CHAPTER 16: Ashes & Fading Memories

The one thing Sheppard liked about the infirmary on Atlantis was that there were no boring ceiling tiles. This wasn't the Milky Way after all. The architects of this majestic city had been a tad bit more creative to say the least. Towering columns of bubbling water stretched up into a soothing dance of arcs and lines similar to that of the ceiling of a cathedral. Dark shadows played across the arches accompanied by a few shimmers of light dancing across them like that of a soothing serenade.

It was mesmerizing. He had been staring at the play of light and shadow for over an hour. What he hadn't realized was that there were people standing at his bedside, frantically trying to get him to respond to them.

A sinking sensation told him that it hadn't all been a dream. The trip to Herac had indeed happened. His spiral into darkness had happened. From what little he could recall, he knew there could be no redemption for what he had done. He hadn't even expected to survive. How disappointed he was to have woken and found that death had cowardly retreated.

The voices of his friends filtered in lazily. He found that even if he wanted to respond, he really didn't have much to say.

"Colonel Sheppard, please." Elizabeth's pleading voice broke through the fog that was settlled on his mind. "What does this mean, Carson?"

"I don't know, lass. It could be any number of things. Shock, a side affect from the poison, a state of catatonia. Now he's only just woken, so maybe we should give him some time to…."

Another voice cut him off. It was high-pitched and angry.

"No! Not after what he's done. We can't allow him to selfishly tune out the rest of us after all that's happened." A ruffle of clothing and Sheppard sensed a presence leaning in on him. McKay's pale face disrupted his view of the light show. "Do you hear me Sheppard? Snap out of it, damn it! You're not allowed to be catatonic!!!"

"Calm down, McKay." Ronon's soft grumble could be heard from nearby.

"No, I…." Someone must have physically stopped the scientist from his building rampage as he was pulled from Sheppard's view and replaced by the compassionate but worried face of Teyla. She ran a soothing hand through his hair…god even his hair ached…and smiled at him.

"Colonel Sheppard. We wish for you to speak to us. Please. We only wish to make sure that you are…as well as can be expected." Teyla was about to say "all right", when she realized that at the moment, that wasn't really possible for any one of them.

Sheppard swore he could almost hear the waves of the ocean crashing against Atlantis far below them. The shadows grew, the lights dimmed. He had barely noticed but time had passed and he was now alone. Or so he thought.

Clattering and muttering met his ears: McKay. Damn the man. He couldn't be separated from his precious laptop, could he? It angered Sheppard, but he was so weak, so depressed, there was nothing he could even muster to do about it.

His eyes were dry. Had they really been open all that time? He tried to blink, tried to swallow against a horribly dry throat, but he couldn't seem to get his body to respond. But somehow, panic did not come. He felt rather peaceful like this.

He drifted in this malaise for a long time.

-------o-------

Morning dawned on Atlantis. The air was still as if waiting for permission to move. It was quiet, too quiet.

Carson was writing down some notes to update Sheppard's chart, standing at the end of his bed. The doctor was beyond exhausted. He kept making mistakes in his notations, scribbling them out in frustration. He exhaled loudly, rubbing over his left eyebrow before placing the chart back in its appropriate place. He leaned forward, placing hands upon the railing of Sheppard's bed and stared at the sleeping man.

The colonel had just about gone into cardiac arrest on the Jumper but miraculously, his vitals stabilized. In turn, he had become unresponsive. Later in the evening of the day before, Sheppard had opened his eyes. There was nothing more than that. He was still unresponsive. Now the man was in a deep slumber once again. It wasn't like he was going to bounce back after…well, it just wasn't going to happen overnight anyway.

Thinking back to the horrors they witnessed on the planet, Carson shuddered. He could only surmise that those who had been poisoned would have eventually succumbed to heart failure or brain aneurisms due to withdrawal, or worse, by each other's hand. The levels of adrenaline found in Sheppard's blood was alarming: it was a miracle the man was still alive.

"Dr. Beckett?" A soft voice came from behind him.

Startled, he turned to find Teyla looking at him through tired eyes, a smile of greeting on her face. She glanced at Sheppard as she came to stand beside the doctor and then looked back to Carson.

"Sorry, love, didn't hear you approach." Carson said in a quiet voice.

"How is he?" She wasn't expecting any miracles, but she was forever the optimist. Carson admired her for it, knowing the history she had survived.

"Holding his own."

"He is strong." Teyla nodded. They remained in silence for a few minutes.

"Teyla, are you all right?" Carson hesitated to ask, as he knew the answer already.

Teyla looked down with another smile before regaining eye contact. There was sorrow in her eyes that did not quite reach her lips. She was strong, too.

"In time I will be." She said, studying his face. "And so will you. And Ronon, and Rodney, and even Colonel Sheppard. We will recover."

"How can you be so sure?" Carson hadn't seen anything compared to what Teyla had witnessed in a lifetime, but what he had seen would haunt him until death.

"It is what we do." Teyla replied simply. She patted him on the arm and then left him alone once more.

"Aye. You hear that Colonel? You'll be just fine." Carson patted a hand on Sheppard's bruised and swollen hand. He smiled briefly and retreated back to his office.

It was just too quiet.

-------o-------

"His motor functions have been affected, hence why he can't respond to us. The basic qualities of the poison are quite similar to caffeine, oddly enough. We analyzed it and found that the traces remaining in his system were the equivalent to something like consuming one hundred and forty cups of coffee all at once. The half-life on that alone is equivalent to four days for his body to metabolize all of it. Side affects can include everything from delirium, which we've seen already, to seizures, to heart palpitations…the list goes on." There was a brief pause. "He's a mess."

Beckett.

"Shit."

Smirk. Ronon.

"Ronon, I do believe you've been spending too much time with the marines." Came a chuckle from the doctor.

"I know worse words than that, doc, and most in languages you've never heard of." Came the dry response.

It took him until now to realize his eyes had been open during their entire conversation. However, Sheppard found to his detriment that his body seemed to be ignoring him at the moment. He couldn't move a muscle.

Brief flashes of another time and place, dark and sinister, interrupted his eavesdropping. Intense heat and flame. Embers dancing on the wind. Women. Children. Screaming and fleeing but to no avail. The face of death. Pain. Darkness.

He willed it all to go away. He was literally trapped in a body that refused to move under his command. There was nothing he could do but be subjected to haunted memories, even if they were the briefest of flashbacks. He would never fully recover all the time he spent on that planet. For that, he would be forever grateful.

His mind shifted back to observing his surroundings. Carson and Ronon had gone. He was alone. It was oddly comforting.

He was a monster, after all. And just who would want to be in the company of a monster?

-------o-------

Huddled into a ball on the couch in her quarters, Elizabeth tried to make sense of things. She hadn't even been on the mission, yet everything she'd gathered after their return was enough to have her doubting her power of command.

How could they all have been so naïve to think this planet was the answer to all their problems? Had they really become so blind by the pressing need for the power a fully functioning ZPM or two promised them?

She couldn't shake the haunted looks of those who had returned. Sheppard's team barely spoke to her, or each other for that matter. They spoke nothing of Sheppard's actions, of which she had learned little through Major Lorne. Whatever had transpired on that planet was kept locked away from her.

Maybe it was better that way.

-------tbc--------

I'm sorry, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine to read when Shep wakes up to ceiling tiles. I mean, come on, do you really think the Ancients would've put something so horribly mundane in their beautiful city?!