AUTHOR: Wraithfodder
RATING: T
CATEGORY: Drama, heavy-duty angst
SPOILERS: Massive spoilers for season two episode Conversion.
Copyright Disclaimer: See part 1
SUMMARY: A missing scene from "Conversion." Sheppard contemplates his future as his body and mind succumb to the iratus bug retrovirus..
Mirror, Mirror
PART TWO
It wasn't long before the door quietly slid open again, but he was sort of surprised to hear Elizabeth asking how he was doing. "My body's mutating into a bug," he replied sharply.
He could feel an anger rising in him, but he had to stomp it down, fearing that he might physically act on it. It was becoming more difficult to contain his urge to strike out. He kept his face to the side, shadowed in the comforting darkness. He wasn't vain, but even without the mirror to look in anymore, he could feel the grayness creeping onto his face from his neck. Sometimes it was a spiky, crawling feeling when he turned his head and felt the tug of new alien skin.
She filled him in on the progress of the mission, her voice exuding a positive attitude that he knew she didn't feel at all. He wanted to clench his fists into balls and pound something at the impotence he felt in being able to do nothing. Instead, he focused on the situation, demanding more security. Yet she kept talking, as if this was something that could be cured with a pill or a shot, as if it wasn't that bad. He turned his head, inwardly cringing, but at the same time not caring, about the shock on her face and in her voice. He had to give her some credit. She hadn't seen him since he'd punched out her wall; she was holding up well, considering that he now looked some hideous freak. But as he spoke, keeping his voice as level as possible, it seemed that she didn't want to increase the guards, as if in doing so, it would only confirm their worst fears.
Didn't she get it? He shot to his feet, putting himself almost in her face. "I'm not safe to be around anymore," he'd ground out heatedly and she'd recoiled. He all but threw her out, but he caught her tremulous voice, ordering for a doubling of the guard. For a brief moment, he savored the silence and solitude as he sat back down on his bed. The door shut with a quiet snick, leaving him alone with his increasingly dark thoughts.
Time passed. It was meaningless now. As each minute laboriously crawled by, he could literally feel himself changing more and more. No, it wasn't like he'd told Beckett. This wasn't like Ford's situation. Ford was – he didn't know where the young lieutenant was, if he were alive or dead – but Ford had still been Ford when he'd last seen him – before the Wraith beam had sucked him up into the night sky. He'd still had that bizarrely distorted eye, and the jumpy personality that McKay had once called 'schizophrenically homicidal,' but he was still Ford. He was still human despite the changes the Wraith had caused in his body from the overdose of … whatever. The memory of what had caused Ford's transformation was elusive, as if his past were becoming pointless.
Sheppard held out both of his hands before him. They were now mutated to a deep shade of gray. A heavy layer of something hard yet flexible was forming over the length of his fingers, jutting out over his knuckles, like a horn on some beetle. He couldn't peel it off, couldn't feel it. Was it an alien bug's version of protection against its prey?
He paced the room, ignoring his surroundings, all except the walls that trapped him. He stopped and lifted his black shirt. The gray was across his entire torso now. For all he knew, it went below the belt down to his toes. A part of his mind wondered if he'd actually turn into a bug, or would he end up like Ellia: a murderously insane being covered with that gun metal blue, hard flinty skin? He'd felt that slick, cold layer when she'd attacked him and he'd fought back for his very life. It had shocked him, but not as much as the pain when she'd tried to feed off him. If Ronon hadn't arrived when he had, he'd be dead.
Maybe it would have been better if Ronon hadn't arrived at all.
Sheppard stared at his distorted reflection in a picture on the wall. A pair of unfeeling reptilian-like eyes stared back at him, mocking him. Tiny protuberances were visible along each side of his neck. He felt them. They were hard and spiny. They didn't belong on a human being. Angry, terrified, he ripped the photo off the wall and threw it across the room.
He was losing it. He knew it. He didn't deal well with captivity. He smashed his hand into a wall, then felt it: something odd against his palm. He pressed his palm flat against the wall and felt a weird suction feeling. A strangled laugh escaped his lips as he placed his other hand against the wall in the same manner and pulled up. A second later, his head touched the ceiling.
Sheppard felt a surge of unbridled power shoot through his limbs as he experimented with his newfound ability. He skittered across the ceiling like an insect, the strength that had been developing in him ever since he'd been infected, holding him in place. He'd never seen a room from exactly that vantage point before. It was sort of like flying, but more so, his eyes focused on the floor, on the photo he had tossed in anger. He studied it like a spider studied its prey.
The very act should have scared the living shit out of him: it was undeniable proof that he was no longer human – that the retrovirus had won. The fear of his inexorable change was there, but it too was losing ground to the urges of the new unearthly creature into which he was evolving.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed. Time was a worthless concept except for the one thought that he continued to fiercely hold on to: would his team return in time to save him? He had to focus hard, deliberately forcing down thoughts of fleeing his prison or else he knew all would be lost.
The door to his room opened. Elizabeth entered – slowly, cautiously – calling out for him. He studied her, listening to her diplomatic entreaties that he come out from hiding. She knew he was hiding. Knew he hated what he was becoming and hated for anyone to see him like that, but more than that, having people see him lose control.
It was so simple to do, it was almost … instinctual. He let go, landing feet first directly behind her. She seemed startled at his sudden presence. She might have been more than startled had she turned a split second earlier. Yet she didn't flinch at his more radically altered appearance; maybe the doctors were keeping her apprised of his transformation.
But he hadn't been totally prepared for her admission that the team had failed in their mission. The nest was too heavily protected by the iratus bugs. Yet without the bugs, without the therapy, he stood no chance in hell of surviving, at least not as John Sheppard. She had to send the team out again, he insisted; yet she refused to do it.
She was consigning him to a fate worth than death. "If you won't, then kill me now." It wasn't a question, but a demand, tersely laid out in as graphic a description as possible.
Yet again she refused his request, and he could feel the anger flaring once more, simmering violently beneath the surface, wanting desperately to break free.
"Then try again," he urged, forcing control into his demand.
She steeled her eyes, and in that one solitary action, she denied him the reprieve he so desperately sought. Fury overtook him and he acted. He grabbed her by the neck, pushing her until her body collided painfully against the wall.
Pinned helplessly to the wall, Elizabeth cried out that Walker and Stevens had died in that abortive mission. Even when his hand squeezed against her throat, she maintained that she wouldn't sacrifice any more lives. It took a moment for that horrific logic to pierce his mind, past the aggression that sought to engulf him. People were dying in a vain attempt to save him. He was past saving, wasn't he? He could see it in her eyes.
He could break her neck as easily as he could snap a toothpick between his fingers.
Her eyes held defiance, but also terror. A flash of memory rose unbidden in his thoughts. Another set of eyes that sparked with apprehension and fear, a body pressed firmly to a wall, an exercise stick held firmly up to Teyla's throat.
Dead man walking. He knew he couldn't face becoming what Ellia had become, because he would eventually do what she had done - kill those who meant something to him. He was a danger, a risk. If they didn't kill him, they'd contain him. Lock him away like some… specimen, trying to fix him. He knew now, deep down inside that if he passed a certain point, there would be no salvation: just a keening insanity that would never leave him as long as he took a breath.
Death was the only option.
His death - before he took another's life.
To be continued...