A/N: The muses are pleased by your offerings of reviews, and present you with more Sheppard care taking.
Ch. 8
Village 443
There was no familiarity for John. He heard sounds – voices and other noises he couldn't give a name to. He smelled things he'd never scented before. No heart monitor beeping, smells of antiseptics and rubbing alcohol, and definitely no Scottish accent nagging him to open his eyes already. His brain swam in darkness that his senses were trying to pull him out of. Except his senses didn't know a damn thing. The more they pulled him from the dark, the more he hurt, pushing him back under. But his senses needed to make sense of his messed up surroundings.
A third sense joined the party. He could feel. Softness beneath him, and unbearable heat alternating with cold, then going back to heat. If he wasn't shaking when the cold hit, he was shaking from the pain. But, sometimes, the pain would ebb away like a tide, and the darkness became absolute heaven. He wanted to surrender permanently to it, but his damn senses wouldn't let him.
What he heard and what he smelled sent shocks of cold racing down his spine. He was in a strange place, surrounded by strange people.
Ah hell, what now! Were they helping him out of the kindness of their hearts, or healing him for a bit more fun involving adding to an already massive collection of injuries?
His senses were making their point quite clear. Everything was wrong, and he needed to find out just how wrong. But every time he tried, the pain would spike, and the darkness would suck him back under. So he kept pushing through it, testing it, waiting for the moment when the pain wasn't so bad...
SGA
Frosty grass crunched under Maj's feet like bits of brittle clay if she so much as shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Frost flaked off the splints of wood she picked up from the top of the pile and placed into her woven hand-basket. Every breath felt like bringing the frost into her lungs, and it made her cough. It would have been easy to assume winter was just around the corner, but the temperatures had a way of fluctuating during the fall season before real winter finally set in. Maj lifted her foot to tap a piece of wood against her heel and dislodge more frost, then set it on top of the stack in her basket.
It was a sufficient pile in terms of number. She turned and started toward the back door of her home. She saw them out of the corner of her eye, standing clustered against the cold like a nervous herd of dumb pack animals
" I've got no time for words," Maj stated. The leader of this five person gaggle detached from the rest to start following her, so she increased her steps.
" Madame Maj," Lorek said. He was a tall man with wide shoulders, thinning brown hair, and a beard flecked with gray reaching past his chest. He wore a fur-lined, heavy long coat of dark beige frayed at the hem, and buttoned up to his neck. The heavy boots on his feet thumped and crunched the frozen grass. His longer limbs gave him enough stride to catch up to the determined Maj. " Though family business is your affair it is still your duty to alert us to the matter of bringing another into this village." Lorek's voice was deep, but a little soft. " Whether his intent is to stay or not."
Jorsek you dead-brained tattle-tale. Maj began pondering suitable forms of revenge that involved placing something foul smelling in the man's home, when she was interrupted by Lorek's calloused hand landing on the shoulder of her faded white coat with the fur-lined hood.
" Madame Maj, please. We are not hear to harass you. We simply wish to know more of this supposed wayward child of yours."
When Maj reached her door, she stopped and turned on her heels, tilting her head to one side. " Well, you could ask the poor boy yourself, but all you would get is a load of ill-induced ramblings for your trouble. As for anything I have to tell you, I'm sure Jorsek's reiterated it all for me, so I really don't have much else to say."
Lorek's hand dropped from her shoulder. The tall man straightened, and made the act of adjusting his coat to keep his twitchy hands busy. The man didn't do well in a confrontation, especially with Maj. The only reason he had been made head of the Village council was because he had a propensity for wriggling into other people's business. That, and Maj had it on good authority that the man knew how to bribe (she'd gotten a few transactions several times in the past that she blatantly dismissed), especially bribing men like Jorsek and his contingent of village guardians.
But it wasn't Lorek's unsavory means of keeping the order in the village that irked Maj to giving him the cold shoulder. It was the way he kept coming to Maj every time something unusual popped up, asking her if anyone or anything happened to 'follow her back' from the capital after returning from an off world trip, or whether she had brought back some strange device of unknown origins.
It had gotten worse when the disappearances began. If she wasn't being bombarded by questions concerning the possibility of some odd creature having hitched a ride with her from some other world, it was catching the fleeting glimpse of cautious, suspicious, and even hostile looks shot her way. She was an off-world trader, therefore the perfect scapegoat for every mishap. Some of the blasted fool farmers even had the tenacity to blame her for any crop failure. So Maj had every right under the sun to be petulant when it came to the folks of this village.
Lorek inhaled a deep, calming breath, and released it slowly in a stream of cloudy air. " Please Maj, be reasonable. We are only being cautious. Just last week, Eyring Kesta's wife went into the woods to collect food herbs, and she never returned."
Maj's nerves jolted electrically on hearing this. She knew Eyring Kesta as a decent, patient man. His wife Aleen tended to be timid, but had always been fond of Maj's stories of off world travel.
Lorek continued. " I know the brigands haven't been seen for a month, and no one new has been thrust our way, but we still cannot turn our backs on inquiring after any stranger that enters our village. This isn't an interrogation, Maj. We are neither accusing you nor your son of any wrong doing. We are simply adhering to procedure."
All the fight left Maj right then and there. She couldn't well argue against procedure when people were popping off into thin air never to be heard from again. But she hated being forced to weave so much deceit.
Although wording things just right wasn't necessarily making it deceit. " His name is John, and I found him in a strange place, wounded and ill, so brought him back for healing. Though I can make no precise promises, being that he hasn't been raised on this world, chances are going to be good he won't be sticking around. He'll want to go back. When he's better, I'll allow you a chance to speak with him... But not until then."
Lorek's shoulders sagged and the muscles of his face went slack in relief. " Thank you, Maj. That is all we ask. And we promise to treat him respectfully."
Maj gave Lorek a short, stiff nod. " You'd better. Now, if you don't mind, I must attend to my son." She turned, and didn't give Lorek the chance to respond when she went inside. She walked quickly through her kitchen with the small electric stove next to the door, a sink on the left wall, and her pantry on the right. At the other end of the kitchen was the short hall leading to the front room. She turned and headed up the stairs to the guest room.
Her charge was still fast asleep under the piles of blankets that rose and fell with his heavy breathing. She could hear the breath rattling in his lungs, and the rhythm became interrupted by coughs. Maj set the basket of wood by the stove and went over to the young man. She knelt beside him, her knees popping, and placed her hand against his forehead.
Maj clucked her tongue. " Still a bit too warm. Guess it's time to take off the layers." She stood and began removing each blanket one at a time to fold them and set them on her work table. She did this until John was down to being covered by one blanket. Maj pulled that one back in order to check on his wounds. He was dressed in one of Gidel's old work shirts - two sizes too large for such a slender body, with a collar so wide it hung low on John's chest – and a pair of her husband's brown trousers kept in place around the skinny waist with a strip of leather like a make-shift belt (which it was. Her husband had always been fond of wide belts that would probably be uncomfortable for the young man.)
She lifted the shirt to see that the hardened pulp was beginning to flake off – time to make more. She also needed to wrap the man's chest and ankle, and change the wrappings around his wrists, which she had intended to do last night, but fell asleep watching over her charge. She'd been too exhausted then but had been refreshed enough today to change the man out of his filthy clothes – which she intended to wash and mend. Nothing more uncomfortable than being forced to wear over-sized clothes on an alien world. Maj had suffered such predicaments herself a few times.
Maj probed the man's visible ribs to ensure none of them had shifted. She tried to be as gentle about it as she could, but the soft moans of discomfort were inevitable. Then his head began to move, then his eyelids. Maj stopped.
The bruised looking lids fluttered open, blinking several times to remove the sleep film. The head rolled in Maj's direction, and the tired eyes squinted when they fell on Maj.
Maj blinked back in pleasant alarm, then managed to get her wits enough about her to smile kindly at her charge. " Well hello there. Glad to see..."
The man lifted his head and furrowed his brow, and it was then Maj realized that something was wrong. The man's eyes were glazed as though they'd been covered by a film of glass, and sweat ran from his hairline down the side of his face. Plus his breathing was increasing, faster and faster.
Maj stiffened. " Oh dear."
The glassy eyes widened. The man bolted upright and pulled the rest of himself out from under the covers, placing his feet beneath him then backing up practically stuffing himself into the corner at the head of the bed. Maj jerked in surprise and took an involuntary two steps back.
The man was fever wild, which meant that at this very moment he was capable of anything. But rather than being frightened (though she was quite nervous) Maj found herself oddly fascinated by what she was seeing. She was no stranger to the sick, being the local expert on healing plants and powders. She'd been witness to plenty of fever madness, and found the most common form of it to result in unfocused, unthinking, blind, raging panic. Some have even killed themselves in that fit of unprovoked terror, or wounded others. Sometimes it was mild, other times too volatile to handle
So which one was this stranger? Maj took careful note of the man's eyes, the look on his face, and the way he was trembling and breathing fast. It was his eyes that caught her interest. No wild, nameless panic there. John was all calculating caution, watching Maj as a wounded, cornered animal will watch its attackers, waiting for the first move to be made so he could make the second. His body was tense and in the proper position to pounce; crouched with the balls of his feet lifted off the bed, back curved, and his hands before him flat on the mattress.
This boy was ready for a fight, and it doubled Maj's unease. One would think the young man's frail state would not even register him as even a minor threat to the mind. Yet the gauntness of the face no longer hidden behind a beard, with the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, the pale, bruised skin, even the way the collar hung open to expose the whip-lean body beneath, and definitely the mussed hair gave John the air of a wild man running on pure instinct. Maj could see the pulsation of his chest with each heaving breath that sent threads of saliva flying from his lips. No matter his weakness, he was dangerous, and could inflict injury on Maj though she would probably end up inflicting more on him.
She would rather it didn't come down to that.
Maj held up both her hands and knelt to the floor. If one wanted to scare a predator, then the trick was to make oneself look bigger. If one wanted to calm a frightened being, then one needed to go the opposite way and make themselves small, and let that being know that it still retained some control.
" Easy there, John. Easy. It's all right, I'm not going to hurt you," she soothed.
The use of the man's name made John's eyes glitter with confusion.
" That's right, John, I know who you are. It is John, right? Your name was written on that necklace you're wearing."
John glanced briefly at the tags dangling from his neck, then returned his wary gaze to Maj. He shifted, backing further into the corner while retaining his stance of readiness. " Where..." his voice was harsh from ill use, and quiet. " Am... I?" Caution, confusion, and fear interchanged places with each other in his gaze. His trembling became more pronounced in his arms and legs, which meant they were about to give out. Maj risked inching a little closer to the terrified man.
" Far from home, I can tell you that now. You're at my house. My name is Maj. I found you wounded in the streets of the Ioth capital and brought you to my home so I could heal you. So, you see, you can safely assume I've no intention to hurt you. Why heal someone only to hurt them?"
" To hurt them some more," John stated. Maj jerked her head back. It had been a statement of fact, not a question. Maj hadn't been blind to the scars on his body hidden under the fresh wounds, she just hadn't given them a second thought what with her assuming the young man was a soldier and all. The round scars created by projectile weapons, and the longer marks that could have been made by whips, knives, or both. Scars of battle, and in light of what John had just said, torture.
This struck Maj momentarily dumb. " Uh... I suppose. But I've still no intention of hurting you. In fact, I've had to use some of my good herbs on you, so would prefer it if you returned the favor by not dieing on me." She gave a weak chuckle that was short lived. The man frowned in further confusion. His left arm gave out and he nearly landed face first on the mattress, but caught himself in time. Maj inched closer.
" Please, let me help you. You're ill and you need to rest, and I swear no harm will come to you while you're in my home. I know I have no proof to show for it, but you can trust me."
The wariness was gone, leaving confusion and fear to deal with. Maj inched closer, and reached out to him. He recoiled in a flinch and shrank into a shivering huddle. But he did not attack or even swat Maj's hand away when she reached up to brush back his hair.
" See? I won't hurt you, John. It's all right for you to rest. And you need to rest. I'll keep looking out for you."
Maj had to hand it to herself – prideful though it may have been – she was good. John's body eased out of its tension when she began brushing his hair back. He unfolded himself gradually from his crouched huddle to lie curled back on the bed. The feral danger left him like morning mist fading under the sun. The wild man was gone, and in his place was something so fragile looking, covered in bruises and wearing that over sized shirt, that Maj almost believed that if she wasn't careful in the way she touched him, he would shatter to dust. It struck her with such a profound sense of protectiveness that her eyes burned with tears of fury.
What if the council had demanded to see John, forcing themselves into her home and provoking John into a state of panic by getting him to wake up? They would have overreacted, seen his fear as madness, hauled him to the prison, and made a public spectacle of him in doing so. It wouldn't be the first time. It was why they always questioned her about off-world devices as there was a superstitious belief that devices existed that could control a man's mind, turn it, and thus turn the man, on his friends, family, and neighbors. When Marl Hessing's boy had started acting strangely due to a head wound obtained from trying to climb the Iaret Cliffs, the council had him locked up, 'just in case' some 'wicked' alien device was involved.
The council, the whole village, were nothing more than a collection of panic mongers hiding behind what they thought to be the best interest of the town.
The council wasn't going to lay a finger on John. They could talk to him, get to know him, but if they touched him then that was crossing the line.
Maj continued running her fingers through the mussed hair. " Listen John. I'm going to fetch some bandaging for your chest and foot. You wait right here and I'll be back before you know it."
She rose and left, hurrying to the closet in the hall to gather the rolls of cloth strips on the top shelf. When she returned, John was fighting to keep his eyes open. She coaxed him into putting a little effort into sitting up, but did most of the work in lifting him. Still, he managed to stay upright long enough for her to bind his chest. She let him lay back down as she dealt with his ankle. Once finished, she pulled the blanket back over him.
John was fast asleep. Maj smiled in relief, and lightly patted his shoulder.
" Well, that wasn't so bad."
She spoke too soon.
For the next three nights, John's fever fought against her attempts to bring it down. She brewed teas and more pulp, cleaned his wounds, cooled him with a wet rag. But the fever kept clawing it's way back up. Any food she tried to get him to eat he expelled, and she was making him drink water every five minutes for the moisture he lost every ten minutes. On the second night, his fever spiked until he was writhing, mumbling, moaning, and whimpering in agony. She had called in Gidel to help her carry John into the wash room and set him in cold water that had him screaming and struggling to get out.
Maj stayed with him, through the day and even throughout the night. It took its toll on her, and by the third day she could barely keep her eyes open, or shuffle from room to room. Then the fourth evening came, and Maj checked John's temperature, placing her hand against his forehead then both sides of his cheeks.
The skin was cool. The fever had broken. Maj released a breath of indescribable relief. She dropped her head onto the edge of the bed, and chuckled wearily, patting John's arm.
" Good job young one," she said with her voice muffled by the mattress. " You did good. You'll be all right now. All right..."
Now she could rest herself.
SGA
John heard music. Well, perhaps not music. There was no beat to it, no rhythm, but that didn't keep him from calling it music. It was a sound like tiny bells, soft, timid, and wonderfully familiar. It brought about images he would have loved to get lost in forever. Thoughts of his mother's wind-chimes hanging from the old willow tree in their back yard when he was eight. Chimes of plain metal pipes, or metal pieces shaped into animals and painted in metallic, prismatic colors that flashed and glittered in the sunlight. Chimes of crystal and of glass like giving the wind a voice when it blew. He'd always liked the crystal ones, the way the light winked off faceted surfaces, breaking light down and casting rainbow patches on the tree trunk.
The chimes induced other images. Summer days, grassy meadows and scattered trees. Mossy forests drenched in the single color of green, where shallow brooks whispered around smooth, round rocks. Fairy-tale type places, right out of Tolkein's Middle Earth. Had it been Washington? Or northern California? Pristine snow stretching forever down a mountain side under a crisp blue sky. Walking through it had been like wading through a sea of diamonds. Cool breezes on hot days, and his mother sitting on the wooden porch swing she always had in the back yard, facing where ever her chimes were hung.
John would have been content to wallow deeper into the memories, but the chimes compelled him to know. Were they his mother's? Something told him no, but he still had to see for himself.
John felt the muscles of his eyelids flutter, struggling against his command to open, then finally relenting. He managed a crack when radiant light blinded him and he had to squeeze his eyes shut. He tried again, pulling them apart a centimeter at a time for his eyes to absorb the light molecule by molecule. That light faded from blinding to gentle. He blinked away the film blurring his vision, and saw the chimes swaying above him. Chimes of metal pipes surrounded by crystals or rocks smoothed and shaped. Dark silver shales of what looked like hematite, liquid purple amethyst, and misty quartz carved into teardrops, long pieces of black obsidian carved into a spiral, more quartz shaped similar and giving John the impression of icicles.
John's favorite were the clear crystals; tear-drop shaped, star shaped, or with no real shape or faceted surface at all, like droplets of water frozen in time. White light flashed off them, and colors danced around John across the ceiling and along the walls. If each color had a sound, white would be the chimes. Blue could be anywhere from the roar of waves to a single water drop. Green the whispering rush of leaves. Yellow the sigh of the wind. Red the roar and snapping of flames. Violet would be perfect, comfortable silence. Black – that could go two ways - chirping crickets, or hollow empty silence, like loneliness.
John was content in musing over what most would deem as unimportant. He felt heavy, as though the bones of his limbs had taken on the consistency of rock. He wanted to drift back to sleep and let his mind wander through the images the chimes produced. But other images were slinking in like nocturnal creatures testing the light, ones that had nothing to do with what the chimes were creating. Fleeting flashes of uncaring faces, lips curled into sneers, and fists flying at him. John frowned, and shuddered. Aches and pains started waking up throughout his body, coinciding with the direction the blows of the memories were aimed.
There wasn't a friendly face throughout the mental barrage, until the old lady's face popped into the mess. Her face had been kind, as had been her touch. John focused on that until his mind settled, then cleared. John inhaled a deep breath but winced when his side cramped. He pulled his hands up to either side of himself, and pushed his leadened frame back against the wall as support to push himself up into a sitting position. His arms shook with the effort, and he had to rest with every two inches he achieved. He kept at it until he was upright enough to get the lay of his surroundings as he slumped against the corner, panting.
It was a small room, with a kind of work desk cluttered with what appeared to be craft projects on one side, and a short, square, black metal stove on the other. The closed door was across from the bed. John turned his head for a look out the window, but couldn't see much except for a solid light gray sky like an overcast winter.
His struggle to sit up had drained him, and he had nothing left to scoot back down beneath the warm covers. He looked down at himself, and twisted his mouth at the large shirt covering him with a collar so wide one side nearly hung down to his elbow. With a shaking hand, John jerked the collar back over his sharp shoulder. He was plenty aware of the fact that he wasn't even one step toward one hundred percent, but he also knew he hadn't gotten that bad off. Who ever owned or had owned this shirt was a big guy – a really big guy.
The door creaked open, it seemed, on it's own accord, and it was enough to get John's body to work up a grain of energy for him to go rigid. A creature, like a small, two-legged dinosaur with folded membranous wings attached to its spindly fore-arms, trotted into the room making clicking, purring sounds. It leaped onto the side of the bed and scurried up, and John's heart leaped into his throat. He shrank away from the creature that started sniffing at him. Once it appeared to have gotten a nose-full of his scent, it started rubbing up against him like a cat, butting its head into his chest, then it's whole body.
John laughed nervously. " Aren't you friendly," he said. He lifted his shaking hand, and the creature immediately butted into it, arching its back to rub its spine under John's palm. John was surprised by the velvet fuzzed skin rather than cool, leathery scales. The creature chirped and purred contentedly until it finally circled then curled itself up in John's lap.
John let out a breath of relief. " Okay. Well at least I know the pets are friendly."
" And incredibly loyal to boot."
John snapped his head up at the voice. The old woman with the silver braid of hair was standing in the door way, watching John with a small smile on her face and mild spark of amusement in her eyes. She was dressed in a large violet skirt that stopped half an inch above the floor, and an off-white knit sweater. Around her neck was a polished blue crystal in the shape of a tear attached to a thin, leather thread. In her hands was a tray carrying a tin cup of something steaming, some bandages, and several small bowls. She entered the rest of the way into the room and set the tray on the table so she could pull up a small stool to the bed side. Her wrinkled finger pointed at the green winged dinosaur.
" Ris liked you from the start, or he wouldn't be curled up against you right now."
John twitched an uneasy smile. " That's a good thing, right?"
The old woman wrinkled her brow in silent perplexity. John shrugged.
" It's been my experience that just because something likes you, that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing."
The woman's brow smoothed and seemed to pull her mouth up in a smirk. " He won't be marking you as his territory if that's what you mean."
John lifted one shoulder that sent the shirt collar sliding down the other shoulder, which he quickly snatched back into place. " Among other things." He took in his surroundings for a second time at a glance, but lingered on the steaming cup for a moment. Something smelled good - food good – and he bet it was coming from that cup. The smell forced him to become aware of the cold hole in his stomach screaming to be filled.
" Hungry?" the woman asked. John's eyes snapped back to her and her knowing smirk. John felt no real trepidation around this apparently kindly old lady, but he wasn't naïve enough to let his guard down that easily, not until he knew the full situation concerning his current predicament. He nodded.
The woman slapped her knees then rose. " Of course you are. But nothing solid for you yet." She began to fuss around John much like Carson would be doing right now. She placed a hand on his shoulder to slowly ease him forward so she could adjust the pillow. She then placed both hands beneath his arms to lift him up a little more until his back was comfortably against the wall with the pillow cushioning his backbone. John felt the usual prickle of irritation over the fussing, but seeing as how he'd just met this woman, kept the desire to gripe to himself.
" Thanks," he said instead.
The woman gave him another smirk then a pat on the shoulder. " No pleasant deal being invalid," she said. " And treated like a child because of it."
John stared at her in surprise. The woman merely winked at him as she reached out to take the cup. " You strike me as the independent type." She held the cup out to him. " Plus my son used to give me the same look when I would fuss about him during illness."
John took the cup into his unsteady hands, and noticed for the first time the bandages around his wrist. The old woman turned to toss more wood into the stove.
" Those were quite a mess," she said. She peered over her shoulder at him. " Actually you were quite the mess from head to foot." She returned her attention to the stove. " My name's Maj, by the way, in case you don't remember. I told you once before but it was while you were suffering from fever so I doubt you retained much memory of that moment."
John took a sip of the tea-brown liquid. It was a little watery, but had a nice, mild, beef-stew flavor. It was warm going down his throat, and snuffed the cold the moment it hit his stomach. " Where am I?" he asked.
Maj stirred the burning wood with a poker. " My home in the village of 443. First wilds settlement in the east."
John choked on his next sip. " Wilds?"
Maj set the poker leaning against the wall and straightened, dusting her hands off onto her skirt. " Wilds, wilderness, beyond the city. The government's attempt at reclaiming this planet." She turned back to John and sat herself on the stool, leaning with one arm on the edge of the bed. " By the alarmed look on your face, I'm assuming you've heard a tale or two about it."
John took another tentative sip. " Just that your government's always looking for new kinds of weapons to give you guys."
Maj shook her head bitterly. " We don't need weapons. We need better parts for that run down heap of an electric generating dam. The thing's been hiccuping for years. It's supposed to get maintenance once a month but we've been having to do it every three weeks. Our electrician practically lives there now. Too far to keep traveling back and forth so often. All I can say is thank goodness for the wood stoves or we'd all never get out of bed in the mornings."
Maj suddenly leaned forward to place her hand on John's forehead. John flinched, but not enough to get even the broth to slosh.
" Sorry," she said. " Forgot the routine check." She sat back. " Although not much point now. Your fever hasn't been back up since it broke the day before yesterday."
John took a longer sip of broth and flicked his tongue nervously over his dry lips. " What happened to me? How did I end up here?"
Maj held up a finger of the hand resting on the bed. " How you ended up here I can answer. I brought you here after witnessing your suicide attempt when saving a young boy from a bunch of thugs. Those thugs would have pounded the life right out of you, but I intervened and brought you here for some proper healing. You don't stand by and let a man get killed for doing the right thing. As for what happened to you – well – most of the wounds you got from the beating. The rest is for you to tell, if you can remember."
John took a lesser sip. The cup wasn't even half-way consumed and he was already starting to feel full. " Well isn't that the million dollar question." Maj raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
" Well, first off... My name is Lt. Colonel John Sheppard..."
Maj's other eyebrow raised to join with the first. " Lieutenant Colonel? But your necklace just said John Sheppard."
John sipped. " Lt. Colonel's my rank from where I come from. It means I get to boss all the rest of the soldiers around... As long as they don't outrank me."
Maj beamed. " Ahhh, so you are a soldier then. I thought as much by the way you took on those brats. I thought to myself 'the man has style, I wonder if he's a solider?'"
John smiled, somewhat shyly. He'd never really been complimented on his fighting style. Praised for improving it from Ronon and Teyla, occasionally told that he was a good soldier, but fighting tended to be a necessary given and not something always freely commented upon (unless one thought he sucked at it.)
" You were quite good," Maj went on. " Probably would have won had you been at your full strength. But you weren't looking so well. From your smell at the time, I'd say you'd taken a little swim in the river."
John grimaced before drinking more broth. " Maybe. I recall being wet, and cold – a lot. I... Uh... I think I was trying to get away from some people."
" Well, you were lucky. Made you sick as an old Lyret, which makes you a fortunate fellow that I found you. I know the herb mixtures for countering the effects of that polluted excuse for liquid. As well as how to rid your skin of the smell."
John's eyes rounded over and his heart thudded. " What?"
Maj's chest jerked in a silent chuckle, but she waved a dismissive hand. " Oh relax, boy, it's all nothing I haven't seen before. Besides, I'm trained in the healing arts and have respect enough not to make comments over another's body, especially a sick body. I'm not a dirty minded old woman, and was a little too preoccupied with your poor condition to start giggling like some immature little girl who likes to keep her mind in the garbage." Maj's face slackened in sobriety, and she rolled her eyes down to the quilted blanket covering John, fingering a loose thread. " I was quite afraid I'd lose you before I got the chance to talk to you." She returned her gray-brown eyes to John, and smiled. " But being a soldier, I suppose it was only natural that you would fight."
John moved the cup back and forth in small circles until a tiny whirlpool was formed. " Comes with the territory."
Maj pointed at the cup. " You finished?"
" Yeah. Sorry I couldn't finished it all."
Maj took the cup and set it on the tray, trading it for a roll of bandages and one of the small bowls. " It's not your fault. I didn't expect you to finish it. You haven't kept anything down for days and your innards aren't too pleased about it. Hold out your hands."
John did as told, and Maj proceeded to unwind the bandages.
" You said you'd been escaping from some people when you dunked yourself into the river?" she asked.
John thought back, and got only flashes of pain and shouting for the effort. " I don't... really recall. The last thing I remember is visiting some friends of a friend of mine. I must have been drugged or something, because the next thing I know, I'm back on Ioth, tied to a chair or something." With a sudden thought, John looked up at Maj. " I'm still on Ioth, right?"
Maj smiled. " Yes. You're still on Ioth. I've done my world hopping for the month."
John looked back down to watch Maj remove the bandages from off his wrists.
" Anyways, I remember getting away, running, then trying to find shelter... It's just..." John wrinkled his brow as he tried to force recalcitrant memories to the surface. " It's kind of hazy right now. I don't even know why the hell I was taken. Except that the last time we were on this planet, we were trying to negotiate a trade. Medicine for the chance to find out why the wraith skip this planet on their buffet run. Your government wanted weapons, but it's my world's policy not to go handing weapons out to everyone we meet."
Maj wadded up the first bandage and set it aside. John's heart sank at the sight of his wrist swollen with bruises, abrasions, and scabs. Maj smeared some sort of green-brown goop onto the cuts.
" Well, it's our government's policy to haggle for things we don't need," Maj said. " Idiots. We could use medicines." The goop applied, Maj set aside the bowl to wrap John's wrist. " What world do you come from? I've traveled all over and I've never seen any with clothes similar to yours."
And here was the real million dollar question, or more like life or death. Maj was a nice lady, but protocol was protocol and even a world untouched by the wraith couldn't be trusted. Although if John could word it just right, then he wouldn't end up having to lie. Really it was nothing more than a matter of refraining from announcing that they resided in the city of the Ancestors.
" We're, uh, kind of new to this galaxy."
Maj looked up briefly. " Oh?"
" Yeah, we're explorers from another galaxy, a galaxy with 'gates... I mean rings... like the ones you travel through. You see, the people you call the Ancestors made a one way trip to our galaxy, which is why we have the ring. On our planet we found a map to your galaxy, plus a way to power the ring to get us here. We took it, and here we are."
Maj finished wrapping the first wrist and moved on to repeat the process with the second. " Huh. Didn't think that kind of travel was possible. Although I never even really considered it before."
John couldn't help hiccuping out a laugh. " Yeah, well, a couple of years ago I didn't even know it was possible to travel from one planet to the next through a big, freakin' ring."
Maj looked up at John, pausing in the motions to unwrap the bandage.
Oops.
" You didn't know there was a such a thing as Ancestral rings?"
Crap. John rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. " Well... it's kind of complicated. My planet's still kind of new to the ring travel thing. I mean compared to you guys. You've been using it for thousands of years. We haven't. A lot of the people on my planet get kind of weird when it comes to alien, interplanetary stuff. I mean we've been existing on our own just fine... I guess. And by that I mean we've never needed to go to other planets to get stuff. In terms of survival we have everything we need and then some. So we mostly go through the ring for exploration purposes. Which is what brought us to this galaxy – exploring. We're not a big group of people, only a couple of hundred, but – and please don't take offense to this – barring the wraith we can pretty much kick the asses of everyone else in this galaxy – weapons and technology wise."
Maj didn't look up at John when she spoke. " Your people wouldn't be in a conquering frame of mind, would they?"
John snorted at that. " Oh hell know. As a whole - not counting all the wackos who hope to get abducted by aliens – we're pretty content where we are. Like I said, we're here for strictly exploration purposes. Finding stuff, learning stuff, mostly about the Ancestors – although we call them Ancients."
" Were they your Ancestors too?" Maj asked.
" Yeah, I think so. I mean, it must be since a lot of us are genetically related to them. See, a lot of us have what's called the Ancient gene which makes us kind of, sort of, half or quarter Ancient or something." John nodded. " Ancient related, I guess. Not Ancients, though."
Maj's eyes darted up to John, unreadable, then back down. " I see."
John's heart thudded in sudden unease. " Um, I haven't offended you or anything, have I? I mean most people in this galaxy don't get the whole Ancient gene thing and the rest... they kind of get really upset about it, like we're lying and therefor giving the Ancestors a bad rep."
On finishing the last touches on the bandage, Maj gently set John's hand back on the bed, then looked up at him, catching his gaze and holding it in her own. " No, you did not offend me. And I believe you about this 'gene' thing. I'm quite aware that the Ancestors had gone somewhere when they vanished." Maj stood and placed one hand on John's shoulder to get him to lean forward enough to remove the shirt. The slight difference in temperature made him shiver.
" John, I'm going to be honest with you." She said, unwinding the bandages from around his chest. " I can get you home, but it will require patience. To leave the valley I need a new key card, but one won't be arriving for several weeks at most (hopefully at most and not beyond that)," she added under her breath. " Plenty enough time for you to heal properly and be able to endure the journey. But it also means having to endure the blasted people of this village, and I'd rather you didn't. If you think the city is bad when it comes to strangers, then you haven't seen anything until you've seen how a village reacts to an off-worlder. They tend toward violence, I'm afraid. So for reasons of safety, I've been telling folk that you're my son." Maj sucked in her breath through her teeth and grimaced. " I know, it's lying, but it'll hopefully keep the folk here off your back, so I'd strongly suggest you play along with it."
John smirked. " Yes mom."
Maj flicked him on his good shoulder. " Barely met and already you're getting smart with me."
" Just playing along."
" Yes, well, watch it or I'll play along and give you a good smack to the back of the head. It would also be best if you didn't go wandering the village a lot, especially alone. If you feel the itch to get out and about, it would be best to do it in the company of either me or Gidel – he's my nephew. You'll be meeting him soon enough."
Maj moved back enough to have both hands planted on John's shoulders, and her head ducked to position her eyes directly level with John's. " And do not go wandering through the woods, unarmed or alone. And even armed and accompanied, don't go to the ruins." She went back to removing the wrappings. " We've been experiencing disappearances lately. First tools and weapons, then people foolish enough to go walking into the deep woods without a projectile or another person. We've been wearing away new paths trying to find folk and the cause for their vanishing, but we haven't found hair nor bone of them. The theory is that the brigands have taken to being slippery rather than going with the frontal assaults, though they usually leave some sign of themselves behind. We've petitioned the government but no one's come yet, so we've taken to being extra cautious. Oh, that includes a curfew of no being about after sunset except for group functions in the town square."
John, oddly enough, found himself unaffected by this bit of info. What's an alien world without horror-movie style mysterious happenings. I knew this place was messed up in more than one way. Images of men in hockey masks brandishing machetes danced in his head.
Maj applied the goop to John's cuts and abrasions, then applied the fresh bandages around his chest. When she finished, she placed the shirt back over John and moved to the end of the bed to handle his foot. John rubbed the side of his tired face with one hand. Then he yawned wide until his jaw popped. Maj was quicker with John's ankle with there being less to wrap and no cuts to tend to. When done, she covered his bare feet back up, and moved to the work table to take up the second small bowl and hand it over to John.
" It's bitter but it will help with any pain you might be having."
John scrunched his face at a smell like disinfectant and green tea. He gagged on the first sip that burned his tongue with its bitter taste, but forced himself to down the stuff since there wasn't much to swallow anyways. He gagged a few times like a cat trying to lurch up a hairball, swallowed convulsively, and shuddered.
" Oh that was horrible."
Maj removed Ris from off John's lap so John could settle back into the bed. Maj pulled the quilt up to John's shoulders, and lightly patted his shoulder blade. " You rest as long as you need. I'll be back later with more broth should you be ready for it."
Maj took up the tray and headed form the room with Ris following.
" Maj?" John said before sleep pulled him back under.
Maj paused and turned. " Yes John?"
John's eyelids fluttered. " Thanks."
Maj grinned. " You're welcome."
John slid out of consciousness to the rhythm-less music of the chimes, and wandered the places the music brought his mind to.
SGA
TBC...
