Chapter 3

Disclaimer: See first chapter

Once again thanks for the reviews and I'm glad that there are a few people out there that are enjoying my fumbled attempts at writing.

Sorry if you don't like the way this story is going, progressing, moving, etc., I've written the ending already and am having a bit of writer's block about how to get to it(too many ideas that are half formed). Hopefully you'll all stick around.

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"Casualty of War," Major Sheppard rolled the words around in his mouth as he mulled over the multiple connotations. Sour acid assaulted his taste buds. The taste was a now permanent fixture, a good compliment to go with his dour mood. How could three little words carry so much weight? Each word, a series of nails in the coffin, so to speak. Each word, a mental burden that his synapses turned into action potentials of rapidly fired energy carrying with them an imaged physical pain to accompany the mental anguish that he was in.

There were so many that had died since entering this galaxy and embarking on what they were led to believe would be the adventure of a lifetime. Yeah right, what a load of bullshit that had turned out to be. The Atlantis expedition had turned out to be, in more appropriate turns, the struggle of a lifetime. The struggle for acceptance by new races. The struggle for forgiveness by those same new races once they'd learned that it was the Atlantians' fault that the Wraith were culling generations early, make that my fault, John corrected himself with a mental cringe. The struggle to sustain themselves as their rations continued on their constant downward spiral. And lets not forget, the struggle to survive. That little problem just begged to be acknowledged and everyday it was ignored just meant that the next day it would let itself be known with a vengeance.

Good men and women were dying like fireflies drawn to the false security of a brilliant light bulb. Many of these brave souls were people that he'd just meet recently and never had the chance to fully get acquainted with, but that didn't change anything. Their deaths were still on him; the crimson that flew through their once lively veins now flowed black and angry across his heart. He was the head military man on Atlantis. That meant it was his duty to protect these people. And as each flame was snuffed out, he felt yet again his failure to provide this much needed and expected commodity.

No matter how hard he tried to ignore the memories that assaulted him, each laden with more guilt than the previous one, he felt himself sink deeper and deeper into the melancholic abyss that had opened inside his being.

Now, he had the loss of someone that he actually knew as more than a random face in the crowd or name on a roster; someone that he cared for, on his hands. Another tally mark on the wall, another line through the attendance list, another notch in the belt. Death, the Wraith, hostile natives, evil; the bad was winning and all John could think about was lying down and giving in. He had been a fighter all his life, but it was becoming too much. He was getting to old, too tired, and he just wanted it to end. He wanted to see the smiling face of his lost comrade and laugh at his inane jokes. The memories flashed across his cones and rods only to be projected internally in a looping parody of happiness. The hair on Sheppard's arms rose as if in applause to the moviemaker's show and he rubbed at them with his hands feverishly until they became red, but to no avail. A cold had settled into his bones and seeped into all is pores. The cold held him in its grasp as a mother clings a child to her bosom.

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TBC