Bite by irishamber

[irishamber.livejournal.com]

Title: Bite
Characters: Ronon, Beckett, Sheppard
Word Count: ~700
Rating: PG

A/N: Hi all, I just discovered this community the other day, got me a live journal account and figured out how to use it (I think). If I've messed up posting this please let me know so I can correct.

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Ronon Dex knew fear. But when he woke in the Atlantis infirmary with the metallic scent of blood heavy in the air and his arms and legs restrained, it took every bit of courage he'd ever had to swallow that fear.

"Hey." Sheppard pushed himself up from the chair in the corner to stand next to the bed. "Relax." He nodded at Ronon's bandaged right arm. "The restraints were to protect you from yourself. You were trying to gnaw your arm off."

Ronon seriously doubted that. He already felt the deep itch of the healing wound. Worse, he felt the contrast of the cut on his opposite shoulder seeping blood. He had to escape.

"Release me."

"Uh, if it were up to me, I'd have you out of here in a minute, but Beckett made me promise to get him first." With that Sheppard activated his comm and let Dr. Beckett know that "his patient was awake."

Knowing it was futile, Ronon jerked at his restraints in panic, rocking and sliding the bed with his struggles. Then he saw Dr. Beckett and fought harder. Not that it did any good. Sheppard held him down while Dr. Beckett slid a needle under his skin.

Fighting the weight of his eye lids, he watched as they removed the bindings holding his injured arm to the bed and Dr. Beckett loosened the bandage.

With a force of will driven by fear, he backhanded Dr. Beckett with his newly freed arm, knocking the man off the stool he'd been perched on. Too slow. He was too slow. Sheppard was holding him down again before he could even think to reach across to free his other arm. It was the drugs. Knowing it was futile, he fought both the drugs and Shepperd's hold. He couldn't live like this.

"Ronon. Ronon!" Sheppard yelled for his attention but Ronon couldn't afford to look away from Dr. Beckett.

The man stood and worked his jaw, giving Ronon that deceptive sad eyed look. "Why'd you go and do that, lad? I just wanted to see how you were healing." Beckett's eyes dropped to Ronon's now bare arm, the bandage lost in the abbreviated battle. "Holy Mary --" He cut himself off and hurried over to the other side of the bed to lift the bandage from Ronon's still bleeding shoulder. His eyes darted back and forth between the two as comprehension dawned. "You can...your saliva...I'll need to run some tests."

Ronon let out a battle cry, renewed his fight against the drug, and lurched up against Sheppard. When that didn't succeed he lay still and once again commanded, "Release me."

"Ronon, buddy. Calm down." Ronon didn't even bother to glare at Sheppard for the use of that buddy word.

"Lad, I just want to find out why you were able to heal yourself. This could be an amazing breakthrough in medicine." Dr. Beckett gave him his patented I'm-a-doctor-and-I-just-want-to-help look. The man might have saved Ronon's life by removing the chip from his back, but Ronon didn't intend to let Beckett prey upon him any more than he'd let the wraith.

"Okay, doc. That's it." Sheppard reached down and loosened the bindings from Ronon's legs. "It isn't doing him any good to be here. You'll have to get your samples another time." He freed Ronon's other arm, swung it around his neck and helped him to stand. Ronon, gratefully accepted the help, ignoring the blood dripping down his side.

Sheppard walked him to door and said, "We'll get you to your own bed and in the morning you can tell me why you won't let Beckett look at you."

Ronon, eyed Sheppard in disbelief. Surely the man wasn't that obtuse. "I won't let him do to me what he did to the wraith."

A gasp drew Ronon's attention to Dr Beckett, sitting on the edge of the bed Ronon had just vacated, his back to them.

Sheppard sighed and said, "That went well."  Then Sheppard took a breath, adjusted his grip on Ronon and hurried him out the door. Ronon smiled. Maybe Sheppard really was his buddy.

Comments

[dr-dredd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking that Rodney isn't the only one who's going to have to regain everyone's trust. Nice short fic!

[irishamber.livejournal.com]

Thanks. On the trust issue I think the person's whose trust Carson will have the most difficult time regaining is his own. His behavior with the wraith makes me think of one of my favorite fics (Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose..can't remember the author, I read way too many in the past couple weeks as I played catchup). But I adore the bit in it where Rodney is teaching scientific ethics and thinks of it as the things he wished someone has told him before it was too late. None of them, Carson included, know going in where their ethical lines are drawn and now he's likely crossed his line and may not even know it.

[kuna-yashmaa.livejournal.com]

To cross the line one must have it on the first place. Only people from the normal families (i.e. families where morals are not 'morals', but physiology - unspoken, unquestioned rules) have the lines to cross. Unfortunately, none of the main SGA characters I've seen so far were from a normal families.
One doesn't need to give an Oath to break it. Oath is already there when one was born, if he was born in a normal family. And that Oath stays there, doesn't matter if you're a doctor, or a scientist, or a military. It's there... Or it's not - and never was.

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

Only people from the normal families (i.e. families where morals are not 'morals', but physiology - unspoken, unquestioned rules)

Trust me, that is not the norm.

When you are very small, you don't understand that other people are real, and that when they are hurt, they really hurt, and it's just as bad as when you are hurt. Some people never grow out of this (and such people may be very intelligent and clever, but I wouldn't want to live with them); most people do, and most of them do it by asking questions (why is the sky blue? why can't I eat dessert first? why are you mad at me for hitting her when it was she who wouldn't let me play with her toy?) and by having it brought home to them that no, the world does not revolve around them.

Most of us, though we may have a sense of right and wrong, don't think about whether a given action is right or wrong until it is brought up. Often, it is brought up indirectly first -- we watch a show where someone says "tell me what I want to know or I will hurt you" long before we are in a position where someone we could hurt will not tell us what we want to know, and so by the time it happens we have long since decided "no, I will not hurt someone to make them talk, I want to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror in the morning."

But sometimes there are times when no matter what you pick, you will hurt someone. And the part of you that thinks "is this a good thing to do?" is one of the first parts to go to sleep when you are very tired, or very angry, or very drunk, or otherwise altering your brain -- and so often people will do things that they know better than to do, and then when they come back to themselves, they hate themselves for it.

The thing people have been suggesting is that the SGA characters, once they knew they were going to be part of the mission, should have been asking themselves "Suppose Thing X happened: what would I do?", working out what the right thing to do would be, and then doing it over and over and over again for slightly different versions of X. Practicing ethics is like practicing a musical instrument or dance or martial arts moves: you do it so that, when you are tired and angry and upset, you will still do the right thing without having to think about it.

Once you *have* practiced it until it's as natural as walking on two feet -- and some people start when they're very young and some people only start seriously practicing when they're much older -- you never do speak about it or question it, any more than you speak about or question why you don't fall on your nose every time you take a step. Of course, if you cheerfully step out onto the ice, you will need to have also practiced walking on two feet on ice. And so on, and so forth.

But perhaps I am misunderstanding you, and we are talking about two different things. After all, it almost seems to me as if you are saying "if your parents were not good people, you can never be a good person," and that can't be right.

[irishamber.livejournal.com]

Fabulous answer to this post. You keyed right in on what was bothering me but I couldn't figure out how to verbalize.

"But sometimes there are times when no matter what you pick, you will hurt someone. And the part of you that thinks "is this a good thing to do?" is one of the first parts to go to sleep when you are very tired, or very angry, or very drunk, or otherwise altering your brain -- and so often people will do things that they know better than to do, and then when they come back to themselves, they hate themselves for it."

And if you add very scared to this list you will have most of the SGA team. I think this is why Ford can suggest stealing the ZPM from the planet that uses it for protection of children w/o it striking him as wrong. Where as Elizabeth's training has a very strong ethical base and her automatic response is that it is wrong.

Lovely response. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.

[kuna-yashmaa.livejournal.com]

First: *whispers* people who wrote SGA scenario were not in any danger, they just sat in perfect safety and wrote the stuff which made my physically sick a couple of times. ;)
________________________________________

Well, I guess I'm weird. Morals are not discussed in my family. That's why watching SGA I often can only wave my hands and open and close my mouth silently - I can't put the obvious in words. :) (Why wouldn't you read somebody's letter? Because it's somebody's? - dead circle!)

I never heard any member of my family saying... 'stealing is bad'. In my family it's not bad - it's insane. Trashy, if you prefer. :) In regular circumstances my hand wouldn't close around the thing that is not mine - that is all to it. But if somebody would put a gun to my head, or lock somebody dear to me in the cage starve to death - I would try to steal, if that would be a demand. But remember - "one feels incredulity at the first breaking of habit, but horror at the violation of principle".

What is missing form SGA on every turn - is that horror. And why it would be there, if it was not a principle that was violated, but mere habit? That's the difference between normal and not - was (insert word here) the principle or habit?

They hate themselves for it - that is exactly what I was talking about. Show it. This is not 'Karamazov brothers', where it's a part of the plan - show (and study) little, miserable, slimy characters, this is PG-13 movie - so show it! Show the remorse, the change of thought, 'I can't do it!', 'over my dead body!', something! (think of Dr. Fraiser on Carson's place - you'll see it too.)

What was the example? "Tell me what I want to know or I will hurt you"? Remember Starbuck in 'Poisoning the well' situation? (For she is Sheppard's analog, not Lee, like someone might think). What she did? Remember? Yes, she tortured that damned Cylon for (what was the timeline? 48 h?), say, two days. And Madam President put him out of the airlock. But remember her hand against the airlock wall, her 'Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. I don't know if he had a soul or not but, if he did, take care of it'? Remember? It took what? One minute of movie time? But one can immediately see that it's the person on the other end, not a pile of slimy rotten cruel trash. One minute - but how much does it mean... I don't know how to explain. :(

I'm not talking 'good' or 'bad' - for definitions of those are pretty obscure. Remember - 'students of history learn that the human being is a very complicated contraption and they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of bad and the bad out of good, and the devil take the hindmost'. :)

I'm not longing for 'good' in that movie - but for big. One character that would behave normally. One character I would be able to stay with in the same building. One character abut whom I could say - that is the member of my family speaking! Is it too much to ask? Is it?

SG1 had Dr. Fraiser, and Daniel, and Sam, and General Hammond. And even Jack, who should be burned out shell full of ashes - he was a person. Not a good one per se, but big.

One thing is for sure - one can't 'practice ethics'. (Well, you can practice with booklet of 'FDA ethics' - but that is mostly about whom you can consult, or what stocks you can't buy). *laughs hysterically*

If by the age of 40 person doesn't have normal (regular) 'ethics' - no practice would... how to tell it? Put them in? *he-he-he*

[kuna-yashmaa.livejournal.com]

"if your parents were not good people, you can never be a good person,"

Let's live definition of 'good' to cool down, for I'm not very good at high philosophical definitions. :)

'Never' is a big word. Starbuck is good enough for me, and she had abusive parents. I heard about children of alcoholics saying 'not a drop - never in my life'. (Never heard them succeeding at it - but it's thought that counts).

But generally - children of thieves are thieves, etc. How much of that is genetically predetermined? I'd say a lot, but there're other schools out there, which believe that social component is... stronger than genetic one. And most likely it's combination of both. (and family is BOTH - DNA and grooming).

So it's all probability - the more normal the family is - the more likely it would have a normal offspring. But exclusions are possible in either direction.