![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
harriet-spy.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sga_flashfic[Sorry about the failed cut-tag, everyone.]
Title: when I came I was a stranger (2/2)
Author: Sarah T.
Website: www.aliencorn.net
Rating: NC-17
Characters: John, Teyla, Rodney
Notes: A "Vegas" AU. Thanks to the Spike for a Turkish-massage beta. (~12K words.)
Summary: John is recruited.
“Well,” John said out loud when he got back to his room, “that was anticlimatic.”
The pale green walls of his room seemed to agree with him.
Maybe it was all a test, and he’d only prove his worthiness by escaping.
Maybe he’d lost his mind, caring whether these guys even thought he was worthy. But it wasn’t so much the SGC itself, really, it was…
He had liberated a stress ball from the conference room supply stash almost without thinking about it. The rest of the day and on into the evening, he sat on the edge of his bed, bouncing it against the wall and catching it, over and over and over again. For a long time, he could let his mind go blank, fill it with the rhythm, but after the lights dimmed, images began to flash in his mind on the off-beats.
The chair, all gleaming blue mystery.
Thud.
The Wraith, pale and just as full of secrets.
Thud.
It was like flipping the light switch off and on, off and on, but what he was looking at stayed the same, desires that freaked him out with their intensity. The longer he wasted away in the room, the worse it got. He wanted to sit in the chair, let it do whatever it wanted to him, get it over with. And the Wraith…it wasn’t just that he wanted to talk to him again, get more out of him that the people around here weren’t telling. He needed to do it, needed to let that whisper get into his thoughts and show him things. Last night he had been so close, so close to understanding…
Chair.
Thud.
Wraith.
Thud.
Waiting.
Thud.
Waiting for him.
Thud.
He threw himself back onto the bed, letting the ball drop to the floor.
Eyes that had shone purer and fiercer than the Wraith’s. A voice rich and distant with its own secret knowledge.
“Teyla,” he whispered desperately, and slid his hand downward.
He was already hard.
He was just dozing off when McKay burst into his room. “God, you’re not sleeping already, are you?” he demanded crossly. “How can you be tired when you’re not doing anything but lying around in hospital?”
John blinked at him, glad he was under a sheet. Now that McKay was actually there, the thought that John had wanted him to show up seemed a little misguided. “What do you want?”
“I want you to do me a favor. You owe me big-time for getting you on the team.”
“I’m not on the team, McKay,” he pointed out.
He waved a hand. “Not yet. Irrelevant detail. Come on.”
Damn, he was pompous. But he was also probably the only supporter of John’s candidacy for the SGC, so there was nothing to do but humor him. John remembered thinking when he left the Air Force that at least he’d left politics behind; when you gave up your career, you gave up giving a damn about how it went, too. He sat up, discreetly hitching up his scrubs. “Where are we going?”
“Just come on,” he said impatiently, and a minute later John was following him through yet another confusing set of corridors he hadn’t explored yet. The place was really not on a human scale. Unbidden, he imagined Bugs Bunny tunneling his way in and looking around in confusion: I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque!
“You and me both, buddy,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
After about ten minutes of walking, McKay slowed, and seemed to be listening. “It’s supposed to be around here somewhere…”
“What?”
“Just a little something I want you to break up.”
“Break up? What are you—“
“Shhh!” McKay raised an imperious hand. “I hear something.”
John did too, a remote echo of shouts and the squeak of heavy boots against a metal floor. McKay hurried forward, and after a few more turns, they emerged into what looked like a unused storage area, lit by wavering and sparking fluorescents. John smelled the tang of sweat before he even saw the crowd of Marines in a loose circle near the center.
He recognized this all right—not really an Air Force thing, but he’d seen it at other bases. Just a little informal brawling for fun and profit, out of eyeshot of the officers. Work off some energy, establish who was the big dog. But these guys didn’t have the usual cheerful, rowdy air to them. They sounded like whoever was fighting, they really wouldn’t mind seeing them get hurt. John wondered who it was. He was startled when they got close enough that he could catch a glimpse.
It was Teyla. Teyla in a racerback that showed off her toned arms and loose flowing pants, barefoot, dripping sweat but not bloodied anywhere, eyes far away. She was matched against a Marine with almost a foot on her, and John felt sick. There was no way this could end well. But her reflexes were unbelievably quick. She made the Marine’s punches look like slow and clumsy swipes until she could duck inside his reach and deliver a ringing elbow to the solar plexus. He tottered, and she spun and grabbed his arm, got it into a submission lock. She shouldn’t have been strong enough to get the right leverage, but down he went to his knees.
“Do you give up?” she said, low, barely audible over the crowd’s mixed roars and boos.
“Fuck you, bitch,” he spat.
She tightened her grip. “I said, do you give up?”
Disgust twisting his face, he reached out with his other hand and slapped the rough concrete floor. She released him at once, turning away as though she had already forgotten him, hardly even breathing fast. As she scanned the crowd, John thought her eyes flashed over them, but if she saw them, she gave no sign. “Who is next?”
“Go on,” McKay nudged him. He’d joined Sheppard at the very edge of the crowd. “Break it up!”
“No,” John muttered, as his astonishment gave way to an awful weariness. “What we need to do is get out of here right now.”
“Get out of here? But she—“ He pointed. Another Marine had entered the ring to a chorus of cheers and laughter. This one ran more to weight than height. He was a kickboxer, John could see—maybe Muy Thai. He scored a blow that glanced off her jaw, but she shook it off and kept moving. “Look at her!”
“Come on, McKay.” John turned and walked off into the corridor. McKay hesitated, but followed him. When they were safely out of range, he exploded.
“What do you think you’re doing? I brought you down there to break that up, and you just leave?”
What a thought. Him, a shady half-stranger in hospital scrubs, and McKay, who had undoubtedly pissed off every member of the military he had ever come into contact with. “Believe me, McKay, we were not going to break that up. And I don’t think Teyla would have thanked us for trying, either.”
“But you’re one of those people! You’re supposed to be able to get it! Fix it!”
“Oh, I get it all right,” John said. Teyla had looked painfully familiar—someone fighting the biggest, nastiest demons she could find outside of her own head, and knowing exactly where to go to find the fight. He’d never seen it on a woman before. “I just don’t know how to fix it.”
“They’re going to kill her one of these days!”
“Have to say, it doesn’t really look like it. She’s amazing.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” McKay said, momentarily distracted. “You should have seen her with her bantos rods. It was so beautiful.” He shook his head sharply. “That doesn’t mean it’s safe for her to be down there doing the ultimate fighting championships with a bunch of Marines who think she’s a freak!”
“Does she do this a lot?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed unhappily. “There were rumors, but she’s been shutting me out ever since…”
He didn’t know why McKay had instinctively latched onto him to solve the problem. Some kind of weird membership test?
“Why didn’t you tell Lorne?”
“And give her an extra reason to hate me?” McKay eyed him. “Are you sure you didn’t get a concussion during the bombing?”
“Well, then, I don’t see what you expected me to do.”
McKay wasn’t upset for the right reasons—all he could see was the blood and the violence, which, from the way Teyla handled herself, was just as much a part of her ordinary life as it had been of John’s. Still, John could sympathize. Teyla clearly felt like she couldn’t leave that ring until she couldn’t stay on her feet anymore, and seeing it had made him want to drag her out if he had to. He would have been glad to let her hit him if she needed someone to hit. But McKay blaming him for what was going on was a little much.
“Show a little team spirit! Chivalry! Something! Don’t you even care?”
He was unbelievably lucky McKay was so terrible at reading people. “Care? Care about a bunch of people who’ve kidnapped me out of my life and left me to get old on a locked ward while they decide whether I’m good enough for them?”
“The other Sheppard would have cared,” McKay said coldly. “Why do you think I wanted you on the team?”
Wanted? Damn. But this wasn’t for McKay to see. “Psychosis?”
“That’s it.” McKay threw up his hands. “If I’d wanted to be insulted by someone useless, I’d have brought Zelenka along. Do you think you can find your way back to your room without a trail of breadcrumbs?”
“I bet I can manage,” John said casually.
Back in his room, he did as many pushups as he could until his arm gave out.
Lorne surprised him by showing up in his room the next day just as he was trying to manage a pull-up on an exposed pipe. “Hello, Sheppard.”
“Colonel.” John tried not to look like he was glad to have an excuse to lower himself slowly to the ground. His shoulder thanked him sarcastically as he touched down. “Welcome to my world.”
“Well, this is certainly…depressing,” he said, taking a look around at the room where John hadn’t managed to establish anything more of his personality than a certain messiness in the way towels and little plastic cups were strewn around. “Why don’t we take a walk?”
“Taking a walk” meant actually going outside, strolling on the pavement surrounding the grim industrial buildings that made up Area 51. John felt weird wandering around in public in the scrubs they’d given him, but there was no one around to see it.
It was early yet. The air was warm and dry, shocking after the semi-refrigeration of the ward. John knew that the sun wasn’t high enough yet to be relentless, but the glare in his eyes was enough to make him long for his glasses. Still, the desert had never looked so good to him. The sky swept all the way down to the horizon. He remembered hoping when he came to Vegas that it would make him feel free.
They walked in silence for a little while. John couldn’t hear anything but the whistle of the wind. If McKay had told Lorne anything about the previous night, it didn’t show.
“So, I’ve been reviewing your record,” he said finally, in a carefully neutral tone.
That was one of those sentences that never led into an enjoyable conversation. “I can completely explain that incident with the paste in art class.”
Lorne didn’t smile. “Atlantis can always use pilots, and the first team hasn’t had a real one since we lost Sgt. Markham. You have a lot of experience operating in extreme environments. There’s no question that you would bring real skills to the table.”
“But?”
“Our teams tend to be small. The expedition itself is less than three hundred people, with limited Earthside leave. We care a lot more about chemistry than you might expect, and it’s my job to make sure it works.”
“And you don’t think I’ll fit in.”
He couldn’t help it—a subtle inflection of sarcasm had crept into his voice. Lorne stopped and looked at him. He didn’t look angry, but he obviously wasn’t inclined to apologize for doing his job.
“Your record suggests that you’re either an incorrigible loner or a rebel. I understand that you’ve been in some tough situations, but I’m not sure we need that on the first team, or Atlantis for that matter.”
John swallowed, feeling acid start to churn in his stomach. Where was he going to go next? Out into that horizon? “So you’re going to recommend against my appointment.”
Lorne started walking again. “I don’t want to judge you hastily. I think there’s some chance you’re a better man than your record makes you out to be. Rodney likes you, which is saying something. Rodney doesn’t like many people.”
So McKay hadn’t told him about the fight. John certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.
“Yeah, I’ve gotten that impression.”
“Look.” He sighed. “Rodney was thrust into the kind of command responsibility we generally try to avoid giving to the scientists. He’s done the best he could.”
Obviously Lorne was committed to defending his people. They weren’t going to bond by bitching about McKay. Okay. “I get it. But I also get the impression he thinks I’m somebody else.”
“He and the other Sheppard did get along well,” Lorne said. “But I think he knows you’re not going to be him.”
“What did the other Sheppard do, anyway? McKay said he was a hero.”
A slight pause. “He had my job. Saved the Earth at least three times more than I have, I might add.”
“Oh.” Whoops. “That’s…awkward.”
“I’ll try not to hold your superior alternate-universe self against you,” Lorne said, and gave him a wry smile. John was starting to feel like he couldn’t resent him, which made it worse. “Anyway, Rodney pulling for you is a plus, though whether you could stand each other long term is a different question. But there’s Teyla to consider, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” John tried to sound casual.
“You may have gathered that she’s not from around here.” Actually, he hadn’t, but it made sense. Scary sense. “She belonged to a people called the Athosians. They were very helpful to us when we first arrived. She went with us on about half our missions even though she wasn’t officially a member of the team.”
Belonged? He decided not to ask.
“I had to fight to get the SGC to take her on the team. I’ve had to fight to get her to stay. This is a good team, despite everything. I’ve worked too hard keeping it together to let it be disrupted by a dirty cop who got lucky.”
Lorne was looking straight at him again. John met his eye—he had to. “Look, despite what certain of my ex-girlfriends might tell you, I’m not a totally insensitive asshole. I can tell she’s had a rough time. I’m not going to mess with her. She doesn’t need it.”
They held eye contact. Lorne eventually looked away. “That’s not what your ex-girlfriends say, actually.”
It startled a half-chuckle out of him. “Do I even want to know?”
Lorne smiled again. “No one wants to know what their background check says, believe me.”
They walked on a little further. There was only so long John could take the great blustering silence. “So, what happens now?”
“I’m making contact with Colonel Carter tomorrow to give her my recommendation. She can push your appointment through, but she’ll only do it if I tell her to. I don’t want to string you along, Sheppard, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.”
Damn, John wished he could hate him. “And what if you recommend against me?”
“What? Oh, right, McKay threatened you because you haven’t signed the nondisclosures. He really likes to do that for some reason.” Lorne turned back towards the entrance. “Just hang in there for now.”
“Great.”
“You know, we do have temporary quarters that are a little nicer than the hospital wing. I could get you moved.”
“Nah,” John said, “I’m starting to feel like I belong down there.”
That night, John watched the lights dim with a dull dread that was all too familiar from fucked-up missions of years past. Waiting for rescue that probably wasn’t coming. Knowing that even if it came there’d be no fixing what had happened.
He’d come back from his trip outside with a wavering hope he tried not to examine too closely. Lorne hadn’t slammed the door shut, not all the way. And at least he’d know one way or the other tomorrow. But he’d dozed off without meaning to, and when he woke up the conversation had taken on a whole different cast in his mind.
Lorne was obviously a nice guy, a competent soldier, a leader who looked after his people. The kind of person John liked to work with, wouldn’t mind working for.
And he’d taken one look at John’s record and practically thrown himself between him and his team.
John couldn’t even blame him.
And now that even McKay was pissed at him…
He tried to imagine what would happen the next day and his imagination ran dead into a terrifying blankness. What would it be like, going through the motions in some dead-end PI job, knowing the whole time that there was this life he was supposed to have had, a life worth something, that he had blown his chance at without even realizing it? Knowing that he’d found the ruby slippers that could get him home, only he’d just fumbled and dropped them? Knowing that there were creatures and constructs out there that could light up his brain like they were made just for him, purer than the rush of flight, filthier than any orgasm he’d ever had, and he’d never even tasted it?
Why did he have to keep surviving, again and again and again, if all it was going to add up to was this?
Maybe it was time to put an end to it. Time to find his own personal blaze of glory and this time make sure he rode all the way down into the heart of it.
“Tell me about Atlantis,” he snarled, slapping his palms against the cell before the Wraith could even get up.
He didn't look surprised as he moved towards him like some infinitely old, infinitely cunning animal. “John Sheppard. Ghost in the machine. Restless, restless. No sleep for the wicked.”
“Tell me.”
His lips pulled back in a terrible grin. “My thoughts are my own. Will you pay my price?”
What could the Wraith ask for that he still cared about? “What do you want?”
“Let me in, John Sheppard,” he said, and now that he knew what it was, he could feel the Wraith’s mind creeping, swirling around his. “Let me in and I will show you everything.”
John swallowed recklessly and pressed his forehead to the glass, and the fog swallowed him at once.
After some timeless period of silence, it cleared. He was skimming over shining waters, an immensity of ocean. Silver spires rose suddenly from the waves, a perfection and arrogance of form that demanded worship or utter rejection. The delicate glassy towers spoke of thousands of years of uninterrupted study, of fearless possession, of haughty peace. Fireworks blossomed cool colors over the skyline as he approached.
This was the city. The city that would have been his.
He couldn’t get close enough, though he spread himself against the glass. He had to get closer. He barely heard the door click open, was hardly aware of his own feet stepping into the cell.
Those weren’t fireworks. They were explosions. Anti-aircraft fire. As he ducked beneath them, he realized he was in a Dart, and his mission was to destroy.
This was the city of the creators who turned on their own creations, who played favorites and cruel games with peoples through the millennia and never realized until too late that they had molded their own enemies, and molded them into something to fear.
A cold hand groped across his chest.
“Oh, John Sheppard, I am lucky to have met you,” the Wraith breathed, and John didn’t even have enough control over his own muscles to brace himself. Didn’t even have the will to be disgusted by how hard he was.
“Let him go,” a voice rang in his ears, but muffled, as if he were underwater, and suddenly he staggered, falling back against the glass. The wrong side of the glass. The cell was closed again. The Wraith still had hold of one arm, but he was staring past him. John didn’t have to look to know; he could feel the presence burning cold, the strong, steady pull of the force behind him.
“Why do you defend them, Teyla?” the Wraith said. “Their songs are not your songs. Set me free and I will make you a queen more glorious than any hive has ever dreamed.”
John twisted his head, expecting to see her rebuff him, but instead she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She was wearing a long floating cardigan over some kind of short sleeping-gown, and she was as pale as she could get.
“Just a taste,” he murmured. “If he has found favor in your eyes I will return the gift later. He will be your first worshipper, as broken open and willing as you could ever desire.”
His free hand moved slowly back towards John’s chest. Even though John didn’t understand them, his whispered words had made him harder, and it was all he could not to jerk into the touch.
“A year, Teyla. Give me just one year of John Sheppard’s life and I will give you my name.“
She drew herself up. “I already know your name,” she said, and spoke a word that blanked John's brain with confusion, as if he were only catching half the meaning carried by each syllable. “Now let him go!" The Wraith recoiled, hissing in agony. Released from his mental and physical grip, John was able to slide to the door. He nearly toppled through when Teyla opened it for him.
“Holy fuck,” he mumbled as she hauled him to his feet.
“We must get out of here,” she said, and urged him along into a run.
Teyla led him up an emergency stairwell four flights. She was quick and graceful, even in her sleeping clothes. John, still reeling from what had just happened, had trouble following her. He wasn’t even sure how he’d ended up down there in the first place. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to stand still for a Wraith to turn him into one of those poor bastards from the desert. Worst of all—in that moment, worst by a large margin—was that he was still incredibly turned on. The feeling wasn’t fading, not as he watched Teyla’s slim thighs move in front of him, not as he felt her still pulling him like gravity. And she was bound to notice sooner or later if he didn’t get away from her.
They came off the stairwell into another dim corridor. She stiff-armed a door open and nearly threw him into the room in front of her. It looked like an abandoned budget hotel room, complete with queen-size bed whose comforter appeared to have been bought back in the seventies. The guest quarters Lorne had mentioned.
Teyla shut the door and turned up one of the forlorn lamps, which cast a sickly glow. She turned back to him, breathing fast from all the stairs, and seized the hair on the back of his head with one hand. He had to stoop so as to not have it ripped out.
“What is your name?” she demanded, staring into his eyes.
“John Sheppard.”
“Who do you follow?”
“What? No one.”
She studied him for a minute longer. He tried to meet her eyes and not stare at, for instance, her parted lips. Just when he thought he’d have to give up, she let him go.
He took two hasty steps away, trying to clear his head, and laughed bitterly. “It’s just as well Lorne’s turning me down.”
“Is he? I had not heard that he had decided.”
“Doesn’t matter. This’ll do it. And it should. I don’t, I don’t have any idea what any of this even is yet and it’s tearing me apart! I just went down and deliberately tried to feed myself to an alien, and it felt better than half the sex I’ve ever had!”
Teyla frowned, and John winced. Probably shouldn’t have said that last part. He expected her just to turn and walk out. He didn’t know if he’d be able to let her go. If the Wraith’s mental influence had been a tickle in his mind, right now Teyla was a Roman candle.
“You still don’t understand, John,” she said, very softly. “They are Wraith. They can make you do things, want things, you never would otherwise.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Like this?”
It was like he was moving through the blank moment in the vision before the fog rolled back as he stepped forward, grabbed Teyla’s arms, and kissed her.
He actually expected to be hit—this was a woman who could take on any five Marines who came at her, who could kill Wraith, whose arms were like whipcord with muscle. But she kissed him back, rough and biting, her fingers clawing into his shoulders. He could feel the press of her breasts against his chest as his hands slid down her arms, to her waist, to cup her small, firm ass. She spread her legs just enough as he half-hoisted her that she could rub herself against him, sucking hard on his collarbone.
If he has found favor in your eyes…
He didn’t normally take it this fast, especially not the first time, and somehow he managed to make his brain engage enough with his mouth to stammer out, “Do you—is this—?”
She slid one hand down into the back of John’s pants. “Take them off,” she growled.
He set her down to comply. She caught his hair again and held his gaze as he frantically hooked his thumbs into the waistband and hauled it all down, the little jerks of pain doing nothing but urging him on. She eyed his cock and made a small, guttural noise. Without breaking contact, she urged him backwards until he fell over onto the bed. He started to sit up, but she stopped him with an imperious palm to his chest that almost stopped his heart as well. After that, he could do nothing but lie and wait like an offering for her.
She paused to yank off her cardigan, impatiently whipping the sleeves around her. As she did, the clingy fabric of her gown climbed up her legs. John stared up at her helplessly, hypnotized by the glimpse of her thighs, burnished smooth and slender. He would have gone down on her gladly, eaten her out til she screamed, but she didn’t lie down. Instead, she moved to straddle him as he lay, and, God, she wasn’t even wearing anything underneath, did she always…
She rode him mercilessly, sheened over with sweat, eyes half-closed, lost in her own private world. Somehow, this didn’t throw him out of it—it only turned him on more. After some time, she caught one of his hands at her waist and guided it down to stroke her clit, and catching her rhythm was easier than it had ever been for him. Coming startled him; he had felt like he could keep up this athletic effort as long as she wanted him to. He kept caressing her through it, as though that was being handled by some deep portion of his brain that didn’t shut down with the pleasure. She leaned forward just a little, and he cupped her breast with his free hand, rubbing his thumb fiercely through the fabric across the nipple. For a couple of minutes there was no sound at all except her short panting breaths. Then she came in a great trembling burst, her eyes going shut completely.
As he watched her slide off him and curl up on the bed, it occurred to him that Lorne was going to kill him. But Teyla didn’t push him away when he lay behind her, settling a tentative arm over her, and so he didn’t really care.
They lay that way for a little while. John stared down over Teyla’s shoulder at her prominent collarbones. He felt empty and clean, purged of every anxiety and anger that had stalked his thoughts since he’d first followed the Wraith to the poker game. He was sure that if he fell asleep here, it would be restful and dreamless. But he wasn’t so sure about Teyla. He had given it all up to her, and she had taken it, and what had she gotten in return? She had obviously had things taken from her that he couldn’t hope to restore. And he was no great bargain anyway. The thought made him feel absurdly tender and grateful. He brought his hand up to stroke the little wisps of hair at her temple—
And found himself pinned on his back, her knee planted in his chest, her hand gripping his wrist hard enough to cut the circulation off. “Do not,” she commanded, and her eyes were as wild as his must have looked before. “Do not ever.”
“Okay,” he said quickly, spreading both his hands out in a gesture of surrender. “Okay.”
She blinked and let him go, almost flinging herself off him. She settled with her back against the wall, drawing her knees nearly to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs, and putting her head down. He sat up, half-stretching a hand out to her and then letting it drop. He didn’t dare get closer.
He hadn’t been that out of his mind.
Just enough to walk down and let himself into the Wraith’s cell.
“God, Teyla, if you didn’t want—“
“I wanted it.” She didn’t lift her head. “Do not apologize.”
“Okay,” he said, trying not to sound baffled. It was the last thing in the world he wanted, to be useless to yet another woman he cared about, and yet that’s where he kept ending up. Only the conviction that no one but a complete jackass would walk out on her now, no matter how little good he could do, kept him on the bed.
After a while, Teyla said, “Not long ago, I was held captive by the Wraith.”
Her voice was quiet, dry, matter-of-fact. John tried to imagine what it would be like to be at the mercy of creatures like the one downstairs, no cages, no guards, no rescuers, and he couldn’t. He’d spent so much time thinking about whether he could get himself to Pegasus, whether he could cope with what Pegasus might throw at him, that he hadn’t stopped to think about what it was like to live there. It was a real place, where real people were going through hell, not just the source of spectacular weirdness in his own life.
“Oh,” he said, and for lack of anything better, “Captured on a mission?”
“No, afterwards. The Darts came to Athos. Looking for me, killing everyone else.” She took a deep breath. “All my people, gone. Because of me.”
Damn. The same story in every universe, the same torture for all of them. How could he not have seen it before?
“It was war,” he said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it probably would have happened whether or not you allied with Atlantis.”
“No,” she said bleakly. “It happened because I have Wraith DNA.”
She shot him a wary look over her arms. He realized that she expected him to be repulsed. He supposed he might have been. But he was already coming to understand that Pegasus had a price, that it took a piece of you. Amongst so many strangenesses, it hardly seemed to matter. “Wraith DNA. How would that make it your fault?”
“Because my ancestors were experimented on long ago by a Wraith, but the experiment was shut down. That Wraith was very pleased when he discovered that a descendant of one of his subjects had survived. He persuaded his queen to let him collect her. Me. It was a month before the Atlanteans even realized I was missing.”
No wonder McKay always looked at her like he was grieving. He’d lost her. He and Lorne must have been insane with guilt.
Her hands were clenching and unclenching against her legs. John ached to reach out and steady them with his own. “He couldn’t have cared that much.”
She stared down again. “He cared more than you can imagine. He wanted to know what abilities he could evoke in me, and he was willing to try anything. By the end, he was obsessed. I did not understand it at first, but he was trying to make me into a queen.” She paused. “My hair was long then, and grew longer, like theirs, and it pleased him so—“
She broke off, and now she was shaking all over. John couldn’t stay back any longer, but all he could think to do was put a hand gently on her knee. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She seized his hand, and he started to pull it back, but she held on, looking up again. Her eyes burned clear. “So I know what the Wraith can make you need if they are determined enough, John. You are not some sort of freak to…respond to this one as you did. It does not mean you cannot work with us.”
It didn’t seem right to let her change the subject so fast. “You know it wasn’t your fault. Any of it.”
“As none of those deaths were yours?”
He winced. “That was different.”
“No. It was not. That is why," she persisted, "you are wrong when you think you are not good enough for us.”
He couldn't make her talk about it. That much he knew. “So, are you going to tell the bosses?”
“I think not,” she said. “We can…compensate for your susceptibility.”
“Compensate?” he laughed. “That’s a funny way to describe it.”
She actually smiled, and moved her head a little impatiently, like she was embarrassed. There might even have been some color in her cheek. “Rodney used to say—“
She stopped. Poor McKay, chasing the ghosts of the people he was supposed to have known. He said, impulsively, “He misses you, you know.”
Her eyes softened further. “I know.”
An unwelcome thought distracted him. “I actually went into the cell. There have to be access records. They’ll find out.”
“Yes, they will.”
“They won’t be happy about that.”
“No, they will not,” she said, and he could see she had made a decision. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the chair room.” She raised her chin, determined, and he couldn’t help it, he saw the queen in her, too. After all these days of waiting, he’d surrendered himself for good. “But we will get Rodney first. There is something we should have told you a long time ago.”
He let her pull him up, despite the twinge in his shoulder. He was ready to go.
Title: when I came I was a stranger (2/2)
Author: Sarah T.
Website: www.aliencorn.net
Rating: NC-17
Characters: John, Teyla, Rodney
Notes: A "Vegas" AU. Thanks to the Spike for a Turkish-massage beta. (~12K words.)
Summary: John is recruited.
“Well,” John said out loud when he got back to his room, “that was anticlimatic.”
The pale green walls of his room seemed to agree with him.
Maybe it was all a test, and he’d only prove his worthiness by escaping.
Maybe he’d lost his mind, caring whether these guys even thought he was worthy. But it wasn’t so much the SGC itself, really, it was…
He had liberated a stress ball from the conference room supply stash almost without thinking about it. The rest of the day and on into the evening, he sat on the edge of his bed, bouncing it against the wall and catching it, over and over and over again. For a long time, he could let his mind go blank, fill it with the rhythm, but after the lights dimmed, images began to flash in his mind on the off-beats.
The chair, all gleaming blue mystery.
Thud.
The Wraith, pale and just as full of secrets.
Thud.
It was like flipping the light switch off and on, off and on, but what he was looking at stayed the same, desires that freaked him out with their intensity. The longer he wasted away in the room, the worse it got. He wanted to sit in the chair, let it do whatever it wanted to him, get it over with. And the Wraith…it wasn’t just that he wanted to talk to him again, get more out of him that the people around here weren’t telling. He needed to do it, needed to let that whisper get into his thoughts and show him things. Last night he had been so close, so close to understanding…
Chair.
Thud.
Wraith.
Thud.
Waiting.
Thud.
Waiting for him.
Thud.
He threw himself back onto the bed, letting the ball drop to the floor.
Eyes that had shone purer and fiercer than the Wraith’s. A voice rich and distant with its own secret knowledge.
“Teyla,” he whispered desperately, and slid his hand downward.
He was already hard.
He was just dozing off when McKay burst into his room. “God, you’re not sleeping already, are you?” he demanded crossly. “How can you be tired when you’re not doing anything but lying around in hospital?”
John blinked at him, glad he was under a sheet. Now that McKay was actually there, the thought that John had wanted him to show up seemed a little misguided. “What do you want?”
“I want you to do me a favor. You owe me big-time for getting you on the team.”
“I’m not on the team, McKay,” he pointed out.
He waved a hand. “Not yet. Irrelevant detail. Come on.”
Damn, he was pompous. But he was also probably the only supporter of John’s candidacy for the SGC, so there was nothing to do but humor him. John remembered thinking when he left the Air Force that at least he’d left politics behind; when you gave up your career, you gave up giving a damn about how it went, too. He sat up, discreetly hitching up his scrubs. “Where are we going?”
“Just come on,” he said impatiently, and a minute later John was following him through yet another confusing set of corridors he hadn’t explored yet. The place was really not on a human scale. Unbidden, he imagined Bugs Bunny tunneling his way in and looking around in confusion: I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque!
“You and me both, buddy,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
After about ten minutes of walking, McKay slowed, and seemed to be listening. “It’s supposed to be around here somewhere…”
“What?”
“Just a little something I want you to break up.”
“Break up? What are you—“
“Shhh!” McKay raised an imperious hand. “I hear something.”
John did too, a remote echo of shouts and the squeak of heavy boots against a metal floor. McKay hurried forward, and after a few more turns, they emerged into what looked like a unused storage area, lit by wavering and sparking fluorescents. John smelled the tang of sweat before he even saw the crowd of Marines in a loose circle near the center.
He recognized this all right—not really an Air Force thing, but he’d seen it at other bases. Just a little informal brawling for fun and profit, out of eyeshot of the officers. Work off some energy, establish who was the big dog. But these guys didn’t have the usual cheerful, rowdy air to them. They sounded like whoever was fighting, they really wouldn’t mind seeing them get hurt. John wondered who it was. He was startled when they got close enough that he could catch a glimpse.
It was Teyla. Teyla in a racerback that showed off her toned arms and loose flowing pants, barefoot, dripping sweat but not bloodied anywhere, eyes far away. She was matched against a Marine with almost a foot on her, and John felt sick. There was no way this could end well. But her reflexes were unbelievably quick. She made the Marine’s punches look like slow and clumsy swipes until she could duck inside his reach and deliver a ringing elbow to the solar plexus. He tottered, and she spun and grabbed his arm, got it into a submission lock. She shouldn’t have been strong enough to get the right leverage, but down he went to his knees.
“Do you give up?” she said, low, barely audible over the crowd’s mixed roars and boos.
“Fuck you, bitch,” he spat.
She tightened her grip. “I said, do you give up?”
Disgust twisting his face, he reached out with his other hand and slapped the rough concrete floor. She released him at once, turning away as though she had already forgotten him, hardly even breathing fast. As she scanned the crowd, John thought her eyes flashed over them, but if she saw them, she gave no sign. “Who is next?”
“Go on,” McKay nudged him. He’d joined Sheppard at the very edge of the crowd. “Break it up!”
“No,” John muttered, as his astonishment gave way to an awful weariness. “What we need to do is get out of here right now.”
“Get out of here? But she—“ He pointed. Another Marine had entered the ring to a chorus of cheers and laughter. This one ran more to weight than height. He was a kickboxer, John could see—maybe Muy Thai. He scored a blow that glanced off her jaw, but she shook it off and kept moving. “Look at her!”
“Come on, McKay.” John turned and walked off into the corridor. McKay hesitated, but followed him. When they were safely out of range, he exploded.
“What do you think you’re doing? I brought you down there to break that up, and you just leave?”
What a thought. Him, a shady half-stranger in hospital scrubs, and McKay, who had undoubtedly pissed off every member of the military he had ever come into contact with. “Believe me, McKay, we were not going to break that up. And I don’t think Teyla would have thanked us for trying, either.”
“But you’re one of those people! You’re supposed to be able to get it! Fix it!”
“Oh, I get it all right,” John said. Teyla had looked painfully familiar—someone fighting the biggest, nastiest demons she could find outside of her own head, and knowing exactly where to go to find the fight. He’d never seen it on a woman before. “I just don’t know how to fix it.”
“They’re going to kill her one of these days!”
“Have to say, it doesn’t really look like it. She’s amazing.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” McKay said, momentarily distracted. “You should have seen her with her bantos rods. It was so beautiful.” He shook his head sharply. “That doesn’t mean it’s safe for her to be down there doing the ultimate fighting championships with a bunch of Marines who think she’s a freak!”
“Does she do this a lot?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed unhappily. “There were rumors, but she’s been shutting me out ever since…”
He didn’t know why McKay had instinctively latched onto him to solve the problem. Some kind of weird membership test?
“Why didn’t you tell Lorne?”
“And give her an extra reason to hate me?” McKay eyed him. “Are you sure you didn’t get a concussion during the bombing?”
“Well, then, I don’t see what you expected me to do.”
McKay wasn’t upset for the right reasons—all he could see was the blood and the violence, which, from the way Teyla handled herself, was just as much a part of her ordinary life as it had been of John’s. Still, John could sympathize. Teyla clearly felt like she couldn’t leave that ring until she couldn’t stay on her feet anymore, and seeing it had made him want to drag her out if he had to. He would have been glad to let her hit him if she needed someone to hit. But McKay blaming him for what was going on was a little much.
“Show a little team spirit! Chivalry! Something! Don’t you even care?”
He was unbelievably lucky McKay was so terrible at reading people. “Care? Care about a bunch of people who’ve kidnapped me out of my life and left me to get old on a locked ward while they decide whether I’m good enough for them?”
“The other Sheppard would have cared,” McKay said coldly. “Why do you think I wanted you on the team?”
Wanted? Damn. But this wasn’t for McKay to see. “Psychosis?”
“That’s it.” McKay threw up his hands. “If I’d wanted to be insulted by someone useless, I’d have brought Zelenka along. Do you think you can find your way back to your room without a trail of breadcrumbs?”
“I bet I can manage,” John said casually.
Back in his room, he did as many pushups as he could until his arm gave out.
Lorne surprised him by showing up in his room the next day just as he was trying to manage a pull-up on an exposed pipe. “Hello, Sheppard.”
“Colonel.” John tried not to look like he was glad to have an excuse to lower himself slowly to the ground. His shoulder thanked him sarcastically as he touched down. “Welcome to my world.”
“Well, this is certainly…depressing,” he said, taking a look around at the room where John hadn’t managed to establish anything more of his personality than a certain messiness in the way towels and little plastic cups were strewn around. “Why don’t we take a walk?”
“Taking a walk” meant actually going outside, strolling on the pavement surrounding the grim industrial buildings that made up Area 51. John felt weird wandering around in public in the scrubs they’d given him, but there was no one around to see it.
It was early yet. The air was warm and dry, shocking after the semi-refrigeration of the ward. John knew that the sun wasn’t high enough yet to be relentless, but the glare in his eyes was enough to make him long for his glasses. Still, the desert had never looked so good to him. The sky swept all the way down to the horizon. He remembered hoping when he came to Vegas that it would make him feel free.
They walked in silence for a little while. John couldn’t hear anything but the whistle of the wind. If McKay had told Lorne anything about the previous night, it didn’t show.
“So, I’ve been reviewing your record,” he said finally, in a carefully neutral tone.
That was one of those sentences that never led into an enjoyable conversation. “I can completely explain that incident with the paste in art class.”
Lorne didn’t smile. “Atlantis can always use pilots, and the first team hasn’t had a real one since we lost Sgt. Markham. You have a lot of experience operating in extreme environments. There’s no question that you would bring real skills to the table.”
“But?”
“Our teams tend to be small. The expedition itself is less than three hundred people, with limited Earthside leave. We care a lot more about chemistry than you might expect, and it’s my job to make sure it works.”
“And you don’t think I’ll fit in.”
He couldn’t help it—a subtle inflection of sarcasm had crept into his voice. Lorne stopped and looked at him. He didn’t look angry, but he obviously wasn’t inclined to apologize for doing his job.
“Your record suggests that you’re either an incorrigible loner or a rebel. I understand that you’ve been in some tough situations, but I’m not sure we need that on the first team, or Atlantis for that matter.”
John swallowed, feeling acid start to churn in his stomach. Where was he going to go next? Out into that horizon? “So you’re going to recommend against my appointment.”
Lorne started walking again. “I don’t want to judge you hastily. I think there’s some chance you’re a better man than your record makes you out to be. Rodney likes you, which is saying something. Rodney doesn’t like many people.”
So McKay hadn’t told him about the fight. John certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.
“Yeah, I’ve gotten that impression.”
“Look.” He sighed. “Rodney was thrust into the kind of command responsibility we generally try to avoid giving to the scientists. He’s done the best he could.”
Obviously Lorne was committed to defending his people. They weren’t going to bond by bitching about McKay. Okay. “I get it. But I also get the impression he thinks I’m somebody else.”
“He and the other Sheppard did get along well,” Lorne said. “But I think he knows you’re not going to be him.”
“What did the other Sheppard do, anyway? McKay said he was a hero.”
A slight pause. “He had my job. Saved the Earth at least three times more than I have, I might add.”
“Oh.” Whoops. “That’s…awkward.”
“I’ll try not to hold your superior alternate-universe self against you,” Lorne said, and gave him a wry smile. John was starting to feel like he couldn’t resent him, which made it worse. “Anyway, Rodney pulling for you is a plus, though whether you could stand each other long term is a different question. But there’s Teyla to consider, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” John tried to sound casual.
“You may have gathered that she’s not from around here.” Actually, he hadn’t, but it made sense. Scary sense. “She belonged to a people called the Athosians. They were very helpful to us when we first arrived. She went with us on about half our missions even though she wasn’t officially a member of the team.”
Belonged? He decided not to ask.
“I had to fight to get the SGC to take her on the team. I’ve had to fight to get her to stay. This is a good team, despite everything. I’ve worked too hard keeping it together to let it be disrupted by a dirty cop who got lucky.”
Lorne was looking straight at him again. John met his eye—he had to. “Look, despite what certain of my ex-girlfriends might tell you, I’m not a totally insensitive asshole. I can tell she’s had a rough time. I’m not going to mess with her. She doesn’t need it.”
They held eye contact. Lorne eventually looked away. “That’s not what your ex-girlfriends say, actually.”
It startled a half-chuckle out of him. “Do I even want to know?”
Lorne smiled again. “No one wants to know what their background check says, believe me.”
They walked on a little further. There was only so long John could take the great blustering silence. “So, what happens now?”
“I’m making contact with Colonel Carter tomorrow to give her my recommendation. She can push your appointment through, but she’ll only do it if I tell her to. I don’t want to string you along, Sheppard, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.”
Damn, John wished he could hate him. “And what if you recommend against me?”
“What? Oh, right, McKay threatened you because you haven’t signed the nondisclosures. He really likes to do that for some reason.” Lorne turned back towards the entrance. “Just hang in there for now.”
“Great.”
“You know, we do have temporary quarters that are a little nicer than the hospital wing. I could get you moved.”
“Nah,” John said, “I’m starting to feel like I belong down there.”
That night, John watched the lights dim with a dull dread that was all too familiar from fucked-up missions of years past. Waiting for rescue that probably wasn’t coming. Knowing that even if it came there’d be no fixing what had happened.
He’d come back from his trip outside with a wavering hope he tried not to examine too closely. Lorne hadn’t slammed the door shut, not all the way. And at least he’d know one way or the other tomorrow. But he’d dozed off without meaning to, and when he woke up the conversation had taken on a whole different cast in his mind.
Lorne was obviously a nice guy, a competent soldier, a leader who looked after his people. The kind of person John liked to work with, wouldn’t mind working for.
And he’d taken one look at John’s record and practically thrown himself between him and his team.
John couldn’t even blame him.
And now that even McKay was pissed at him…
He tried to imagine what would happen the next day and his imagination ran dead into a terrifying blankness. What would it be like, going through the motions in some dead-end PI job, knowing the whole time that there was this life he was supposed to have had, a life worth something, that he had blown his chance at without even realizing it? Knowing that he’d found the ruby slippers that could get him home, only he’d just fumbled and dropped them? Knowing that there were creatures and constructs out there that could light up his brain like they were made just for him, purer than the rush of flight, filthier than any orgasm he’d ever had, and he’d never even tasted it?
Why did he have to keep surviving, again and again and again, if all it was going to add up to was this?
Maybe it was time to put an end to it. Time to find his own personal blaze of glory and this time make sure he rode all the way down into the heart of it.
“Tell me about Atlantis,” he snarled, slapping his palms against the cell before the Wraith could even get up.
He didn't look surprised as he moved towards him like some infinitely old, infinitely cunning animal. “John Sheppard. Ghost in the machine. Restless, restless. No sleep for the wicked.”
“Tell me.”
His lips pulled back in a terrible grin. “My thoughts are my own. Will you pay my price?”
What could the Wraith ask for that he still cared about? “What do you want?”
“Let me in, John Sheppard,” he said, and now that he knew what it was, he could feel the Wraith’s mind creeping, swirling around his. “Let me in and I will show you everything.”
John swallowed recklessly and pressed his forehead to the glass, and the fog swallowed him at once.
After some timeless period of silence, it cleared. He was skimming over shining waters, an immensity of ocean. Silver spires rose suddenly from the waves, a perfection and arrogance of form that demanded worship or utter rejection. The delicate glassy towers spoke of thousands of years of uninterrupted study, of fearless possession, of haughty peace. Fireworks blossomed cool colors over the skyline as he approached.
This was the city. The city that would have been his.
He couldn’t get close enough, though he spread himself against the glass. He had to get closer. He barely heard the door click open, was hardly aware of his own feet stepping into the cell.
Those weren’t fireworks. They were explosions. Anti-aircraft fire. As he ducked beneath them, he realized he was in a Dart, and his mission was to destroy.
This was the city of the creators who turned on their own creations, who played favorites and cruel games with peoples through the millennia and never realized until too late that they had molded their own enemies, and molded them into something to fear.
A cold hand groped across his chest.
“Oh, John Sheppard, I am lucky to have met you,” the Wraith breathed, and John didn’t even have enough control over his own muscles to brace himself. Didn’t even have the will to be disgusted by how hard he was.
“Let him go,” a voice rang in his ears, but muffled, as if he were underwater, and suddenly he staggered, falling back against the glass. The wrong side of the glass. The cell was closed again. The Wraith still had hold of one arm, but he was staring past him. John didn’t have to look to know; he could feel the presence burning cold, the strong, steady pull of the force behind him.
“Why do you defend them, Teyla?” the Wraith said. “Their songs are not your songs. Set me free and I will make you a queen more glorious than any hive has ever dreamed.”
John twisted his head, expecting to see her rebuff him, but instead she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She was wearing a long floating cardigan over some kind of short sleeping-gown, and she was as pale as she could get.
“Just a taste,” he murmured. “If he has found favor in your eyes I will return the gift later. He will be your first worshipper, as broken open and willing as you could ever desire.”
His free hand moved slowly back towards John’s chest. Even though John didn’t understand them, his whispered words had made him harder, and it was all he could not to jerk into the touch.
“A year, Teyla. Give me just one year of John Sheppard’s life and I will give you my name.“
She drew herself up. “I already know your name,” she said, and spoke a word that blanked John's brain with confusion, as if he were only catching half the meaning carried by each syllable. “Now let him go!" The Wraith recoiled, hissing in agony. Released from his mental and physical grip, John was able to slide to the door. He nearly toppled through when Teyla opened it for him.
“Holy fuck,” he mumbled as she hauled him to his feet.
“We must get out of here,” she said, and urged him along into a run.
Teyla led him up an emergency stairwell four flights. She was quick and graceful, even in her sleeping clothes. John, still reeling from what had just happened, had trouble following her. He wasn’t even sure how he’d ended up down there in the first place. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to stand still for a Wraith to turn him into one of those poor bastards from the desert. Worst of all—in that moment, worst by a large margin—was that he was still incredibly turned on. The feeling wasn’t fading, not as he watched Teyla’s slim thighs move in front of him, not as he felt her still pulling him like gravity. And she was bound to notice sooner or later if he didn’t get away from her.
They came off the stairwell into another dim corridor. She stiff-armed a door open and nearly threw him into the room in front of her. It looked like an abandoned budget hotel room, complete with queen-size bed whose comforter appeared to have been bought back in the seventies. The guest quarters Lorne had mentioned.
Teyla shut the door and turned up one of the forlorn lamps, which cast a sickly glow. She turned back to him, breathing fast from all the stairs, and seized the hair on the back of his head with one hand. He had to stoop so as to not have it ripped out.
“What is your name?” she demanded, staring into his eyes.
“John Sheppard.”
“Who do you follow?”
“What? No one.”
She studied him for a minute longer. He tried to meet her eyes and not stare at, for instance, her parted lips. Just when he thought he’d have to give up, she let him go.
He took two hasty steps away, trying to clear his head, and laughed bitterly. “It’s just as well Lorne’s turning me down.”
“Is he? I had not heard that he had decided.”
“Doesn’t matter. This’ll do it. And it should. I don’t, I don’t have any idea what any of this even is yet and it’s tearing me apart! I just went down and deliberately tried to feed myself to an alien, and it felt better than half the sex I’ve ever had!”
Teyla frowned, and John winced. Probably shouldn’t have said that last part. He expected her just to turn and walk out. He didn’t know if he’d be able to let her go. If the Wraith’s mental influence had been a tickle in his mind, right now Teyla was a Roman candle.
“You still don’t understand, John,” she said, very softly. “They are Wraith. They can make you do things, want things, you never would otherwise.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Like this?”
It was like he was moving through the blank moment in the vision before the fog rolled back as he stepped forward, grabbed Teyla’s arms, and kissed her.
He actually expected to be hit—this was a woman who could take on any five Marines who came at her, who could kill Wraith, whose arms were like whipcord with muscle. But she kissed him back, rough and biting, her fingers clawing into his shoulders. He could feel the press of her breasts against his chest as his hands slid down her arms, to her waist, to cup her small, firm ass. She spread her legs just enough as he half-hoisted her that she could rub herself against him, sucking hard on his collarbone.
If he has found favor in your eyes…
He didn’t normally take it this fast, especially not the first time, and somehow he managed to make his brain engage enough with his mouth to stammer out, “Do you—is this—?”
She slid one hand down into the back of John’s pants. “Take them off,” she growled.
He set her down to comply. She caught his hair again and held his gaze as he frantically hooked his thumbs into the waistband and hauled it all down, the little jerks of pain doing nothing but urging him on. She eyed his cock and made a small, guttural noise. Without breaking contact, she urged him backwards until he fell over onto the bed. He started to sit up, but she stopped him with an imperious palm to his chest that almost stopped his heart as well. After that, he could do nothing but lie and wait like an offering for her.
She paused to yank off her cardigan, impatiently whipping the sleeves around her. As she did, the clingy fabric of her gown climbed up her legs. John stared up at her helplessly, hypnotized by the glimpse of her thighs, burnished smooth and slender. He would have gone down on her gladly, eaten her out til she screamed, but she didn’t lie down. Instead, she moved to straddle him as he lay, and, God, she wasn’t even wearing anything underneath, did she always…
She rode him mercilessly, sheened over with sweat, eyes half-closed, lost in her own private world. Somehow, this didn’t throw him out of it—it only turned him on more. After some time, she caught one of his hands at her waist and guided it down to stroke her clit, and catching her rhythm was easier than it had ever been for him. Coming startled him; he had felt like he could keep up this athletic effort as long as she wanted him to. He kept caressing her through it, as though that was being handled by some deep portion of his brain that didn’t shut down with the pleasure. She leaned forward just a little, and he cupped her breast with his free hand, rubbing his thumb fiercely through the fabric across the nipple. For a couple of minutes there was no sound at all except her short panting breaths. Then she came in a great trembling burst, her eyes going shut completely.
As he watched her slide off him and curl up on the bed, it occurred to him that Lorne was going to kill him. But Teyla didn’t push him away when he lay behind her, settling a tentative arm over her, and so he didn’t really care.
They lay that way for a little while. John stared down over Teyla’s shoulder at her prominent collarbones. He felt empty and clean, purged of every anxiety and anger that had stalked his thoughts since he’d first followed the Wraith to the poker game. He was sure that if he fell asleep here, it would be restful and dreamless. But he wasn’t so sure about Teyla. He had given it all up to her, and she had taken it, and what had she gotten in return? She had obviously had things taken from her that he couldn’t hope to restore. And he was no great bargain anyway. The thought made him feel absurdly tender and grateful. He brought his hand up to stroke the little wisps of hair at her temple—
And found himself pinned on his back, her knee planted in his chest, her hand gripping his wrist hard enough to cut the circulation off. “Do not,” she commanded, and her eyes were as wild as his must have looked before. “Do not ever.”
“Okay,” he said quickly, spreading both his hands out in a gesture of surrender. “Okay.”
She blinked and let him go, almost flinging herself off him. She settled with her back against the wall, drawing her knees nearly to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs, and putting her head down. He sat up, half-stretching a hand out to her and then letting it drop. He didn’t dare get closer.
He hadn’t been that out of his mind.
Just enough to walk down and let himself into the Wraith’s cell.
“God, Teyla, if you didn’t want—“
“I wanted it.” She didn’t lift her head. “Do not apologize.”
“Okay,” he said, trying not to sound baffled. It was the last thing in the world he wanted, to be useless to yet another woman he cared about, and yet that’s where he kept ending up. Only the conviction that no one but a complete jackass would walk out on her now, no matter how little good he could do, kept him on the bed.
After a while, Teyla said, “Not long ago, I was held captive by the Wraith.”
Her voice was quiet, dry, matter-of-fact. John tried to imagine what it would be like to be at the mercy of creatures like the one downstairs, no cages, no guards, no rescuers, and he couldn’t. He’d spent so much time thinking about whether he could get himself to Pegasus, whether he could cope with what Pegasus might throw at him, that he hadn’t stopped to think about what it was like to live there. It was a real place, where real people were going through hell, not just the source of spectacular weirdness in his own life.
“Oh,” he said, and for lack of anything better, “Captured on a mission?”
“No, afterwards. The Darts came to Athos. Looking for me, killing everyone else.” She took a deep breath. “All my people, gone. Because of me.”
Damn. The same story in every universe, the same torture for all of them. How could he not have seen it before?
“It was war,” he said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it probably would have happened whether or not you allied with Atlantis.”
“No,” she said bleakly. “It happened because I have Wraith DNA.”
She shot him a wary look over her arms. He realized that she expected him to be repulsed. He supposed he might have been. But he was already coming to understand that Pegasus had a price, that it took a piece of you. Amongst so many strangenesses, it hardly seemed to matter. “Wraith DNA. How would that make it your fault?”
“Because my ancestors were experimented on long ago by a Wraith, but the experiment was shut down. That Wraith was very pleased when he discovered that a descendant of one of his subjects had survived. He persuaded his queen to let him collect her. Me. It was a month before the Atlanteans even realized I was missing.”
No wonder McKay always looked at her like he was grieving. He’d lost her. He and Lorne must have been insane with guilt.
Her hands were clenching and unclenching against her legs. John ached to reach out and steady them with his own. “He couldn’t have cared that much.”
She stared down again. “He cared more than you can imagine. He wanted to know what abilities he could evoke in me, and he was willing to try anything. By the end, he was obsessed. I did not understand it at first, but he was trying to make me into a queen.” She paused. “My hair was long then, and grew longer, like theirs, and it pleased him so—“
She broke off, and now she was shaking all over. John couldn’t stay back any longer, but all he could think to do was put a hand gently on her knee. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She seized his hand, and he started to pull it back, but she held on, looking up again. Her eyes burned clear. “So I know what the Wraith can make you need if they are determined enough, John. You are not some sort of freak to…respond to this one as you did. It does not mean you cannot work with us.”
It didn’t seem right to let her change the subject so fast. “You know it wasn’t your fault. Any of it.”
“As none of those deaths were yours?”
He winced. “That was different.”
“No. It was not. That is why," she persisted, "you are wrong when you think you are not good enough for us.”
He couldn't make her talk about it. That much he knew. “So, are you going to tell the bosses?”
“I think not,” she said. “We can…compensate for your susceptibility.”
“Compensate?” he laughed. “That’s a funny way to describe it.”
She actually smiled, and moved her head a little impatiently, like she was embarrassed. There might even have been some color in her cheek. “Rodney used to say—“
She stopped. Poor McKay, chasing the ghosts of the people he was supposed to have known. He said, impulsively, “He misses you, you know.”
Her eyes softened further. “I know.”
An unwelcome thought distracted him. “I actually went into the cell. There have to be access records. They’ll find out.”
“Yes, they will.”
“They won’t be happy about that.”
“No, they will not,” she said, and he could see she had made a decision. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the chair room.” She raised her chin, determined, and he couldn’t help it, he saw the queen in her, too. After all these days of waiting, he’d surrendered himself for good. “But we will get Rodney first. There is something we should have told you a long time ago.”
He let her pull him up, despite the twinge in his shoulder. He was ready to go.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-25 09:01 pm (UTC)This is stunning.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-25 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-25 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:02 am (UTC)Great portrait of a man with little to lose, and yet everything to lose. John drifts back and forth, starting with Another decent death, gotten away from him and ending at He was ready to go; almost drowning in his very palpable aloneness. Perfect.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 04:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 04:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 04:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 05:15 am (UTC)And I love this portrayal of Teyla, brittle but not broken, fierce and dangerous.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-27 12:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 05:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-27 12:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-26 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-27 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-27 04:40 am (UTC)Am really looking forward to the following chapters! Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-28 03:32 am (UTC)HOLY COW
Date: 2009-01-27 03:38 pm (UTC)Teyla with remnants of Wraith queen in her is unbelievably hot and I love the subservient personality you highlight in John---I'm hoping that there will be hot bdsm in the future for the two of them.
Re: HOLY COW
Date: 2009-01-28 03:33 am (UTC)Re: HOLY COW
Date: 2009-01-28 04:59 am (UTC)Re: HOLY COW
Date: 2009-01-30 09:30 pm (UTC)This is great :) I can't wait for more chapters - Please tell me you'll be updating again soon?
Re: HOLY COW
Date: 2009-01-31 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-28 01:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-28 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-28 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-29 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-30 09:24 pm (UTC)Err, yes, sorry for the rambling. This is a really great story.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-31 03:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-02 04:29 am (UTC)Very well written and a joy to read. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop.
I loved it and this will remain one of my all time favorite fics.
I keep referring others to read this.
BRAVO!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-02 05:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-25 09:27 pm (UTC)Now why the blue blazes couldn't the Boys at Bridge have done something even remotely similar to this in the first damn place? This was dark and powerful and completely alternate universe while keeping so completely true to the characters, far truer than they managed in most of the damn canon.
Also, thank you.
ETA: Yeah, this is another one of several fan written stories that I would love to print out, roll up like a newspaper and swat the idiots at Bridge Studios on the nose with.