A/N: Silly muses and bunnies with their crazy cliffhangers. They are most pleased by the responses.
Ch. 5
We're all Mad Here
Rodney looked down at himself, then at John, back at himself, and back at John again. "Ooookaaaaay?" He was still dressed mission ready, but Sheppard was sporting a rather bland pair of scrub-like white pajamas that appeared to be a size or two too big on his angular frame. Maybe it was the trick of the light and so much blinding white – at least Rodney honestly hoped it was – because Sheppard was looking grotesquely pale and a few pounds lighter. Which was a bad thing. A very bad thing. The pallor, obviously, because that kind of coloring was not a healthy shade. And Sheppard had already been looking a little extra wiry before this whole mess began.
No, it was the scrubs. The scrubs provided no false padding, unlike a jacket and tac-vest. The scrubs were accentuating what was already there. Sheppard was fine despite being drugged into next month. Perfectly fine.
Rodney realized he was being hysterical, and yet the realization did nothing to change the fact. It took a moment of deep, cleansing breaths before he was finally able to move. He knelt next to Sheppard and pressed his fingers into the man's neck.
The pulse was slow, sluggish. But, then again, tall people were said to have slower heart-beats.
Good crap, drowning in denial much?
McKay grimaced in disgust at the small pool of spittle forming beneath John's mouth. He shook Sheppard's shoulder.
"Colonel. Hey, Sheppard. Wakey, wakey. I need you front and center to help me think our way out of this VE. Crap, if this is what the future holds for X-box I'm never playing another video game as long as I live. Sheppard!"
Sheppard moaned and lifted his even more disheveled head. " Rooo-dney?"
"Yes, Rodney, the one and only." He patted the side of John's face with the right amount of force not to cause hurt. "Come on, you need to snap out of it."
"Tired," Sheppard breathed, dropping his head back onto the spongy floor.
Rodney clenched his jaw, focused on frustration rather than terror, grabbed John's shoulders that felt uncomfortably sharp, and shook until the man's teeth clacked. "Sheppard! Wake now, nap later. Come on! I need you up so we can get the hell out of here!"
Sheppard shoved at him with as much strength as a four year old. But it was his pallor going a little green that finally forced Rodney to stop.
"Sheppard, I swear, if you puke on me, I will put blue dye in your shampoo and call you a smurf for the rest of your damn days!"
Sheppard gave him a withering look muted by his overwhelming pathetic appearance. "Can you say... decaf?"
Rodney reared his head back. "You wouldn't?"
"Jus' try...me."
Rodney opened his mouth to retort and then remembered that now wasn't a good time. "We'll debate revenge tactics later. So, tell me which movie you recently saw that involved Belleview Sanitarium? Or is this a personal experience?" He prided himself on knowing enough about the military that if one of their own ended up in the loony-bin, then they usually didn't make it past Major. Although, maybe, that was just the Air Force. There were a few marines that had McKay wondering...
"Never... sanitarium. Psychiatrists, psychologists... no nut-house." John smiled drunkenly. "Close, though."
"Oh, yes, that's encouraging. You know, the more I come to know about you, the less I want to know. What were you almost in for?"
Sheppard replied with a tired, woeful, while also 'none-of-your-damn-business-McKay' glare. Sheppard being able to pull off all three expressions at once under a drugged haze shouldn't have been natural.
Rodney gulped. "Right, never mind."
The padded door swung open on hinges that needed a good oiling. Norman Rockwell – Dr. Atar - was back, wearing a lab coat and brandishing a clip board. He padded softly over to Sheppard, trailing two burly orderlies like Rottweilers in human form. They were wearing rather unflattering looks of anticipation as though bruising drugged, bony, helpless Lt. Colonels was the highlight of their day. Rodney's hand whipped out the nine-mil still secured to his thigh and aimed it.
"Okay." He cleared his throat to make the words less of a squeak. "Okay, just back off, all of you. You lay one finger on him and I'm blowing it off."
"Yull... Sh't me... M'kay," John slurred.
Dr. Rockwell – Atar - placed his hand on John's arm. "Are you still seeing this McKay fellow, John? Still won't accept his death, I see."
Rodney's jaw dropped and the gun with it from his suddenly numb hands. "Oh no."
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Teyla was going to be sick. Ronon was holding a dead woman in his arms, and he was happy. Not that she did not want Ronon to be happy. She just preferred it when what made him happy was real. Perhaps, if he were killing a wraith, excelling in a competition of strength, or basking on a warm beach similar to the one in the first scenario, then maybe it would have been acceptable.
But he was hugging a fake, dead woman.
"Ronon?" Teyla's voice cracked. As Sheppard might say, this was freaking her out. She had never met Melena, but she knew of her from the few stories Ronon felt like telling of her. Simple descriptions told with such affection it brought the usually emotionless man to tears while also smiling. Close to tears. If he did cry, it was only in private. But it was enough to let Teyla know how much this quiet, stoic man had loved this woman.
That love was now terrifying her. Ronon was wearing a look of relief over something that wasn't even real.
Ronon looked up, and Melena's head turned. She regarded Teyla with narrowed eyes, but not with the contempt of a jealous lover. This was something more suspicious, disgusted, even afraid.
"Ronon, we must kill her."
Teyla stiffened, heart pounding. "But what have I done?"
"She is a wraith, Ronon," Melena said. She pushed away from her love to circle Teyla and those that restrained her. "Kill her now before she changes back."
Teyla looked at Ronon. Ronon looked at her, shocked.
"Ronon, I am not..." Pain cramped her midsection, doubling her over in time to see the corpse-white bleeding over the dark skin of her hand. Morbid fascination had her turning her palm up. A feeding mouth split her palm. She looked up at Ronon in horror. "Ronon, this is not real. We are in the game. This is not real!"
Ronon kept staring, just as horrified and completely confused, which she had never seen on the runner before.
Horror morphed into betrayed rage. Teyla was wrong, she'd been scared before, she was terrified now.
As Dr. McKay might say, "Oh crap."
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It had all been Holland's fault. Not Winchester the third whatever. Holland. Holland hadn't made it back except in a body-bag. Sheppard hadn't just been shot, he'd been shot, dehydrated, and starving because the guys doing the shooting had cornered him in a nearby cave. And Sheppard had felt it his duty to drag a dead body along with him. Hunger plus blood-loss plus a rotting corpse plus more hunger and dehydration equaled unequivocal delirium. He'd been so freakin' nuts, the elephants weren't pink, they were red with machine guns, and the yellow Submarine had had nukes that wouldn't stop going off.
It wasn't until the medics had gotten the bullet out and enough liquids and nutrients in him that it was realized the need to stuff him in the nut house was not necessary. Psychiatrists and psychologists, yes. Loony-bin, no. But it had been close, real close. A male nurse had commented, "He sure kicks ass for a skinny guy." Enough said.
Really, really, really close. So he hadn't been as surprised as he should have been on waking up in a padded room. John swore it had all been foretold in a fortune cookie once.
"Colonel Sheppard," the painfully familiar doctor said. "How are you feeling today?"
John lifted his head on his unsteady neck and suffered from having a thin string of drool dribble out of the corner of his mouth. "Like I've been drugged. How the hell... do you think I... feel?" He hated it when he couldn't think straight. "Rodney's alive... right there." He lifted a finger that was as unsteady as his neck, pointing at McKay standing in the corner with his jaw hanging open as though someone had just told him Zelenka won the Nobel Prize.
The doctor glanced over his shoulder and then glanced back wearing one of those patronizingly calm smiles. It was both placating and condemning Sheppard as having too many screws loose. "John, we've been over this. What you're seeing is not real. Dr. McKay was killed, shot through the head. It caused you to have a nervous breakdown. Now, I know your memory isn't as reliable as it should be – that's the fault of the medication, I'm afraid – but you're usually more quick on the draw about remembering what happened."
John did remember, quick as a slap: McKay talking, big whole blooming in the back of his head, blood, brain matter, bits of bone. John could still smell it, metallic and cold. He could feel it running down his face, dropping organic bits to plop on the floor.
"Sheppard!"
John flinched. Rodney was kneeling next to Doc. Familiar and looking panicked.
"Not real, Sheppard. It's not real. We're in a game, remember?"
John looked between the two supposed figments of his imagination. "Game?" Major Charles Winchester the third, not Holland. The supposed to be dead man alive on the gurney had been Holland but called himself Winchester. Sheppard shook his head. "It's a game."
Doc. Familiar ran his hand soothingly over John's head. "It's not a game, John. I know it feels unreal, but that's the medication."
John jerked his head away. "End game."
"John, please, don't make this harder on yourself."
"Abort."
"This will never end if you don't accept the truth."
"Exit."
"John, please."
"Don't listen, Sheppard!"
Sheppard sucked in a sharp breath. "Control-alt-delete."
"John?"
"Sheppard!"
John slapped his hand over his ears. "Will you two just shut up! End game, end game, end game...!"
Doc Familiar sighed. "You brought this on yourself, John."
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The wraith that had once been Teyla used her new found strength to brake free. She took off running from the ruined building. Old instincts kicked in and Ronon gave chase, Melena close at his side, as it should be. All felt right in the world, except for an incessant voice that kept questioning the logic in all this.
This isn't supposed to be happening. Melena didn't escape, she died.
You don't know that.
Teyla isn't a wraith.
Could have been from the start, first test subject of Beckett's.
He hadn't created the retrovirus then. If he had perfected it, Sheppard wouldn't have turned into a bug.
The voice was making him angry. It's logic made him think of McKay, it's calm made him think of Sheppard. Both men had a tendency to be right about a lot of things. Not everything, but a lot.
Ronon weaved around rubble and leaped over skeletal chunks of dead buildings. Everything was as he remembered when he'd been dragged back to this place to fight the wraith. Sheppard had been there, and Teyla. She'd been human. She'd saved him. A wraith would not have done that.
Teyla moved ahead at inhuman speed, took a corner and vanished when Ronon took it after. But he could still smell her stench, like blood, death, but underlined by a perfume that was Teyla from the candles she always burned when meditating.
"I know you're here, wraith!" Ronon bellowed.
She rose from behind a stack of crates and emerged with more grace than she had even as a human. She was tense, scared, but resigned. "Ronon, please. This is not real. We are still in the game. You know me. You know this is not possible. You know this Melena is not real. You know, Ronon. It is painful for you, I understand, but you cannot give into this dream. Please, Ronon, do not do this."
Ronon had had plenty of wounds throughout his life, but it was always the non-physical ones that hurt the most. He looked over at Melena still standing beside him. Her look was hard, cold. She was a strong woman, but Ronon had never seen such a look on her face.
Her features blurred, shifted, the hard look becoming soft, urgent, a look Ronon knew, and yet he still wanted to believe it.
"Ronon!" Teyla's voice wavered. He looked at her, at her fear. He could smell it on her. Wraith never stank of fear.
Teyla stepped forward. "Ronon, I...!" She jerked to a halt when a red dot appeared in her forehead. Blood drew a perfect red line between her eyes to her nose. Then she crumpled into a heap on the ground. Ronon looked numbly over at Melena holding her arm out straight with a nine-mil still smoking in her hand.
A nine-mil.
Ronon raised his weapon. "End game." He blasted a gaping hole in Melena's chest and vowed that Pondo would be next.
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Rodney tried to pull the two human Incredible Hulks off the more breakable body of his friend. His hands passed right through, touching Sheppard on the other side. The man wasn't exactly up to enduring physical contact at the moment. Two more pairs of hands was too many and he thrashed, kicked, bucked, and snarled more viciously. One slab of muscle wrapped his thick arm around John's chest. Rodney heard the snap above the yelling, and yelling turned into screaming.
Rodney felt ready to puke. "Crap, Sheppard, it's not real. That rib isn't really broken. Sheppard!"
John struggled harder. The second bruiser switched from grappling with John's legs to wrapping his arm around Sheppard's throat and squeezing. The lack of oxygen was further incentive for John to kick things up a notch. He added twisting and squirming to the kicking and back arching, even throwing his head back to flatten any unsuspecting nose behind him. The bruiser squeezed harder.
There was a snap. Sheppard sagged like a puppet with cut strings. His head hung at an odd angle. The room went quiet.
Dr. Atar tsked. "Oh dear. Now look what we've done." He turned to face Rodney for the first time and smiled that annoying, placating, crap-eating grin of his. "Let's try something different, shall we?"
Rodney blacked out for no reason that he could think of.
TBC...