Thanks so much for all the reading a reviewing that's been going on! (I'm still new at this whole thing, so someday I'll be one of those folks with a good introductory paragraph, but that day is not today.) Tomorrow the epilogue will be up, and this section of the story will be finished. Thanks for the love, and I probably won't see any of you for several months since classes start tomorrow, so enjoy your winter semester!
"There's nothing you can do." His voice was sing-songy, almost sweet, like and old friend coaxing you to stop doing something stupid.
"Yes I can. I'm still lucid."
"Yes, because lucid people talk to figments of their imagination."
John picked Teyla up from the back of the Jumper, avoiding looking at the Wraith the whole way. "Just shut up!"
"Now little brother, come here and sit down, you're not doing any good running around like this." John carried Teyla's body to the edge of the field and went back to work on the naquada generator. "You and I both know you're not smart enough to do this."
"Yes I am."
"No you're not. You're smart, but you're not that smart. Not even Rodney could properly calibrate this. You've only been able to figure the things out that you have because your cerebral cortex has been stimulated beyond its normal capacity, giving you a higher brain function. By my messing with your memories, it's over-stimulated your brain. If I were to leave you'd be the regular little boy you've always been." John adjusted the interface of his data pad and began entering calculations. "This is a bad plan, little brother. Rodney only let you do it because he knows you're going to die, and you'd rather die fighting."
"You bet your ass I would."
"Now John, there's no call for such language. Your mother certainly wouldn't approve." The Wraith was contentedly sitting on a rock a few feet away, watching John struggle to remain conscious. He seemed to enjoy getting a rise out of him, but John figured that was okay. He always knew how to push Rodney's buttons because he worked the same way, tell him something couldn't be done and it would be done in record time.
John kept tapping on his keyboard, trying to modify the equations to just the right point. He was almost there, he just needed a minute more. "If you're going to ignore me, little brother, I'm going to have to start talking to her again."
John looked over from his work and threatened, "Leave her alone. She can't cause you anymore trouble."
"That is true. But if you're going to be too stubborn to play, I'm just going to have to feed on her for a while." John grabbed his 6mm from his side and shot the wraith straight through the heart. He chuckled again. "So you're lucid, huh? Because lucid people summon up firearms to shoot the figments of their imagination."
He turned back to the generator and Rodney was there, tapping at the calculations. "How's it coming, McKay?"
"This is impossible Sheppard!"
"Impossible like dialing a gate while surrounded by convicts, or five-sixths a solar system impossible?"
Rodney glared at him for a moment before yelling, "This is defying the laws of physics, not even me in a million years could do this, impossible!"
"Should I call Colonel Carter to fix it then?"
"Colonel, you push, and you push. You play off the ego, and the desperate hope that bravery will win the day, but it won't. You knew someday your luck was going to run out, and this is that day." Rodney stood up, stared Sheppard straight in the eyes and said, "I can't save you." Rodney turned and sat down on the rock outcropping next to the wraith.
John stepped back to the generator, and stared at it helpless for a moment. He tapped on his radio and said, "Doc, I'm gonna need you to make another house call, something's wrong with McKay."
"I'm sorry Colonel, I can't do that."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because Colonel, you're dead, and I don't pay house calls to dead people." John turned back around, hoping a little berating would fix Rodney right up, but he wasn't there.
The Wraith smiled at him again and said, "You wanted the fight to be between you and me. Summoning friends isn't just the two of us."
"You want to go, let's go." John stepped forward, prepared to get throttled by a Wraith, and the world dissolved. He was back on his first hive ship, staring at the Queen's table, all laid out for guests.
"Sir! We're glad you could make it!" Ford saluted him and escorted him down the length of the table. "You ran a little late, but we knew you'd be coming, since you're the guest of honor, and all." Ford led him past Stackhouse, Grodin, Gaul, Abrams, Everett, and others. They all nodded their hellos to John as he went past, finally sitting at the head of the table with Ford to his right, and Sumner to his left. Sumner gave John a firm handshake and joked, "Glad you could finally join your party, Colonel."
"Well sir, I didn't realize I was running late."
"That's just like you, sir." Ford raised his glass and the group followed suit. "Time for a toast everybody. We salute Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, our mentor, comrade in arms, and killer." A unified "cheers" went up from the table as every man and woman drank to the screwed-up life of John Sheppard.
He stumbled back from the table, as with the drink they shifted into their true selves. Blood dripped from the contact point on Sumner's chest, Ford's left eye turned black, and Stackhouse merely ceased to exist. "Sir?" Ford asked concerned, "Sir, are you alright?"
"This isn't real." John staggered back from the table, muttering to himself, and turned to ran from the room. But with the turn, the scene changed, and he found himself back in the clearing. Teyla was on the ground where he'd left her, but now the breathing had slowed. John tumbled to her side and struggled to wake her, shouting in her ears as he tried to shake her back to life.
"She's gone, John." That damned wraith was still sitting right where John had left him. "You took too long. The stimulant has completely worn off and her soul belongs to me.
He ripped around and made his way back to the generator in the back of the jumper, shouting "She's not gone! I can still save her!" The clearing was gone again, and he was running down the aisle of a church.
"Sure you can. Just like you saved her." John never thought he'd feel pain like this again. There she was, wrapped in her favorite dress, green, like her eyes. He knew that was why she always wore it, to make her eyes shine. Somehow, John's dad had managed to get her green scrubs at the hospital, so even there she could have some little piece of joy.
He'd shoved this day to the darkest corner of his mind, and never thought about it again. John's method of coping had always been a strong drink and long run, which never let him work through the pain like psychiatrists wanted him to, but let him put it to a place where it wouldn't control him anymore. This memory was for long nights when he hadn't slept, and when he was just lonely enough, and stupid enough to think of happy memories from home.
Some woman from the base had chosen a wig for her, almost exactly what her hair had looked like years ago when she'd had it. She'd been wearing scarves and spiking her traces of hair for so long that the flowing locks struck John as odd. The officers and their wives were sitting in the pews, making small talk to his father, reminiscing about what a lovely woman she'd been, about how beautiful she used to be, before.
None of them had liked her in life, but the somehow managed to find nice things to say in death. She was a California surfer girl, free spirit, hippie, and artist. Not at all the kind of woman you wanted married to a Colonel in the US military. They were in love, something else these people didn't understand. His dad always said when you found a woman that beautiful, all sense of protocol went out the window.
The Wraith stood by his side, staring down at his mother, whispering "What makes you think you can save Teyla, when you couldn't save her? You couldn't even save yourself, John. Tell me, how many times did you feel the back of his hand, before death took him too?"
John just shook his head, "He couldn't help it."
"Couldn't help it?" the Wraith scoffed.
John stepped closer, resting his hands on the edge of the coffin, relishing the chance to look at her face again. "He loved her so much, that when he lost her it was hard for him to be around me, sometimes."
"Ah, you think it was alright because you're her son, not his?" John just kept watching her, waiting for some kind of movement, a breath, a flicker, something. She looked alive, like she would hop out of the casket any moment, just to tease his father and his stuffy. She always tried to keep Dad from taking himself too seriously, and tried to teach John the same. "I can see how it would be painful to keep you around. Your spirit was hers, the art, the air, the sense of humor. You even look like her. Lean, runner's build, dark, with messy black hair, and those lovely green eyes. Yes, that's complete justification for doing that to a son."
"At least he hit me less than his father hit him. And I'll never have any children to hit."
"Are you sure about that?"
The Wraith was trying to bait him, but he wouldn't win. John just smiled. "This is a happy memory now?"
"You picked the wrong one to torment me with. That spirit of hers," he met the Wraith's eyes, as the church melted away, "it taught me to fight." John awoke on the ground next to Teyla and he lurched himself to his feet.
"You'll never make it. The jumpers are already on their way here, they'll stop you before you finish." John staggered towards the generator, feeling the darkness try to swarm him and pull him back in. He just kept walking as the Wraith tormented, "That wasn't the ultimate dream, little brother."
"Stop calling me that." The Wraith stood and blocked John's path, taunting him again. "That's your nightmare."
"People calling me by annoying nicknames?" John stepped to the side, but the Wraith followed, he lurched again, but the Wraith still blocked his way. "Say my name, and I'll let you pass."
John summoned his strength, to stand up straight one last time, and clearly say what he'd been dreading. "Michael." The Wraith changed before his eyes, taking on the short haired, all-American appearance he had last held, somewhat akin to clean-cut, Aryan way his father had always looked.
"I'm what scares you the most." John tried to take another step around him, but his strength was gone, and he collapsed. He summoned the will to brace himself up and spat out, "You're dead."
"John, my boy, you and I both know that's not the point. I'm alive, just deep down inside you, rather than in my own body." Michael bent down and began explaining in his best condescending tone like John was a two-year-old.
"When you woke up the Wraith, you woke up something inside yourself that you thought you'd long since buried. After all, the vast majority of you belongs to your mother, but deep down, there's that core element that your father left you, and you're losing control of it. You've already let it out, first when Bob went after Teyla, and then when you lost control of everything to that bug virus. Of course you come back and apologize, but so did he. You've both crossed the line, and eventually he couldn't come back anymore." John managed to strain himself to his hands and knees, but one swift kick from Michael sent him flying through the air past Teyla.
He swaggered over, knowing he'd won and kept talking. "Your deepest, darkest fear is that we are brothers. After all, we're both half-breeds born of Ancient parents. You can feel that someday that code of ethics of yours is going to go out the window, and you'll be just like us."
John laid on his back, staring up at the cloudless sky. He could feel life leaving her beside him, and morosely thought that at least they were dying outside- he knew neither one of them had wanted to end in the infirmary. He tilted his head to her and reached his arm out, and stretching his fingers, he had to tell her that he tried.
"You see, little brother, your fear is that at the end of the day you're no better than us, just losing."
His fingers brushed past hers, he was almost there. He couldn't move his body anymore, he ached for air washed clean of the blood he'd spilled, but it wasn't coming. He kept reaching with what little his body hadn't been stripped of, he wouldn't let her die alone.
"You're afraid of what you have to do to fight a Michael, afraid that it's already happened, that you've sold your soul to feed your wrath, and it won't do any good. So that's the hell that awaits you when you stop fighting, that's the hell I'm here to take you to, little brother."
He loomed in the air over John and stretched down his hand, "So what do you say? Are you coming freely, or shall I take you by force?" John stared at the hand in front of his face as his fingertips stretched one last time, and touched Teyla. He felt her warmth, and the world went dark.
Thanks for reading, and if you could see so far as to press that little review button, (to tell me it was good or it blew, either way) I'd be forever grateful. Thanks!