him, throws himself willingly into the void, whispers the word as he falls.
The word Number Twelve whispers, is "Sam."
Author: Laura (the artist formerly known as Cookie Monster)
Rating: PG13 for language
Feedback: Makes the world go round. Honest. Trust me, I do English. PLEASE REVIEW!!! or e-mail to trinity8889@hotmail.com.
Disclaimer: You may find this surprising, but I do not own Stargate SG1 or any of the characters associated with it! Sightings of Daniel locked in my wardrobe are sheer speculation, folks. Oh, and Sci-Fi? You can bite me. (Bitter about Farscape? Me? Nooooooo.)
A.N: The exchange in part 2 is, ahem, 'borrowed' from Farscape. Any references to albatrosses (living, or dead!) are taken from Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'
This story has been posted previously, but has had to be re-posted due to the fact that I am a techno-idiot! It has also been 100% reworked, so this is the brand spanking new version. Ooooo.
************
Number Twelve cannot remember a life outside of his four dark walls.
He lies curled in a corner, his thin arms wrapped around his thin legs, his eyelids twitching in a sleep that provides no escape, as he no longer has anywhere to escape to. Awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, every path leads back to this cramped cell and this life; the only one he knows.
He stirs, and his saucer-like blue eyes flicker open. They dominate his features, almost too large for a face that is still handsome, but haunted, so thin that his bones are covered by the merest whisper of flesh, so pale that it is almost luminous in the darkness. In his half-asleep state he reaches out a hand beside him, reaching for someone, something, anything, but like all the other nights, there is nothing there and all that meets his searching hand is the cold floor. His eyes drift shut and he sleeps again, not remembering what he was looking for, not remembering where to find it. Not remembering if it ever really existed at all.
His movement has exposed the skin on his stomach, the lines criss-crossing it barely visible in the darkness. His body is like a roadmap, the marks and lines can be read and followed by touch alone from one end to the other, torturous Braille, with every scar marking a different Test, a different story. The long, thin lines are the roads, justifiable in their precision, their narrow perfection. The hills are the burns on his chest and legs, raised and textured, red and angry. They were just to make him scream, and he did until he couldn't anymore, his mouth open, his vocal chords straining, something inside him, broken, crushed.
On this pitiful roadmap there is only one landmark that is truly his. It lies to the Southwest, and he told them once what it was for, but that was a long time ago, and the memory has faded, even if the scar has not, and now it is just another symbol of what he has become, of the thing they have made him. The man with no name, who doesn't need a name because it wouldn't mean anything, but to whom the number twelve means everything.
Loud footsteps echoing in the long corridor.
His eyes snap open, but he doesn't move, doesn't prepare to fight or run. There is nowhere for him to go, no life outside what they do to him, no desire to escape, because they are coming for him, just for him, and if he were still capable of it he would feel relief. If they come for him then they need him, and it's only when they Test him that he knows he isn't dead, even though he doesn't know if he wishes he was.
So he stays passive as they drag him from his cell, doesn't resist as they position him upright and strap him in, doesn't argue as they place the electrodes on his legs, arms, chest, testicles and on his shaven head. And when the current flows he doesn't even scream, because there is no one to help or hear him. Instead, with a voice that is brittle with disuse he repeats the one word that is the only untainted thing in his life, over and over again, his private mantra, his prayer for a life and time forgotten. He says it again and again until he feels unconsciousness beginning to claim him, throws himself willingly into the void, whispers the word as he falls.
The word Number Twelve whispers, is "Sam."