sga_flashfic | Speaking for the Dead by Kriadydragon (Supernatural Challenge)

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Title: Speaking for the Dead
Author:

kriadydragon
Rating: PG, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, Carson, various canon characters and one OC
Summary: "What say the dead?"

A/N: Took me long enough to get a story down I liked. Everything else refused to produce a workable ending. Me and endings, gosh! Takes place in season four, but no spoilers (unless you haven't seen Sunday, then there's spoilers.)

Speaking for the Dead

Sumner knows how to work the reverse psychology angle, making Sheppard wonder if he'd ever been a drill Sergent. Maybe in a second life, perhaps? No, the whole second-life thing had been officially chucked out the window. Another universe, then, or maybe as a favor to someone. He's the one who keeps Sheppard moving on the long marches through the woods fading into autumn. From camp to camp, Sumner is there keeping pace. He doesn't yell, bark, curse; he cajoles in that calm yet incessant voice of certainty, as though everything he knew about Sheppard he'd known all along, and John is proving him right.

“Can't even keep in a straight line. Walking really isn't a throttle jockey's thing, is it, Colonel.” He spits the title out like a private joke.

And it works. Sheppard doesn't even try to walk in a straight line. He does try to stay upright, to keep going, to prove Sumner dead wrong. Against bare, bleeding feet, weak legs and lack of food, he trudges to his next prison. He has yet to drop.

The next camp has him in a wooden cage in the center among the tents and hastily built huts of straw, mud, and sticks. Markham sits with him since it's always a bonus having another set of military-molded eyes to take in and asses. Sheppard knows he should be freaked by the clarity of the dead soldier's presence, but he's always found it easier to just go with the flow. He sums it all up to the grade-A quality of the “medicine” the local witchdoctor keeps shoving down his throat.

“I wouldn't underestimate the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, sir,” Markham says. “Arrows can be pretty wicked, and theirs look barbed.”

John grins thinking about Rodney with an arrow in his ass. “Don't have to tell me, Sergent.” Then shivers as he realizes for the, he thinks fiftieth time, that he's talking to someone who isn't supposed to be there. Also for the fiftieth time, he ignores it out of gratitude to have someone to talk to at all. He's too cold and hungry to care about his sanity, anyways.

The next march to the next camp heralds the return of Sumner and his condescending trash-talk.

“My three year old granddaughter can walk better than you.”

Guilt pierces sharp, thudding John's heart and sagging his shoulders. Either the dead can read minds or Sheppard's an open book; Sumner's features soften.

“You did what you had to, Sheppard,” he says, then looks at John, stern yet gentle. “So stop thinking about it. I can make it an order if you want.”

It doesn't seem right that the dead should be making him feel better, and it freaks Sheppard more than talking to the man he'd killed.

The next prison is a hole in the ground too deep to climb out of without help. Before Sheppard is shoved in, he's restrained by a ridiculous number of heavy-handed guards who don't trust to starvation as an ample means of subjugation. They hold his head back by his hair, tilting it until his neck is bent in half, the bone creaking, as another pries his jaws apart for the witchdoctor to pour his special blend.

“Let the dead speak. Let them condemn you through your tongue, wraith-bringer.”

John chokes and gags on the syrup-thick liquid that tastes like old shoes. Beside him, Sumner scowls, but not at John.

“What say the dead?” asks the witchdoctor.

“Tell him,” says Sumner, “tell him the dead have nothing to say. At least not to him.”

John grins between coughs. “The dead don't like you.” Which earns him a blow to the face, an elbow to the upper spine, and a kick to the ribs when he's dropped before being dumped in the pit.

It's always Carson in the hole, sitting next to him, watching him, assessing him, and always sad because of it. Although why Beckett has to list each new injury is beyond Sheppard. Some things are hard to let go of, he supposes.

“Looks like you've got two more cracks to the ribs, lad, but at least they're not broken. Wish they'd feed you, though. You're looking a wee bit thin.” An understatement, of course, but then Carson is in no position to play doctor, so instead settles for being one friend trying to find a ray of sunshine for another. Or, in the case of now, play the negative down to keep the positive going.

And John appreciates it.

“They'll find you lad,” Beckett, as usual, says. “They always do.”

When they pull him out of the hole, dragging him like a sack of skin and bones, Peter Grodin is there frowning at the scene.

“What say the dead?” asks the witchdoctor.

“Tell him the dead say to sod off.”

John bites his lip to stifle a laugh. His silence rewards him with a punch to the gut.

The witchdoctor spits in his face. “Fool! You cannot silence the dead. You cannot continue to disgrace them with your stubborn refusal. They will speak. They will use your own tongue to curse you for what you have done!”

Peter snorts and says dryly, “Yes, and such a long line it is. The man is all talk, Colonel. Best not to listen to him.”

Back into the march, Sumner pokes and prods with a new arsenal of verbal insults. The next camp is in a clearing by a lake. It's a beautiful spot, golden under the late afternoon sky, trees fire-bright in red, yellow, and orange. The air is crisp and smoke-tanged reminding John of fall walks through the woods with his mother during the time they were stationed in Vermont. Maybe it's for that reason it's his mother this time, rather than Markham, in the cage next to him. He's exhausted, as usual. Too exhausted to move. Lying curled and shivering like a child, he swears he can feel his mother's fingers as they comb through his hair.

“You always did love the fall,” she says. “Even if you wouldn't admit it.”

John smiles. “Summer was freedom...”

“But the fall was peace.” It had always been summer when they would move, remaking home by the time the leaves changed color no matter where they ended up. It had been the only consistency in John's life.

When the witchdoctor comes with his medicine, demanding to hear the dead, John's mother rises, lifting her chin in defiant pride.

“Tell him how proud I am of my son.”

The resulting beating from his continuing silence wets his mother's face with tears. John had never considered that the dead could still cry.

John can barely stand on the next march. He stumbles on gelatinous legs, skinning his knees, elbows, sometimes landing on his side or back. He can't help crying out in pain. Sumner's berating turns to shouting, then bolstering.

“Come on, Sheppard, get up! You can do it. You've made it this far, you can make it farther, so stop lying around on your lazy ass and get moving!”

Sheppard tries. When he can't stay upright, he crawls. His guards, always impatient and angry, tug on the lead rope tied to his wrists, yanking him to the ground to be dragged. Sumner turns his arsenal on them: the heavy artillery of swear-combinations only a marine can pull off without batting an eye. It makes Sheppard vaguely glad he's never had to be subject to the wrong end a Sumner tirade.

At the next prison – a small cave – it's Carson again.

“I bloody well hope you're not taken that wizard's tripe to heart, lad.”

“Yeah,” says Mitch on his other side. John's too exhausted and ill to be disconcerted by the double haunting. Make that triple when Dex pops up in front of him.

“Damn, Sheppard, you are, aren't you?” says Dex, shocked and disgusted. “You never could learn to let go.”

John shrugs matter-of-factly. “But I did wake the wraith.”

“You act like it wouldn't have happened, otherwise,” Beckett says. “The way I figure it, sooner or later doesn't make much of a difference, not even for who lives and who dies and when it all happens. It's the living who suffer the dead, John. You can't dwell your whole life on what-might-have-beens. When life doesn't turn out the way you like, you move on. When you make mistakes, you learn, and move on some more. They've no right to do this to you. No one does. That includes yourself.”

“You're a good man, Shep,” says Mitchell.

Dex grins stupidly. “The dead have spoken it.”

The next march, John doesn't even have the strength to try. He's dragged part way, then carried, slung over the shoulder like the animal skins these people are so fond of wearing.

“They'll find you, Sheppard,” Sumner says. “They're looking right now. Been looking this whole time.”

Back in the feeble wooden cage, it's Charin who sits with him, which he finds just a little odd since he didn't know her all that well. He's too worn to a thread to think about it, so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. Hunger has evolved from a cold emptiness to a constant pain adding itself to the pile. Charin caresses his fevered, aching head.

“They are coming, Colonel,” she says with a sweet smile. “They are close.”

The moment is interrupted by the witchdoctor and another dose of medication. The guards grab a fist-full of his hair, bending his neck-bone.

“They're getting closer, Sheppard,” says Sumner.

The liquid is poured, burning like acid, down his throat. He gags and chokes.

“Hang on, John,” says his mother.

John coughs, then pukes the liquid back out. A punch to the face stuns him enough to make the second dose easier to dump into his mouth.

“You can do it, buddy,” says Mitch.

“Just a few more minutes,” says Dex.

They drop John to the ground where he curls and shudders with a whimper he can't fight.

“Hold on, sir,” Markham pleads.

“It's all right, colonel,” Peter adds, “it won't be much longer.”

John cracks his eyes open to Carson kneeling in front of him. He can feel the doctor's hand on his shoulder, squeezing in silent reassurance.

“They're here, John,” he says with a smile. “They're here.”

The witchdoctor boots him in the chest. “What say the dead, then, fool?”

Sheppard grins, letting his eyes slide shut. “That my people are here.” He concedes to darkness as P-90s and stunners explode around him.

John wakes to the living: the faces of Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla clustered around his bed. It takes them a moment to realize he's awake, and when they do they burst into motion and sound, asking how he is, if he needs anything, Teyla calling for Keller. The chatter continues as he's checked over and told the obvious – malnutrition, broken bones, cuts, bruises and a fever that has finally broken.

The witchdoctor's medicine is finally out of his system, which explains the lack of extra faces. Happy as he is to be home, there's a pang of sadness beneath that joy, but he doesn't know why. Got that used to their company, he surmises. He sets it aside to focus back on the living: warm touches to his shoulder and arms, living hands in his, and the indescribable relief on each of his team member's faces.

Finally, Keller is forced to chase them off when Sheppard can no longer keep his eyes open.

The privacy curtain is pulled and the lights turned low. John thinks he can almost feel slender fingers combing through his hair. He doesn't open his eyes to find out. He doesn't need to.

The end

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kensieg.livejournal.com

sad but nice to see missing faces. more fun than visiting tombstones.

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