"Pieces of the Whole" (2/3)
Sep. 13th, 2007 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kristen999Title: “Pieces of the Whole” (2/3)
Author: Kristen999
Character(s): Sheppard with Team
Genre(s): Stargate Atlantis: H/C -Angst
Rating: T
Words: 12,900(total)---3,200 This Part
Warnings: torture
Summary: The team are captured and learn that there are two forms of torture.
Notes:I wrote this a couple of months ago and it gave me fits. I re-wrote parts and debated about posting it, since its not the most original plot in the world. Here is the result, this is not what I typically write.
Big thanks as always to Beth for her patience and care as a wonderful beta. Also thanks to Mandy for reading the rough and raw chunks in the middle of the night.
Previous Chapter
----------------------------
Ronon's head aches and his memories are scattered like the dust on the floor. He'd let his guard down during the meal, not noticing the slight bitter taste layered under the sweetness. His prison cell is sparse; a tiny room with a single chair that he ignores and a narrow space to stride back and forth in.
The three walls that surround him bear the imprints of his fists. The building material is made of painted over slab that denies him the pleasure of leaving holes. His fingers are swollen, but not broken, and the next time he sees one of the Thlemians he'll satisfy his desire to hear some bones crack.
He doesn't know how long he's been locked away in this dark, silent cell. There's no natural daylight to go by, no hum of machinery or nature to measure. An invisible energy field keeps him close to the wall, giving him the space of a long coffin. He growls at the empty air, curses the guards for their cowardice in not showing themselves. The frustration gets the best of him and his hand lashes out to feel the zap of pain burst through his fingers.
He doesn’t know when the sounds began.
A whisper behind him. A mutter deeper, elsewhere.
Snippets of conversation pan from one corner of the room to the other. Sometimes it's a garbled sentence; a woman's voice or some soft crying off in the distance causing his ears to strain to catch the noise.
Hours go by and his senses are dulled by the nothingness; his mind drifts aimlessly, only to be jerked back by odd laughter. His keepers are screwing with his head; his ears relax only to be tickled to life by the nuisance around him.
It's a scraping of nails over his nerves, winding him way too tightly. He claws at the energy barrier in front of him, feeling the static charge build up in his fingertips, causing all the hair along his arms to sizzle. He's ready to test the limits again, to see how long it takes the room to grow yellow if he holds his hands inside the obstruction, letting the pain overwhelm him before he pulls away.
He begins to push his hand towards the energy field when the east wall slides open, streaming light into his gray world.
The other room is subdued, cast in low luminescence and in the middle of it is Colonel Sheppard, hunched over on the floor with his hands clamped over his ears as if trying to block out a audible assault. Ronon can't see the man's face since it's buried between his knees and the sight of his team leader in such dire distress makes his imprisonment all the more unbearable.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Dex?”
Ronon spins around and gets as close to the force field as possible, his nose tingling from the proximity to it. “Who are you?”
He's pissed that he allowed someone to slip in unnoticed.
The man has the deepest blue eyes, much like the seas that surrounds Atlantis. “My name is Orate.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Ronon demands, tilting his head towards the window.
“I think the noise level is a little too much for the colonel. Would you like me to turn it off?”
------------------------------
Being exposed to firing jet engines without ear protection can result in temporary hearing loss. The same could be said about firearms in an enclosed space. Sheppard's had the honor of experiencing both at one time or another during his career in the Air Force.
If he had a long safety pin he'd have popped holes in his eardrums by now.
The sheer brutality of the white noise woke him from a dreamless sleep into a cloud of disorientation, making it impossible to think. Where was he? What time was it? What the hell was going on?
Oh, yeah. Prison cell. Vin Diesel. Pain.
His memories get a little muddled after that.
None of that matters now, except stopping the waves of energy trying to make his ears bleed. His temporal bones and the channels leading to his inner ear are ready to collapse.
He plugs his pointer fingers in his ears to cork the air from going inside to activate the nerves leading up to his brain. If it works it might stop the feeling that his head might explode. His thoughts are lost in a sonic boom and he can't sleep or scream over the noise. He's familiar with this tactic, too; drive the occupant insane, deprive them of rest, bombard them with noise.
He contemplates slamming his forehead into the unyielding floor to knock himself out when the noise stops.
He dares to lift his head to bask in the blissful silence.
The door opens up and this time he's not going to stick around for twenty questions. He balls up his fists, eyes searching for a target when an elderly man, no taller than Linda Hunt, stands before him. The man is hunched over a wooden cane and his face is more wrinkled than one of Ronon's old leather skins. Grandpa could give Father Time a run for his money.
“Guess not all of you can try out for the next Fast and the Furious,” Sheppard mumbles.
The old guy raises a single eyebrow. “You plan on hitting me?”
“No.”
“Not a very wise choice, Colonel.”
Before Sheppard can react to the ominous threat, a bony hand points at his chest.
“Kneel.”
Something in Sheppard's head detonates and he's on his knees, unable to fight against the force that pulls him to the floor.
------------------------
“Your leader is weak,” Orate says, watching the window.
“You don't know anything about him,” Ronon snarls.
“He dropped his guard, allowed appearances to deceive him.” The Thlemian shakes his head. “Would you have made the same mistake?”
Undermining his CO's authority by agreeing is exactly what this alien wants from him.
“You wouldn't have... you're a warrior, a hunter. You live by instinct and don't make such mistakes.” Orate stands before him. “No, you would have struck, maybe even have escaped.”
Ronon's never been able to penetrate the field, but if he punches hard enough, maybe he can grab Orate by the throat. His captor studies him and Ronon glowers back.
“You have great strength and your loyalty is impressive. Just how strong do you think your colonel is?”
“Very.”
Ronon tries not to look at what's going on in the other room; there's nothing he can do to stop it, nothing to prevent it from happening. It makes his rage boil to the surface, but he won't give in. He owes Sheppard more than that.
“A person of few words. You're more of a man of action. An enforcer who isn't afraid to get his hands too bloody.”
“Would you like to test your theory? Let the barrier down and I can give a demonstration.”
Orate chuckles. “You'd like that, wouldn't you?”
“It'd make my day.”
“I’m sure it would. I imagine that urge to kill flows through your blood. Sometimes violence is the only way to make people understand. It saves lives. Brute force is a show of superiority that wins more often than not.”
Ronon tries to ignore what is going on in the next cell since such distractions can hurt his chances of escaping. He knows he could take out this man with his bare hands if given the chance.
“Your leader sees killing as a failure.”
“No, he doesn't.”
“Really? Why don't you watch and find out.”
Ronon crosses his arms, puffing out his chest, the muscles straining under his clothes.
“If you won't look, then you'll listen.”
-----------------------------
The London Eye is the largest observation wheel in the world and it’s considered an insult to use the word 'Ferris' when describing it. There were many attractions in Europe that Sheppard enjoyed visiting, but the Eye was by far his favorite, sometimes going on the attraction every day. The ride wasn’t fast; in fact it didn’t even have to stop to take on passengers and took half an hour to complete one revolution. But despite its slow pace, it had its appeal in the glorious height it reached.
He's there right now, rising more than four hundred feet high, over looking the southern bank of the Thames. The more he focuses on the amazing view, the more calloused fingers push through his brain.
Grandpa isn't a replicator; there's no holographic hand shoving past tissue and matter, but it feels just as awful. It's worse than driving spikes into his skull or an ice pick behind the eye... it's plucking and drilling.
His hands are inert by his sides and an internal pressure continues to build in his head until it feels like his skull will burst into fragments. The questions are spoken softly, but they wail like a banshee inside his mind.
“How many people have you killed?”
Sheppard thinks of freedom and calm.
“How many by your hands?”
The sensation of hovering above the city.
“Do you see their faces when you close your eyes?”
It hurts physically to rip out his memories, leaving him panting and eyes squinted closed as tightly as possible until he feels a warm trickle of blood drip down from his nose.
“Do they look shocked?”
The teenage Afghani boy's face is smudged with grease and his clothes are stained red around the hole in his chest.
“Stop!” Sheppard pleads.
“Does he haunt your dreams, Colonel?”
“Why... don't you... shove that cane... up your --”
“Did he have to die?”
The bends would preferable to this agony. Sheppard begins to calculate how much weight the London Eye can hold.
Claws rake across the surface of his brain and the blood drips faster down his chin.
His closed lids are a movie screen for the memories he battles against. He opens his eyes, fights to focus, concentrates on counting the liver spots on the old man’s face. “People... die... It happens in war.”
“Are they even people to you? Do you know their names before you take their life away?”
The tarmac has body bags lined up next to his chopper ready for their trip home. Sheppard can feel his eyes try to roll into the back of his skull. “I... kill so others can live.”
“They mean nothing to you,” the Thlemian accuses.
The old man's voice fills his ears and drags his thoughts out into the open, burning a trail of fire behind them. Sheppard's voice breaks as he whispers, “If I didn't care... don’t you think I would stop trying to make up for it?”
-----------------------------
Ronon has seen torture, has pried information from people in insidious ways to save lives. There's no rule book in war, no matter what people say. It’s you or the enemy... your brother or a hole in the ground for a corpse. What these people are doing to Sheppard is for sport.
“You’re all cowards!” he spits. Ronon wants to break the window and snap the old man in half.
“Your colonel doesn't have what it takes to resist... he's vulnerable.”
“Sheppard hasn't told him a damn thing you want to hear.” Ronon glares at his captor in pride. “I'd say he's winning.”
“For how long?”
“Don't underestimate him.”
Orate grins. “And don't overestimate his chances. Everyone has a breaking point... even you.”
The blood running down the colonel's face can't be a good sign. The Wraith have tried to force Sheppard to say and do things without this type of result, but the sight is enough to set the flames on high inside the inferno that's been building. He turns around to face the other way.
These people don't have the right to do this; to take away his friend's dignity.
“The colonel doesn't like talking about death. About killing... but what about you? It's not such a dirty deed is it?”
Ronon would rather duel with this asshole than listen to the mind rape that's going on next to him. “You like talking about death so much? Would you like to learn the details first hand?”
“Do you enjoy it? Does it fill in the emptiness deep down inside; that bottomless pit that has no room for anything else but hate?” Orate barbs.
“I won't lose sleep over killing you.”
“Tsk... tsk. Avoiding the question, Mr. Dex.”
“Why do you hide behind your force field!”
“We all hide behind walls; some are more impenetrable than others.” Orate thrusts his hands through the invisible barrier and grabs him by the scruff of his shirt.
Ronon is jerked towards the shield, his body scraping along the pulse of energy, burning his skin from the contact as he's shoved towards the window. Orate is a lot stronger than he looks and there's no escaping the man's grip. The alien is able to move wherever he wants and slams Ronon up against the glass, his head pinned in place by another hand.
“Where is your rage? Where is your desire? What can your bottled up emotions do for you and your team leader now? Watch and be helpless, oh great protector.”
--------------------------
Sheppard is at his friend's funeral; there wasn't enough left of Dex for a coffin and Mitch's burns were bad and he imagines his mom will wail over the closed casket. He flew them personally to Kuwait to be shipped off to Germany first before their final voyage home. He talked to them the entire way, offering apologies and promises he couldn't keep.
His mom was cremated and he was never allowed to touch the urn on the mantel even though at a young age he knew her desire to have her ashes spread at sea. His dad never allowed it and it was one of many arguments he never won.
There are more dog tags and faces without names, but soon they fade to serial numbers on mission reports hazy letters of remorse and people he can never forget.
Ford's face still pops in his mind; the one with two good eyes and a boyish smile.
Sumner's is between a set of crosshairs.
Carson's is a disembodied voice over a radio telling him everything's going to be all right.
“So many failures...”
Sheppard can feel the old man's skeletal fingers press against his skull, strong bony thumbs trying to drill holes in the center of his forehead.
He manages to lift his hands away from his sides before they're slammed back in place. Every facial muscle twitches like he's pulling four G's and the tiny sounds escaping his throat are small and pathetic.
“No matter how may lives you take....you cannot save the ones you've sworn to protect.”
Sheppard puts up another black wall with rows of calculus problems; he thinks of square roots, the radii of circles and never ending integers. He can feel himself slipping and crumbling away, his body swaying on its feet. Sheppard still battles, protecting what he has left, but the stabbing pain only mounts.
“I can feel it......what's eating away at you the most. Stop fighting me,” Grandpa implores.
“I'd rather die first.”
“If that is what it takes.”
The old man spreads his thumbs from the middle of Sheppard's forehead across his temples. It’s like forcing open a door and the room fills with his screaming.
--------------------
“Do hear the sound of that? Of your colonel's defeat?”
“I don't hear defeat. I hear resistance.”
Ronon will watch now, to bear witness to Sheppard's fight and strength. Anger overwhelms his training; it fills his heart with blackness and his only solace is that it will be unleashed on Orate and all his friends at some point.
“Your rage is a weapon, runner. It's your salvation.” Orate lets go of his hold and Ronon can only lash out at the force field as the man steps behind its protection once again.
“Tell me. Will you trade a life for a life?”
“Yes.”
Ronon means it... if this is what they wanted from him all along. “Is that your game?”
The alien draws back, his mocking voice fills with somber seriousness. “This is no game... are you truly that numb to death?”
“I don’t fear it.”
Orate grins, waving a hand in the air, and Ronon's weapon appears in the empty chair. “A death to prevent a death. Shouldn't be hard for a man who doesn't have a problem with killing.”
Ronon grips his blaster. “I will only take my life after you free Sheppard and the others.”
His captor chuckles. “Who said anything about your own?”
A door opens and another Thlemian is shoved inside, a scrawny man with dirty clothes who bows before his leader and looks up at Ronon with fear-filled eyes.
Orate grabs the thin shoulders with his massive hands and steers him towards the shield. With little effort, the newcomer is pushed forward, passing through the barrier as he trips over his own feet and stumbles to the ground before Ronon.
“Kill him and I'll stop Colonel Sheppard's soul from being ripped apart.”
-------------------------
The pain has become a flood; the dam holding everything back has busted. There are too many images to keep track of and the feeling behind each memory is as fresh as the day they were burned into his consciousness. Sheppard can feel Grandpa's mind with his, swimming through the running waters.
“Enough!” he hears himself yell.
Everything is blur of mistakes, errors-- every sin, every second guess ever made. Sheppard can feel them sharp as knives...blood leaving another trail down his face. He's back on the Wraith ship, near the body of Colonel Sumner, trying to understand the words of a dying monster.
He's broken the lock to Pandora's box---released the hounds of Hell upon the innocent.
“You woke the Wraith-- you sentenced everyone in this galaxy to a new plague,” the old man whispers inside his head.
“Yes,” Sheppard's voice trembles.
“How can death have meaning when it’s your constant companion?”
Sheppard can feel himself falling, too weak to struggle anymore –too lost to find anything to hold on to, everything spilling out of his head.
“Answer me!”
-----------------------------
Ronon stares at the Thlemian cowering before him. “What did he do?”
“What does it matter?”
The blaster feels good in his hand and he looks back and forth between his suffering CO, his friend, and the petrified Thlemian.
“I don't kill innocent people.”
Orate's laugher fills the room. “You don't know that.”
“This is not my enemy and I'm no murderer.”
“It's an ends to a means. Who is this person to your team leader? To an officer who commands such respect?”
“It would only lower me to kill a bystander for Colonel Sheppard. It would betray everything he ever stood for.”
“Your colonel is being torn to pieces... do you not want to stop his pain?”
Ronon's guts twist, knowing he's giving up his chance. “He's taught me to be better than that.”
------------------------
Sheppard can feel the demands echo over and over again, calling for submission. Despite it all—despite his body's longing for rest, his right hand pulls away from his side and rises, inch by painful inch until it wraps numb fingers around his tormentor's wrist.
His torturer is in way too deep, too far inside his head to wrest it away.
“Answer me.”
“Every... life is worth something. Is worth dying for... worth protecting. We can't do anything for the dead... but we can for the living.”
Sheppard allows himself a victory when he pushes away one set of fingers from his aching head and blackness soon follows.
Pieces of the Whole (3/3)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author: Kristen999
Character(s): Sheppard with Team
Genre(s): Stargate Atlantis: H/C -Angst
Rating: T
Words: 12,900(total)---3,200 This Part
Warnings: torture
Summary: The team are captured and learn that there are two forms of torture.
Notes:I wrote this a couple of months ago and it gave me fits. I re-wrote parts and debated about posting it, since its not the most original plot in the world. Here is the result, this is not what I typically write.
Big thanks as always to Beth for her patience and care as a wonderful beta. Also thanks to Mandy for reading the rough and raw chunks in the middle of the night.
Previous Chapter
----------------------------
Ronon's head aches and his memories are scattered like the dust on the floor. He'd let his guard down during the meal, not noticing the slight bitter taste layered under the sweetness. His prison cell is sparse; a tiny room with a single chair that he ignores and a narrow space to stride back and forth in.
The three walls that surround him bear the imprints of his fists. The building material is made of painted over slab that denies him the pleasure of leaving holes. His fingers are swollen, but not broken, and the next time he sees one of the Thlemians he'll satisfy his desire to hear some bones crack.
He doesn't know how long he's been locked away in this dark, silent cell. There's no natural daylight to go by, no hum of machinery or nature to measure. An invisible energy field keeps him close to the wall, giving him the space of a long coffin. He growls at the empty air, curses the guards for their cowardice in not showing themselves. The frustration gets the best of him and his hand lashes out to feel the zap of pain burst through his fingers.
He doesn’t know when the sounds began.
A whisper behind him. A mutter deeper, elsewhere.
Snippets of conversation pan from one corner of the room to the other. Sometimes it's a garbled sentence; a woman's voice or some soft crying off in the distance causing his ears to strain to catch the noise.
Hours go by and his senses are dulled by the nothingness; his mind drifts aimlessly, only to be jerked back by odd laughter. His keepers are screwing with his head; his ears relax only to be tickled to life by the nuisance around him.
It's a scraping of nails over his nerves, winding him way too tightly. He claws at the energy barrier in front of him, feeling the static charge build up in his fingertips, causing all the hair along his arms to sizzle. He's ready to test the limits again, to see how long it takes the room to grow yellow if he holds his hands inside the obstruction, letting the pain overwhelm him before he pulls away.
He begins to push his hand towards the energy field when the east wall slides open, streaming light into his gray world.
The other room is subdued, cast in low luminescence and in the middle of it is Colonel Sheppard, hunched over on the floor with his hands clamped over his ears as if trying to block out a audible assault. Ronon can't see the man's face since it's buried between his knees and the sight of his team leader in such dire distress makes his imprisonment all the more unbearable.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Dex?”
Ronon spins around and gets as close to the force field as possible, his nose tingling from the proximity to it. “Who are you?”
He's pissed that he allowed someone to slip in unnoticed.
The man has the deepest blue eyes, much like the seas that surrounds Atlantis. “My name is Orate.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Ronon demands, tilting his head towards the window.
“I think the noise level is a little too much for the colonel. Would you like me to turn it off?”
------------------------------
Being exposed to firing jet engines without ear protection can result in temporary hearing loss. The same could be said about firearms in an enclosed space. Sheppard's had the honor of experiencing both at one time or another during his career in the Air Force.
If he had a long safety pin he'd have popped holes in his eardrums by now.
The sheer brutality of the white noise woke him from a dreamless sleep into a cloud of disorientation, making it impossible to think. Where was he? What time was it? What the hell was going on?
Oh, yeah. Prison cell. Vin Diesel. Pain.
His memories get a little muddled after that.
None of that matters now, except stopping the waves of energy trying to make his ears bleed. His temporal bones and the channels leading to his inner ear are ready to collapse.
He plugs his pointer fingers in his ears to cork the air from going inside to activate the nerves leading up to his brain. If it works it might stop the feeling that his head might explode. His thoughts are lost in a sonic boom and he can't sleep or scream over the noise. He's familiar with this tactic, too; drive the occupant insane, deprive them of rest, bombard them with noise.
He contemplates slamming his forehead into the unyielding floor to knock himself out when the noise stops.
He dares to lift his head to bask in the blissful silence.
The door opens up and this time he's not going to stick around for twenty questions. He balls up his fists, eyes searching for a target when an elderly man, no taller than Linda Hunt, stands before him. The man is hunched over a wooden cane and his face is more wrinkled than one of Ronon's old leather skins. Grandpa could give Father Time a run for his money.
“Guess not all of you can try out for the next Fast and the Furious,” Sheppard mumbles.
The old guy raises a single eyebrow. “You plan on hitting me?”
“No.”
“Not a very wise choice, Colonel.”
Before Sheppard can react to the ominous threat, a bony hand points at his chest.
“Kneel.”
Something in Sheppard's head detonates and he's on his knees, unable to fight against the force that pulls him to the floor.
------------------------
“Your leader is weak,” Orate says, watching the window.
“You don't know anything about him,” Ronon snarls.
“He dropped his guard, allowed appearances to deceive him.” The Thlemian shakes his head. “Would you have made the same mistake?”
Undermining his CO's authority by agreeing is exactly what this alien wants from him.
“You wouldn't have... you're a warrior, a hunter. You live by instinct and don't make such mistakes.” Orate stands before him. “No, you would have struck, maybe even have escaped.”
Ronon's never been able to penetrate the field, but if he punches hard enough, maybe he can grab Orate by the throat. His captor studies him and Ronon glowers back.
“You have great strength and your loyalty is impressive. Just how strong do you think your colonel is?”
“Very.”
Ronon tries not to look at what's going on in the other room; there's nothing he can do to stop it, nothing to prevent it from happening. It makes his rage boil to the surface, but he won't give in. He owes Sheppard more than that.
“A person of few words. You're more of a man of action. An enforcer who isn't afraid to get his hands too bloody.”
“Would you like to test your theory? Let the barrier down and I can give a demonstration.”
Orate chuckles. “You'd like that, wouldn't you?”
“It'd make my day.”
“I’m sure it would. I imagine that urge to kill flows through your blood. Sometimes violence is the only way to make people understand. It saves lives. Brute force is a show of superiority that wins more often than not.”
Ronon tries to ignore what is going on in the next cell since such distractions can hurt his chances of escaping. He knows he could take out this man with his bare hands if given the chance.
“Your leader sees killing as a failure.”
“No, he doesn't.”
“Really? Why don't you watch and find out.”
Ronon crosses his arms, puffing out his chest, the muscles straining under his clothes.
“If you won't look, then you'll listen.”
-----------------------------
The London Eye is the largest observation wheel in the world and it’s considered an insult to use the word 'Ferris' when describing it. There were many attractions in Europe that Sheppard enjoyed visiting, but the Eye was by far his favorite, sometimes going on the attraction every day. The ride wasn’t fast; in fact it didn’t even have to stop to take on passengers and took half an hour to complete one revolution. But despite its slow pace, it had its appeal in the glorious height it reached.
He's there right now, rising more than four hundred feet high, over looking the southern bank of the Thames. The more he focuses on the amazing view, the more calloused fingers push through his brain.
Grandpa isn't a replicator; there's no holographic hand shoving past tissue and matter, but it feels just as awful. It's worse than driving spikes into his skull or an ice pick behind the eye... it's plucking and drilling.
His hands are inert by his sides and an internal pressure continues to build in his head until it feels like his skull will burst into fragments. The questions are spoken softly, but they wail like a banshee inside his mind.
“How many people have you killed?”
Sheppard thinks of freedom and calm.
“How many by your hands?”
The sensation of hovering above the city.
“Do you see their faces when you close your eyes?”
It hurts physically to rip out his memories, leaving him panting and eyes squinted closed as tightly as possible until he feels a warm trickle of blood drip down from his nose.
“Do they look shocked?”
The teenage Afghani boy's face is smudged with grease and his clothes are stained red around the hole in his chest.
“Stop!” Sheppard pleads.
“Does he haunt your dreams, Colonel?”
“Why... don't you... shove that cane... up your --”
“Did he have to die?”
The bends would preferable to this agony. Sheppard begins to calculate how much weight the London Eye can hold.
Claws rake across the surface of his brain and the blood drips faster down his chin.
His closed lids are a movie screen for the memories he battles against. He opens his eyes, fights to focus, concentrates on counting the liver spots on the old man’s face. “People... die... It happens in war.”
“Are they even people to you? Do you know their names before you take their life away?”
The tarmac has body bags lined up next to his chopper ready for their trip home. Sheppard can feel his eyes try to roll into the back of his skull. “I... kill so others can live.”
“They mean nothing to you,” the Thlemian accuses.
The old man's voice fills his ears and drags his thoughts out into the open, burning a trail of fire behind them. Sheppard's voice breaks as he whispers, “If I didn't care... don’t you think I would stop trying to make up for it?”
-----------------------------
Ronon has seen torture, has pried information from people in insidious ways to save lives. There's no rule book in war, no matter what people say. It’s you or the enemy... your brother or a hole in the ground for a corpse. What these people are doing to Sheppard is for sport.
“You’re all cowards!” he spits. Ronon wants to break the window and snap the old man in half.
“Your colonel doesn't have what it takes to resist... he's vulnerable.”
“Sheppard hasn't told him a damn thing you want to hear.” Ronon glares at his captor in pride. “I'd say he's winning.”
“For how long?”
“Don't underestimate him.”
Orate grins. “And don't overestimate his chances. Everyone has a breaking point... even you.”
The blood running down the colonel's face can't be a good sign. The Wraith have tried to force Sheppard to say and do things without this type of result, but the sight is enough to set the flames on high inside the inferno that's been building. He turns around to face the other way.
These people don't have the right to do this; to take away his friend's dignity.
“The colonel doesn't like talking about death. About killing... but what about you? It's not such a dirty deed is it?”
Ronon would rather duel with this asshole than listen to the mind rape that's going on next to him. “You like talking about death so much? Would you like to learn the details first hand?”
“Do you enjoy it? Does it fill in the emptiness deep down inside; that bottomless pit that has no room for anything else but hate?” Orate barbs.
“I won't lose sleep over killing you.”
“Tsk... tsk. Avoiding the question, Mr. Dex.”
“Why do you hide behind your force field!”
“We all hide behind walls; some are more impenetrable than others.” Orate thrusts his hands through the invisible barrier and grabs him by the scruff of his shirt.
Ronon is jerked towards the shield, his body scraping along the pulse of energy, burning his skin from the contact as he's shoved towards the window. Orate is a lot stronger than he looks and there's no escaping the man's grip. The alien is able to move wherever he wants and slams Ronon up against the glass, his head pinned in place by another hand.
“Where is your rage? Where is your desire? What can your bottled up emotions do for you and your team leader now? Watch and be helpless, oh great protector.”
--------------------------
Sheppard is at his friend's funeral; there wasn't enough left of Dex for a coffin and Mitch's burns were bad and he imagines his mom will wail over the closed casket. He flew them personally to Kuwait to be shipped off to Germany first before their final voyage home. He talked to them the entire way, offering apologies and promises he couldn't keep.
His mom was cremated and he was never allowed to touch the urn on the mantel even though at a young age he knew her desire to have her ashes spread at sea. His dad never allowed it and it was one of many arguments he never won.
There are more dog tags and faces without names, but soon they fade to serial numbers on mission reports hazy letters of remorse and people he can never forget.
Ford's face still pops in his mind; the one with two good eyes and a boyish smile.
Sumner's is between a set of crosshairs.
Carson's is a disembodied voice over a radio telling him everything's going to be all right.
“So many failures...”
Sheppard can feel the old man's skeletal fingers press against his skull, strong bony thumbs trying to drill holes in the center of his forehead.
He manages to lift his hands away from his sides before they're slammed back in place. Every facial muscle twitches like he's pulling four G's and the tiny sounds escaping his throat are small and pathetic.
“No matter how may lives you take....you cannot save the ones you've sworn to protect.”
Sheppard puts up another black wall with rows of calculus problems; he thinks of square roots, the radii of circles and never ending integers. He can feel himself slipping and crumbling away, his body swaying on its feet. Sheppard still battles, protecting what he has left, but the stabbing pain only mounts.
“I can feel it......what's eating away at you the most. Stop fighting me,” Grandpa implores.
“I'd rather die first.”
“If that is what it takes.”
The old man spreads his thumbs from the middle of Sheppard's forehead across his temples. It’s like forcing open a door and the room fills with his screaming.
--------------------
“Do hear the sound of that? Of your colonel's defeat?”
“I don't hear defeat. I hear resistance.”
Ronon will watch now, to bear witness to Sheppard's fight and strength. Anger overwhelms his training; it fills his heart with blackness and his only solace is that it will be unleashed on Orate and all his friends at some point.
“Your rage is a weapon, runner. It's your salvation.” Orate lets go of his hold and Ronon can only lash out at the force field as the man steps behind its protection once again.
“Tell me. Will you trade a life for a life?”
“Yes.”
Ronon means it... if this is what they wanted from him all along. “Is that your game?”
The alien draws back, his mocking voice fills with somber seriousness. “This is no game... are you truly that numb to death?”
“I don’t fear it.”
Orate grins, waving a hand in the air, and Ronon's weapon appears in the empty chair. “A death to prevent a death. Shouldn't be hard for a man who doesn't have a problem with killing.”
Ronon grips his blaster. “I will only take my life after you free Sheppard and the others.”
His captor chuckles. “Who said anything about your own?”
A door opens and another Thlemian is shoved inside, a scrawny man with dirty clothes who bows before his leader and looks up at Ronon with fear-filled eyes.
Orate grabs the thin shoulders with his massive hands and steers him towards the shield. With little effort, the newcomer is pushed forward, passing through the barrier as he trips over his own feet and stumbles to the ground before Ronon.
“Kill him and I'll stop Colonel Sheppard's soul from being ripped apart.”
-------------------------
The pain has become a flood; the dam holding everything back has busted. There are too many images to keep track of and the feeling behind each memory is as fresh as the day they were burned into his consciousness. Sheppard can feel Grandpa's mind with his, swimming through the running waters.
“Enough!” he hears himself yell.
Everything is blur of mistakes, errors-- every sin, every second guess ever made. Sheppard can feel them sharp as knives...blood leaving another trail down his face. He's back on the Wraith ship, near the body of Colonel Sumner, trying to understand the words of a dying monster.
He's broken the lock to Pandora's box---released the hounds of Hell upon the innocent.
“You woke the Wraith-- you sentenced everyone in this galaxy to a new plague,” the old man whispers inside his head.
“Yes,” Sheppard's voice trembles.
“How can death have meaning when it’s your constant companion?”
Sheppard can feel himself falling, too weak to struggle anymore –too lost to find anything to hold on to, everything spilling out of his head.
“Answer me!”
-----------------------------
Ronon stares at the Thlemian cowering before him. “What did he do?”
“What does it matter?”
The blaster feels good in his hand and he looks back and forth between his suffering CO, his friend, and the petrified Thlemian.
“I don't kill innocent people.”
Orate's laugher fills the room. “You don't know that.”
“This is not my enemy and I'm no murderer.”
“It's an ends to a means. Who is this person to your team leader? To an officer who commands such respect?”
“It would only lower me to kill a bystander for Colonel Sheppard. It would betray everything he ever stood for.”
“Your colonel is being torn to pieces... do you not want to stop his pain?”
Ronon's guts twist, knowing he's giving up his chance. “He's taught me to be better than that.”
------------------------
Sheppard can feel the demands echo over and over again, calling for submission. Despite it all—despite his body's longing for rest, his right hand pulls away from his side and rises, inch by painful inch until it wraps numb fingers around his tormentor's wrist.
His torturer is in way too deep, too far inside his head to wrest it away.
“Answer me.”
“Every... life is worth something. Is worth dying for... worth protecting. We can't do anything for the dead... but we can for the living.”
Sheppard allows himself a victory when he pushes away one set of fingers from his aching head and blackness soon follows.
Pieces of the Whole (3/3)
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Date: 2007-09-15 01:50 am (UTC)