Characters: John, team
SPoilers: All through season four, but before Kindred.
Summary: Road trip! Er, uh... space trip! But poor John's not feeling to hot. Beta'd by the lovely
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splitbeak, who I thank muchly for the help. A/N: I'd been feeling poorly, so took it out on John, poor boy. Now I feel better. Poor, poor John.
SGA
So it wasn't a tension headache - more an interchange between dull ache and sharp pain, rising and ebbing like a tide from the top of John's neck, pooling into the base of his skull, sliding around the bone to flood his sinuses, then receding only to do it all over again. Looking at the lighted 'jumper control-board incited an early onslaught of throbbing, and the HUD popping up, ensuring him that he was on course to the space gate, made him want to tear his eyes out.
Then there was the nausea with a presence that hadn't been this persistent until they'd started for home. It had been on-again, off-again on the planet, like a mild threat. Now it was like a rock at the bottom of his stomach, a moving rock that was stirring up acid and the piece of bread he'd attempted to eat at breakfast.
“...I'm just saying, they get a little overzealous with the rituals. It's trade, for crying out loud, not the damn stock exchange.” The co-pilot chair gave a petulant little squeak when Rodney dropped into it. “How much do you want for the fruit? How about this much? No? Okay, then, this much? You agree? Oh, excellent – then hands are clasped, the deal is done and we all go home to do the exchange thing before the fruit goes bad. Whoever on that planet stipulated a trade agreement that required five days of wining and dining after the agreement was... agreed upon... hopefully had their asses kicked.”
John rolled his shoulders and neck, stretching the muscles though it had yet to alleviate the pain in his head, and cringed at the sharp twinge. The mild aches in the rest of his body weren't so mild any more, and seemed to be getting further from mild by the minute, even with the Tylenol having been in his system for a good half-hour, now.
Ronon's deep voice carried to him from the rear-hatch, “You didn't seem too bothered by the food, McKay.”
“Do you hear me complaining about the food? It was all the stupid talking. The speeches and toasts and... five days of it! All for... prunes and some kind of happy weed.”
What was meant to be a weary sigh deflating John's lungs hitched, turning into a small cough that made his intercostals throb. His back also throbbed, as did his arms, hands, legs, feet all the way to the tips of his toes and fingers. He hated being sick. Hated, hated, hated...
“Dried Eeva fruit,” Teyla said, also from somewhere in the rear hatch, “when sugared and cooked, is a rare delicacy, and the ofin plant has much medicinal value.” Last time John had looked, she and Ronon had been playing some Satedan card game using an Earth-made deck. According to the ripping flutter of plastic paper being shuffled, they still were.
“Yes, lovely, whatever. Still not worth the price of five days of long-winded toasts and Sheppard getting that planet's version of the chicken pox or whatever.”
John saw, in his peripheral, Rodney swivel around to look at him, and the motion made him wince.
“Colonel, you look like crap,” McKay said.
John sneered, “Really, Rodney? I had no friggin' idea!” He winced again against the decibels of his own voice. The pain in his skull shot down his spine, provoking his stomach to churn and gurgle unpleasantly. He moaned, clenching his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut, and wishing he could melt out of existence.
“See? See why it's bad to let other people eat off your plate?” Rodney wheedled.
“How was I supposed to know that littler girl was sick? She was bouncing off the damn walls. And basing this assumption on the way I'm feeling right now, I don't think that's a symptom.” It wasn't until two days later, when the “stress headache” had made itself at home in the bottom of John's skull, and the hyperactive little girl was dragging her feet everywhere she went, that he realized Rodney had had a point about allowing children to “nibble” on the same bread he'd been nibbling on. John wouldn't deny it; he was a sucker when it came to little kids, especially the outgoing ones who thought stories about men in hockey masks were exciting even if they made no sense. He'd also had no reason to suspect the worst over a five ear old taking a bite of his dinner roll. It wasn't like he could have stopped her, anyways – she'd had half the thing eaten and back on his plate by the time he'd finished reaching for the salad bowl.
“Children are breeding grounds for diseases. You can't trust them, even when they're your own,” McKay replied with inarguable certainty.
John looked down at his arms patched and splotched with bruises that weren't actually bruises but skin discoloration. According to Teyla, the disease was relatively harmless. It would make him miserable for several days – muscles aches, joint aches, and hot and cold flashes - give him the appearance of one who'd been severely mugged, then gradually clear up. It lasted about two to three weeks at most, she'd promised, which John had said he could live with. He'd had a stomach bug that had lasted that long, and a battle with pneumonia that had lasted a month. Two to three weeks was a cake-walk.
Then Rodney had to open his big mouth about the potentially altered affects of Pegasus Galaxy diseases on a body from the Milky Way, and suddenly Teyla was no longer so sure. It seemed that the disease had a tendency to last longer in those not from that planet – Everaon, Evere-on, Eveyon... John still couldn't pronounce it and had no desire to try - so there was no saying what it would do to a body not even from this region of space. On top of that, thanks to a malfunctioning stargate – not DHD but the 'gate itself - that Rodney couldn't fix without better diagnostic tools and a team of 'gate technicians, they were crawling their way through the black void to the nearest spacegate – twenty-hours away, give or take.
“Maybe you should go lie down,” said Rodney. “Before you do a face plant into the controls and inadvertently veer us off course to the nearest asteroid.”
John didn't have the energy to argue against. “Yeah,” he muttered, rubbing the side of his face. It wasn't like he was needed to pilot with the 'jumper on auto, but he always had a hard time pulling himself away from the controls, because you never know.
He also didn't want to move. If rolling his shoulders made him want to detach his arms, then he didn't want to know what his hips, knees and spine had in store for him. He was quite content where he was. If he held perfectly still with his eyes closed, giving his mind free reign to wander, the throbs settled into a more distant, tolerable rhythm.
“Sheppard!” Rodney barked.
John jumped, and the motion was a mistake when his stomach sloshed. He bolted from the seat with one hand over his mouth, almost slipping on the cards Ronon and Teyla had set out on the floor. He barely made it to the tiny bathroom at the back of the rear hatch, and was in the process of dropping to his knees when his last meal came up, again, then again, then once more for good measure.
He'd thought his ribs had been hurting before.
When he finally finished, as in able to breathe again, he made his agonizing way back to his feet, dropping when his legs gave out, then trying again. Puking really shouldn't have taken that much out of him. Even with his knees locked, his legs shook with the threat of buckling. He stumbled back into the rear hatch, one shoulder against the wall and arms hanging useless at his sides. John stared into the cockpit where McKay was wiping everything down with pad after pad of alcohol wipes.
“There's no way we're getting back into Atlantis,” McKay said. “We open the 'jumper and down comes the quarantine protocols, locking us in.”
“I thought you fixed it?” said Ronon. “Again.”
Rodney scowled. “I did. I'm just saying, if they do come down, it's not my fault. The system's twitchy, complicated, requiring a very intimate understanding. Even the smallest imprecise command could send it into a tizzy over a common-cold, or keep it completely dormant when it's another plague. Fixing a system like that takes time, patience, finesse -”
“So, it'll work when we don't want it to, not work when we really need it to, and you can't fix it,” Ronon said, grinning.
McKay paused and balked at the Satedan. “What! No, I can fix it. It just takes... it's not... it's complicated...” When he carried on with his disinfecting, his movements were rigid and quick. “Shut up.”
“John?”
John moved his attention to Teyla. She was crouched on the floor by the bench, patting the seat now covered by his sleeping bag.
“Come, lie down.”
Lie down – that was all he'd wanted since the sickness had started its assault. Up until now, he'd pushed all thoughts of a warm bed and pillows aside while he could, taking advantage of the illness' early stages until all the agreements were had been finalized, the rituals completed, and the wraith made no impromptu appearance.
Rodney was right: whoever came up with prolonging trade agreements with dinners and superfluous speeches needed a good ass kicking.
John gladly did as he was told, moving in an ungainly shuffle and dropping onto the bench. When he attempted to lean forward to unlace his boots, Teyla moved quick to do it for him. John twisted his mouth uncertainly, but other than that just didn't have the energy to care, so he struggled out of his outer-shirt instead, leaving only his T-shirt. It was too warm for both. John was about to lie down as soon as the shirt was off when Teyla pressed a water bottle into his hands.
“Drink,” She commanded.
“Your kid is in for some major mothering,” John said, and would have drank half the bottle if Teyla hadn't pulled it away. Her smile was more an amused smirk. She placed her hand on her rounded belly, and her other hand on John's knee.
“I have had much practice.”
Behind her, Ronon snorted.
John glared at him. “She's talking about all of us, big guy.” With a groan, he eased himself onto his side on top of the sleeping bag while pulling his legs up to join the rest of him. He was out as soon as his head touched the folded jacket that was now his pillow.
-----------------------------------
“Oh, please, if anyone was going to be the Human Torch , it would be Sheppard. The man is too C-4 happy not to be. And Mr. Fantastic was the brains – a scientist. I'm the scientist, end of story.”
John was awake as far as his brain was concerned. The rest of his body begged to differ, his limbs heavier than lead and his eyelids glued shut. He was content to lie there until his mind agreed with his body and drifted back into darkness, but the conversation was begging for a response.
“I think the colonel meant that Mr. Fantastic is the leader, as John is the leader,” Teyla said, her logic, as always, flawless and indisputable.
“And Sheppard's kind of lanky,” said Ronon. “Long-limbed -”
“And skinny,” Rodney added.
“Yeah, that too.”
“And I have heard,” said Teyla, “people refer to you as... fiery?”
John could easily imagine Rodney's stiffening perk. “Really?”
“Your temper, mostly,” Teyla replied, and the disappointed deflate was just as easy to imagine. “But many have commented on your energy, and how they admire it.”
“I think it's more amazement that he hasn't dropped dead of a heart attack,” Ronon said. “At least that's what I've heard.”
“Going back to the Fantastic Four, now... Teyla, didn't you say Sheppard called you the Invisible Woman?”
John stiffened.
“Yes, but she is most admirable. Her ability to create shields would be quite useful. And she, too, is intelligent.” Her modest pride was just as effortless to picture as McKay's smugness. John relaxed. Thank goodness for the movie industry's current obsession with comic books, and Ronon's obsession with action-packed earth movies.
“I don't look like the Thing,” Ronon growled, and John tensed again.
“It's not about, it's about personalities. He kicks ass, you kick ass,” said McKay. “That's where you're similar. Lots of ass kicking, not looks. But I still say Sheppard's the Human Torch, Colonel N-a-hot-alien-chick-named-Larrin-did-not-kidnap-me. Lying bastard.”
Okay, now that demanded a response. Sheppard had had every right to keep that little detail to himself, knowing Rodney's reaction when it came to... “hot” alien chicks. He'd already told McKay, ten times now, that the next female alien kidnapper was his, because they weren't all that they were cracked up to be and had a mean right hook. John was ready for the eleventh lecture, but a tickle in the back of his throat cut him off. He coughed dryly while his hand searched the floor for the water bottle.
“Didn't lie,” he choked. His hand collided with cool plastic and he gripped it desperately. A quick swallow appeased the itch enough for him to talk. “Just... didn't want to confirm or deny it.”
“Oh, a thousand apologies, then,” Rodney mocked. “You're not a lying bastard, you're just a lucky bastard.”
John grunted. “Not from where I was standing.” His voice trailed into a low moan when his headache seemed to pulse from the top of his skull to the small of his back, if that were even possible. Sure as hell felt possible. “Talk about something else.”
“Whiny when you're sick, much?” McKay scoffed. John refused to answer that. As far as he was concerned, he had every right to his irritability. He didn't recall the worst flu he'd ever had sucking this bad, and as though to prove it, his stomach-acid bucked.
Bolting from the bench to the bathroom was a separate state of hell. His joints, muscles and bones didn't settle for an uncomfortable throb, they screamed at him, pulling and popping as though his skeleton were falling apart. When he puked, heaving for all he was worth, he thought for sure he was shredding his abdominal muscles. He heaved three times with nothing to show for it, leaving him slumped over the toilet, sweat-soaked, shaking and too spent to so much as crawl. Three minutes later, when he still hadn't emerged, Ronon came in and hauled him back to the bench, even aiding in lying him out on his back.
“This is not like the flu,” John rasped, and grimaced at the way the vibrations of his vocal cords made his throat feel like it was being scraped with rusty nails. The touch of a cool, moist cloth to his forehead caused his body to start in weak alarm.
“It is rare but not unheard of for the illness to be severe,” said Teyla.
“And in a place where immunities are galaxy-wide,” Rodney added, “you're a buffet. So of course it's going to suck beyond anything you've ever experienced. However, being the lucky bastard that you are, it probably won't kill you. At least I don't think it will. We've been in this galaxy for four years and no disease has so far (though that's not to say they sure as hell haven't tried), so why should this one?” He then asked, with a lot of hesitation that did not inspire any confidence, “Right... Teyla?” like he was looking for assurance rather than confirmation.
“Crap, McKay, you suck at pep-talks,” John groaned. “Teyla already said I'm not going to die, so I'm not going to die. Stop thinking it.”
“You see! This is why the human race as a whole are hypocrites. We whine about wanting the honest to goodness truth and get all pissed off when we get it. No one appreciates honesty. No one.”
“Honesty's got nothing to do with it,” John breathed, longing for unconsciousness. “It's all in the delivery. That's what you suck at. Honest to goodness truth.”
“Go back to sleep,” Rodney growled.
“Trying,” John growled. “Keep it down.” Whatever else Rodney said faded into a garbled mess muffled behind a sparking wall of dark. It wasn't sleep, not even close, but as close as John was going to get.
--------------------------------------------
“Brillef.”
“Brillef? What the hell kind of name is Brillef? It sounds like something you'd name a dinosaur or a cave-man or something.” Rodney chuckled. “Brillef of the North, distant relation to Nanook of the North. Probably a cousin.”
“It was my uncle's name, McKay,” was Ronon's flat reply.
There was a moment of silence, then, “Brillef the Mighty also has a nice ring to it. Good, strong warrior name – Brillef.”
Getting his eyelids to part sent needles of pain into John's brain, then blades of pain when he managed slits, but he swallowed back the need to groan. Swallowing, in turn, made the sides of his throat stick together, and he brushed his fingers along the floor in search of his water bottle.
“Better than Winston,” Ronon said. There was a rustle of cloth, the soft creak of leather, then smooth plastic was pressed into John's palm.
“What the hell is wrong with Winston?” Rodney demanded. “It's a strong name. Classy, too. I would have loved to have been named Winston.”
John took two long swallows that moistened the tortured membrane of his esophagus. “Better'n Meredith,” he said when he was finally able to talk. He got his eyelids open enough to see Teyla on the bench, Ronon on the floor by her legs, and Rodney on the floor with his back against the jam of the cockpit door. All three were eating from MRE packets.
Rodney gave him a simpering grin. “Awake and insightful, how nice.”
“But Winston...” John said next. “Sounds too much like a butler.”
“You're late to the party so your input means nothing,” Rodney sneered. His hand squirmed inside the packet until emerging with what John could only assume was a breaded chicken nugget, and popped it into his mouth. “William's also a good name.”
“So's Zachary.”
Rodney's brow puckered in alarm. “Zachary?”
“Yeah, Zachary. S'got energy, spunk. Good name for a boy.”
“Gee, Colonel C-4, like spunk much?”
John shrugged and moaned when the body-aches pounded to the beat of his heart. “Jus' like the name.” He let his eyes drop, slow and careful, to Teyla's stomach. “Hear one you like yet?”
Teyla smiled in a manner that was both appreciative and amused. “I have already made my list of names for my child. We were simply discussing various favorite names.”
“Brillef,” McKay muttered with a half-laugh. Ronon threw a wadded napkin at his head.
John's soft laughter exploded into a cough that he quickly doused with another drink. “How many names on your list?” he asked when he could.
Teyla's hand settled on the center of her belly, fingers splayed and touch delicate as though holding the small and fragile head still safe behind her skin. She did that a lot. Rather than rest her hand at the top of her stomach, or support the bulge from below, her hand went to the middle with fingers curled; possessive of and anxious to touch the life growing inside her. It made John wonder if there was more to it than maternal instinct, because as far as Teyla knew, she and that little life were the last of her people.
John was hit with a surge of discomfort over Teyla's proximity to him, although she'd assured him that she had already suffered the illness, once, in her late teens, and those who suffered it once did not suffer it again. Really, though, there was no stopping the worry. Like John had once told Ronon, he was worrier. He'd been worried about Teyla coming on this mission - even with her needed because the locals knew her, trusted her, and refused to negotiate unless she was there; even with a network of underground tunnels that had kept the population safe from the wraith for generations, making it the most secure planet Teyla could visit; even though she wouldn't have taken “no, you can't come, it's too risky” for answer, and would probably have knocked John on his ass if he'd tried. She'd needed to get off-world. She'd been cooped up in Atlantis for too long, and a cranky Teyla was a scary Teyla.
“There are four names I must meditate over,” Teyla said. “The name that feels right in my heart will be my son's name.”
“What if they all feel right?” Ronon asked.
Teyla smiled, her dark brown eyes bright and glittering with mirth. “Then it is simply a matter of picking the one I like the most.”
“Bet there's a ceremony involved,” Rodney said around a mouth-full of nugget.
“There is a celebration, actually,” said Teyla. “A great feast where the name of the child is announced to all. Each member of the camp brings their favorite dish and a gift. The eldest offers a prayer asking the Ancestors to see the child to adulthood. Following that is dining and dancing.” Her smile twitched, weakening but fighting against the melancholy that dulled her eyes. John's chest clenched, and his mind went straight to what-could-have beens: What could have been done sooner, faster, different? Should they have found her people another world to settle on? Were they searching for them hard enough?
He shoved it from his mind. They'd already been through this, more then once, with John voicing his what-ifs out loud and Teyla assuring him that it had been beyond their control – hollow assurances, though, because John had seen the same consideration over what-ifs in Teyla's eyes.
“I'll bring the cake,” John sighed, and swallowed back a little bit of bile. The fight to keep his eyes open was wreaking havoc on his skull, and his stubborn resolve to take part in the conversation wasn't going to sustain him for much longer. “Party's always gotta have cake.”
“Says who?” Rodney challenged.
“People who like cake.”
“Can't argue with that,” said Ronon.
“Cake 'n ice-cream.” John's eyes gradually lost the fight to stay open with each blink. “An' beer, I'll bring that, too.” But as soon as his eyes stayed closed, more bile shot burning like fire into his throat, and they snapped back open. He managed to croak a “Crap!” before he bolted in a frantic, scrabbling crawl to the bathroom. Hands gripped him by the biceps and dragged him the rest of the way, holding him as he heaved.
“Thanks... Ronon...” he managed in between.
A strong arm braced him across his chest, and an equally strong hand rubbed carefully between the shoulder blades to help ease his shuddering. When the pointless dry-heaves were done, Ronon supported most of John's weight back to the bench.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:11 am (UTC)From:So this is part one of how mnay?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:14 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:37 am (UTC)From:If you really hate dividing up your fics, just hard code them instead of usging rich text. You can upload something as large as 12,000 words in a single post that way..if it really bothers you.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 10:07 pm (UTC)From:Cool quote
Date: 2008-05-15 08:56 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)"There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income
parents' lives a misery."
"... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears
because of what you just said."
"I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't
pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!"
-- Filthy Rich and Catflap
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http://ebloggy.com/henrypenningtonve
Hello
Date: 2008-08-25 09:19 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)