FIC: Too Late
Jun. 12th, 2005 11:35 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
miera-c.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sga_flashficI was working on this when the ESP challenge was posted, and thought, wothehell. It's probably not what people were expecting from the challenge but here goes.
Title: Too Late
Author: miera
Challenge: ESP/telepathy challenge
Rating: R (imagery and language)
Pairings: none
Main characters: Elizabeth Weir, Carson Beckett, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Summary: A grim encounter with an alien presence leaves Elizabeth - and everyone else - in bad shape.
Warnings: None
Beta: none. All my fault.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: The boys and girls of "Stargate: Atlantis" belong to a lot of people who are not me. No harm intended, just some not-for-profit fun.
Author's Notes: Um, there's quite a bit of vomiting in this story. Be warned.
***
When she woke up this time, Elizabeth was afraid she was going to vomit again.
She was sweating, freezing and her whole body was trembling. She had instinctively bolted upright when she awoke, and the movement made her head spin. She fought back the wave of nausea and tried to breathe deep and slow.
A warm arm went around her shoulders and she felt someone holding her. "Easy, it's alright. You're safe." Even with her eyes shut, Carson's accent was unmistakable.
The sound of his voice in her ear called up one of the horrific images from her dreams. Elizabeth retched, unable to hold it back, but nothing came up this time.
"Shh," Carson said in her ear, one hand making soothing circles on her back.
Elizabeth forced her eyes to open and looked up at him. He was alive, with all his limbs attached. Not lying cleaved and gutted on the floor. His eyes met hers steadily and she saw the concern in them. She stared into his eyes for a long time, wanting to empty her mind of the memories that were keeping her from rest.
***
10 Hours Ago -
Carson rushed to the gate room to find Sheppard, Rodney and Lieutenant Ford soaking wet, surrounded by Bates and the security team.
Elizabeth Weir was unconscious in Sheppard's arms.
"What happened?" Carson asked, going straight to Elizabeth.
"She's unconscious and non-responsive. Her pulse is fast and she's breathing, but I can't wake her up," Sheppard told him, carefully setting Elizabeth on the gurney. The entire group started to hurry through the corridors towards the infirmary.
"How'd she lose consciousness?"
No one answered and Carson looked up and found Sheppard looking at him, guilt etched into the man's features. "I think it's my fault."
"What else were you supposed to do?" Rodney interjected angrily, though Carson gathered he wasn't agreeing with Sheppard's assessment.
Carson repressed a sigh. "Go back to the beginning."
"We got to the planet and were checking out the area around the Stargate," Sheppard began reciting. "There were some ruins not far away. Looked like no one had been here for a very long time."
"There were markings on some of the stones but we couldn't decipher them," Rodney put in.
"We started to head back to the Gate when Elizabeth stopped."
Carson looked between the two men. "And?"
Sheppard looked at Rodney, who appeared simultaneously frustrated and frightened. "I don’t know. She wasn't moving, but it looked like she was seeing things and wanted to move and talk, but she wasn't."
"It was like she wasn't with us any more," Ford spoke up for the first time.
"Then what happened?"
"That went on for a while," Rodney took the story back up. "We tried calling to her, then the Major tried to grab her arm and hit some kind of energy field."
Carson looked at Sheppard. "It's not serious," Sheppard said, though the grimace on his face belied his words.
"I didn't detect any energy readings and there were no signs of technology anywhere. She was trapped, Carson," Rodney's voice became lower and more urgent. "And she started to cry."
Carson did a double take. He had never seen Elizabeth cry, and God knew he'd seen her when she had good reason to do it.
"I wanted to get her away from whatever had her, so I grabbed her and pulled." Sheppard's face twisted, and he looked at Carson almost pleadingly. "I got her loose of whatever the hell it was, but she folded up like a deck of cards and she's been this way ever since."
Carson frowned. He dispatched a nurse to look at Sheppard and began a thorough exam of his unconscious patient. She had no obvious injuries, no signs of trauma to the head and no evidence of illness.
He had no idea how to wake her up.
***
7 Hours Ago -
John Sheppard never thought he'd be so happy to have someone puke on him.
Three hours after he had carried Elizabeth through the Stargate back to Atlantis, she regained consciousness. She blinked in confusion at the anxious group of people standing around her bedside for a minute, and then her eyes went wide and confused.
Then she threw up on him. Which was disgusting and smelled awful, but it meant she was alive and awake.
He would've been glad, if she hadn't been so completely distraught.
Beckett and the nurses scrambled for drugs and clean towels. Elizabeth dry heaved and John held her upright, ignoring the stain on his uniform and the ache in his chest from the large electric shock he'd received rescuing her. She looked up at him through wet eyes and he noticed there were tiny little red marks across her face from burst blood vessels, scattered among her freckles. Her hand fisted in his jacket.
"John?" She could barely whisper. "You're alive?"
"I'm here, I'm fine," he told her, his arm tightening around her instinctively. Her fingers were turning white but she didn't let go of him.
She coughed again and Beckett gently pulled her away, settling her on the pillows. But Elizabeth froze. "Carson?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"It's alright, Elizabeth," Rodney put in. "You're back in Atlantis."
She turned her shocked gaze towards Rodney. John shared a look with the doc, both of them baffled. Beckett bent down.
"Elizabeth? Can you tell me what you remember?"
"Dead," she muttered. "You were all dead." She frowned. "You kept dying. I was watching and I couldn't do anything about it and you all..." she swallowed and John felt his own stomach start to flip over. "I couldn't make it stop."
Her voice dropped to a whisper and she stared at things none of them could see. "There was so much blood..."
John saw the horrified expression on Rodney's face, and knew it matched his own.
***
4 Hours Ago -
In the absence of any sign of technology or detectable energy, Rodney was forced to conclude whatever had attacked – and that absolutely had been an attack – Elizabeth had been some kind of alien life form. In all probability a sentient one.
Which was so beyond completely fucked up, he couldn't find the words for it.
He supposed there was a possibility that whatever the hell had had Elizabeth was acting out of some primitive self-defense reflex, torturing her with visions of everyone she knew and cared about being gruesomely killed... but to what purpose? To scare her away, in case she was a predator? Because she was the smallest and weakest of them and thus the easiest target? Because she was female? If Teyla had been there instead, would it have gone after her?
He didn't buy it. The capacity to immobilize a fully grown human being and then delve into their psyche and dredge up the worst possible thoughts was too precise and targeted to have been a reflexive action. It screamed "deliberate."
The question was why. Fear and intimidation, protecting territory, a first strike? The most insidious answer, and therefore the one he believed most strongly, was that the alien thing got its rocks off by torturing others.
Deliberate psychological/psychic assault, on a level the Wraith could only dream of. What the hell was wrong with this galaxy anyway?
Rodney finished showering absently. Carson had ordered him and Sheppard to go clean up and try to rest. Well, he was clean, and he was going to go eat something, but Rodney knew there was little chance of resting or working or doing much of anything but worrying, and he might as well worry in Elizabeth's proximity.
He dressed and went to collect some coffee on his way back to the Infirmary. He paused to check status in the Control Room, where Bates was standing guard, in case any hostile aliens appeared, interested in causing more pain and misery. With the look on the Sergeant's face, Rodney almost pitied the aliens.
Zelenka was monitoring the internal sensors himself, rather than delegating the task to one of the technicians. He looked up at Rodney and then quickly looked back down. Rodney impulsively put a hand on Zelenka's shoulder as he walked past.
***
Carson started to pull away but Elizabeth, feeling like a 5 year old, clung to him. He stopped, and then moved closer.
She leaned into him. In any other circumstances she wouldn't have been so pathetically needy, but the terrible visions were still chasing around her head. It helped to have a warm body close by, reminding her at a fundamental level that the things she had seen were false. Her friends and colleagues weren't all butchered while she watched helplessly. Everyone was fine.
She was so tired. Her whole body ached. She wanted badly to go back to sleep, but every time the nightmares ripped her apart all over again and she woke up like this.
"Elizabeth? You need to sleep." Carson's voice was soft but insistent.
She shook her head no. She was too afraid. It was humiliating but she was just... it was all just too much.
"I could give you something," Carson told her. She thought he'd suggested that before and she'd refused, as she always had in the past.
A hand touched her hair. She cracked her eyes open and saw John, standing on the other side of the bed. "Elizabeth, you've been through enough for one day. Let Carson give you something so you can sleep."
She shouldn't, though. What if something happened, what if she was needed for something?
Another warm weight, this time at her feet. Rodney was resting a hand on her ankle. "We'll be here," he told her. "Let us worry about everything for once, will you?" There was a ghost of a smile beneath the deep concern on his face.
On her best day, Elizabeth couldn't have argued with all three of them at once. She settled herself on the bed and Carson fussed with her IV. John leaned over her. "We’re here, ok? Nothing's going to happen to you."
She fell asleep before she could point out to him that his promise was too late.
***
Title: Too Late
Author: miera
Challenge: ESP/telepathy challenge
Rating: R (imagery and language)
Pairings: none
Main characters: Elizabeth Weir, Carson Beckett, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Summary: A grim encounter with an alien presence leaves Elizabeth - and everyone else - in bad shape.
Warnings: None
Beta: none. All my fault.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: The boys and girls of "Stargate: Atlantis" belong to a lot of people who are not me. No harm intended, just some not-for-profit fun.
Author's Notes: Um, there's quite a bit of vomiting in this story. Be warned.
***
When she woke up this time, Elizabeth was afraid she was going to vomit again.
She was sweating, freezing and her whole body was trembling. She had instinctively bolted upright when she awoke, and the movement made her head spin. She fought back the wave of nausea and tried to breathe deep and slow.
A warm arm went around her shoulders and she felt someone holding her. "Easy, it's alright. You're safe." Even with her eyes shut, Carson's accent was unmistakable.
The sound of his voice in her ear called up one of the horrific images from her dreams. Elizabeth retched, unable to hold it back, but nothing came up this time.
"Shh," Carson said in her ear, one hand making soothing circles on her back.
Elizabeth forced her eyes to open and looked up at him. He was alive, with all his limbs attached. Not lying cleaved and gutted on the floor. His eyes met hers steadily and she saw the concern in them. She stared into his eyes for a long time, wanting to empty her mind of the memories that were keeping her from rest.
***
10 Hours Ago -
Carson rushed to the gate room to find Sheppard, Rodney and Lieutenant Ford soaking wet, surrounded by Bates and the security team.
Elizabeth Weir was unconscious in Sheppard's arms.
"What happened?" Carson asked, going straight to Elizabeth.
"She's unconscious and non-responsive. Her pulse is fast and she's breathing, but I can't wake her up," Sheppard told him, carefully setting Elizabeth on the gurney. The entire group started to hurry through the corridors towards the infirmary.
"How'd she lose consciousness?"
No one answered and Carson looked up and found Sheppard looking at him, guilt etched into the man's features. "I think it's my fault."
"What else were you supposed to do?" Rodney interjected angrily, though Carson gathered he wasn't agreeing with Sheppard's assessment.
Carson repressed a sigh. "Go back to the beginning."
"We got to the planet and were checking out the area around the Stargate," Sheppard began reciting. "There were some ruins not far away. Looked like no one had been here for a very long time."
"There were markings on some of the stones but we couldn't decipher them," Rodney put in.
"We started to head back to the Gate when Elizabeth stopped."
Carson looked between the two men. "And?"
Sheppard looked at Rodney, who appeared simultaneously frustrated and frightened. "I don’t know. She wasn't moving, but it looked like she was seeing things and wanted to move and talk, but she wasn't."
"It was like she wasn't with us any more," Ford spoke up for the first time.
"Then what happened?"
"That went on for a while," Rodney took the story back up. "We tried calling to her, then the Major tried to grab her arm and hit some kind of energy field."
Carson looked at Sheppard. "It's not serious," Sheppard said, though the grimace on his face belied his words.
"I didn't detect any energy readings and there were no signs of technology anywhere. She was trapped, Carson," Rodney's voice became lower and more urgent. "And she started to cry."
Carson did a double take. He had never seen Elizabeth cry, and God knew he'd seen her when she had good reason to do it.
"I wanted to get her away from whatever had her, so I grabbed her and pulled." Sheppard's face twisted, and he looked at Carson almost pleadingly. "I got her loose of whatever the hell it was, but she folded up like a deck of cards and she's been this way ever since."
Carson frowned. He dispatched a nurse to look at Sheppard and began a thorough exam of his unconscious patient. She had no obvious injuries, no signs of trauma to the head and no evidence of illness.
He had no idea how to wake her up.
***
7 Hours Ago -
John Sheppard never thought he'd be so happy to have someone puke on him.
Three hours after he had carried Elizabeth through the Stargate back to Atlantis, she regained consciousness. She blinked in confusion at the anxious group of people standing around her bedside for a minute, and then her eyes went wide and confused.
Then she threw up on him. Which was disgusting and smelled awful, but it meant she was alive and awake.
He would've been glad, if she hadn't been so completely distraught.
Beckett and the nurses scrambled for drugs and clean towels. Elizabeth dry heaved and John held her upright, ignoring the stain on his uniform and the ache in his chest from the large electric shock he'd received rescuing her. She looked up at him through wet eyes and he noticed there were tiny little red marks across her face from burst blood vessels, scattered among her freckles. Her hand fisted in his jacket.
"John?" She could barely whisper. "You're alive?"
"I'm here, I'm fine," he told her, his arm tightening around her instinctively. Her fingers were turning white but she didn't let go of him.
She coughed again and Beckett gently pulled her away, settling her on the pillows. But Elizabeth froze. "Carson?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"It's alright, Elizabeth," Rodney put in. "You're back in Atlantis."
She turned her shocked gaze towards Rodney. John shared a look with the doc, both of them baffled. Beckett bent down.
"Elizabeth? Can you tell me what you remember?"
"Dead," she muttered. "You were all dead." She frowned. "You kept dying. I was watching and I couldn't do anything about it and you all..." she swallowed and John felt his own stomach start to flip over. "I couldn't make it stop."
Her voice dropped to a whisper and she stared at things none of them could see. "There was so much blood..."
John saw the horrified expression on Rodney's face, and knew it matched his own.
***
4 Hours Ago -
In the absence of any sign of technology or detectable energy, Rodney was forced to conclude whatever had attacked – and that absolutely had been an attack – Elizabeth had been some kind of alien life form. In all probability a sentient one.
Which was so beyond completely fucked up, he couldn't find the words for it.
He supposed there was a possibility that whatever the hell had had Elizabeth was acting out of some primitive self-defense reflex, torturing her with visions of everyone she knew and cared about being gruesomely killed... but to what purpose? To scare her away, in case she was a predator? Because she was the smallest and weakest of them and thus the easiest target? Because she was female? If Teyla had been there instead, would it have gone after her?
He didn't buy it. The capacity to immobilize a fully grown human being and then delve into their psyche and dredge up the worst possible thoughts was too precise and targeted to have been a reflexive action. It screamed "deliberate."
The question was why. Fear and intimidation, protecting territory, a first strike? The most insidious answer, and therefore the one he believed most strongly, was that the alien thing got its rocks off by torturing others.
Deliberate psychological/psychic assault, on a level the Wraith could only dream of. What the hell was wrong with this galaxy anyway?
Rodney finished showering absently. Carson had ordered him and Sheppard to go clean up and try to rest. Well, he was clean, and he was going to go eat something, but Rodney knew there was little chance of resting or working or doing much of anything but worrying, and he might as well worry in Elizabeth's proximity.
He dressed and went to collect some coffee on his way back to the Infirmary. He paused to check status in the Control Room, where Bates was standing guard, in case any hostile aliens appeared, interested in causing more pain and misery. With the look on the Sergeant's face, Rodney almost pitied the aliens.
Zelenka was monitoring the internal sensors himself, rather than delegating the task to one of the technicians. He looked up at Rodney and then quickly looked back down. Rodney impulsively put a hand on Zelenka's shoulder as he walked past.
***
Carson started to pull away but Elizabeth, feeling like a 5 year old, clung to him. He stopped, and then moved closer.
She leaned into him. In any other circumstances she wouldn't have been so pathetically needy, but the terrible visions were still chasing around her head. It helped to have a warm body close by, reminding her at a fundamental level that the things she had seen were false. Her friends and colleagues weren't all butchered while she watched helplessly. Everyone was fine.
She was so tired. Her whole body ached. She wanted badly to go back to sleep, but every time the nightmares ripped her apart all over again and she woke up like this.
"Elizabeth? You need to sleep." Carson's voice was soft but insistent.
She shook her head no. She was too afraid. It was humiliating but she was just... it was all just too much.
"I could give you something," Carson told her. She thought he'd suggested that before and she'd refused, as she always had in the past.
A hand touched her hair. She cracked her eyes open and saw John, standing on the other side of the bed. "Elizabeth, you've been through enough for one day. Let Carson give you something so you can sleep."
She shouldn't, though. What if something happened, what if she was needed for something?
Another warm weight, this time at her feet. Rodney was resting a hand on her ankle. "We'll be here," he told her. "Let us worry about everything for once, will you?" There was a ghost of a smile beneath the deep concern on his face.
On her best day, Elizabeth couldn't have argued with all three of them at once. She settled herself on the bed and Carson fussed with her IV. John leaned over her. "We’re here, ok? Nothing's going to happen to you."
She fell asleep before she could point out to him that his promise was too late.
***
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 03:52 pm (UTC)And that ending was perfect.
I'm glad the muses were able to distract you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:51 pm (UTC)thanks
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 03:57 pm (UTC)just one spelling mistake, "so signs of trauma..." where i think it should be "no signs of trauma..."?
other than that, a great read!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:50 pm (UTC)Thanks
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 04:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:49 pm (UTC)I write the only ElizabethOK I know that's not true, but it's a very small club. Still, all praise is welcome praise, especially from cool people. *s*thanks
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:48 pm (UTC)thanks
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-12 07:56 pm (UTC)Oooh, yes, because the mind fuck's already happened. Creepy cool; I love that ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:48 pm (UTC)thanks
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 12:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:47 pm (UTC)whoever you are. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:12 pm (UTC)And then all those added up to more than the sum of the parts.
Thanks for sharing. Write more!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:47 pm (UTC)that's a tremendous compliment, thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-16 04:55 am (UTC)I think this started from one of my "they all love Elizabeth/what would they do without her" rants.
Plus I'm a sucker for that "the guys rally around their girl" plot. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 02:50 pm (UTC)That line kills me dead.
A Weir character study from you is the best thing ever, just so you know, because they are perfect jewels. I also like the subtext with her and Carson.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-19 03:46 pm (UTC)I was throwing subtext in there every which way. That's the fun part about gen, you don't have to pick. ;)
Drive by archivist says
Date: 2005-06-20 07:09 pm (UTC)(Also, for future reference, can you put "by [authorname]" in your subject line? It makes archiving a lot easier!)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-25 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-20 05:47 am (UTC)Very well-written. I really enjoyed it.