Disclaimer: The Atlantis characters belong to their respective owners, etc. The original ones I'd kinda like to keep. Actually, I'd really like to keep Shep, too, but what can you do?
And again, thanks so much for the fantastic reviews. They make my day and keep me going amidst 72 computer crashes per chapter. And ah, yes… the ruins… shall we go back to them? Okay… here we go:
As John had passed through the village, stumbling once in while over his untied bootlaces, the moon was still up, and dawn was only a hazy promise in the distant horizon.
He made his way to his destination by fading memory, by undetermined purpose. When he saw the ragged hillside silhouetted in the distance, a part of his scrambled subconscious was relieved that he had come the right way. When he came nearer and the humming noise began to sound in his ears again, a faint smile lit his face – an echo of the vibrant man he had once been.
He wandered around the uneven landscape for a time, head tilted, listening. When the humming grew louder in one place in particular, at the base of a long slope of terrain, he dropped to his knees and began to pull at the hard-packed dirt and mud, ignoring the sharp, buried pieces of metal that cut into his skin.
Steadily, and with determination, he clawed at the dirt, scooping it in a growing pile beside him. He was oblivious to the wind and the light, icy rain that began falling on him. He paid no mind to his body's shivering from the cold and the trembling of his aching muscles, or the fact that his bent legs soon became numb from lack of circulation. None of that mattered to him. All that mattered was reaching the source of the humming that seemed to call to him, compelling him to listen to its single-note song. He focused on it, allowing it to drown out all the other noise in his head, even quieting that singular, familiar voice that had insisted he return to this place. He narrowed his focus until nothing existed but the humming sound and the urgent need to locate it source.
He had been there for over two hours, and the sky was the light gray of early morning, when Tosia finally reached the edge of the ruins. She paused, steeling herself to enter the place she'd vowed to never set eyes upon again. John was so covered in dirt and mud that he was almost invisible against the black and gray of his shadowy surroundings, and she nearly turned back. Then she spotted movement – John scraping away in the dirt and ash, pulling free shards of metal and clawing at the ground with frightening, single-minded determination. Tosia's gaze darted to the stone marker that lay only some ten feet beyond John's position. Anger rose so swiftly in her that it left her breathless, paralyzed with outrage.
Unaware of the old woman's presence, John took hold of a thin, rusted pipe, and wedged it in the trench he had created, wiggling the makeshift lever back and forth, pushing a curved chunk of ornately carved stone aside. Leaning forward, so that he lay almost headfirst inside the wide, deep hole he had created, his hands hit something flat and cool against his palms. The humming in his ears grew louder.
Even though John continued to push more dirt aside, unmindful and oblivious to the dangerous sanctity of the place, Tosia still found it impossible to tear her eyes away from the stone marker, the final resting place, which thankfully, John had yet to disturb. She had erected that gravestone and then left it, never coming close to it again, and a pang of guilt tore through her at that.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw John toss aside a chunk of twisted, dirty white metal and plastic, and Tosia thought it might have been the remains of a tablet. Her vision swam with sudden tears, and she saw Gaereth in the same place, searching with the same tenacity, the same stubborn, reckless dedication. Then she saw the terrible explosion, the one that frequently haunted her dreams. She saw Gaereth's body hurled like that of a discarded child's toy, plowing into her, knocking her off her feet, both of them slamming to the ground. The sharp pain of shrapnel hitting her in the face and fire catching in her hair, her skin, slicing, burning, terrifying. She saw once more, Gaereth on the ground beside her, his dark head resting against her shoulder, his face bloodied and blackened, his beautiful eyes staring sightlessly up at the snow-filled sky. Snowflakes were caught in his thick lashes, and some had landed on his irises, white flecking the dark blue. She wanted him to blink them away, to draw breath, to not leave her...
No! She would not let that happen again. She could not live through that again. She strode forward, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him backward. He gagged at the rough pull of his shirt collar and resisted, but Tosia could be just as determined, and she hauled on him until he sat back up. When she positioned herself in front of him, he scowled and tried to push past her.
"Gaereth, stop it!" Tosia ordered, reaching for his arm. He twisted away from her, shouting an inarticulate protest. Tosia's hand flew out, seemingly of its own accord, and slapped him hard across the face. His head snapped to the side, then his wide eyes met hers, filled with betrayed hurt. Eyes that were clear hazel instead of dark blue, and Tosia blinked, startled. The present snapped back into its rightful place. Gaereth's beloved features were gone, and John's heartbreakingly similar ones came into sharp focus. Even still, her anger remained, more cutting than ever.
"That is enough, John!" she spat, breathless. She did not allow herself to soften at the red mark that rose on his cheek. She scarcely even felt the sharp sting in her palm and the ache of her knuckles. "What in God's name are you doing?"
"'Lantis," John said so softly that Tosia wasn't sure if she'd heard correctly. She couldn't have heard him correctly.
"What did you say?" she said, staring intently at him, the rain streaking lines of mud down his face and plastering his dark hair to his head. He was shivering with cold, teeth nearly rattling together. "John, answer me!"
When he only frowned and turned his head away to stare down into the hole, Tosia couldn't help but raise her lamp to shine its light in the same direction. The blue light glinted on what she first thought were shattered crystals and broken glass. Then she realized it was a window. Stumbling a few steps closer, she crouched beside John, pressing the lamp against the amazingly intact, glassy surface. With a start, she realized her mistake – foolish sentimentality had almost blinded her to what lay before her eyes. And what she saw inside that window made her heart stutter in her chest for the second time in as many days.
John leaned forward and laid one dirt-covered hand flat on the thick glass, and something lit up beside his splayed fingers – a bright yellow, pulsing light, its tempo like that of a heartbeat. When he lifted his hand again, the pulsing immediately stopped, and the light winked out. Tosia placed her hand in the same place. Nothing happened, and she wasn't surprised at that. Some of the remains of the old technology she and Gaereth found hadn't worked for them at the time, either. It was the ultimate finality of their punishment – to render them unable to use to the very tools they themselves had created. But why was it responding to John? Had the others made a mistake? Was he somehow more… complete then she was?
For an interminable amount of time, she stared into the previously concealed underground room, stared at the old technology so familiar, yet so foreign at the same time. How could this have been here for all these years? She had assumed that it had all been destroyed in that last explosion. But here it still was, her work, traces of her old life, still here. Silent. Waiting. How could it possibly have survived? The implications of the possible tide of change that John had wittingly, or unwillingly set in motion stupefied her. No… It terrified her.
Staggering to her feet, Tosia tossed the lamp aside. She couldn't help another quick glance down at the remains of her former lab again, but without the lamp to illuminate it, the window was now just a dark, harmless blur. Not making a conscious decision to do so, she snatched up handfuls of pebbles and dirt and shoved it all back in the hole, placing larger rocks overtop to ensure no one else would find it, unknowingly mimicking John's own motions of a few days ago.
When she turned back around, hair wild, face streaked with dirt, John was sitting back on his heels, hands drawn up to his chest, watching her with cautious bewilderment. She finally noticed the bright red blood mixed in with the black dirt on his hands, trickling down his wrists and seeping into the cuffs of the rain-soaked jacket he had put on inside out.
Even through all the mud and dirt, she saw that John's fine-boned hands were crisscrossed with far too many cuts and abrasions to count. All his fingernails were torn and bloody, two of them ripped clean off, blood oozing from the raw, tender flesh. She was stunned by the amount of damage he had inflicted upon himself.
Grasping his upraised wrists, Tosia looked into his eyes, surprised when he met her gaze again. "How did you know this was here, John? How could you possibly have known…"
He blinked and flexed his fingers, wincing, as though he were for the first time feeling the sharp pain in his hands. His lips moved, and for a moment, Tosia thought he was going to answer her, but what came out was a faint whimper. She realized that she was grasping his wrists so tightly, her fingernails were digging into his flesh, and she loosened her grip.
She had waited for his purpose to be revealed, hadn't she? And here it was. Here he was, finishing what Gaereth had started. She just hadn't anticipated that purpose catching her so unaware. So unprepared. And a loss of control was something Tosia could never withstand.
They had to get out of this place. Right now, her mind chanted. Even if the ruins no longer posed a danger, she could not face any of this yet. Her own cowardice infuriated her, anger replacing the fear. That anger gave her additional strength as she hauled on the back of John's jacket again, pulling the collar tight up around his throat, managing to force him to his feet. He gasped in a choked breath, and his numb, unsteady legs nearly buckled under his weight. Tosia yanked on his jacket and belt until he regained his footing, pulling at him until he stumbled beside her, his legs tingling with the pins and needles of renewed circulation.
As soon as they were outside the ruins, John shook his head from side to side and started muttering incoherently under his breath. Dragging his feet, he pressed his bloodied hands against his ears in a futile attempt to shut the other voices out, the voices that became clear again as soon as the humming faded. The scattered images and countless screaming faces flashed before his eyes in a sudden rush, overtaking everything else, and he was trapped alongside them, caught within their terrifying embrace.
Tosia, lost in her fury and unconcerned with John's distress, grabbed hold of his forearm, snatching his hand from his ear and dragged him by his wrist through the village, not even pausing in her steps at the many times he stumbled.
At the spectacle of the old woman pulling the tall stranger behind her like a wayward child, the villagers stopped in their tracks, staring open-mouthed. The sight would have been comical had Tosia's face not been so clouded with mindless anger, and had the man not been bleeding and stumbling, so muddled as to seem completely unaware of his surroundings. No one spoke to them, only giving them a wide, cautious berth as they passed.
Reaching home, Tosia pulled John inside, banging the door shut behind them. She marched him over to the bucket on the block in the kitchen, and plunged his hands in the cold water. John let out a sharp gasp, the cold and the intensified pain momentarily stunning him.
Lasca jumped to her feet from where she and Antal sat at the table. "Mother, what… where have you been?" She stared wide-eyed at the rain soaked, muddy pair. "What has happened?"
"Antal, help me with him!" Tosia ordered when John suddenly became aware enough to struggle, nearly upending the bucket and splashing them both as he broke free from her.
Antal quickly moved behind John, and took hold of his forearms, forcing the damaged hands back in the water. John cried out, and a wave of sympathy for the man struck Antal, almost causing him to loosen his hold.
Lasca watched her mother with growing alarm as Tosia, seemingly unmindful of the pain she was causing, began to scrub at John's hands with a rough cloth. John twisted and fought against Antal's intractable grip, soft, frantic moans escaping his tightly gritted teeth. Antal shot Lasca a pleading look to intervene.
"Mother, stop this!" Lasca shouted, but the old woman continued to ignore her and kept scrubbing the battered, tightly fisted hands. Torn skin began to come away with the dirt, and Lasca turned to her son. "Antal, let him go!"
Relieved, Antal immediately released his grip, and John snatched his hands away from the abuse, stumbling backward until the back of his legs hit the table.
Tosia, as though in a fog, turned and saw the shocked accusation on Lasca's face and the confusion on Antal's. The cloud of anger abated with a sudden rush, leaving her trembling and breathless. Her side burned with fiery tenacity and she welcomed its punishment. When she looked at John, the pain pinching his features again reminded her of Gaereth, and she knew he would be ashamed of her. She was ashamed of herself. She knew, without a doubt, that Gaereth would condemn her just as she had ridiculed her own people for their fear.
Shuffling closer to the injured man, and with a wildly shaking hand, she reached up to apologetically stroke the faded red mark on John's cheek. She wasn't surprised when he ducked from her hand, turning his head and stumbling away from her. He held his torn hands protectively against his chest, brows knitted in a furious scowl, visibly shaking with a mingling of cold and pain.
"Mother, tell me what has happened?" Lasca implored. "What is going on?"
Tosia only shook her head. "Will you tend to him, Lasca? We do not want those cuts to become infected."
Lasca stared at Tosia in astonishment for a moment, then shook her head. Years of experience dealing with the difficult woman had taught Lasca that Tosia would speak her mind only when she was ready, and not a moment before. Turning her back on her mother, Lasca directed her attention to John. When she moved closer to him with Antal a few steps behind her, John backed around the table, body tensed, his eyes darting from her to Antal, like a trapped animal.
Lasca nodded for Antal to take over, and the young man began speaking to John in a low, soothing voice even as John continued to retreat from him. When John's back hit the far corner, and there was nowhere for him to go, panic flittered across his features. Then something in him steeled, bracing for battle. His bleeding hands clenched into loose, upraised fists. A glimmer of the soldier became visible in his eyes.
"It is all right, John," Antal reassured, holding his own hands out in a placating gesture, not moving any closer to the man. "Tosia did not mean anything by what she did, and she's sorry for getting so angry. But we must wash that dirt off your hands, all right? I promise it won't hurt so much this time. It is all right now…"
Antal patiently continued talking in that low, calm voice while John stared with narrowed eyes at him, gauging his every move. Finally, after a time, John slumped against the wall, dropping his hands, the pain and bone-numbing cold from his hours in the rain starting to take hold. Blood dripped from his fingers and onto the floor, attracting his attention, and he focused on the small, red dots by his feet, listening to the faint, plopping sounds they made as they landed.
Antal slowly moved to his side, and John didn't seem aware of his approach. When the young man reached him and very slowly slipped his arm over John's trembling shoulders, he didn't resist. Antal gently led him back to the counter.
Carefully, with Antal's help, Lasca finished washing the dirt and debris from John's seeping hands, her motions so gentle, they seemed a mockery of Tosia's previous harsh actions. Lasca cooed softly to John as she worked, and Antal alternated between patting the man's shoulder and the top of his damp head in a further attempt at consolation.
Seeing that John was well taken of, Tosia, who had been watching silent and remorseful, turned and left the hut, closing the door with a soft thump.
Antal and Lasca looked up at the sound.
"'I swear, Antal… sometimes that woman…" Lasca said, then allowed her voice to fade, unwilling to finish what she had been about to say.
"Why do you suppose Tosia's so angry with John?"
"Who knows," Lasca sighed and blew an errant strand of hair from her face. "I have lived with her for most of my life, and yet I know almost nothing about her. You know Tosia – she tells us only what she wants to tell us."
Antal nodded and stared into the bucket in which he loosely held John's hands – the man was compliant now, leaning heavily against Antal's side. He noticed that the water was tinged a deep, murky pink, and he swallowed hard, looking away. "How do you suppose John hurt himself so bad?"
I do not know, Antal…" Lasca tried not to allow her frustration to show with Antal, for it wasn't her son who was trying her patience.
"Do you think that's why she's angry?" Antal asked, "'cause John did something to hurt himself?"
"No, I do not think so, son," Lasca said, gently lifting one of John's hands to inspect the damage. She winced when she saw the blood still running freely from the numerous open cuts. "I am sure Tosia will explain what happened when she feels more up to it."
"All right," Antal agreed, and they continued to work in silence, save for the intermittent words of reassurance offered to the injured man.
Once they had washed away the dirt as best they could, they sat John at the table. Antal held the man's wrists steady while Lasca began bandaging the still bleeding hands. John was now so pliant, and his gaze so unfocused that Lasca suspected he was no longer even aware of them. It appeared as though he had slipped into a place where he felt nothing. Judging by the amount of painful looking cuts, scrapes and deep gashes she covered with numerous strips of rags, Lasca thought, for now, that was probably a good thing.
--- tbc ---