Story - Drifting

[kriadydragon]

Title: Drifting
Rating: T, Gen
Characters: Sheppard, Team
Warnings: Torture (nothing explicit). Insanity
Summary: A combination of prompts provided by clarkangel  - who wanted Sheppard touching something or in the chair, something happening to him where he slowly looses his memory, fights Ronon and gets hurt - and katstale who also wanted Sheppard and memory loss, but him wandering alone on a planet and his team having to track him down because Shep keeps running from them. The two ideas were just begging to be combined, hope you guys don't mind. Apologies in advance to Clarkangel - I wasn't able to get John into restraints. However! One of the other prompts has inspired a story that will involve John in restraints (not the next story to be written but the one after) so he will end up restrained one way or another.

Takes place sometime between season three and four.

Drifting

I will give you everything you have ever wanted if you will stay with me. Please, stay with me.

Dreams of wonder and pleasure and adrenaline shot through John's brain like pathetic distractions – ferris wheels, helicopters, and the love of a former wife. His body still arched away from the chair that felt overheated as though trying to solder his spine to its surface, and pain skittered like electricity to the very tips of his nerves.

I am not yours! I am no ones. I am everything! I am nothing!

The pain exploded outward in a single concussive force that made John scream.

“I do not understand. The city responds one moment, then refuses to respond the next.”

“It's his doing. Talk sense into him.”

“Colonel Sheppard, you must concentrate. Do this and the pain will end, you must not fight it.”

Do not fight, Please do not fight. I am... I am alone. I am not yours! I am no one's! I am everything and you are nothing!

Do not leave me! Leave me! Leave me now!

The concussive pulses thinned into sharp ribbons slicing muscle, bone and soul. John curved his back until he felt bent in half, but the skin of his hands were fused to the chair's arms. He couldn't get off. No matter how loud he screamed, how he defied, how he begged, she would not let him go. So he sobbed, and she caressed him with warmth one minute and scorching heat the next.

I will give you everything. You will never want and never worry.

I am no one.

I am yours, you are mine.

I am everything, you are nothing.

Ribbons became knives and needles of flame. It hurt, it hurt so bad, like wraith feedings, bullets and being burned alive.

“Colonel Sheppard! Stop being stubborn. You are accomplishing nothing more than your own agony.”

“Our people are unable to access more and more systems. The shielding is failing!”

“Just a little longer. Colonel Sheppard...”

You are mine. You are nothing.

He was being turned inside out, and his brains were boiling in his skull.

“You don't understand. His people are looking for him. If the shield fails then they will find him with their devices. They will find us.”

I will give you all that you have wanted.

I will destroy you.

“Just a little longer.”

“No, no more time. The shield is down. They will find us. We must get rid of him!”

Through the fire turning John to dust, he felt the pinching grip of hands on his arms and legs, pulling and tugging and ripping him away as though he really had become one with the chair.

No, he is mine! You cannot have him. I will destroy him, I will love him! He must die!

John's body burned, froze, convulsed and shook. Another pulse greater than the first ripped through him, taking the very air from his lungs and leaving nothing left to scream with. Then his body was airborne, and he flew away into limitless darkness.

---------------------------------------------

His bare feet scraped over gritty beige sand, and he wondered if he should be worried that he didn't feel it. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that it was doing enough damage to mark his path in bloody footprints. That wasn't a good thing, he was sure of it – the footprints, not the damage. Well, yes, he needed to be worried about the damage, but the footprints would make him easier to find.

And if he was found, there would be worse damage.

He lifted his hand high enough to brush his fingertips across the striated wall of rock on his left – all sundry shades of brown, cream, white, and quartz. When the dizziness hit, touching the cool stone settled the world back around him. He needed to rest, except he couldn't, or they would find him.

And when they found him, they would promise him so many wonderful things – everything he'd ever wanted – as they hurt him. They wanted to give him everything he wanted, and that was funny because the one thing he'd wanted they wouldn't give.

Technology, access to the city, weapons... if you'll just bring her to life for us. It is important to keep trying to bring her to life.

You are mine, I will give you everything you have ever wanted.

Except an end to the pain. They refused to stop the pain. All he could remember was the pain... and the promises. Which was an odd thing to remember since he couldn't even remember his own damn name.

---------------------------------

There were ruins not far ahead – geometric bones piled in front of a wide cleft in a cliff wall, maybe the entrance to a canyon maze. Both would provide good cover, good hiding from... something. Something bad. He pushed away from the rock wall and stumbled toward it. He was so hungry, and thirsty, and hot but he couldn't stop or... or something bad...

Bad people. There were bad people. Had to be because he hurt like he'd been beaten and only bad people beat other people. There was also a... bad place, where the bad people lived. A place that hurt; he didn't know how he knew, he just knew.

He wavered and swayed like a drunk on bloody feet, pressing his hand to his throbbing side and his other to his throbbing head. A gusty wind kicked up spirals of sand that rubbed his face and bit his eyes. He squinted against it, moving the hand from his head palm out to shield himself. He needed something to protect his eyes from the sand and the sun, like glasses, like... shaded glass. But when his hand flopped against the pockets of his pants, then the thin cloth of his T-shirt, he found nothing.

That wasn't right. There should have been glasses, and something else covering his chest and stomach and back. He sighed a long, dry breath that rubbed his throat raw and took another ounce of energy from him. Squinting harder, his hand lifting back up to shield, he touched the tip of his swollen tongue to cracked lips as though already tasting the water shimmering between him and the ruins.

No, not water. Rippling heat. He knew that.

He stumbled among roofless houses of sand-stone walls weathered soft and frail. He stepped into the kind shade of the only hut still retaining a roof, and found, in a low corner, the last inch of a dying puddle. With a desperate sob of relief, he dropped to his knees and scooped muddy water into his mouth with blood-caked hands. It tasted warm, metallic, sour but was a mercy on his leathery tongue and dehydrated throat. He would probably puke it up later but he honestly didn't care. Relief was relief, and he suspected himself the kind of man who did not waste opportunities, even the temporary ones.

When the next time he dipped his hand in only to encounter soft mud, he crawled into the corner, curled up on his uninjured side, and closed his eyes. A distant voice in his head screamed that he needed to keep moving, to hide someplace better.

He was too tired to listen. Besides, this was the middle of nowhere. There was no danger here.

-------------------------------------

His night was spent shivering, but not vomiting, and in on-again/off-again dreams full of promises, pain, bad people and a bad place that shouldn't have been bad. It made him realize that there were things he knew, like an instinct that wouldn't be shaken. Such as if there was a bad place, then there was a good place; if there were vicious people, then there were kind. And it wasn't simply some sentimental natural order of things; neither was it wishful thinking. He knew. With a breaking heart and a screaming soul, he knew. It was as sure and as real as the blood humming through his veins and the pain throbbing in his body.

There was a safe place with safe people, he just needed to find it. Maybe... maybe he might remember, if he followed the bloody footprints back to where he'd started. But then the bad people would find him and hurt him...

He curled tighter, shivering harder. He was better off being nowhere, where no one could find him. It was safer.

But, damn it, there was a good place, and he wanted to be there so bad it made his chest clench until he could barely breathe. When something warm tickled down his face, he touched it and his shaking finger came away wet.

-----------------------------------

The morning was golden, cold and sharp with shadows. He wandered from dead hut to dead hut in search of more mud puddles. The puddle in the hut with the roof was nothing more than clay, cracked and pliable as old skin. When the other huts yielded nothing, he dropped back to his bruised knees before the dried puddle and dug until he reopened the wounds on his hands.

Still nothing. The ground had been more thirsty than him, and not inclined to share.

He tried the canyon entrance that wasn't a maze after all. It ended twenty feet from the opening at a round clearing and a pile of boulders. There were a few scrawny plants growing from the serrated crags, but he knew better than to try and suck moisture from them.

He knew so many things. So many damn useless things. As he stared at the rocks blocking his way further into the canyon, he thought of the stupidity of sticking his hands into crevices and nooks where poisonous things hid, yet he could not remember his name, the good people and the good place. Grabbing a small rock from the pile, he whipped around and hurled it back down the path with a hoarse roar, and fell face-first into the sand.

He lay there, panting, heart pounding, fingers curling into the grains and gathering a fist-full to his palm that he squeezed and squeezed as though it were possible to force something else to share in his agony. The sand slipped through his fingers like water.

---------------------------------

I will give you everything you've ever wanted if you stay with me. No pain, no sorrow. You will want for nothing.

He jerked awake with a gasp that stabbed his ribs and burned his throat. Coughing, he pushed himself up on trembling arms that managed to support him long enough for him to slide his legs beneath his body. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep. Voices still echoed in his head, so many...

He froze. Not voices. Well, yes, voices, but not the garbled whispers of a groggy mind. These voices were shouting, calling, and getting exponentially louder.

He lurched, wavered and stumbled to his feet, hitting the canyon wall when he listed violently. Clinging to it and keeping to the shadows, he pulled himself along to the entrance, then cringed back when he reached it.

“Well it's not like there's plenty of places to go. I mean, you honestly don't think he'd be so scrambled as to wander off into the desert, do you?” A short, round man with thinning sandy hair stepped out of a hut, hands fidgeting nervously with a square device in his hands, then slapping the device against its edge as he muttered, “Stupid LSD. Leave it to a bunch of idiots to drop Sheppard off on a planet with interference.”

Familiarity struck like a blow, and he shrank further back.

“He's here, McKay.” Another emerged from the neighboring hut. “It's where the footprints headed, and the blood in the dirt of that hole was pretty fresh,” said the tall man with the knotted hair, equally and painfully familiar and... damn it, the footprints! They'd followed the footprints just like he knew they would. They'd found him. They found him!

He crept back until beyond sight and hearing, turned and ran to the rock pile. Maybe, just maybe, he could scale it to the other side, poisonous creatures be damned. He scrambled over razor boulders that added to the wounds on his hands and feet, drawing more blood that could be followed, pulling loose stone and pebbles to go clattering down loud enough to be heard. He was almost to the top, so close he whimpered like a plea to his own body to keep going, just a little further, up and over to where there would be no more pain.

“Sheppard! Sheppard, wait!”

Fear ripped through him like a wave, making his whole body jerk and his blood-slick foot slip out from under him. He landed hard on his chest that shoved the air from his lungs on a grunt, and his hands lost their fingernails scrabbling for a better hold.

“Sheppard, stop!”

A strong hand grabbed his ankle and pulled, and fear became a wild-fire that consumed him. He screamed, kicking out, pulling away, but the grip was too firm. The hand started tugging him in, and another hand landed on the small of his back to grip the waistband of his pants.

He couldn't go back: not to where they made promises and hurt him; said they loved him as they beat him; said he would never want for anything as he slowly died. He couldn't. He wouldn't. He wouldn't!

Twisting around, he slammed his foot into the face of the big man, then lunge forward, throwing both himself and the man off the pile onto the soft sand below. He didn't wait to catch his breath, and rolled onto his hands and feet, then leaped on top of the man, pinning the man down as he wrapped his hands around the solid neck.

But the man was bigger, stronger, and bucked throwing him easily off. The big man, even winded and half -choked, still managed enviable ease when he rolled to his knees then jumped to his feet.

“Sheppard,” big man said, rubbing his throat. “What – what the hell -”

He charged, tackling big man and driving him back three feet before big man flipped him onto his back. He kicked out again, driving his foot into big man's stomach and winding the man long enough to get himself scrabbling back to his own feet.

“Sheppard,” big man gasped, straightening though still pained, holding both hands palm out. “Sheppard, look at me. It's me, Ronon. I'm not going to hurt you.”

Lies. False promises. More false promises. Big man was going to hurt him and hurt him and hurt him...

With a broken cry, he again charged and barely ducked a blast of red energy that skittered over his shoulder. He lashed out with his arm, knocking the weapon away that clacked against the rocks until falling into a crevasse. He lashed out again with his other fist only to have the big man block it by grabbing the wrist. Big man twisted his arm down and pulled him closer until there was an inch between their faces, forcing solid eye contact.

Big man was seething. “Sheppard, it's me. Ronon. You need to calm down before you get hu-”

He snapped his head forward into big man's head, then threw all his weight into big man, driving him to the ground. He let his fists rain, blow after blow on head, shoulders and arms. Suddenly, the big man grabbed him by the biceps and yanked him off, practically throwing him into the nearest boulder. His injured side made contact and he cried out.

“Sheppard!”

Pressing a hand to his stabbing side, he staggered drunkenly to his feet and again charged. Big man was ready and grabbed him by both arms, whipping around and slamming him into the ground where Big man pinned him with one arm across his chest and the other his neck.

He thrashed, trying to squirm out of the hold.

“Sheppard! Sheppard, stop! Please! I'm not going to hurt you!”

Lies, lies, more lies, more false promises. They always made false promises before they hurt him. He thrashed hard until he managed enough room to angle his head down and sink his teeth into the arm holding him.

Instead of yanking the arm away, big man grabbed his arm and pulled him up, gathering him to the broad chest. One strong arm wrapped around his shoulders and the other across his stomach, and held him there. He kicked, jerking forward, slamming back, snarling and shouting and clawing at the thighs beneath his hands. They wouldn't take him. He wouldn't let them. When the arms tightened, a rib grated and he screamed.

“Damn it, Sheppard! You need to stop. You're hurting yourself. Just stop! I'm not going to hurt you!”

Lies, lies, lies. He struggled harder.

“I'm not going to hurt you, do you hear me? I-am-not-going-to-hurt-you!”

He couldn't breathe; his heart was beating too fast for his lungs to keep up. He sucked in dry air that burned, swallowed it, choked on it. Choking turned into gagging and he heaved and heaved. He didn't want to go back. Oh, gosh, he didn't want to go back, he didn't, he couldn't...!

The heaving intensified, making breathing impossible. He was barely aware of only one arm across him, now, and a hand rubbing gently over his upper spine.

“Easy, Sheppard. Breathe, just breathe. Come on...”

Between the next heave that couldn't even bring up bile, he sucked in a rough, trembling breath. The big hand gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then returned to rubbing.

“That's it, Sheppard. That's it. You're doing good, just keep breathing.”

He did, and it was easier when the heaving stopped. Each inhale shuddered; each exhale rode on a whimper or a sob. He had no strength left to struggle, and waited with stiff muscles, shivering skin and a fluttering heart for the large hands to break his bones.

The hand continued rubbing, and it made breathing so much easier. “I'm not going to hurt you, Sheppard. I'm not going to hurt you.”

Sheppard. He knew that name. Why did he know that name? Why did he believe the big man's promise?

“I'm not going to hurt you.”

And he knew the big man wouldn't. He knew, like an instinct, as certain as the breath rattling in his lungs. He knew.

He collapsed against the big man's chest, all energy spent. The solid arms wrapped carefully around him, both protecting and reassuring, and he was okay with the darkness taking him this time.

-------------------------------------

“He looks horrible. What the hell did those bastards do to him?”

“They messed him up, bad. I couldn't get him to calm down.”

“We are here for you, John.”

You are safe.

He wanted to believe that, he did. He was so tired of lies, of hurting...

“Why isn't he awake yet? Shouldn't he be? Maybe you're wrong about there being no brain-damage.”

“Relax, McKay. You'd be doing the same thing if you were starved, beaten and had your brain turned inside out by a broken Ancestor city.”

“I know, I know, I just... It's just... you'd think they could have just asked nicely instead of... you know.”

“They wanted to keep him, Rodney.”

They did want to keep him. They'd made him promises, hurt him, and thought that would make him stay and make it all better.

“You are safe, John.”

You are safe.

He prayed it was true. Deeper inside, where a blanket of warmth helped him to rest, he knew it was true.

------------------------------

He awoke to darkness, shadows, indefinable shapes and soft whispers coming closer... and panicked. They were coming for him again, and he couldn't... just couldn't... no more. He launched from his bed to land with a painful thud on the hard, cool floor, and scrambled backward until his spine hit a wall, then sideways until he found a corner he could pack into.

The lights flared on, momentarily blinding him. When he was able to see again, he gaped.

He knew this place – the copper walls, the scent of chemicals, the bed on its frame a configuration of metal poles, white boxes with a bright red cross on them, and the red airy clothes worn by a bewildered looking woman.

“Colonel Sheppard?”

Sheppard. He knew that name. His name. John Sheppard. Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, military leader of a city called Atlantis. Atlantis – Ancient city , home. He was home. The safe place. The good place.

But when the nurse reached for him, he shrank back and she snatched her hand away, then hurried off. He felt bad about that. It wasn't that he didn't trust her, it was just that it was too soon for touching. He needed a minute, nothing more. A quick minute. Which he wasn't given when the nurse returned with a gaggle of nurses and Dr. Keller in tow. They talked sweetly to him, reached out for him, tried to coax him back onto the bed only to have him pull away and back into another corner where they couldn't reach.

“Just give me a damn minute,” he hissed, recoiling when they clustered. At a sharp but nervous command from Keller, they backed away, giving him his space, telling him to call if he needed anything. Even with them gone, he still shook and realized that he was dressed in only scrub pants without a top. There was a bandage on his wrist, bandages on his hands and feet, and a pad covering most of his injured side. He lifted the pad to see a single line of stitches extending for three ribs and bruising covering most of his flank.

But he didn't hurt.

He did wonder when he'd gotten so pathetically skinny.

The brush of something heavy and warm against his naked shoulders and back made him start. Reaching up, he touched the soft lining of a blanket, and looked up to see Ronon standing over him.

“You were shivering,” he said. He sat down next to him, folding his legs Indian style, with enough space between them for John not to feel crowded. Ronon's eyes went straight to the wrist-wrap and darkened.

“I didn't mean to do that,” he said in a voice hardened with bitter remorse. “I was trying not to hurt you.”

John rubbed the tips of his bandaged fingers over the stretched, flesh-tone cloth. “It was an accident. I -” he looked at Ronon's face, right eye swollen with a companion bruise over it, and swallowed. “I wasn't making it easy.”

“Not your fault,” Ronon said.

“Why the hell is he on the floor?”

Both John and Ronon looked up at Rodney and Teyla, standing and staring – Teyla's shock mild and Rodney's absolute. John looked away, wishing he could melt into the wall.

“It gets boring looking at the same wall after a while,” Ronon said. “Nothing wrong with a little change of scenery.”

Rodney snorted. “Yeah, very little.” Then they both sat, Rodney across from John and Teyla next to him, her look a silent question asking if it was okay. When John nodded, she relaxed and adjusted the blanket more comfortably around him. Ronon scooted closer until they were touching shoulder to shoulder, giving John something to lean up against when needed. Rodney, ever prepared (though John suspected it had been meant for himself) pulled a water-bottle from his pocket and placed it within John's reach.

“In case you're thirsty,” he said. “Ice chips can get pretty dull, too.”

They fell into a silence that was comfortable enough, even for McKay it seemed. The wall was warm at John's back, bleeding through the blanket, and Atlantis was warm all around him. Even sitting on the floor he felt drowsy and content.

“They tried to bribe me,” he said, leaning more heavily against Ronon. He was too tired to care about what he was saying. “Promised me everything if I'd make their city work.”

Teyla placed her hand over his, lightly so as not to aggravate the healing cuts.

Rodney huffed with a glower. “That city was screwed up beyond repair. Those people were idiots.”

John nodded in complete agreement. They'd promised him everything he'd ever wanted, when everything he wanted was right here.

The end

A/N: I've always wanted to do a story about an insane Atlantis... or at least an insane Atlantis-like city, in the case of this particular story.