Fic: Defense Mechanism, Part 2 (nc-17)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
“Christ, I wasn’t thinking. I just… I couldn’t-”
“I know, John,” she quieted.
She gave him a pointed look because they didn’t have the privacy they needed for that conversation. Behind them, the curtain was partially drawn but she could still hear the words of the medical staff as Carson ordered a full body check up for Elizabeth. She’d repeatedly told John’s guard to stand down, but she was well aware of the heavy weaponry resting not five feet from them, ready to spring into action if John so much as exhaled the wrong way.
Her thoughts were jumbled as she rested on the infirmary bed, and she tried for a hopeful voice. “Maybe we’re overreacting? Just because you bit me, doesn’t mean I’m infected. There’s a chance.”
“Elizabeth,” he began again, and his face was pinched with such guilt and recrimination, she didn’t know how to respond. “I don’t…”
Elizabeth glanced away, resisting the urge to reach out and soothe him. God, she wanted to, but that would have created too much of a scene; besides, she'd allowed that lapse of judgment before and look where it had landed her. Despite her confusion and anxiety, she refused to blame him entirely for what had transpired. She shouldn’t have allowed things to progress like they had when he wasn’t entirely himself. He’d bitten her unthinkingly because of a retrovirus, but Elizabeth didn’t have the luxury of such an excuse for her own actions. She should have never allowed the kiss to begin in the first place, much less for it to progress like it had.
“Col. Sheppard,” Caldwell called, entering the infirmary with three armed men in tow. “I'm placing you into custody-”
“Col. Caldwell!” Carson shouted, intercepting the party. They clustered in the center of the infirmary, and Elizabeth watched, feeling a headache coming on. “My infirmary is not the place for your men-”
Caldwell wasn’t hearing it. “This is a military matter now.”
"I happen to think it's entirely medical."
"Luckily my authority supersedes yours-"
“Gentlemen,” Elizabeth began tiredly, then glanced aside at John. She didn’t want to deal with a pissing contest right now, between anyone. “That won’t be necessary. I’m fine.”
Caldwell gestured the guards with a nod of his head, then turned back to Elizabeth. “With all due respect, no, you’re not. Sheppard attacked you - again.”
“Steven-”
“Elizabeth, it’s all right,” John spoke up, surprising her.
The guards circled around him and she stared before realizing she'd miscalculated John's response to Caldwell's posturing. His sense of guilt and recrimination had kicked into overdrive, and Caldwell was only going to feed into that. Elizabeth just wanted assurances that the retrovirus hadn’t spread to her, and after that, she was fully willing to put this entire event behind her. Her hand drifted to the bandages covering her neck, and the urge to desperately crawl into a hole and hide overwhelmed it.
God, he’d bitten her, and all of Atlantis knew about it. She could just imagine the gossip now.
Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose, attempting to regroup and regain authority before this turned ugly. “Please, just stop. We can deal with any security issues in a moment. First, I want to find out what Carson’s tests said.”
Carson cleared his throat sheepishly. “Unfortunately, we won’t get the results for a few hours yet.”
“We don’t need it,” John said, and she immediately glanced to him but he wasn’t returning her gaze. “When I got infected, my bite mark healed unnaturally fast. That was the first sign that something was wrong.”
Everybody turned to stare at her neck. Self-consciously, Elizabeth swallowed, then Carson stepped forward to help her remove the bandages. She didn’t feel the mark - in fact, she hadn’t felt much of anything except adrenaline and fear since being escorted to the infirmary. She squirmed a little as Carson peeled back the bandages, waiting expectantly for the others to tell her what they saw.
“Well?” she breathed anxiously. “What is it? Is the bite mark still there?”
The others exchanged uneasy looks, and Elizabeth felt her stomach drop.
“I’m sorry, love,” Carson said quietly. “There’s no mark.”
John followed the statement by slamming his fist into the wall.
Hours later, John paced in agitation around the square cage, glancing every so often passed the horizontal bars to the two guards that held him in custody. The brig offered no point of distraction, and John kept pacing, listening to the buzz of electricity that held him within the force field. He couldn’t stop thinking over everything, the guilt of his actions combining with the restlessness of his current situation.
Jesus. And to think, they’d foolishly thought the worst had been over when Carson had begun his treatment.
He really fucking hated those bugs.
His emotions were running wild and John couldn’t leash it. It was like every impulse he had, no matter how momentary, had the ability to rule him. That was the problem with being infected with this damn disease. He couldn’t stop his baser instincts, and right now he was furious - with Caldwell, with these guards, but most of all he was furious with himself.
The door slid open, and Caldwell entered the brig, stopping before the horizontal bars of John’s cage. He quietly instructed the guards to leave, and John watched them file out, one-by-one, until he was left in an empty room with Caldwell.
“How is she?”
“Handling it better than most,” Caldwell answered. “Dr. Beckett's gathered his scientist together again, but it’s doubtful they’ll manage to reproduce the treatment without more samples of the Iratus Bug stem cells.”
John stepped closer to the bars. “If we need more stem cells, then send me back to that planet.”
“As I recall, Major Lorne destroyed the cave after you finished taking the samples. There’s nothing left.”
“You don’t know that,” John growled.
“I do,” Caldwell countered, evenly. “Two days afterwards, I had Daedelus scan the cave for further nests, but it was void of life. There’s nothing left.”
“Then stop my treatment,” John immediately offered. “Start hers.”
Caldwell shook his head. “There isn’t enough. The way Dr. Beckett explained it, Elizabeth would need a full course treatment, and there is only enough to finish the rest of yours.”
"If it'll slow down her mutation, then-"
"Slowing it down isn't good enough, Colonel. We can't lose both of you to this disease. There's only enough to save you, so we really don't have an option."
"Caldwell-"
"That's enough!" Caldwell stopped him, then took a breath, wrestling his agitation back into a cool exterior again. "I understand you're concerned. I am, too. Neither of us wants to see Elizabeth in this situation, but it's here and we have to handle this with a level head."
It occurred to John that Caldwell was showing more concern for Elizabeth than he had ever shown for anyone else. He'd always known that underneath this weird power-struggle going on between them, there was begrudging respect and admiration, but now he started to wonder if Caldwell felt more than that for Elizabeth. The notion set John's teeth on edge, an undeniable spike of animosity rising, and - he didn't know it - but the slits of his eyes narrowed unnaturally in a primal threat.
Caldwell sensed it. "So much for a level-head?"
John clenched his fists and turned away, and after a beat, he realized that he was getting jealous while Elizabeth's life was in danger. He needed to get his head on straight; retrovirus or no, he couldn't let his baser instincts control him.
After a moment, Caldwell’s voice dropped to accusations. “What were you thinking? Elizabeth’s been the only one to trust you unflinchingly throughout this entire process, and you attacked her? Why?”
It hadn’t been an attack.
His hands fisted at his sides, and he knew why he’d done it - the lust in him had been insatiable and overwhelming. Biting her had felt so natural, so appropriate because the thing inside him had recognized Elizabeth as a mate. He’d taken advantage of her momentary lapse in judgment and now she was infected. There was no excuse for that. Christ, they were right back to where they were a week ago, except instead of John, Elizabeth’s life hung in the balance. The thought scared him into a place where the fear was a living, angry thing inside of him. He growled, the sound unnaturally low and rough in his throat, and he turned back to see Caldwell's defensive posture.
“Is she going to be all right?”
Caldwell’s expression was less than reassuring. “Dr. Beckett’s team is working on it. In the meantime, for reasons passing understanding, she wants you released from the brig. Her loyalty to you is blinding her, but I don’t have that problem. You can’t be trusted right now. The brig is the best place for you.”
John paused. He couldn’t let his self-control slip, not even for a second, and if it did, he wanted others there to keep him in his place. Begrudgingly, he knew he could trust Caldwell to do that.
John nodded, jaw clenched. “Agreed.”
Caldwell looked surprised for a beat, but then he schooled his features. “I almost want to say I’m glad that we're finally seeing eye-to-eye, but I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Just look after her.”
Caldwell held his gaze, somberly, and then nodded. “I will, Colonel. You have my word on that.”
He left, and the guards returned. John resumed his agitated pacing across the small square cage, frustrated that he couldn’t protect Elizabeth himself. It was his job to do that, to keep her safe, but he’d so royally screwed it up, there was no way back now. God, no wonder she had wanted to break it off with him. He was even starting to wonder why she’d ever gotten involved with a fuck-up like him in the first place.
There had to be a way to salvage this.
There had to be.
“I think there may be a way to salvage this,” Carson said, the following evening as Elizabeth rested against a gurney. “Dr. Brown actually came up with the idea.”
Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. “Katie Brown? She’s a botanist. How can she help?”
“I’ve passed along the data for the stem cell research to every science division in Atlantis. Everybody from botanists to marine genealogists have taken a gander at the notes, which is the only reason that Dr. Brown was able to recognize similarities between Colonel Sheppard’s treatment and a rare native plant found on the Sukarian homeworld. We may have an alternative cure.”
“Sukarian homeworld?” Elizabeth repeated numbly, trying to recall the details.
It was hopeless, though. The retrovirus was fast acting, and Elizabeth felt her concentration slip further and further as the hours passed. The physiological changes had yet to appear, but Elizabeth was more than well aware that she was being mentally compromised. John had been right about the codeine high.
“Don’t worry about the details,” Carson said. “Caldwell has already sent a team through the Stargate to collect samples. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have some viable options.”
“Tomorrow?” Elizabeth muttered numbly. “But, Carson, won’t the retrovirus advance enough to compromise me by then?”
His face fell a little. “You’ll have to deal with some of the side-affects, aye. I won’t lie: it’s not going to be pretty, and if Colonel Sheppard’s mutations were any indications, we may begin to see physical manifestations of the retrovirus in as little as seven hours. But we’ve got a head start this time, Elizabeth. Don’t you worry! We’ll figure it out.”
She forced herself to smile, but it probably came out a grimace. “Thank you, Carson.”
He smiled back, reassuringly. “My job, love.”
“What about John? How is he doing?”
Carson rolled his eyes. “A bit mean-spirited lately, but I can’t blame him. A part of that is probably the charm of the retrovirus, but I imagine he’s agitated and worried about you more than anything. Poor lad blames himself for what happened.”
Elizabeth grimaced. “I told him not to do that.”
“Since when does he take orders well?” Carson countered with a good-natured smile.
They talked for a bit more before Carson left to attend to some leftover matters from the prior day, before this latest predicament with the retrovirus had managed to capture his undivided attention all over again. Elizabeth waited until she got clearance from one of the nurses before she hopped off the bed. She was joined by a guard on her way out of the infirmary; now that she was infected, protocol dictated that she be treated no better than John.
Well, she was being treated a little better than John. Repressing a sigh, she wondered for the hundred time if she should go visit him in the brig. But it was hard enough to deal with her rapidly evolving condition. Maybe it was cowardly, but she didn’t want to make things more complicated than they needed to be.
This reasoning held merit until the late evening.
By sunset, Elizabeth was restless with an ill-defined agitation. She was isolated, trying desperately to get random bits of work done in the privacy of her own bedroom but her concentration was shot. Eventually she retreated to the bathroom for a quick shower, but the sight that greeted her in the reflection of the mirror stopped Elizabeth cold.
Her skin was turning bluish-purple, just like John's. It was progressing faster than John’s evolution had been. The discoloring started at her collarbone and was spreading up the left side of her face, stopping just below the high arc of her cheekbone. She peered closer into the mirror and saw flecks of yellow embedded in the green of her eyes, and the slight oblong shape to her iris. It scared her stiff for a moment, and then she was moving, rapidly shedding her clothes to see what else had transformed.
She stood nude under the bright garish light of her bathroom, staring at the hints of discoloration that wrapped around the front nexus of her hips to her tailbone, spreading the unnatural tinged-skin towards her torso. Her nipples had hardened under the cool splash of air, and she lifted off on her tippy toes and stretched, testing a flexibility that she hadn’t had since she was in her late teens and studying ballet. She did it effortlessly now, the old knee injury on her left leg unnoticeable and irrelevant. There was a hidden strength and flexibility within her body that would have amazed her had she not been terrified of the growing implications.
She remembered John - how rapidly he could move, almost quicker than the eye. She remembered seeing footage of him crawling along the ceiling top, evading search parties and flying bullets like they were mere nuisances.
There was something she needed to do; something that was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what. Eventually, she redressed quickly and left her room.
Her feet carried her to the brig before she even made the conscious decision, something pulling her like a magnate towards the place. The guard outside the door stared at her while Elizabeth overcame a last moment’s hesitation. After a beat, she told the guard that she wanted to visit, and there was a brief period that followed where he had to get special permission from Caldwell to let her do so. It rankled her pride a little, that she needed to ask for permission from Caldwell to do anything in her city, but she knew full-well why such precautions were being put in place.
Still, she hoped Caldwell wasn’t getting too comfortable. She planned on being back in charge in no time.
“You can go in now, ma’am,” the guard informed her.
She entered the brig, and there was another guard stationed to the left of her. The door slid shut behind her before she even made out the figure of John lying spread out over the cot. Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. His lanky body seemed relaxed and untroubled, and a spark of irritation went through Elizabeth for reasons she couldn’t even understand. She circled the cage, walking towards him until the moment she saw his eyes snap open. The knowledge of her presence quickened his breathing, almost imperceptibly, but Elizabeth noticed it among a dozen other things she could pick up now thanks to her heightened awareness.
He smelled different - well, not different, but stronger. His scent was a mixture of musk and masculine fragrances that muddle her senses again, and when she blinked and glanced away briefly in order to regroup, she glanced back only to find John abruptly standing in front of her, face inches apart from her own with a single horizontal bar between them.
“Elizabeth,” he breathed, in a tone that went straight through her.
The awareness of him was suddenly something that stole her breath away. She hadn’t been prepared for that. His body sang to her on a level she couldn’t even define, but it was instinctual and dark, and her breathing quickened. She traded a look with him that seemed to go right through both of them as if they shared one single impulse. Lust tightened low in her belly, and she could pick up a telling scent in the air from John - some pheromone, maybe? He was just as responsive to her as she was of him - as if there was some primal recognition.
Her mate.
Her pulse kicked up, and if it hadn’t been for those damn bars between them, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what either of them would have done.
“You’re changing,” he whispered, knowingly.
She finally managed to peel her gaze away, snapping out of the trance she’d found herself locked into when gazing into John’s eyes. She fisted her hands at her sides, attempting to lessen any outward telltale signs of the strange moment that had just transpired. The guard looked oblivious to the moment, but she wasn’t willing to risk more damage to their reputations or further backlash against John.
They had to stay in control.
Still, it was difficult to manage in his presence and Elizabeth suddenly rethought the wisdom of this visitation. She hadn’t been expecting this, and a part of her - the rational part of her, the one that had reached the decision to break off a relationship with him - wanted to bolt for the door and never look back.
“Don’t go,” John rasped, urgency crisping the normal drawl of his voice.
Despite herself, she snapped her gaze back to him, finding herself incapable of looking away again. God, he was gorgeous. The blue scales on the sides of his face had once felt threatening and foreign, but now they just sharpened the attraction of his features. He looked glorious to her, so beautiful that she wanted to breach the distance between them, consequences be damned. Heat pooled low in her belly, spreading wetness between her thighs.
She-she needed to get out of here.
“I have to go,” she said, almost pleading.
The desperation in her voice at any other time would have made Elizabeth flinch, but she needed him to know how painful this was, walking away from him. She needed him to know that she didn’t want to do it, but it was for the best. This was all for the best.
His face fell, and her heart broke a little when he nodded in understanding.
She broke her gaze, striding past the guards without another word. Once she was clear of the door, she felt her breath escape in a long, unsteady release. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to repress the memory of John’s face, the look he’d given her piercing something primal inside of her. She couldn’t focus on that. Not now. Perhaps never again.
One of Caldwell’s men was staring at her. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
She mustered a small nod, and left without a response.
Part 3
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
“Christ, I wasn’t thinking. I just… I couldn’t-”
“I know, John,” she quieted.
She gave him a pointed look because they didn’t have the privacy they needed for that conversation. Behind them, the curtain was partially drawn but she could still hear the words of the medical staff as Carson ordered a full body check up for Elizabeth. She’d repeatedly told John’s guard to stand down, but she was well aware of the heavy weaponry resting not five feet from them, ready to spring into action if John so much as exhaled the wrong way.
Her thoughts were jumbled as she rested on the infirmary bed, and she tried for a hopeful voice. “Maybe we’re overreacting? Just because you bit me, doesn’t mean I’m infected. There’s a chance.”
“Elizabeth,” he began again, and his face was pinched with such guilt and recrimination, she didn’t know how to respond. “I don’t…”
Elizabeth glanced away, resisting the urge to reach out and soothe him. God, she wanted to, but that would have created too much of a scene; besides, she'd allowed that lapse of judgment before and look where it had landed her. Despite her confusion and anxiety, she refused to blame him entirely for what had transpired. She shouldn’t have allowed things to progress like they had when he wasn’t entirely himself. He’d bitten her unthinkingly because of a retrovirus, but Elizabeth didn’t have the luxury of such an excuse for her own actions. She should have never allowed the kiss to begin in the first place, much less for it to progress like it had.
“Col. Sheppard,” Caldwell called, entering the infirmary with three armed men in tow. “I'm placing you into custody-”
“Col. Caldwell!” Carson shouted, intercepting the party. They clustered in the center of the infirmary, and Elizabeth watched, feeling a headache coming on. “My infirmary is not the place for your men-”
Caldwell wasn’t hearing it. “This is a military matter now.”
"I happen to think it's entirely medical."
"Luckily my authority supersedes yours-"
“Gentlemen,” Elizabeth began tiredly, then glanced aside at John. She didn’t want to deal with a pissing contest right now, between anyone. “That won’t be necessary. I’m fine.”
Caldwell gestured the guards with a nod of his head, then turned back to Elizabeth. “With all due respect, no, you’re not. Sheppard attacked you - again.”
“Steven-”
“Elizabeth, it’s all right,” John spoke up, surprising her.
The guards circled around him and she stared before realizing she'd miscalculated John's response to Caldwell's posturing. His sense of guilt and recrimination had kicked into overdrive, and Caldwell was only going to feed into that. Elizabeth just wanted assurances that the retrovirus hadn’t spread to her, and after that, she was fully willing to put this entire event behind her. Her hand drifted to the bandages covering her neck, and the urge to desperately crawl into a hole and hide overwhelmed it.
God, he’d bitten her, and all of Atlantis knew about it. She could just imagine the gossip now.
Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose, attempting to regroup and regain authority before this turned ugly. “Please, just stop. We can deal with any security issues in a moment. First, I want to find out what Carson’s tests said.”
Carson cleared his throat sheepishly. “Unfortunately, we won’t get the results for a few hours yet.”
“We don’t need it,” John said, and she immediately glanced to him but he wasn’t returning her gaze. “When I got infected, my bite mark healed unnaturally fast. That was the first sign that something was wrong.”
Everybody turned to stare at her neck. Self-consciously, Elizabeth swallowed, then Carson stepped forward to help her remove the bandages. She didn’t feel the mark - in fact, she hadn’t felt much of anything except adrenaline and fear since being escorted to the infirmary. She squirmed a little as Carson peeled back the bandages, waiting expectantly for the others to tell her what they saw.
“Well?” she breathed anxiously. “What is it? Is the bite mark still there?”
The others exchanged uneasy looks, and Elizabeth felt her stomach drop.
“I’m sorry, love,” Carson said quietly. “There’s no mark.”
John followed the statement by slamming his fist into the wall.
Hours later, John paced in agitation around the square cage, glancing every so often passed the horizontal bars to the two guards that held him in custody. The brig offered no point of distraction, and John kept pacing, listening to the buzz of electricity that held him within the force field. He couldn’t stop thinking over everything, the guilt of his actions combining with the restlessness of his current situation.
Jesus. And to think, they’d foolishly thought the worst had been over when Carson had begun his treatment.
He really fucking hated those bugs.
His emotions were running wild and John couldn’t leash it. It was like every impulse he had, no matter how momentary, had the ability to rule him. That was the problem with being infected with this damn disease. He couldn’t stop his baser instincts, and right now he was furious - with Caldwell, with these guards, but most of all he was furious with himself.
The door slid open, and Caldwell entered the brig, stopping before the horizontal bars of John’s cage. He quietly instructed the guards to leave, and John watched them file out, one-by-one, until he was left in an empty room with Caldwell.
“How is she?”
“Handling it better than most,” Caldwell answered. “Dr. Beckett's gathered his scientist together again, but it’s doubtful they’ll manage to reproduce the treatment without more samples of the Iratus Bug stem cells.”
John stepped closer to the bars. “If we need more stem cells, then send me back to that planet.”
“As I recall, Major Lorne destroyed the cave after you finished taking the samples. There’s nothing left.”
“You don’t know that,” John growled.
“I do,” Caldwell countered, evenly. “Two days afterwards, I had Daedelus scan the cave for further nests, but it was void of life. There’s nothing left.”
“Then stop my treatment,” John immediately offered. “Start hers.”
Caldwell shook his head. “There isn’t enough. The way Dr. Beckett explained it, Elizabeth would need a full course treatment, and there is only enough to finish the rest of yours.”
"If it'll slow down her mutation, then-"
"Slowing it down isn't good enough, Colonel. We can't lose both of you to this disease. There's only enough to save you, so we really don't have an option."
"Caldwell-"
"That's enough!" Caldwell stopped him, then took a breath, wrestling his agitation back into a cool exterior again. "I understand you're concerned. I am, too. Neither of us wants to see Elizabeth in this situation, but it's here and we have to handle this with a level head."
It occurred to John that Caldwell was showing more concern for Elizabeth than he had ever shown for anyone else. He'd always known that underneath this weird power-struggle going on between them, there was begrudging respect and admiration, but now he started to wonder if Caldwell felt more than that for Elizabeth. The notion set John's teeth on edge, an undeniable spike of animosity rising, and - he didn't know it - but the slits of his eyes narrowed unnaturally in a primal threat.
Caldwell sensed it. "So much for a level-head?"
John clenched his fists and turned away, and after a beat, he realized that he was getting jealous while Elizabeth's life was in danger. He needed to get his head on straight; retrovirus or no, he couldn't let his baser instincts control him.
After a moment, Caldwell’s voice dropped to accusations. “What were you thinking? Elizabeth’s been the only one to trust you unflinchingly throughout this entire process, and you attacked her? Why?”
It hadn’t been an attack.
His hands fisted at his sides, and he knew why he’d done it - the lust in him had been insatiable and overwhelming. Biting her had felt so natural, so appropriate because the thing inside him had recognized Elizabeth as a mate. He’d taken advantage of her momentary lapse in judgment and now she was infected. There was no excuse for that. Christ, they were right back to where they were a week ago, except instead of John, Elizabeth’s life hung in the balance. The thought scared him into a place where the fear was a living, angry thing inside of him. He growled, the sound unnaturally low and rough in his throat, and he turned back to see Caldwell's defensive posture.
“Is she going to be all right?”
Caldwell’s expression was less than reassuring. “Dr. Beckett’s team is working on it. In the meantime, for reasons passing understanding, she wants you released from the brig. Her loyalty to you is blinding her, but I don’t have that problem. You can’t be trusted right now. The brig is the best place for you.”
John paused. He couldn’t let his self-control slip, not even for a second, and if it did, he wanted others there to keep him in his place. Begrudgingly, he knew he could trust Caldwell to do that.
John nodded, jaw clenched. “Agreed.”
Caldwell looked surprised for a beat, but then he schooled his features. “I almost want to say I’m glad that we're finally seeing eye-to-eye, but I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Just look after her.”
Caldwell held his gaze, somberly, and then nodded. “I will, Colonel. You have my word on that.”
He left, and the guards returned. John resumed his agitated pacing across the small square cage, frustrated that he couldn’t protect Elizabeth himself. It was his job to do that, to keep her safe, but he’d so royally screwed it up, there was no way back now. God, no wonder she had wanted to break it off with him. He was even starting to wonder why she’d ever gotten involved with a fuck-up like him in the first place.
There had to be a way to salvage this.
There had to be.
“I think there may be a way to salvage this,” Carson said, the following evening as Elizabeth rested against a gurney. “Dr. Brown actually came up with the idea.”
Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. “Katie Brown? She’s a botanist. How can she help?”
“I’ve passed along the data for the stem cell research to every science division in Atlantis. Everybody from botanists to marine genealogists have taken a gander at the notes, which is the only reason that Dr. Brown was able to recognize similarities between Colonel Sheppard’s treatment and a rare native plant found on the Sukarian homeworld. We may have an alternative cure.”
“Sukarian homeworld?” Elizabeth repeated numbly, trying to recall the details.
It was hopeless, though. The retrovirus was fast acting, and Elizabeth felt her concentration slip further and further as the hours passed. The physiological changes had yet to appear, but Elizabeth was more than well aware that she was being mentally compromised. John had been right about the codeine high.
“Don’t worry about the details,” Carson said. “Caldwell has already sent a team through the Stargate to collect samples. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have some viable options.”
“Tomorrow?” Elizabeth muttered numbly. “But, Carson, won’t the retrovirus advance enough to compromise me by then?”
His face fell a little. “You’ll have to deal with some of the side-affects, aye. I won’t lie: it’s not going to be pretty, and if Colonel Sheppard’s mutations were any indications, we may begin to see physical manifestations of the retrovirus in as little as seven hours. But we’ve got a head start this time, Elizabeth. Don’t you worry! We’ll figure it out.”
She forced herself to smile, but it probably came out a grimace. “Thank you, Carson.”
He smiled back, reassuringly. “My job, love.”
“What about John? How is he doing?”
Carson rolled his eyes. “A bit mean-spirited lately, but I can’t blame him. A part of that is probably the charm of the retrovirus, but I imagine he’s agitated and worried about you more than anything. Poor lad blames himself for what happened.”
Elizabeth grimaced. “I told him not to do that.”
“Since when does he take orders well?” Carson countered with a good-natured smile.
They talked for a bit more before Carson left to attend to some leftover matters from the prior day, before this latest predicament with the retrovirus had managed to capture his undivided attention all over again. Elizabeth waited until she got clearance from one of the nurses before she hopped off the bed. She was joined by a guard on her way out of the infirmary; now that she was infected, protocol dictated that she be treated no better than John.
Well, she was being treated a little better than John. Repressing a sigh, she wondered for the hundred time if she should go visit him in the brig. But it was hard enough to deal with her rapidly evolving condition. Maybe it was cowardly, but she didn’t want to make things more complicated than they needed to be.
This reasoning held merit until the late evening.
By sunset, Elizabeth was restless with an ill-defined agitation. She was isolated, trying desperately to get random bits of work done in the privacy of her own bedroom but her concentration was shot. Eventually she retreated to the bathroom for a quick shower, but the sight that greeted her in the reflection of the mirror stopped Elizabeth cold.
Her skin was turning bluish-purple, just like John's. It was progressing faster than John’s evolution had been. The discoloring started at her collarbone and was spreading up the left side of her face, stopping just below the high arc of her cheekbone. She peered closer into the mirror and saw flecks of yellow embedded in the green of her eyes, and the slight oblong shape to her iris. It scared her stiff for a moment, and then she was moving, rapidly shedding her clothes to see what else had transformed.
She stood nude under the bright garish light of her bathroom, staring at the hints of discoloration that wrapped around the front nexus of her hips to her tailbone, spreading the unnatural tinged-skin towards her torso. Her nipples had hardened under the cool splash of air, and she lifted off on her tippy toes and stretched, testing a flexibility that she hadn’t had since she was in her late teens and studying ballet. She did it effortlessly now, the old knee injury on her left leg unnoticeable and irrelevant. There was a hidden strength and flexibility within her body that would have amazed her had she not been terrified of the growing implications.
She remembered John - how rapidly he could move, almost quicker than the eye. She remembered seeing footage of him crawling along the ceiling top, evading search parties and flying bullets like they were mere nuisances.
There was something she needed to do; something that was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what. Eventually, she redressed quickly and left her room.
Her feet carried her to the brig before she even made the conscious decision, something pulling her like a magnate towards the place. The guard outside the door stared at her while Elizabeth overcame a last moment’s hesitation. After a beat, she told the guard that she wanted to visit, and there was a brief period that followed where he had to get special permission from Caldwell to let her do so. It rankled her pride a little, that she needed to ask for permission from Caldwell to do anything in her city, but she knew full-well why such precautions were being put in place.
Still, she hoped Caldwell wasn’t getting too comfortable. She planned on being back in charge in no time.
“You can go in now, ma’am,” the guard informed her.
She entered the brig, and there was another guard stationed to the left of her. The door slid shut behind her before she even made out the figure of John lying spread out over the cot. Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. His lanky body seemed relaxed and untroubled, and a spark of irritation went through Elizabeth for reasons she couldn’t even understand. She circled the cage, walking towards him until the moment she saw his eyes snap open. The knowledge of her presence quickened his breathing, almost imperceptibly, but Elizabeth noticed it among a dozen other things she could pick up now thanks to her heightened awareness.
He smelled different - well, not different, but stronger. His scent was a mixture of musk and masculine fragrances that muddle her senses again, and when she blinked and glanced away briefly in order to regroup, she glanced back only to find John abruptly standing in front of her, face inches apart from her own with a single horizontal bar between them.
“Elizabeth,” he breathed, in a tone that went straight through her.
The awareness of him was suddenly something that stole her breath away. She hadn’t been prepared for that. His body sang to her on a level she couldn’t even define, but it was instinctual and dark, and her breathing quickened. She traded a look with him that seemed to go right through both of them as if they shared one single impulse. Lust tightened low in her belly, and she could pick up a telling scent in the air from John - some pheromone, maybe? He was just as responsive to her as she was of him - as if there was some primal recognition.
Her mate.
Her pulse kicked up, and if it hadn’t been for those damn bars between them, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what either of them would have done.
“You’re changing,” he whispered, knowingly.
She finally managed to peel her gaze away, snapping out of the trance she’d found herself locked into when gazing into John’s eyes. She fisted her hands at her sides, attempting to lessen any outward telltale signs of the strange moment that had just transpired. The guard looked oblivious to the moment, but she wasn’t willing to risk more damage to their reputations or further backlash against John.
They had to stay in control.
Still, it was difficult to manage in his presence and Elizabeth suddenly rethought the wisdom of this visitation. She hadn’t been expecting this, and a part of her - the rational part of her, the one that had reached the decision to break off a relationship with him - wanted to bolt for the door and never look back.
“Don’t go,” John rasped, urgency crisping the normal drawl of his voice.
Despite herself, she snapped her gaze back to him, finding herself incapable of looking away again. God, he was gorgeous. The blue scales on the sides of his face had once felt threatening and foreign, but now they just sharpened the attraction of his features. He looked glorious to her, so beautiful that she wanted to breach the distance between them, consequences be damned. Heat pooled low in her belly, spreading wetness between her thighs.
She-she needed to get out of here.
“I have to go,” she said, almost pleading.
The desperation in her voice at any other time would have made Elizabeth flinch, but she needed him to know how painful this was, walking away from him. She needed him to know that she didn’t want to do it, but it was for the best. This was all for the best.
His face fell, and her heart broke a little when he nodded in understanding.
She broke her gaze, striding past the guards without another word. Once she was clear of the door, she felt her breath escape in a long, unsteady release. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to repress the memory of John’s face, the look he’d given her piercing something primal inside of her. She couldn’t focus on that. Not now. Perhaps never again.
One of Caldwell’s men was staring at her. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
She mustered a small nod, and left without a response.
Part 3