A/N: (This story is so weird) Reviews really do make my day, so thanks for them all. Glad to see you enjoying this. I would also like to put in a warning now while I remember – this story has a bit more gore and disturbing images than I anticipated. There, you've been warned, so don't get after me about it when certain chapters make you a little nauseas.
Ch. 4
And We all Fall Down
The road grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil.
Young Goodman Brown by Hawthorne
Day four, and John found the positive in that he had someone in which to share his sufferings. Of course, seeing as he had developed a mental callous against this particular embarrassment, he considered it more of an annoyance than a torment. Poor Mathers, on the other hand, was going to pass out from all the excess blood rosying up his face.
An extra helping of soldiers had come in at dawn to commence the strip to the boxers. At John's instruction, neither Atlantean put up a fight since – as confirmed the other day – the pleasure was in the struggle; demonstrating the captive as weak and the captors as strong, which wasn't far from the truth since John didn't have the energy to bat the battering hands away.
They were chained by the neck to the same pole, and took up positions on either side. John was sitting, but not by choice. Hunger was pounding on him, and if he didn't sit then he had to suffer the world pin-wheeling around him. Mathers sat with knees drawn up and back hunched. The kid glared venomously at every look shot his way, even the ones from girls that looked to be his age.
" Positive, Mathers. I think that one young lady might have been flirting with you." John smiled and did a small wave to the girl with the red hair and wearing a sky-blue dress. She didn't even notice, her eyes lingering fixedly on the lean Brian Mathers.
" No offense, sir, but I find nothing positive about being some alien chick's eye-candy."
John lifted his hand to swat a sweat-sucker trying to make its way into his ear. His hand shook so bad it didn't even land on the bug. He clenched his fist, dropping it to his side, and still it shook.
" I know it's tough, Mathers, but you can't let these people get to you. Act like you don't care - and they don't care. You become less eye-candy, and more the century old statue that's been around for too long to show any interest in... or something like that. Can't really think straight enough for a better analogy. At any rate – you need to try and act like it's no big deal."
Mathers nodded, but did nothing to unfold himself from his huddle. " I understand sir. It's just..." He tightened his embrace around his knees and shivered. " I've... kind of got this self-conscious streak. It's not really shame about myself or anything, I've just never liked a lot of attention... Especially in this kind of way. When I was a kid, and my family and I would go to the beach, I'd always wear a T-shirt with my trunks. I just... I hate feeling exposed... being exposed..."
John nodded in understanding. " Yeah, I know what you mean. It makes you feel... more vulnerable than you've ever felt in your life."
" Like being unarmed," Mathers added, " when you're surrounded by wraith." He then rolled his head to the side to look at John. " How do you handle it, sir? How do you keep it from bothering you?"
John shrugged. " Because, right now, we don't have much of a choice. Besides, it doesn't last forever. People can laugh, can smirk, whatever. Doesn't change who you are. Doesn't make you more or less of anything. Hell, if anything, it makes you better, because you learn how to put up with it. You learn that – after all is said and done – you survived, you can move on. And anything else embarrassing that comes along you can toss aside like yesterday's trash since you've been through worse. You learn that it really doesn't matter, no matter how much people laugh."
Mathers sighed. " That easy?"
" Hell no. It takes practice, long years of practice. For me, it was kind of forced. I've had worse humiliations than this. I've had worse experiences. This..." John lifted his arm to encompass their surroundings in a single sweep, " is nothing... so far. I won't lie, this may not be it, being humiliated I mean. They could have more in store for us."
They fell silent enough to hear snickers and whispers of passer-bys. John rested his chin on his upturned knees. A black mark was definitely worse than this. Losing people – beyond worse to a word he didn't have to describe it. Humiliation was a dot in the universe of his existence.
Day five – John was desperate. Or at least he thought he was. He could barely stand, and his lack of struggle against the soldiers had nothing to do with choice. After their next ordeal of near-nudity, John took twenty minutes just to get dressed. It was then that Mathers urged him to try and swallow some of the swill.
" Come on sir. You'll need your strength to help me when I have to drink this crap." It was meant as a joke, but the underlining truth kept either from laughing.
It was a shared sentiment that weakness was one of those humiliations that topped being seen in one's under-shorts. It was also dangerous with the possibility of further torment neither could – or wanted to – imagine looming in the near future. So, with Mathers' help, John took the bowl and lifted it to his mouth. The first sip, he gagged. The second, he spat. The third – more like three quick gulps – left him coughing and and nearly puking it back up.
" Damn it! I'd rather eat a bowl of freakin' shhhh – shaving cream, be nice and clean, shave once a day and you're always be keen!"
John dropped back onto his personal pile of hay. Delirium – lovely and inevitable. But reciting stupid ditties seemed to work as a distraction from the bitter slime coating his tongue and throat.
Mathers attempted to down some of the swill, and only managed a swallow.
" Dang! I'd rather it a bowl of peas than this crap!" he gasped, scooting back to his hay pile provided from Sheppard's now smaller pile.
" Hate peas I take it?" John panted, swallowing continually to keep the stuff in his gut.
" Not anymore."
Day six – more of the same, and the swallow of sour porridge John had managed wasn't helping. Mathers was starting to show signs of malnutrition in that his hands kept shaking. Time was passed – inside and outside – with small talk. Places they've been, things they've seen, people they liked/disliked on Atlantis. Kavenaugh was a universal dislike. Ronon made Mathers nervous, Rodney – sleepy.
" Sleepy?"
Mathers shrugged abashedly. " That's the only way I can describe it. I guess because he knows so much, and he's always busy, all over the place. Plus he talks a lot. I'm not good with long attention spans, sir."
John laughed, nearing on hysterics with the way his mind teetered in and out of reality.
" Dr. Beckett's fun," Brian said.
John, his head resting against the pole, rolled it to face Mathers, quirking an eyebrow. " Fun? The doc? Mr. happy go lucky with the needles to your arm?"
Mathers snickered. " Yeah. He's actually an okay guy outside the infirmary. Tells great jokes, especially with that accent. The guy's gold. And he knows how to put up with everyone."
John grinned. " He's had a lot of practice with the worst of the worst."
" You mean you, sir?"
John narrowed his eyes suspiciously. " Maybe."
Brian arched his back in a stretch until it popped. " I've seen the sign."
John jerked his wobbling head up at this. " What sign?"
Mathers blinked in surprise. " You haven't seen...? Ah crap. It's... um... it's... It kind of started out as a joke, then people started taking it seriously. It's just a ' Colonel is in/Colonel is out', so we know when it's cool to come in and see the doc. Usually – if you're in – he's, you know, kind of – okay, really busy. He normally won't deal with anyone else, especially if it's something minor. Plus, it's never a pretty sight seeing your CO messed up after some conflict... you know?" Brian winced on the last part.
John let out a huff of breath that jerked his chest. " Yeah, I know."
Sumner still wandered the halls of John's darker nightmares.
Day seven - and all was the same say for an increase of weakness in both Atlanteans' limbs. They took up singing more stupid ditties, just to offend the locals – though the Atlantean swears had little affect in laying on the offense. He taught Mathers the shaving cream song, and dredged up new verses.
" Holed up in some tiny little barn, with not many places to sit, you roll in the dirt long enough, you smell like a big pile of shaving cream...!" Mathers howled. Passer-bys gasped.
John snickered. " Good one. Not exactly like the song, but good."
Day eight - and both were urging the other to take more than three swallows of the swill. It was hell, but it did help to clear the mist settling heavily over their consciousness.
" One more swallow, sir," Mathers urged. John couldn't see the kid's dirty face in the dim light, only his shadowed form. John forced another stream of the filth down his burning throat, then handed the bowl to Brian and took up the sideline cheer-leading.
Water was the more hassle, since they only had one cup between them. They took mental inventory of their sips, and managed to find a pattern that enabled them to keep it lasting until the evening.
So went the routine on into day nine, ten, eleven, and then Sheppard lost count. Nothing had changed. Menk dropped by now and then, refusing to let John see his team, and forever assuring that they were fine.
And how the hell can they be fine if they're wasting away like us? But John wasn't in the right state of mind to study Menk over for signs of deceit. Of course, even when he had been in the right state of mind, he still couldn't tell.
Menk never had anything more done to the two than what was already being done.
" Sir?" Mathers croaked.
John let his head loll against the pole to look at the kid. Mather's was dirt-caked, bruised, and declining physically toward bony. John could only imagine himself looking just as bad or worse.
" Yeah?"
" I don't care about being in my underwear anymore," he said.
John furrowed his brow. " Okay."
Mathers continued. " I think... the people not looking at us anymore... I don't like that. It's worse, somehow. Way worse, like something's wrong."
John flicked his eyes to the passer-bys. Brian was right, no one was looking at them. Their faces were turned, up or down, or just away. And they walked faster as well.
John didn't miss the discomfort, the disgust. He started laughing, softly at first, then rising as his strength would allow.
" We must really look bad."
Mathers didn't hear. He'd passed out.
SGASGASGASGA
" Master Sheppard."
His name was hissed in his ear, crawling down his spine, making him writhe from the discomfort of it. John peeled his eye lids apart then rolled onto his bare back to stare up at the bearded, grime-smeared face of Culs. John grimaced at the putrid breath being puffed in his face.
" What the hell do you want?"
Culs lifted his head to glance over his shoulder. When he turned back to Sheppard, he grabbed him by his skinny shoulders and lifted him into sitting position. Even gentle the man's grip could crush bone to fine powder.
Powder. Baking powder rinse would clear up that mouth-stink. John was truly, indescribably, delirious.
" No time for words, Master Sheppard." He grabbed Sheppard's clothes from the corner where John had shoved them, refusing to spend any energy on dressing, even if it was warmer. The big man thrust the clothes into John's arms, then took him by both biceps and lifted him to his feet. With a massive pat to the shoulder that almost knocked John back to the floor, he turned to the semi-conscious Mathers and repeated the waking process.
" Culs, what...?"
Culs sucked air between his teeth. " Clamp yer jaws, Master Sheppard. Ya wish to be gettin'? Then slap yer tongue."
John arched and eyebrow. " How do you slap your own tongue?"
Once Mathers was on his feet, Culs turned his massive bulk toward the door and slowly pulled it open. A quick glance, and he signaled with a wave of his hand for John and Brian to follow.
" Culs!" John hissed. " What are you doing?"
Culs looked back at John and grinned. " I like ya, John. I've told you that. No sense in lettin' a man of yer manners go to waste. I hate seein' it, I really do. I'd thought Menk would be done by now. But, - heh - bury me, Menk never was one to know when quittin' time came. Now be quick and light footed. We've got ways to go."
Culs slipped into the waning darkness that was fading toward morning.
John hesitated. It felt wrong, so wrong his chest went tight as though someone had strapped a rope around it and pulled. Cold turned his innards into blocks of ice, his blood to rivers of glaciers, weighing him down so that his legs wouldn't move. Strangely enough, klaxons like the alarms of Atlantis during an unscheduled activation blared in his skull.
" John!" Culs hissed.
" Sir?"
John jerked his head in Mathers' direction. The kid was uncertain, and scared to hell, his eyes wide and his body shaking. But he wasn't petrified, and he wasn't going to move until his CO made a decision.
The ice in John shattered, and his legs recovered mobility. No time for uncertainties with two lives on the line. He stepped out into the frosting morning twilight that had their breath misting up to the indigo sky. Culs led the way past two unconscious guards, out of the village and into the woods. It was hard to keep up with the long strides of healthy, strong legs when John's own legs felt devoid of bone and nerves. He stumbled, with Mathers helping him up, then him helping Mathers up.
" Culs... my team?" John panted, catching himself on a tree before he fell again. The going might have been easier if he discarded his clothes, but he was cold, and looked forward to putting them on again.
" Waitin' to meet ya, Master Sheppard," Culs replied.
John didn't feel the wondrous onrush of relief. The warnings were banshee shrieks in his brain, pounding on his skull to the rhythm of his heart. But he was too weak to argue, question, or even think. If he stopped, he'd never move again. Momentum both pushed and pulled him along, and to lose it now would be to drop and die.
But it was wrong, all wrong. He couldn't place it or prove it, he just felt it; spidey-senses, pre-cog, a voice from on high, or still and small – it was the only coherent thought he could form.
He just couldn't find the way to listen. Stop now and die, or go back and die. Rocks and hard places had nothing on his predicament.
They crashed through the underbrush as above the sky began to burn with the gold of dawn. Both John and Brian were wheezing, lurching from tree to tree. Culs moved on ahead, farther and farther.
" Culs..." John gasped, flanks heaving and slick with sweat. " Culs... wait! We can't... we can't keep going like this. We need to rest!"
" No time," Culs called back, casually, indifferently. John looked over at Mathers, now several feet away, but the kid was oblivious to all else say for the subconscious need to keep moving. Sweat had left pale tracks through the grime coating his thinned-out skin. Mathers didn't sense it, hear it - the warnings. He had no idea what was going on, only that his CO was moving, so he needed to move with him.
But John had stopped. He hadn't realized it, and only now realized it because Mathers was moving away.
" Mathers?" John called. " Lieutenant!"
The kid stumbled to a stop, and turned on wavering legs to face Sheppard.
" Sir?"
A high-pitched whistle echoed through the woods. It stabbed into John's ears, and sent ice shooting through his already frozen body.
" Oh hell no Mathers run!"
Brian stiffened, and that was as far as he went when a massive, hairless brown body smacked into Brian, knocking him down. Screams tore the air, sent a cloud of colorful birds exploding into the sky, and drove Sheppard to his knees in horror.
" Nooooo!" he screamed, but it was overshadowed by the shriek of agony, the snarl of the beast, and the sound of flesh being ripped.
John crawled toward the sounds. He had no intent, no plan, just the single-minded will to move, to reach Mathers.
Something hard and jagged pressed down on his back to pin him to the ground, and he was halted.
" Not yet, John."
John didn't look up. Menk's voice was familiar enough to place a face to the foot. When the screams died in a gurgle and cough, another whistle shattered the air, and the erak bounded off back into the woods.
Everything went dead silent. Menk's foot lifted from John's back.
" Now John. Now you can go."
John gathered his strength, but his strength wasn't happy to oblige. He clawed the dirt, dragged his numb body through soil and muck, keeping his eyes fixed to the curled and bloody hand clawing the air, and his ears to the liquid inhalations.
" Hold on kid," John whimpered. Had he anything in his stomach, he would have puked.
" Best hurry, John," said Menk, walking along side as though taking a leisurely stroll. " The boy won't last much longer. I can see the blood from here. Poolin' fast, and it's unpretty to see."
John gritted his teeth, seething with saliva and flecks of foam flying and dripping from his mouth.
" Help him you son of a...!" he snarled, ending with a cough forced from sore lungs. He was close now, closer, he could smell the blood, taste it metallic in the air, hear the rasps that made John want to vomit. " Hang on Lieutenant. That's an order! You hang on!"
John reached out and felt something warm and wet. But he dug his fingers into the soft dirt anyways and pulled himself that last foot, his chest landing in the heated red pool.
Brian's arm fell with a thump to the ground. The gurgling stopped, and his eyes stared emptily at the sky.
John froze. " Lieutenant?" He reached out with a hand that wouldn't stay steady. Blood slid from the corner of the kid's mouth, and ran like a waterfall from the gaping split in his chest down the runnels between his protruding ribcage. John's hand landed on the kid's neck, and felt nothing.
John gagged on bile.
" Oh... bit late then, John?"
The sharp prod of a toe in his ribs was little more than an insect buzz to John. He was numb, utterly and completely, from head to toe. He couldn't even feel his own heart. The next step was supposed to be him waking up with a gasp and lying in a puddle of cold sweat. Then Mathers would ask if he was all right and John would say yeah and... Or, even better, John was in a bed, a soft bed surrounded by the familiarity of personal quarters, and someone would be pounding on his door, snapping in the petulant voice of McKay to get his scrawny carcass up. Yeah, that was the way, that was what was supposed to happen.
" I see why you lost the city, John," Menk said. " But to lose this boy? He was right in front of you John." A vicious kick to the ribs, and John didn't feel it. " Feet away. The erak could have missed," another kick, " if you'd just," another, " kept your mouth," another " shut!" Another and another. It forced the air from John's lungs, and kept it from returning for several, agonizingly eternal, seconds.
" See the hurt you've caused? See what comes from takin' what's never yours? You brought this on yourself, John." Another kick, the hardest of all, as though the rest were just warm-ups. Something cracked, John both felt it and heard it. He didn't scream, just let his eyes tear up.
Menk's words were mumbled gibberish. Except the part about Mathers. John had been warned – spidey senses and all - but apparently he didn't know how to listen.
With a shaking hand gloved in dirt and blood, John reached out and closed Mathers' eyes.
SGASGASGASGA
The smooth wood of the trunk dug into John's knobby spine, but he didn't have energy enough to stay sitting straight. He was conserving it, the last few drops, pooling it together so that he could walk to the gate – fifteen feet away from him – on his own two feet.
He'd had his crawl. Not much left in his store of dignity, but at least he could pretend.
The sun felt refreshingly warm on his skin protected by the film of filth covering it – natures slow-applying sunblock. But he still couldn't stop shivering.
In one arm he held his clothes against his blood-stained chest. The other arm he had draped over one knee, tapping his IDC against his shin. Menk had warned John that the moment he tried to dress before crossing the gate was the moment he got a bullet to the brain. Supposedly, there were snipers in the woods.
And yet it still wasn't incentive enough to hurry through the gate. Neither was the prospect of seeing his team, who'd been released some time before Sheppard, if John was supposed to believe it.
Menk was wrong in every aspect. John wasn't big on the destiny gig, but to have a city come to life the second one set foot in it was like having a house hand over its own keys on its own power. Every light, every console, every hum of machinery that responded to John's presence like a dog to its master's whistle was speaking the words 'I'm yours, all yours, only yours.' If that wasn't destiny, then destiny didn't exist. Not even human beings were that open-armed.
Atlantis was, by every right of John's ancestry and the ancestry of all those carrying the gene, the Atlantean's – the Earthling's. Menk could rant all he wanted, but his words had the effect of water on an oiled surface, sliding off into oblivion.
John held no qualms about claiming Atlantis. Everything that Menk had said had never really mattered from the start.
John curled his toes into the soft, dark soil, digging gouges, then tiny pits. It was cool, and held that pleasant earthy smell, like what the world smells like after it rains.
Menk hadn't let John take Mathers' body. Funny how any other time there wouldn't even be a body to bring back. John didn't want to go back without Mathers, but ran the risk of being shot for lolly-gagging.
Strangely enough, even to him, he didn't care if he got shot. Had he his gun, he would have gladly sent a few rounds into the forest, happy enough to wing a Cy before gun-fire was returned. The Cys must have anticipated this, because John was weaponless right down to his knife. Vulnerable to the third degree. But like he cared. Maintaining the self was never much of a focus of his. The other guy mattered, but the other guy was dead, and John didn't know what to do. Get up, dial, go through the gate; simple, but wrong. He was alone. He wasn't supposed to go through alone. He never went through alone. There was always someone there, many, few, or one – hurt, awake, even dragging John's useless carcass along.
He was supposed to come back with someone. The lack of another presence was like having forgotten something, not knowing what it was, but not leaving until it was found. It tethered John to the spot, having him dig holes in the dirt with his toes, wavering on the edge of passing out. He was so hungry he could have eaten the grass and been satisfied.
But to go back without someone... John twitched his misty head. Confusion was now the dominant state of mind. He knew, like a remembered piece of advice, that going through the gate was the only course of action. He had to go alone, no choice in the matter now.
And he was so hungry.
John braced his back against the tree and used it as leverage to struggle to his feet. Once up, he pushed off from the trunk and stumbled forward. He kept stumbling all the way to the DHD, then leaned in close to the blurred symbols, methodically punching them in. No alpha sight, just straight to Atlantis. The gate roared and rushed to life, foaming like a breaker. He punched in his code, then dug the radio from his clothes that the Cys had so kindly returned, and pressed it to his ear.
" ...olnel Sheppard? Is that you?"
Weir's voice. John couldn't even form a feeling of relief on hearing her voice. All feeling had been post-poned.
" Yeah, yeah it's me."
" Colonel? Are you all right?"
Leaning on the DHD, John closed his eyes. " No, not really."
" The shield's down. It's safe to come through."
John pushed off the DHD and lurched to the gate. He stepped into the shimmering pool, suffered the Mr Toad's Wild Ride ride through the cosmos, and stepped out the other side.
No dignity left to lose, but even if he had, John didn't have the means to even blush. The room was thick with stunned silence, every eye wide, and a few mouths gaping to the floor.
John's ribs dug into the arm holding his clothes, sharp as dulled blades when he took a breath. He glanced around, blinking slowly. He was so freakin' tired he didn't even know what he was supposed to be feeling had he been able to feel at all. Truthfully, he had no desire to feel anything. He knew he wouldn't like what that feeling was when it finally clawed its way through the muck in his head.
It took yet another lurch to get him moving. Taking the stairs was going to be hell. But he took them, one foot at a time. He met Elizabeth at the top, but didn't even acknowledge the reality of her presence. Not yet, not time to talk yet. He didn't even register her expression.
" John?"
Not yet. John dropped his IDC so he could reach out to the wall for support. Cool hands tried to wrap around his arm, and the sensation triggered a bout of queasiness. His involuntary response was to jerk away, pressing into the wall. Another attempt, this time on his shoulder, and he jerked again.
He cringed, sliding along the wall. " Don't... Touch me!" He moved faster, which made the hall tilt and the lights dim. He collided with a body that had him taking two steps back, then two more when yet another hand planted itself on his chest in the action of halting him.
" Colonel?"
John looked up into McKay's bruised face, then flicked down at the sling cradling a bound arm. He stared at it wistfully when he heard his name. He looked up and to the right at Teyla, her lip cut and her wrist bound in a splint. Behind her was Ronon – relatively unscathed, say for a few missing dreads.
But, hey, they were alive. He was supposed to feel relief, joy, even slight annoyance that his team had been injured; that much he knew or at least recalled from past experience. He couldn't even force the emotions on himself.
What he did feel was eyes, countless eyes, touching him like hands, digging beneath the skin to see what was underneath. It made him just as queasy as actual touch, and he began to shake from more than just deteriorating limbs. Not even a circle of wraiths would have him feeling this trapped. His eyes flicked to the shocked faces of Dr. Weir, Major Lorne, Rodney, Teyla – even Ronon looked uncertain.
John's clothes fell from his nerveless hand, and his shoulders hunched in another cringe. Why now? He'd been stared at for numberless days. Why was it bringing him down now?
He couldn't move fast enough, not without falling. He slipped passed Rodney by pressing closer to the wall. The others were following, something John knew by feel, because what else were they going to do? He was acting like a freak, and he knew it.
Screw it, he didn't care. He didn't have the strength to. He needed every last ounce of it to keep his legs moving and carry him to the one place that he would end up in anyways, even if he locked himself in his own quarters just to shut out the stares.
John was hugging the wall now. Each step made his legs quake, and his breath caused his side to flare up as though someone were jabbing him with hot pokers. Time – cruel SOB that it was – lengthened the corridors, turning minutes to hours, and prolonging the agony of movement and a gnawing, empty stomach.
But all roads lead somewhere, and he came to the infirmary with a suddeness that startled him.
His startlement was nothing compared to Beckett's. The Scottish doctor didn't even have time for a yelp of alarm when John stumbled into the infirmary with no wall for support. Carson had to drop his clipboard in order to catch the wasted body before it violently embraced the hard floor.
" Oh bloody freakin' hell! What..." He had John beneath the armpits, and struggled to lift him up back onto feet that had finally rebelled and quit. John gripped the shoulder's of Carson's lab coat in the same vain attempt. He looked up at the doctor's wide-eyed face, and gripped his shoulders tight.
" H-Hey doc?" Gazes burned his back, drilled holes into his skull. He just wanted it to stop, and sleep unexposed. " I-I'm... really tired."
Carson's features softened. " Aye... I can see that lad."
SGASGASGASGA
A/N: I apologize for seeming to have skimped out on some excellent team whump. But I assure you, it will come eventually. There will be all out team abuse further down the line, you can be certain of that.
