Darkness Challenge: Seven Circles Twisting by Brighid
Challenge: Darkness
Title: Seven Circles Twisting
Spoilers: None, really
Rating: Adult
Author: Brighid
Summary: It's all about the night inside.
Note: Well, in keeping with the theme ... it's a bit dark.
Seven Circles Twisting
by Brighid
Elizabeth came down the stairs to greet John's team as they came through the gate. By the third step she was at a dead run and paging Doctor Beckett. She hit the bottom of the stairs and skidded the last few feet, dropping to her hands and knees to pull a wildly convulsing Ford into the recovery position, holding on even has he vomited all over her.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Bates said, barely catching Teyla as she collapsed, unable to get to John and Rodney to soften their falls. All of them, Ford included, were bruised and bloody almost past recognition, their clothes torn and filthy and crusted. They stank so badly it made one of the marines gag audibly as he tried to pull McKay into a recovery position.
The wormhole shut down behind them, and there was only the sound of ragged breathing and a high, thin sobbing cry that split the sudden silence and made Elizabeth's gut twist. "Jesus," Bates said again, and it was as much a prayer as a curse. "That's Major Sheppard."
)*(
"Will you share the Night with us?"
It had seemed an innocuous enough question, really. PX4-893 was a fairly sophisticated civilization. They had technology that compared to the late nineteenth century, with a few surprising leaps. The two days of touring had revealed a well-educated public, an appreciation of the arts and a high degree of civility. They'd been damned good hosts, and Teyla had managed to negotiate a good foundation for a trade agreement that would provide some key food items and some manufactured goods for Atlantis. All that remained was to take it back for Elizabeth's approval.
It would have been just plain rude to not take part in their annual eclipse celebration.
So John had smiled at the little slip of a girl, Eyyae, who was the First's aide and said, "We'd love to."
That was, in retrospect, the point at which it all started to go to hell.
)*(
Elizabeth watched as Carson pulled the curtains closed around Rodney's bed.
"Doctor?"
Carson looked at her. "They'll all have a bit of minor scarring, but nothing too terrible. The worst damage was on Rodney, he's got about fifteen stitches at the hairline. We pumped their stomachs, as well as taking blood and urine samples. I'm screening everything. At the moment their EKG's and their other readings are all within acceptable parameters, so I'm going to guess that the worst of it is out of their systems."
"Do you know what attacked them?" Elizabeth asked.
Carson worried his lower lip with the edge of his thumb. "Well, I'll have to wait for the lab work, but at a guess? Those are human bites. And the facial gouging ... they all had blood and skin under their nails. I'd speculate that at least some of it was self inflicted."
"Self inflicted?" Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, but a flash of Ford's blood-caked face made her open them again quickly. "What the hell happened out there?"
)*(
John took a sip of the thick, sweet wine and looked up through the glass ceiling. He could see seven shadows sliding over the flat, gold disc of the sun. The whole process would take 18 hours, over six of those in complete darkness as three worlds and four moons blotted out the Hoshind's sun.
"And why are we here again?" Rodney asked from his left, sipping his own wine with a vaguely disgruntled expression. "I have a whole lab full of things waiting for me back on Atlantis, Major."
"Why, we're making nice with the locals, Rodney," John said, smiling into his cup. "You remember? The people who have things to trade with us so we don't starve to death before the Wraith get to us."
"I don't make nice," Rodney said dryly.
"No kidding?" John said. "Just drink your wine, smile at everyone and don't try to teach anyone how to make nuclear bombs."
"You never let me have any fun." Rodney said, and he leaned slightly against John's shoulder, a subtle bump.
"That's because you having fun is dangerous," John replied. "Seriously. Go look at the eclipse. Put the astro back in your physicist, all right?"
Eyyae came up along his other side, a copper platter in her hands. "Take one, Major and Doctor. It's for the Night," she explained, pointing to the thin, crescent shaped cakes.
Sheppard grabbed one, sniffed it, took a small taste. "No citrus," he said, and passed it over to Rodney before taking one for himself. "Some foods can make him very sick," he explained to Eyyae, who was watching them with wide eyes. "No disrespect intended."
"None taken," she said, smiling. "It'll be Night soon, Major. May you find your way to the Morning." Sheppard smiled and waved and then took two, wide bites. The cake was sweet, with a taste like almonds. Rodney bumped his shoulder again, and he turned to offer him the last bite, but Rodney's eyes were wide, the pupils tightly constricted, and he was gasping. John started fumbling Rodney's pockets, looking for the epipen, but suddenly the world swam and dipped and he was falling backward, looking up as the last of the sun was swallowed in shadow.
)*(
Teyla was the first one to wake, sitting bolt upright and crying. Carson was at her side in a matter of seconds, gentling her back down into the hospital bed. "Now, lass, calm yourself. I don't want you breaking any of those sutures I spent so much time putting into you so cleverly."
"Doctor?" and her eyes were wide and wild. "Is it Morning?"
"It's afternoon, actually," he replied soothingly. "Now lay yourself down and take a deep breath. And another." He put his hand over her belly, encouraging her to draw deep. "Just a few more, there's a good lass." He patted her arm gently, eyes monitoring her readouts carefully. "Now then, can you tell us what happened, Teyla? The four of you have us all damned worried, that's for certain."
"The Night came," Teyla said at last, her voice scratchy and raw. "And so did the Wraith."
)*(
Aiden Ford found himself scrambling for a gun that wasn't there as the room spun dizzily around him. There was a sound, like drums or heavy feet or too many hearts beating too fast and he couldn't pin it, couldn't find it and the air was heavy in his lungs.
Night, pitch-black and the things that moved there, that shivered in the places where light could not follow. "Major? Doctor? Teyla?" and voices mocked the words back at him, high and low and winding him up like spider silk and God.
God.
Wraith sharp fingers digging in red-mouthed smile hungry smile swallowing he swallowed hard struggling screaming the fingers digging in digging in digging in and he reached out, pressed his thumbs up into the eyes until they pulped beneath the pressure, until he was knuckle-deep in eye-socket but there were so many hands and they were all over him feasting hungry swallowing he touched his fingers to his lips and the salt was real enough to ground him between the waves.
)*(
"The Hoshind must have brought us to the gate," Teyla said. "I have no clear memories of the Night, just vague ... impressions." Her long, dark fingers tangled in the thin infirmary blanket. "I think I may have killed someone. I remember ... bones breaking. The smell of blood." She looked up at Elizabeth and there was a terrible stillness in her face, her dark eyes dry and burning. Elizabeth reached for Teyla's hands, held them tightly between her own.
"You were drugged. Probably with the cakes. It was a powerful hallucinogen that affected the biochemistry of your brain to the point that you cannot be held responsible for your actions." She chafed Teyla's hands gently. "You had no control over this, I promise you. You are not at fault here."
"Then why does it feel otherwise?" and Teyla's voice was thin and far away. Elizabeth bit her lips and did not give in to tears, though she had enough for both of them.
)*(
Aiden watched the doctor fidgeting around, setting up several little vacuum vials on the tray beside his bed. "Why are you taking all the extra samples from me, Doc?" His throat hurt and he was so damned tired and he just wanted to sleep but every time he closed his eyes there was a world of nightmares.
Beckett couldn't quite meet his eyes; he busied himself drawing blood. "Something turned up that wasn't in the others results, and I need to screen you for certain illnesses that might be a consequence of ... what we found," he answered finally.
That sounded ... bad. "Did I ...? Was I ...?" And either way he didn't want to hear the answer but he still had to know, he was missing so goddamn much already.
"No! No. Nothing like that," Beckett said. "It was in your stomach contents. There was ... well. You had human DNA in your vomitus. Not yours. From blood."
Aiden opened his mouth and then his gut was surging, making him puke up spit and bile. Beckett got a pan under his head, and he held Aiden around the shoulders, murmuring stupid things like his Grandmother did when he was a kid and God. Oh God. Oh God.
He only realized he was saying it out loud when Beckett put the tray aside and patted his shoulder and said, "It wasn't you, son. God knows it wasn't you."
Aiden wanted to believe him, but he couldn't. He remembered the taste of it, and a fresh bout of heaves made him double up but he was empty.
So very goddamned empty.
)*(
Rodney wiped himself down, sponging carefully around the stitches to get the stink of cold sweat off of his body. In the vivid light of the washroom he looked as though he'd been stitched together out of spare parts. His belly, groin and thighs were livid with bruises. He wanted a shower but he was at least a week away from that. He smelled blood all of the time, even though Carson swore that he was almost antiseptically clean. Still, every time he tried to eat his mouth was full of copper and found himself pushing away plates still mostly full.
Wipe-up done he kicked his soaked shorts and shirt into the corner and struggled into a fresh pair of boxers and a ratty old T-shirt and then stumbled back towards the bed. He sat down on the edge and dropped his head into his hands and tried to remember how to breathe. He knew he had work to get to, a whole lab full of things waiting for him to get back to. If he wasn't going to sleep he should at least get something useful done, but just this moment he didn't give a fuck.
He didn't want to give a fuck ever again, to be perfectly honest.
The door slid open and someone stepped in. "Can I come in?" John's voice, and it sounded as stripped and raw as Rodney felt.
"If I said no, would you go away?" Rodney didn't even look up, just kept his eyes closed and dropped backwards onto the bed.
"No," said John. "Probably not."
"Then come on in." Rodney waved him over. John stretched out alongside him, so close to Rodney that he could feel small ripples of body heat.
"I tried sleeping. I broke my nightstand," John said at last.
Rodney fumbled his hand over to grab John's, holding it so tightly that his fingers throbbed with both their pulses. "Sleep here, then. We can probably take the whole place apart between the two of us."
John kicked the covers up, pulled them over them both. "Your sheets are damp," he said finally.
"Sweat. I gave up peeing the bed 35 years ago." Rodney pulled John's hand up, kissed the bruised knuckles.
"Good to know, " John replied. He curled onto his side, the one without the stitches, and pressed his face into Rodney's shoulder. "Can we leave the lights on?"
"God, yes," said Rodney.
)*(
End
Title: Seven Circles Twisting
Spoilers: None, really
Rating: Adult
Author: Brighid
Summary: It's all about the night inside.
Note: Well, in keeping with the theme ... it's a bit dark.
Seven Circles Twisting
by Brighid
Elizabeth came down the stairs to greet John's team as they came through the gate. By the third step she was at a dead run and paging Doctor Beckett. She hit the bottom of the stairs and skidded the last few feet, dropping to her hands and knees to pull a wildly convulsing Ford into the recovery position, holding on even has he vomited all over her.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Bates said, barely catching Teyla as she collapsed, unable to get to John and Rodney to soften their falls. All of them, Ford included, were bruised and bloody almost past recognition, their clothes torn and filthy and crusted. They stank so badly it made one of the marines gag audibly as he tried to pull McKay into a recovery position.
The wormhole shut down behind them, and there was only the sound of ragged breathing and a high, thin sobbing cry that split the sudden silence and made Elizabeth's gut twist. "Jesus," Bates said again, and it was as much a prayer as a curse. "That's Major Sheppard."
)*(
"Will you share the Night with us?"
It had seemed an innocuous enough question, really. PX4-893 was a fairly sophisticated civilization. They had technology that compared to the late nineteenth century, with a few surprising leaps. The two days of touring had revealed a well-educated public, an appreciation of the arts and a high degree of civility. They'd been damned good hosts, and Teyla had managed to negotiate a good foundation for a trade agreement that would provide some key food items and some manufactured goods for Atlantis. All that remained was to take it back for Elizabeth's approval.
It would have been just plain rude to not take part in their annual eclipse celebration.
So John had smiled at the little slip of a girl, Eyyae, who was the First's aide and said, "We'd love to."
That was, in retrospect, the point at which it all started to go to hell.
)*(
Elizabeth watched as Carson pulled the curtains closed around Rodney's bed.
"Doctor?"
Carson looked at her. "They'll all have a bit of minor scarring, but nothing too terrible. The worst damage was on Rodney, he's got about fifteen stitches at the hairline. We pumped their stomachs, as well as taking blood and urine samples. I'm screening everything. At the moment their EKG's and their other readings are all within acceptable parameters, so I'm going to guess that the worst of it is out of their systems."
"Do you know what attacked them?" Elizabeth asked.
Carson worried his lower lip with the edge of his thumb. "Well, I'll have to wait for the lab work, but at a guess? Those are human bites. And the facial gouging ... they all had blood and skin under their nails. I'd speculate that at least some of it was self inflicted."
"Self inflicted?" Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, but a flash of Ford's blood-caked face made her open them again quickly. "What the hell happened out there?"
)*(
John took a sip of the thick, sweet wine and looked up through the glass ceiling. He could see seven shadows sliding over the flat, gold disc of the sun. The whole process would take 18 hours, over six of those in complete darkness as three worlds and four moons blotted out the Hoshind's sun.
"And why are we here again?" Rodney asked from his left, sipping his own wine with a vaguely disgruntled expression. "I have a whole lab full of things waiting for me back on Atlantis, Major."
"Why, we're making nice with the locals, Rodney," John said, smiling into his cup. "You remember? The people who have things to trade with us so we don't starve to death before the Wraith get to us."
"I don't make nice," Rodney said dryly.
"No kidding?" John said. "Just drink your wine, smile at everyone and don't try to teach anyone how to make nuclear bombs."
"You never let me have any fun." Rodney said, and he leaned slightly against John's shoulder, a subtle bump.
"That's because you having fun is dangerous," John replied. "Seriously. Go look at the eclipse. Put the astro back in your physicist, all right?"
Eyyae came up along his other side, a copper platter in her hands. "Take one, Major and Doctor. It's for the Night," she explained, pointing to the thin, crescent shaped cakes.
Sheppard grabbed one, sniffed it, took a small taste. "No citrus," he said, and passed it over to Rodney before taking one for himself. "Some foods can make him very sick," he explained to Eyyae, who was watching them with wide eyes. "No disrespect intended."
"None taken," she said, smiling. "It'll be Night soon, Major. May you find your way to the Morning." Sheppard smiled and waved and then took two, wide bites. The cake was sweet, with a taste like almonds. Rodney bumped his shoulder again, and he turned to offer him the last bite, but Rodney's eyes were wide, the pupils tightly constricted, and he was gasping. John started fumbling Rodney's pockets, looking for the epipen, but suddenly the world swam and dipped and he was falling backward, looking up as the last of the sun was swallowed in shadow.
)*(
Teyla was the first one to wake, sitting bolt upright and crying. Carson was at her side in a matter of seconds, gentling her back down into the hospital bed. "Now, lass, calm yourself. I don't want you breaking any of those sutures I spent so much time putting into you so cleverly."
"Doctor?" and her eyes were wide and wild. "Is it Morning?"
"It's afternoon, actually," he replied soothingly. "Now lay yourself down and take a deep breath. And another." He put his hand over her belly, encouraging her to draw deep. "Just a few more, there's a good lass." He patted her arm gently, eyes monitoring her readouts carefully. "Now then, can you tell us what happened, Teyla? The four of you have us all damned worried, that's for certain."
"The Night came," Teyla said at last, her voice scratchy and raw. "And so did the Wraith."
)*(
Aiden Ford found himself scrambling for a gun that wasn't there as the room spun dizzily around him. There was a sound, like drums or heavy feet or too many hearts beating too fast and he couldn't pin it, couldn't find it and the air was heavy in his lungs.
Night, pitch-black and the things that moved there, that shivered in the places where light could not follow. "Major? Doctor? Teyla?" and voices mocked the words back at him, high and low and winding him up like spider silk and God.
God.
Wraith sharp fingers digging in red-mouthed smile hungry smile swallowing he swallowed hard struggling screaming the fingers digging in digging in digging in and he reached out, pressed his thumbs up into the eyes until they pulped beneath the pressure, until he was knuckle-deep in eye-socket but there were so many hands and they were all over him feasting hungry swallowing he touched his fingers to his lips and the salt was real enough to ground him between the waves.
)*(
"The Hoshind must have brought us to the gate," Teyla said. "I have no clear memories of the Night, just vague ... impressions." Her long, dark fingers tangled in the thin infirmary blanket. "I think I may have killed someone. I remember ... bones breaking. The smell of blood." She looked up at Elizabeth and there was a terrible stillness in her face, her dark eyes dry and burning. Elizabeth reached for Teyla's hands, held them tightly between her own.
"You were drugged. Probably with the cakes. It was a powerful hallucinogen that affected the biochemistry of your brain to the point that you cannot be held responsible for your actions." She chafed Teyla's hands gently. "You had no control over this, I promise you. You are not at fault here."
"Then why does it feel otherwise?" and Teyla's voice was thin and far away. Elizabeth bit her lips and did not give in to tears, though she had enough for both of them.
)*(
Aiden watched the doctor fidgeting around, setting up several little vacuum vials on the tray beside his bed. "Why are you taking all the extra samples from me, Doc?" His throat hurt and he was so damned tired and he just wanted to sleep but every time he closed his eyes there was a world of nightmares.
Beckett couldn't quite meet his eyes; he busied himself drawing blood. "Something turned up that wasn't in the others results, and I need to screen you for certain illnesses that might be a consequence of ... what we found," he answered finally.
That sounded ... bad. "Did I ...? Was I ...?" And either way he didn't want to hear the answer but he still had to know, he was missing so goddamn much already.
"No! No. Nothing like that," Beckett said. "It was in your stomach contents. There was ... well. You had human DNA in your vomitus. Not yours. From blood."
Aiden opened his mouth and then his gut was surging, making him puke up spit and bile. Beckett got a pan under his head, and he held Aiden around the shoulders, murmuring stupid things like his Grandmother did when he was a kid and God. Oh God. Oh God.
He only realized he was saying it out loud when Beckett put the tray aside and patted his shoulder and said, "It wasn't you, son. God knows it wasn't you."
Aiden wanted to believe him, but he couldn't. He remembered the taste of it, and a fresh bout of heaves made him double up but he was empty.
So very goddamned empty.
)*(
Rodney wiped himself down, sponging carefully around the stitches to get the stink of cold sweat off of his body. In the vivid light of the washroom he looked as though he'd been stitched together out of spare parts. His belly, groin and thighs were livid with bruises. He wanted a shower but he was at least a week away from that. He smelled blood all of the time, even though Carson swore that he was almost antiseptically clean. Still, every time he tried to eat his mouth was full of copper and found himself pushing away plates still mostly full.
Wipe-up done he kicked his soaked shorts and shirt into the corner and struggled into a fresh pair of boxers and a ratty old T-shirt and then stumbled back towards the bed. He sat down on the edge and dropped his head into his hands and tried to remember how to breathe. He knew he had work to get to, a whole lab full of things waiting for him to get back to. If he wasn't going to sleep he should at least get something useful done, but just this moment he didn't give a fuck.
He didn't want to give a fuck ever again, to be perfectly honest.
The door slid open and someone stepped in. "Can I come in?" John's voice, and it sounded as stripped and raw as Rodney felt.
"If I said no, would you go away?" Rodney didn't even look up, just kept his eyes closed and dropped backwards onto the bed.
"No," said John. "Probably not."
"Then come on in." Rodney waved him over. John stretched out alongside him, so close to Rodney that he could feel small ripples of body heat.
"I tried sleeping. I broke my nightstand," John said at last.
Rodney fumbled his hand over to grab John's, holding it so tightly that his fingers throbbed with both their pulses. "Sleep here, then. We can probably take the whole place apart between the two of us."
John kicked the covers up, pulled them over them both. "Your sheets are damp," he said finally.
"Sweat. I gave up peeing the bed 35 years ago." Rodney pulled John's hand up, kissed the bruised knuckles.
"Good to know, " John replied. He curled onto his side, the one without the stitches, and pressed his face into Rodney's shoulder. "Can we leave the lights on?"
"God, yes," said Rodney.
)*(
End