Backbone of Gravity
Title: The Backbone of Gravity
Author: coolbreeze1
Word Count: ~4300
Spoilers: None
Challenge Prompt: Traps/trapped
Summary: Sheppard versus apple. Apple wins.
I've got this idea for the longer challenge, but I don't know that I'll be able to finish it by the end of June. I had to do at least one of the challenges! This was written quickly, so bare with me... Also, I've never posted directly to Sheppard h/c, so if I did it wrong, sorry!
The Backbone of Gravity
A pair of boots stepped into John’s line of sight, and he immediately recognized the worn, scuffed leather. Ronon. He looked up as much as he could, which really wasn’t all that much. Ronon ducked his head down until the two were staring at each other, eye to eye.
“Hey,” Ronon said.
“Hey.”
“How’re you doing?” Ronon’s eyes flicked over the contraption the villagers had locked John up in before coming back to John’s face.
“That depends. How long has it been?”
“A little over an hour.”
“An hour! That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“Then, in answer to your first question: not great.”
“Hang in there, Sheppard.”
Hang in there? That was about all he was capable of doing. What had McKay called this thing? A pillory? It certainly had the Medieval vibe thing going. John twisted against the restraints to no avail. Whoever had built this thing had done it with the intention of making it last-for a very, very long time.
Two parallel wooden beams had been clasped together, leaving holes just wide enough for the villagers to thread John’s neck and wrists through, and then the beams had been locked down and stacked on stone posts. His arms were stretched out on either side of his body to an uncomfortable degree. The stone posts themselves were only about four feet high, forcing John to bend over. He couldn’t even squat down; there wasn’t enough room in the neck hole for him to do that and not choke.
“Where’s Teyla and McKay?”
“They’re trying to talk to the village council, see if they can lessen your sentence.”
“Okay.”
Twenty hours. The village council had sentenced him to twenty hours in the pillory or whatever the hell they called it. If it had been higher so that he could have at least stood straight, twenty hours wouldn’t have been so bad. But this? He was doubled over, legs straight, hands going numb, and the hole around his neck seemed to be getting smaller.
He coughed against the pressure on his throat and licked dry lips. His team wasn’t allowed to touch him, give him water, or support him in any way. He’d been surrounded before he’d even entered the village. Thirty men pointing crude but effective looking weapons at his chest and demanding that he submit to punishment. It was either that or get his entire team killed. At the time, twenty hours in their little Medieval contraption hadn’t seemed so bad.
He flashed to the man they’d seen by the river, grabbing his chest and collapsing on the sandy bank. John had sprinted over to the stranger, Teyla close on his heels, and they’d immediately started CPR when John had found neither a pulse nor signs of breathing. Ronon and McKay had run to the village for help. A half an hour later, John and Teyla had sat back in exhaustion, the man in front of them beyond their help.
John shook his head, growling in frustration and pushing the memory away. Teyla and Rodney came back a few minutes later, unsuccessful with the council, then left again for the jumper parked a couple of miles away from the village. Something about notifying Atlantis and letting Elizabeth know they’d run into a bit of snag and might not make it back home for a few hours. Ronon refused to leave John’s side, for which John was grateful, but their conversation had died out rapidly. What John really needed was for Ronon or McKay or Teyla or anyone to distract him, but who could sustain a distraction of that magnitude for twenty hours?
The village grew dark around him, and he caught flickering lights in nearby windows out of the corner of his eye. Time passed in a haze. All the effort and strain of not choking in the pillory became centered on his lower back. It had started as a slow, tingling burn after a couple of hours, but as the night grew darker, the fire in his back had grown stronger.
“How much longer?” he grunted out, when pain began lancing up and down the backs of his legs.
“Twelve hours.”
Twelve hours? Twelve damn hours? That meant he’d managed eight mind-numbing hours already. There was no way he could stand like this for another twelve.
In the darkest part of the night, when the flickering candles and fires of the villagers had long been extinguished, Teyla gave him some water, and Ronon stooped under him to take the pressure off his back and legs for a few minutes. For a moment, John reveled in the heavenly relief that brought, until nearby guards started yelling and Ronon and Teyla had to back off. The returning pain and effort was worse than it had been before.
Every couple of hours, his team whispered in fierce debate about simply breaking John out of the pillory. John listened numbly, too involved in keeping his legs from buckling to do anything else. Each time, they concluded that the medicinal herbs the villagers grew were simply too valuable for them to do anything but follow the village council’s decree of punishment. Preliminary tests done on the herbs Lorne’s team had brought back had shown exceptional promise. Sheppard had no idea for what, only that Carson and his team wanted as much as they could get.
“Teyla?” John whispered. His legs were going numb.
“Yes, John?” Her voice sounded immediately and nearby. In the pitch black, he caught a ghost of movement.
“Why am I being punished?”
There was a long pause, and John wondered briefly if maybe Teyla had already explained this to him. He couldn’t remember. His head was throbbing. He felt his left knee start to buckle but he locked it back with a grunt.
“The man who died near the river-they believe it was our fault.”
“Which is ridiculous,” McKay piped up. “You were doing CPR on a man who’d had a heart attack. You can’t save a heart attack victim with just CPR.”
“I didn’t know he’d had a heart attack,” John ground out. “We were just trying to help him.”
“Well, the villagers interpreted you helping as you actually killing. They said the man’s family wanted to stone both you and Teyla, but the council wasn’t willing to go that far. They had to punish one of you to give the family some sense of justice, and they chose you, Sheppard. It’s a good thing they really want our help with their farming techniques, or Teyla would be locked up too.”
“Why don’t we just break him out?” Ronon asked from somewhere off to John’s right.
With that, the conversation devolved again into re-hashed arguments about whether or not they should forgo the medicinal herbs and just go home. John closed his eyes, blocking them out. He forced his mind to concentrate on something else, conjuring images of Antartica’s wide open spaces. Brilliant blues skies overhead, glittering fields of ice and snow underneath. His helicopter raced across the landscape, and his chest swelled with exhilaration. Few places on Earth looked so stunning.
A sudden pressure around his throat had him choking and gagging, and John opened his eyes to a gray, early dawn. It was still dark, but quickly growing less so. Something hard and unrelenting was crushing his windpipe and he could feel his body shaking in response. Breathe-he couldn’t breathe.
“John!”
“Sheppard!”
Voices screamed at him, and the faces of his team jerked right and left in front of him. Why couldn’t he breathe? He sucked in a ragged breath, but it caught in his throat and went no further. His heart was trying to explode out of his chest, and he realized belatedly that his legs had finally buckled. Gravity and the weight of his own body were killing him.
Hands around his back and legs suddenly appeared, tightening their hold and lifting him up. The pressure on his neck eased, and John breathed in great gulps of oxygen. Tears of agonizing effort leaked from his eyes, but he couldn’t wipe them away. Not with his arms still locked between the beams.
“Back away. You are not to interfere.”
The voice sounded distant, but John could hear little over the buzzing roar in his head. The hands holding his body up shifted but not by very much. If anything, they tightened their grip, supporting even more of his weight.
John blinked open his eyes in time to see Ronon pull his blaster. All he could see of his friend was the man’s boots and pants, but the sound of the blaster powering up was clear and distinctive.
“Ronon…don’t,” John pleaded, but his voice was nothing more than an incomprehensible croak. The hands around his waist tightened their grip.
“How long has it been?” Teyla asked.
“Eighteen hours,” McKay answered.
The guards backed off after a few more tense moments without Ronon having to fire at them, but McKay and Teyla were eventually forced to let John go. The agony in his body tripled in its intensity, sending snapping bolts of pain up and down his back. Only two more hours. Two. He could do that. He could do two more hours. He closed his eyes, losing himself in Antarctica again.
“The punishment is fulfilled.”
The voice jarred him out of his daze. It was light out now, and villagers roamed around him in curiosity. He could hear the rustle of their clothes as they moved. Someone stepped up behind him, and a minute later, a rattling key was unlocking the top beam, giving him room to slide his arms and neck out of the trap.
He stepped back, sliding his head away from the beam and trying to stand up at the same time. His arms dropped to his side, deadened unfeeling weights that refused to obey any mental commands. He straightened about an inch before he felt something in his back snap, like a rubber band stretched too tight, and his legs buckled. He dropped to the ground in a boneless heap, his face in the mud.
“Sheppard!” Ronon bellowed. John blinked at the sounds of feet slapping toward him through the mud.
“John,” Teyla whispered, her voice close to his ear. “It is over. We will get you home.”
Hands moved over his body, rolling him onto his back. He closed his eyes against the pulsing agony in his lower back. Even the slightest movement sent sharp stabs of pain through him. Somehow, with Ronon and McKay lifting him up, he managed to get back to his feet. He could hear Teyla talking to someone behind them, probably the village council, but he kept his eyes closed and allowed his teammates to guide him out of the village. All he wanted to do was lie down. The sooner they got back to Atlantis, the better.
ooooooooooooooooooo
John lay stretched out flat on his back in his bed, grateful for the privacy of his own quarters. The trip back to Atlantis had been faster than expected-McKay and Teyla had moved the jumper closer to the village while John had been shackled in the village square. Carson had been waiting impatiently for them in Atlantis, running up the jumper’s back hatch before it had even settled on the ground.
As far as injuries went, this one wasn’t all that serious. In layman’s terms, he’d thrown his back out, which was extremely painful but not life-threatening. Carson’s panicked examination had relaxed when the good doctor had realized there were no gaping wounds-no blood, head injuries, gunshots or knife injuries. Just gasping, pain-filled grunts every time John tried to move.
He’d spent a day in the infirmary, basking in a warm cloud of painkillers and muscle relaxants. Now he was in his own bed, treating his most recent injury the only way possible. With rest. He shifted, grimacing at the twinge of pain that caused in his back. He was still on painkillers, but not enough to completely mask the symptoms. It was amazing how much he used the muscles in his back without actually realizing it.
He would never take a healthy back for granted again.
The ice pack he was lying on had grown warm, and he dug a hand underneath him to pull it out. It took all of his effort and energy to roll over just enough to free the ice pack, and even then he was still left panting from the pain. He could have stayed in the infirmary-Carson had offered. Stay in the infirmary with even stronger pain pills and muscle relaxants, or go back to his room.
The decision had been easy at the time. He’d been willing to take the pain if it meant going back to his own bed. As the burning pulse picked up again, he began to wonder if maybe he should have just stayed in the infirmary. He was quite willing to be drugged into next week if that meant he woke up to a pain-free back.
The door chimed and before John had a chance to respond, it slid open to let McKay enter, followed a moment later by Teyla and Ronon.
“Thanks for knocking,” John grumbled, throwing a dirty look at McKay.
“I did knock.”
“You could have waited for me to answer.”
“You can’t even sit up. How are you supposed to answer?”
“I can too sit up,” John said, not caring that he sounded like he was pouting. He was, in fact, pouting, and to hell with what anyone else thought.
Teyla held a tray of food in her hands and set it on the desk next to his bed. “We thought you might be hungry, so we brought some lunch.”
John was hungry, but he wasn’t sure he was hungry enough to sit up and eat. Just the thought of doing that had his back singing in displeasure. He licked his lips at the internal war. How hungry was he?
“Oh, stop looking so pathetic,” McKay griped, throwing his hands up in the air. “We brought you a sandwich, an apple, two granola bars, and a rice krispy square, compliments of the chef who says, ‘Get well soon.’ You can eat all of that lying down.”
John grinned and reached a hand out for the food. A few minutes later, he’d finished off all but the apple. Teyla helped him sit up just enough to sip at the water bottle and drown another dose of painkillers. Ronon stood at the foot of the bed watching him while McKay wandered around the room, poking through his stuff.
“Do you need anything else?”
“No thanks, Teyla.”
She’d given him the pain pills just in time. He smiled drowsily at her, relaxing into the bed. His stomach was full and his back was calming down. He could feel sleep hovering.
“We will leave you to rest then,” she said. She pulled the covers up to his neck, then stood, shooing the other two out of the room.
“Wait,” John called out, just as they’d reached the door. “Ronon, can you…um…stay for a bit?”
He could feel his cheeks burn red, but some things couldn’t wait. The thought of Teyla helping him to the bathroom was horrifying, and McKay would be more mortified than all of them combined. That left Ronon.
Ronon smirked, but dropped the expression after one look at John’s face. Neither man ever enjoyed being so helpless that they couldn’t do simple tasks. Teyla nodded in understanding, whispering an explanation to McKay as she pushed the physicist out of the room.
The trip to the bathroom was its own exercise in agonizing hell. Ronon helped John roll off the bed then picked him up, holding him steady until he was standing on his own. John leaned heavily on Ronon as they hobbled across the room. He pushed the man out of the bathroom until he was done, and then Ronon dragged him back to bed. By the time John was lying flat again, he was breathing heavily, his fists balled up against the pain.
“You want Beckett?”
“No,” John ground out. “It’ll pass.”
Ronon nodded, about to leave when he suddenly snapped his fingers in a very McKay-like fashion. “Almost forgot. Beckett sent another ice pack for you.” He shoved it under John’s back then pulled the covers back up. John would have laughed at Ronon’s grimace of discomfort at playing nursemaid, but the cold was seeping into his spasming muscles and he basked in the relief that brought.
“Call if you need anything,” Ronon grunted, then retreated.
John slept. He had no idea for how long, but when he woke up again his room was noticeably darker and the ice pack was warm and mushy. He grunted as he rolled, going through the same motions as earlier to pull the pack out from underneath him. He tossed it on the floor and rolled back onto his mattress.
He glanced at the clock on the desk, mentally calculating how much time had passed, and with a start realized he’d been back in his room now for just over twenty hours. Twenty hours. It hardly seemed to be the same amount of time as his punishment on that planet.
Punishment. John shook his head in disgust. He’d tried to save a man, and had been blamed for his death instead. If that man by the river hadn’t had a heart attack, if he’d been choking or drowning or had electrocuted himself somehow, the CPR would most likely have saved him. Instead of being thrown into a pillory and hunched over for twenty hours, he would have been hailed a hero. They would have thrown him a feast rather than locking him up and throwing away the key, so to speak.
John closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He half wished his team would show up again, distract him with stories and jokes, even a movie. He turned his head toward the desk and spotted his radio earpiece, but couldn’t bring himself to call them. He was a grown man-he could sleep off the discomfort without being coddled.
The apple behind the earpiece looked appetizing, however, and John’s stomach gave a growl of approval. He was hungry again. He rolled onto his side, grunting at the lance of pain that shot through his lower back and down his legs. He reached up toward the desk and just managed to curl the ends of his fingers around the tray.
The tray slid ever so slowly across the desk. John could see the apple rocking as it moved. He had just managed to get a better grip on the edge of the tray when the whole thing slipped off the desk, flipping the apple across the room and sending the tray crashing to the floor.
John let out a deep sigh. The apple had rolled toward the wall and stopped, no more than ten feet away but still, with the fire raking through his back, that was ten feet too far. It was amazing, actually, to look across the room at a distance he would normally not think twice about. Today, the floor seemed to stretch infinitely.
He could reach the apple, but it would take him a half an hour and an interminable amount of pain. Was it worth it? He was still lying on his side, and he gripped the edge of the mattress to keep himself there. The apple taunted him, its red skin glowing in the soft light of his room. His stomach growled again, urging him to forget his back and get the food.
He brought his knees up, intent on rolling off the bed when pain ripped through his hamstrings. He sucked in a breath waiting for the agony to fade, but it pulsed in a steady rhythm until the throb centered on his lower back. Screw the apple. He shifted again to lie flat and the pain doubled, twisting through muscles and nerves before he’d moved more than an inch. If Carson hadn’t already assured him there was no permanent damage, John would have sworn something had been broken back there.
Forget lying on his back. He would just stay half-curled on his side. That was fine. He had been trapped for twenty hours in that pillory, bent over with wood beams pressing against his throat and slowly cutting off the circulation in his hands. He could handle being trapped in his bed.
His team would come. Or Carson. Or one of the nursing staff. It had to be getting close to dinner or another dose of pain meds. His stomach and back were screaming for each respectively. Maybe if he straightened one leg at a time. He started to try that, but his back erupted in burning protest.
Maybe he should do it quickly, like ripping a band-aid. Get it over with before he had time to think about it. Except that he’d already had too much time to think about it. He looked longingly at the apple again. If he was going to just plow through the pain, he might as well get something out of the effort.
He rolled off the bed before he could change his mind, reaching out for the floor. He managed to slow his descent into a controlled fall, but he choked out a cry at the pain that snapped through him again.
It took less than half an hour to reach the apple, but it felt longer. He crawled across the ten-foot space between his bed and the wall like a man without water in the desert. But he was moving. He was gaining on that elusive apple. The thought brought a smile to his face. He wasn’t trapped in his bed, or in even in his own body.
With one final lunge, he reached out and wrapped his hand around the apple. He lowered himself slowly to the floor, tilting to the side as he went and letting gravity roll him onto his back. By the time he was done, he was staring up at the ceiling and holding the apple above him in triumph-and pretending he wasn’t on the verge of crying.
John devoured the apple. It tasted every bit as good as it had looked. When he was done, he let the husk roll out of his hand. The floor was more uncomfortable than he could have possibly imagined, and there was no doubt now that he was well past time for his next dose of painkillers. His bed was too far away, and he wished he’d thought to bring his radio earpiece with him.
He’d had his apple. He’d reached it under his own power, and now he wasn’t above asking for help. He really wanted to go back to bed. He turned his head to look at the door into his quarters. It was closer than the bed. He could conceivably crawl to the door and hope someone was outside.
The snapping pulses in his back were constant now, and he closed his eyes, letting one arm drape over his face. He had to get off this floor. He was about to push against the wall and roll back onto his front when the door to his room suddenly slid open. John heard the heavy footsteps enter the room, then freeze, then rush over to his side.
“Bloody hell, lad.”
John lowered his arm and looked up into the worried face of the Scottish doctor. “Hey, doc.”
“What happened?”
He pointed toward the remains of the apple he’d eaten and smiled, the relief that someone had found him almost overwhelming. “My apple rolled away. I was hungry.”
“Why didn’t you just call for help?” the doctor asked, feeling for John’s pulse.
John brushed his arm away, but not without wincing at the pain slicing through his spine. Carson grabbed John’s wrist in a stronger grip, and frowned at what he was feeling.
“Your pulse rate is pretty high. I’d wager you’re in a fair amount of pain.”
“You’d win that bet,” John grunted.
“Alright, up with you. I want you back in that bed.”
Between the two of them, John managed to struggle back to his knees. Carson lifted him, and within three steps was depositing John back onto his bed. John sank into the mattress and closed his eyes, not opening them until he felt a sharp prick in his arm.
“What?”
“Painkillers-the heavy duty kind.”
“Thought I couldn’t have any of those alone,” John mumbled. The pain was ebbing already, spreading numbing relief in its wake.
“You’re not alone, lad,” Carson answered, patting him on the shoulder. “Teyla’s already on her way with a tray of food, Rodney is squawking in my ear as we speak asking after you, and Ronon is asleep on the bench just outside your door. Next time, ask for help.”
“Hmmm…” John answered, smiling at the hazy painless warmth enveloping him. Carson settled down in the chair next to him, assuring Rodney everything was fine. The door chimed then slid open, letting Teyla and Ronon in. John lifted his head and waved at his teammates before dropping back onto the bed. Teyla held a tray full of food-one bright red apple front and center-but John could already feel the drugs pulling him into a stupor.
The food could wait. The trappings of a drug-induced, pain-free haze was one he was ready to linger in for any number of hours.
END
Author: coolbreeze1
Word Count: ~4300
Spoilers: None
Challenge Prompt: Traps/trapped
Summary: Sheppard versus apple. Apple wins.
I've got this idea for the longer challenge, but I don't know that I'll be able to finish it by the end of June. I had to do at least one of the challenges! This was written quickly, so bare with me... Also, I've never posted directly to Sheppard h/c, so if I did it wrong, sorry!
The Backbone of Gravity
A pair of boots stepped into John’s line of sight, and he immediately recognized the worn, scuffed leather. Ronon. He looked up as much as he could, which really wasn’t all that much. Ronon ducked his head down until the two were staring at each other, eye to eye.
“Hey,” Ronon said.
“Hey.”
“How’re you doing?” Ronon’s eyes flicked over the contraption the villagers had locked John up in before coming back to John’s face.
“That depends. How long has it been?”
“A little over an hour.”
“An hour! That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“Then, in answer to your first question: not great.”
“Hang in there, Sheppard.”
Hang in there? That was about all he was capable of doing. What had McKay called this thing? A pillory? It certainly had the Medieval vibe thing going. John twisted against the restraints to no avail. Whoever had built this thing had done it with the intention of making it last-for a very, very long time.
Two parallel wooden beams had been clasped together, leaving holes just wide enough for the villagers to thread John’s neck and wrists through, and then the beams had been locked down and stacked on stone posts. His arms were stretched out on either side of his body to an uncomfortable degree. The stone posts themselves were only about four feet high, forcing John to bend over. He couldn’t even squat down; there wasn’t enough room in the neck hole for him to do that and not choke.
“Where’s Teyla and McKay?”
“They’re trying to talk to the village council, see if they can lessen your sentence.”
“Okay.”
Twenty hours. The village council had sentenced him to twenty hours in the pillory or whatever the hell they called it. If it had been higher so that he could have at least stood straight, twenty hours wouldn’t have been so bad. But this? He was doubled over, legs straight, hands going numb, and the hole around his neck seemed to be getting smaller.
He coughed against the pressure on his throat and licked dry lips. His team wasn’t allowed to touch him, give him water, or support him in any way. He’d been surrounded before he’d even entered the village. Thirty men pointing crude but effective looking weapons at his chest and demanding that he submit to punishment. It was either that or get his entire team killed. At the time, twenty hours in their little Medieval contraption hadn’t seemed so bad.
He flashed to the man they’d seen by the river, grabbing his chest and collapsing on the sandy bank. John had sprinted over to the stranger, Teyla close on his heels, and they’d immediately started CPR when John had found neither a pulse nor signs of breathing. Ronon and McKay had run to the village for help. A half an hour later, John and Teyla had sat back in exhaustion, the man in front of them beyond their help.
John shook his head, growling in frustration and pushing the memory away. Teyla and Rodney came back a few minutes later, unsuccessful with the council, then left again for the jumper parked a couple of miles away from the village. Something about notifying Atlantis and letting Elizabeth know they’d run into a bit of snag and might not make it back home for a few hours. Ronon refused to leave John’s side, for which John was grateful, but their conversation had died out rapidly. What John really needed was for Ronon or McKay or Teyla or anyone to distract him, but who could sustain a distraction of that magnitude for twenty hours?
The village grew dark around him, and he caught flickering lights in nearby windows out of the corner of his eye. Time passed in a haze. All the effort and strain of not choking in the pillory became centered on his lower back. It had started as a slow, tingling burn after a couple of hours, but as the night grew darker, the fire in his back had grown stronger.
“How much longer?” he grunted out, when pain began lancing up and down the backs of his legs.
“Twelve hours.”
Twelve hours? Twelve damn hours? That meant he’d managed eight mind-numbing hours already. There was no way he could stand like this for another twelve.
In the darkest part of the night, when the flickering candles and fires of the villagers had long been extinguished, Teyla gave him some water, and Ronon stooped under him to take the pressure off his back and legs for a few minutes. For a moment, John reveled in the heavenly relief that brought, until nearby guards started yelling and Ronon and Teyla had to back off. The returning pain and effort was worse than it had been before.
Every couple of hours, his team whispered in fierce debate about simply breaking John out of the pillory. John listened numbly, too involved in keeping his legs from buckling to do anything else. Each time, they concluded that the medicinal herbs the villagers grew were simply too valuable for them to do anything but follow the village council’s decree of punishment. Preliminary tests done on the herbs Lorne’s team had brought back had shown exceptional promise. Sheppard had no idea for what, only that Carson and his team wanted as much as they could get.
“Teyla?” John whispered. His legs were going numb.
“Yes, John?” Her voice sounded immediately and nearby. In the pitch black, he caught a ghost of movement.
“Why am I being punished?”
There was a long pause, and John wondered briefly if maybe Teyla had already explained this to him. He couldn’t remember. His head was throbbing. He felt his left knee start to buckle but he locked it back with a grunt.
“The man who died near the river-they believe it was our fault.”
“Which is ridiculous,” McKay piped up. “You were doing CPR on a man who’d had a heart attack. You can’t save a heart attack victim with just CPR.”
“I didn’t know he’d had a heart attack,” John ground out. “We were just trying to help him.”
“Well, the villagers interpreted you helping as you actually killing. They said the man’s family wanted to stone both you and Teyla, but the council wasn’t willing to go that far. They had to punish one of you to give the family some sense of justice, and they chose you, Sheppard. It’s a good thing they really want our help with their farming techniques, or Teyla would be locked up too.”
“Why don’t we just break him out?” Ronon asked from somewhere off to John’s right.
With that, the conversation devolved again into re-hashed arguments about whether or not they should forgo the medicinal herbs and just go home. John closed his eyes, blocking them out. He forced his mind to concentrate on something else, conjuring images of Antartica’s wide open spaces. Brilliant blues skies overhead, glittering fields of ice and snow underneath. His helicopter raced across the landscape, and his chest swelled with exhilaration. Few places on Earth looked so stunning.
A sudden pressure around his throat had him choking and gagging, and John opened his eyes to a gray, early dawn. It was still dark, but quickly growing less so. Something hard and unrelenting was crushing his windpipe and he could feel his body shaking in response. Breathe-he couldn’t breathe.
“John!”
“Sheppard!”
Voices screamed at him, and the faces of his team jerked right and left in front of him. Why couldn’t he breathe? He sucked in a ragged breath, but it caught in his throat and went no further. His heart was trying to explode out of his chest, and he realized belatedly that his legs had finally buckled. Gravity and the weight of his own body were killing him.
Hands around his back and legs suddenly appeared, tightening their hold and lifting him up. The pressure on his neck eased, and John breathed in great gulps of oxygen. Tears of agonizing effort leaked from his eyes, but he couldn’t wipe them away. Not with his arms still locked between the beams.
“Back away. You are not to interfere.”
The voice sounded distant, but John could hear little over the buzzing roar in his head. The hands holding his body up shifted but not by very much. If anything, they tightened their grip, supporting even more of his weight.
John blinked open his eyes in time to see Ronon pull his blaster. All he could see of his friend was the man’s boots and pants, but the sound of the blaster powering up was clear and distinctive.
“Ronon…don’t,” John pleaded, but his voice was nothing more than an incomprehensible croak. The hands around his waist tightened their grip.
“How long has it been?” Teyla asked.
“Eighteen hours,” McKay answered.
The guards backed off after a few more tense moments without Ronon having to fire at them, but McKay and Teyla were eventually forced to let John go. The agony in his body tripled in its intensity, sending snapping bolts of pain up and down his back. Only two more hours. Two. He could do that. He could do two more hours. He closed his eyes, losing himself in Antarctica again.
“The punishment is fulfilled.”
The voice jarred him out of his daze. It was light out now, and villagers roamed around him in curiosity. He could hear the rustle of their clothes as they moved. Someone stepped up behind him, and a minute later, a rattling key was unlocking the top beam, giving him room to slide his arms and neck out of the trap.
He stepped back, sliding his head away from the beam and trying to stand up at the same time. His arms dropped to his side, deadened unfeeling weights that refused to obey any mental commands. He straightened about an inch before he felt something in his back snap, like a rubber band stretched too tight, and his legs buckled. He dropped to the ground in a boneless heap, his face in the mud.
“Sheppard!” Ronon bellowed. John blinked at the sounds of feet slapping toward him through the mud.
“John,” Teyla whispered, her voice close to his ear. “It is over. We will get you home.”
Hands moved over his body, rolling him onto his back. He closed his eyes against the pulsing agony in his lower back. Even the slightest movement sent sharp stabs of pain through him. Somehow, with Ronon and McKay lifting him up, he managed to get back to his feet. He could hear Teyla talking to someone behind them, probably the village council, but he kept his eyes closed and allowed his teammates to guide him out of the village. All he wanted to do was lie down. The sooner they got back to Atlantis, the better.
ooooooooooooooooooo
John lay stretched out flat on his back in his bed, grateful for the privacy of his own quarters. The trip back to Atlantis had been faster than expected-McKay and Teyla had moved the jumper closer to the village while John had been shackled in the village square. Carson had been waiting impatiently for them in Atlantis, running up the jumper’s back hatch before it had even settled on the ground.
As far as injuries went, this one wasn’t all that serious. In layman’s terms, he’d thrown his back out, which was extremely painful but not life-threatening. Carson’s panicked examination had relaxed when the good doctor had realized there were no gaping wounds-no blood, head injuries, gunshots or knife injuries. Just gasping, pain-filled grunts every time John tried to move.
He’d spent a day in the infirmary, basking in a warm cloud of painkillers and muscle relaxants. Now he was in his own bed, treating his most recent injury the only way possible. With rest. He shifted, grimacing at the twinge of pain that caused in his back. He was still on painkillers, but not enough to completely mask the symptoms. It was amazing how much he used the muscles in his back without actually realizing it.
He would never take a healthy back for granted again.
The ice pack he was lying on had grown warm, and he dug a hand underneath him to pull it out. It took all of his effort and energy to roll over just enough to free the ice pack, and even then he was still left panting from the pain. He could have stayed in the infirmary-Carson had offered. Stay in the infirmary with even stronger pain pills and muscle relaxants, or go back to his room.
The decision had been easy at the time. He’d been willing to take the pain if it meant going back to his own bed. As the burning pulse picked up again, he began to wonder if maybe he should have just stayed in the infirmary. He was quite willing to be drugged into next week if that meant he woke up to a pain-free back.
The door chimed and before John had a chance to respond, it slid open to let McKay enter, followed a moment later by Teyla and Ronon.
“Thanks for knocking,” John grumbled, throwing a dirty look at McKay.
“I did knock.”
“You could have waited for me to answer.”
“You can’t even sit up. How are you supposed to answer?”
“I can too sit up,” John said, not caring that he sounded like he was pouting. He was, in fact, pouting, and to hell with what anyone else thought.
Teyla held a tray of food in her hands and set it on the desk next to his bed. “We thought you might be hungry, so we brought some lunch.”
John was hungry, but he wasn’t sure he was hungry enough to sit up and eat. Just the thought of doing that had his back singing in displeasure. He licked his lips at the internal war. How hungry was he?
“Oh, stop looking so pathetic,” McKay griped, throwing his hands up in the air. “We brought you a sandwich, an apple, two granola bars, and a rice krispy square, compliments of the chef who says, ‘Get well soon.’ You can eat all of that lying down.”
John grinned and reached a hand out for the food. A few minutes later, he’d finished off all but the apple. Teyla helped him sit up just enough to sip at the water bottle and drown another dose of painkillers. Ronon stood at the foot of the bed watching him while McKay wandered around the room, poking through his stuff.
“Do you need anything else?”
“No thanks, Teyla.”
She’d given him the pain pills just in time. He smiled drowsily at her, relaxing into the bed. His stomach was full and his back was calming down. He could feel sleep hovering.
“We will leave you to rest then,” she said. She pulled the covers up to his neck, then stood, shooing the other two out of the room.
“Wait,” John called out, just as they’d reached the door. “Ronon, can you…um…stay for a bit?”
He could feel his cheeks burn red, but some things couldn’t wait. The thought of Teyla helping him to the bathroom was horrifying, and McKay would be more mortified than all of them combined. That left Ronon.
Ronon smirked, but dropped the expression after one look at John’s face. Neither man ever enjoyed being so helpless that they couldn’t do simple tasks. Teyla nodded in understanding, whispering an explanation to McKay as she pushed the physicist out of the room.
The trip to the bathroom was its own exercise in agonizing hell. Ronon helped John roll off the bed then picked him up, holding him steady until he was standing on his own. John leaned heavily on Ronon as they hobbled across the room. He pushed the man out of the bathroom until he was done, and then Ronon dragged him back to bed. By the time John was lying flat again, he was breathing heavily, his fists balled up against the pain.
“You want Beckett?”
“No,” John ground out. “It’ll pass.”
Ronon nodded, about to leave when he suddenly snapped his fingers in a very McKay-like fashion. “Almost forgot. Beckett sent another ice pack for you.” He shoved it under John’s back then pulled the covers back up. John would have laughed at Ronon’s grimace of discomfort at playing nursemaid, but the cold was seeping into his spasming muscles and he basked in the relief that brought.
“Call if you need anything,” Ronon grunted, then retreated.
John slept. He had no idea for how long, but when he woke up again his room was noticeably darker and the ice pack was warm and mushy. He grunted as he rolled, going through the same motions as earlier to pull the pack out from underneath him. He tossed it on the floor and rolled back onto his mattress.
He glanced at the clock on the desk, mentally calculating how much time had passed, and with a start realized he’d been back in his room now for just over twenty hours. Twenty hours. It hardly seemed to be the same amount of time as his punishment on that planet.
Punishment. John shook his head in disgust. He’d tried to save a man, and had been blamed for his death instead. If that man by the river hadn’t had a heart attack, if he’d been choking or drowning or had electrocuted himself somehow, the CPR would most likely have saved him. Instead of being thrown into a pillory and hunched over for twenty hours, he would have been hailed a hero. They would have thrown him a feast rather than locking him up and throwing away the key, so to speak.
John closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He half wished his team would show up again, distract him with stories and jokes, even a movie. He turned his head toward the desk and spotted his radio earpiece, but couldn’t bring himself to call them. He was a grown man-he could sleep off the discomfort without being coddled.
The apple behind the earpiece looked appetizing, however, and John’s stomach gave a growl of approval. He was hungry again. He rolled onto his side, grunting at the lance of pain that shot through his lower back and down his legs. He reached up toward the desk and just managed to curl the ends of his fingers around the tray.
The tray slid ever so slowly across the desk. John could see the apple rocking as it moved. He had just managed to get a better grip on the edge of the tray when the whole thing slipped off the desk, flipping the apple across the room and sending the tray crashing to the floor.
John let out a deep sigh. The apple had rolled toward the wall and stopped, no more than ten feet away but still, with the fire raking through his back, that was ten feet too far. It was amazing, actually, to look across the room at a distance he would normally not think twice about. Today, the floor seemed to stretch infinitely.
He could reach the apple, but it would take him a half an hour and an interminable amount of pain. Was it worth it? He was still lying on his side, and he gripped the edge of the mattress to keep himself there. The apple taunted him, its red skin glowing in the soft light of his room. His stomach growled again, urging him to forget his back and get the food.
He brought his knees up, intent on rolling off the bed when pain ripped through his hamstrings. He sucked in a breath waiting for the agony to fade, but it pulsed in a steady rhythm until the throb centered on his lower back. Screw the apple. He shifted again to lie flat and the pain doubled, twisting through muscles and nerves before he’d moved more than an inch. If Carson hadn’t already assured him there was no permanent damage, John would have sworn something had been broken back there.
Forget lying on his back. He would just stay half-curled on his side. That was fine. He had been trapped for twenty hours in that pillory, bent over with wood beams pressing against his throat and slowly cutting off the circulation in his hands. He could handle being trapped in his bed.
His team would come. Or Carson. Or one of the nursing staff. It had to be getting close to dinner or another dose of pain meds. His stomach and back were screaming for each respectively. Maybe if he straightened one leg at a time. He started to try that, but his back erupted in burning protest.
Maybe he should do it quickly, like ripping a band-aid. Get it over with before he had time to think about it. Except that he’d already had too much time to think about it. He looked longingly at the apple again. If he was going to just plow through the pain, he might as well get something out of the effort.
He rolled off the bed before he could change his mind, reaching out for the floor. He managed to slow his descent into a controlled fall, but he choked out a cry at the pain that snapped through him again.
It took less than half an hour to reach the apple, but it felt longer. He crawled across the ten-foot space between his bed and the wall like a man without water in the desert. But he was moving. He was gaining on that elusive apple. The thought brought a smile to his face. He wasn’t trapped in his bed, or in even in his own body.
With one final lunge, he reached out and wrapped his hand around the apple. He lowered himself slowly to the floor, tilting to the side as he went and letting gravity roll him onto his back. By the time he was done, he was staring up at the ceiling and holding the apple above him in triumph-and pretending he wasn’t on the verge of crying.
John devoured the apple. It tasted every bit as good as it had looked. When he was done, he let the husk roll out of his hand. The floor was more uncomfortable than he could have possibly imagined, and there was no doubt now that he was well past time for his next dose of painkillers. His bed was too far away, and he wished he’d thought to bring his radio earpiece with him.
He’d had his apple. He’d reached it under his own power, and now he wasn’t above asking for help. He really wanted to go back to bed. He turned his head to look at the door into his quarters. It was closer than the bed. He could conceivably crawl to the door and hope someone was outside.
The snapping pulses in his back were constant now, and he closed his eyes, letting one arm drape over his face. He had to get off this floor. He was about to push against the wall and roll back onto his front when the door to his room suddenly slid open. John heard the heavy footsteps enter the room, then freeze, then rush over to his side.
“Bloody hell, lad.”
John lowered his arm and looked up into the worried face of the Scottish doctor. “Hey, doc.”
“What happened?”
He pointed toward the remains of the apple he’d eaten and smiled, the relief that someone had found him almost overwhelming. “My apple rolled away. I was hungry.”
“Why didn’t you just call for help?” the doctor asked, feeling for John’s pulse.
John brushed his arm away, but not without wincing at the pain slicing through his spine. Carson grabbed John’s wrist in a stronger grip, and frowned at what he was feeling.
“Your pulse rate is pretty high. I’d wager you’re in a fair amount of pain.”
“You’d win that bet,” John grunted.
“Alright, up with you. I want you back in that bed.”
Between the two of them, John managed to struggle back to his knees. Carson lifted him, and within three steps was depositing John back onto his bed. John sank into the mattress and closed his eyes, not opening them until he felt a sharp prick in his arm.
“What?”
“Painkillers-the heavy duty kind.”
“Thought I couldn’t have any of those alone,” John mumbled. The pain was ebbing already, spreading numbing relief in its wake.
“You’re not alone, lad,” Carson answered, patting him on the shoulder. “Teyla’s already on her way with a tray of food, Rodney is squawking in my ear as we speak asking after you, and Ronon is asleep on the bench just outside your door. Next time, ask for help.”
“Hmmm…” John answered, smiling at the hazy painless warmth enveloping him. Carson settled down in the chair next to him, assuring Rodney everything was fine. The door chimed then slid open, letting Teyla and Ronon in. John lifted his head and waved at his teammates before dropping back onto the bed. Teyla held a tray full of food-one bright red apple front and center-but John could already feel the drugs pulling him into a stupor.
The food could wait. The trappings of a drug-induced, pain-free haze was one he was ready to linger in for any number of hours.
END