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Fic: You can run with us 11/?
Author: Flaim aka Darkfalconheart
Story: You can run with us. (11/?)
Pairing: nothing as of yet.
Summary: John gets captured by the Wraith, they turn him into a runner.
Rating: for this chapter: 13 , may be higher in later chapters
Warnings: some violence
Status: WIP
Spoilers: Up to ‘The lost tribe’.
Wordcount: ca.4000
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, names or other various parts of the SG/SGA universe and all rights are with their respective owners. This is a work of non-profit fanfiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Author’s note: Turning point chapters are always tricky, and this one prove particularly hard to write. I am not really sure if it conveys all the things I wanted to get in here, but there it is.
Chapter 11: Until the darkness dies
This is my window,
And I just woke up,
Feeling adrift and afloat.
Where ends my life?
And where begins the night?
(R.M. Rilke)
Rodney McKay was not sure what he had expected but being hugged by Zelenka, and being welcomed by all the science staff like a hero was certainly somewhat embarrassing. All of them seemed genuinely happy to have him back here. Rodney was not sure if he himself was ready for this, it seemed overwhelming. Atlantis had changed in the year he had been away, and still it was the same. It was a little odd to see General O’Neill in command of Atlantis, but at least Atlantis had a competent leader once again.
Rodney straightened up when he walked into O’Neill’s office. The room had been occupied by different persons, during the last years and changed with them. Elisabeth Weir’s office had been warm, welcoming and had reminded him of a study at times. Carter’s office had been functional, littered with scientific notes and clearly reminiscent of her workspace at the SGC. With Woolsey the room had been a hard to define something, that had made Rodney antsy at times. With O’Neill the room again reverted to a more chaotic version of a command centre. “McKay, come in! Settling in well?” Jack O’Neill gestured Rodney to sit down on one of the chairs.
“Thank you, Sir.” Rodney sat down. “Your help during the attack way more than a live-saver. It saved the whole Athosian community.”
“Not all of them.”
Rodney nodded. “I know. But it saved them from being wiped out by the Wraith,” he reminded the General. The loss of those taken would be felt, but the Athosians would survive. Rodney bit his lip. Merean had been taken too. “On a more personal note, I wanted to thank you, General for looking out for Cylin, Vali and Athalwyn the night after we arrived here.”
“Those kids went through a rough time, the two small ones especially. Their brother seemed already…” O’Neill didn’t find the right words. Cold didn’t fit, and hardened sounded like a criminal.
Rodney understood what O’Neill tried to convey. “That he is. When they found him by the gate ten months ago, they believed him to be a runner, by the way he reacted.” Rodney chuckled. “Give him some years to grow fully into a man and he’ll give Ronon a run for his money.”
O’Neill nodded. “Ronon, your runner comrade. Where do we find him?” he asked. It was time to get this search rolling.
“Sorry, can’t help you. Ask Teyla.” Rodney leaned back, arms in front of his chest, staring at Jack stubbornly.
“Oh c’me on, McKay! Do I look like Woolsey and the IOA? I’d be offended if you say yes.”
Rodney shook his head. “I can’t General. Only four people know how to get in contact with Ronon, and of them Teyla is the boss. If she decides to trust you, ok. Otherwise I can not help you.”
“McKay, we have a good man out there, a man we need to bring home.” Jack had risen and walked over to Rodney. “He’d deserve…”
“What he didn’t deserve was being abandoned like that.” Rodney shot back. He knew it was a cheap shot. O’Neill had not been the one to make that call, but it felt good to vent his anger. “And don’t tell me it was all Woolsey’s doing. When John took mercy on Sumner he had to live it down with two inquiries and a lot of questions asked. When we lost John, nobody from the air force cared enough to ask questions. Had Ronon not gone after him, we might not have the faintest idea what happened to him.” Rodney rose from his seat. “I am sorry, General. But I can’t help you.”
***
John woke disorientated, in his dreams he still heard the shrieks of the darts high up in the air over Sateda. Everything around him seemed sharper, the colours more intense, in spite of the fact that this room was dark. He sat up, his body was shaking. “Easy here, you have been through a lot.” A familiar voice said.
To say John was shocked to see Ronon right beside him, was a gross understatement. He seriously wondered if he was dreaming still. “Ronon – how…” it was not possible, not with the transmitter and what the Wraith had done. But it was Ronon, right in front of him, alive and well.
“It’s a long story.” Ronon said. “And you need to take it slow. You have been through a lot.”
The words didn’t really register with John. His worries were still about the effects his tracking device would have on Ronon’s transmitter. Perhaps it was not distance but time that effected the device? If so Ronon had to leave at once.
“Stop that. My transmitter was removed when I left Atlantis.” Ronon said. “And I won’t go anywhere.” Suddenly he stopped, staring at John.
John stared at him. “I didn’t say a word,” he said. “you read my mind!” he added a little more annoyed.
Ronon rubbed his temples. “We need to ask Jir, once he is back. He’ll know why the mindlink didn’t dissolve.” He murmured.
“Mindlink?” Sheppard felt like he was in a dream still. But then… he had dreamed about Sateda, about things he had never seen or experienced. “and who is Jir?” He had never felt so stupid and less informed since his exams in High school.
“Jir is a… a friend, another runner. He linked our minds so we could draw you out… out of the nest again. He said it should dissolve naturally after we woke up.” Ronon explained. He looked around. Jircanor was probably out, checking the area, perhaps finding some food or other useful provisions.
“Food would be a good idea.” John said, before he scowled. “Damn it, you just thought Jircanor was going to get food, right?”
Ronon nodded mutely. It took not much to feel the chaos in John’s mind, the feeling of being adrift in a surrealistic dream. Ronon sighed inwardly. It had been a long time that he had found talking to somebody easy. And even then, his friends had talked more than he. But silence would not help here.
“You don’t need to, if you don’t want to, you know.” John said slowly. Stopping when he realised that he had read Ronon again. “sorry. Can’t stop doing that.”
“Me too.” Ronon could not shut out Sheppard’s thoughts too. He was relieved to hear steps coming up the stairs. It was Jircanor’s steps, he knew them. Jircanor walked in, a bundle thrown over his shoulders. “Look, who is awake again. Welcome back to the world of the living.”
“Thanks, I think.” John knew he was grouchy, but his head began hurting and it felt weird to read Ronon’s mind all the time.
“Jir, something went wrong.” Ronon began, but he saw Jir frown and scrutinizing both of them.
“You are still linked.” Jircanor exclaimed. “The link is still there. How did this happen?”
“We kind of hoped you’d know.” John managed eventually to sit in a somewhat more comfortable way. “We woke up and our minds were still taking peeks to the other side.”
Jircanor raised his hand, stretching it out towards them, like he tried to feel something invisible in the air. After a moment he withdrew the hand hastily. “That was definitely unfriendly.” He said to himself.
“So what?”
“It will take time to break up the link.” Jircanor said to them. “I can mute it for a while, so you both keep a clear head. But for breaking it up, I’ll need more time.” He rubbed his temples and winced. “Right now your minds are not linked but… more like meshed. It will take time to break it down and separate you two.” He sat down opposite of them, both hand raised, his gaze intently focused on them.
To John it felt like a cool wind brushing his mind, numbing the over sensitivity, helping him to calm down. Yet the sudden silence left him with a pang of loneliness, the sad feeling of loosing something he could not really define. “It will always feel like that,” Jircanor said softly. “if a link is disrupted by force, or death, then the pain will stay with you until the day you die. That’s the main reason we have to be careful when we disentangle your minds.”
John nodded. “Thank you. For all the help.”
“Think nothing of it.”
The food Jircanor had found was mixture of freshly hunted wildlife, some edible plants and some other food conserved in statis-storage somewhere below the city. When he began eating John realised how hungry he was. While he was eating he studied his two companion silently. Ronon looked again much like the runner he had met more than five years ago. The thought that his friend had left behind whatever home he had found in Atlantis to chase after him, was one that unsettled John more than a little. He had hoped to keep his friends safe by staying away, especially after the disaster with Shelleau.
The other runner was harder to read. He was as relaxed as a runner could be in company of others, and even as he did not look it, John somehow knew that the man was older than Ronon or himself. “So you are a runner too?” He asked after a while. It was dumb question really, but there was no witty way to ask a man if he spend his life on the constant run from the Wraith.
“As are you.” Jircanor put aside bottle of water. “How are your eyes feeling?”
John blinked. “Good, actually. The colours are a little more intense and the shadows more defined, but that could be the light in here.”
Jircanor took up a small item and a tiny beam of green light hit John’s face, he winced and turned away. Jircanor deactivated it again at once. “Your eyes are still shadowed, or you wouldn’t react to a weak light that strongly.” He said. “it could take a while for your eyes to readjust.”
“Hey, I know that kind of flashlight!” John pointed to small lightstick. “I have one too, I found it on…”
“You found it the night you decided to use my den for a camp.” Jircanor said dryly. “I guessed you had found it.”
That first night in the hole in the ground came back to John’s mind. How strange had it felt then, to camp in a cave in the earth, back then he had no idea what lay ahead of him. And he remembered waking in the night, shaken up by something he could not define. “It was you! You sneaked up to me.”
“Right again. You didn’t realise I was there until you left.” Jircanor shrugged. “When you made your way to the ruins I considered talking to you right away. But decided to let you go for the time being.”
Ronon arched an eyebrow. “That’s a big compliment, John. He must have judged you as capable as one who has been running for one or two years and lived to tell the tale.”
Irritated John looked from one to the other. “I don’t get it, I always believed runners stayed alone. Ronon you said you had been alone for seven years.”
“I said I had not much choice.” Ronon corrected him. “And occasionally meeting another runner, and knowing the safe places, the network of dead worlds, doesn’t mean you are less lonely. I never felt more alone than the moment I parted ways with another runner.”
“It’s the same for all of us, and always will be.” Jircanor focused on John. “We never approach other runners when they are fresh and untested. Most runners do not last long, some months and then the Wraith get them. Those who last a year or more are likely to hold out for some time, they have escaped all the regular Wraith traps and hunts. They are resourceful.”
“When we found the tracking device and used it, to find Ronon on Sateda, we saw seven more Runners on it. So there are five more out there?”
“What you saw were the Runners being hunted by the same hive.” Ronon interjected. “Every hive uses another frequency for it’s trackers, thus they do not go for a prey that belongs to another hive. Usually at least. Still most hives are aware of runners, can see their signals and go for places where a runner stays too long, even if it is a foreign runner.”
John’s mind did the maths faster than he could really understand it. “But…that means there could be many more runners out there.”
“As I said, many do not last long.” Jircanor took up the explanation. “Then there are those who think they can defy the Wraith and stay in one place for too long. Some even try to stay in one place and fight it out. Those die, or we kill them, when we find them first, before they can bring the Wraith down on people. Add to them all those who take their own life to escape the hunt or simply go mad – runners who last are rare individuals. But there are some, out there, wandering the galaxy.”
“But why?” John asked. “why trying to know the others? You still can’t stay anywhere, you still can’t help each other. What’s the sense in it?” His eyes sought Ronon’s. “and why did you never say a word?”
Ronon sighed. “John, when Cayelan met me, and shared all this knowledge with me, I gave my word never to reveal the secret. The Wraith want it, they want it more than they might want an individual runner. Only two years later Cayelan’s luck run out and they got him.” Ronon hesitated to speak on, staring into the faint light of the glowlamp. “he died without betraying the secret.” He eventually said.
John understood. Breaking a word once it was given was bad, but making someone else break their word, was even worse. “I understand, Ronon. I would probably have done the same.” He turned to Jircanor. “You better don’t tell me.”
“Why?”
John leaned back. “First of all, I have not always been able to keep the information I was supposed to keep. The replicators managed to get into my mind, I have been tricked into revealing information before and… let’s just say I know that I have a breaking point, that I wouldn’t put to test.”
Ronon stared at him startled. “I don’t believe it, you are one of the strongest men I know.”
John shook his had. “Every man has a breaking point, Ronon, and I know mine. And there is something else – faint as the chance might be to return to Atlantis. I still have loyalties there…”
Jircanor stood up. “You still don’t get it, don’t you? You are a Runner. No society, not even those who can remove trackers, take back runners. Because runners change, because runners can’t turn down their reflexes, because runners are not trusted by many.”
Ronon jumped to his feet. “Stop it, Jir. Atlantis is not like other people out here, they took me in. And the moment Teyla or Zelenka gives me the go, we can bring John back home.”
Jircanor turned up his eyes. “Lanteans. But if you say so.” He sat down again.
“it is okay, really it is.” John said into the lasting silence. “I always wondered why people here never tried to do something about the runners. They just let the Wraith get away with it. Whatever secret you are guarding, it is probably too important for all of you.”
Jircanor nodded. “I can not tell you any details, no gate addresses or codes, but I can give you the general scope. And be it only for you to understand and help your people understand when you return to them. There have been runners ever since the Wraith began their great war, and no matter of what race, what nation, whatever faction in this war, there was always one characteristic most runners shared. And throughout centuries, through countless generations we have helped each other, looked out for each other, shared the knowledge of weapons, traps, hideouts and safe places among us. We found a way of leaving messages only a runner could understand, and eventually among those who lasted on the great hunt, we shared the secret of the dead worlds. There are worlds in this galaxy, fallen or destroyed such a long time ago, that none one remembers them, some even fell before the Lanteans fled. A part of those worlds, some of them, are removed from the general network of the rings, usually by a code, so they can’t be accessed without the proper knowledge. We call them dead worlds or the dark space, because the last light of life were crushed there a long time ago. Those places have more than once provided shelter, equipment or otherwise help for us, we retreat to them when the hunt comes too close, when we are too injured to fight on. ”
“That’s why the DHD wasn’t working! Because I didn’t enter the code.” John suddenly understood why the dialling process had been so long. “You know how to rig a DHD?” he asked Jircanor. Usually when Rodney claimed to be able to change something on a DHD, John was short of threatening him with lemons, big lemons.
“I do.” Jiranor nodded. He suddenly frowned, then rose. Without a word he turned and went down the stairs.
“Someone coming?” All fighting reflexes kicking in again John drew his gun. Even as he did not hear anything, it did not mean there was nothing there.
Ronon got to his feet. “I’ll check it out.” He hastened down the stairs too. There was no one outside, only the wind singing between the ruins, whirling sand and leaves about. It took Ronon only moments to find Jircanor, leaning against a half collapsed wall, rubbing his temples. “What happened?” he asked in low tones.
“Something I should have anticipated.” Jircanor said. “Your friend is… is of the true blood, did you know?”
“No. He has this ATA gene…” Ronon did not speak on. “I forgot your people and the Lanteans…. It is the compulsion isn’t it? I already wondered why you were telling him about the dead worlds.”
Jir straightened again, took a deep breath. “It is. I never thought it would be that strong, I always believed the compulsion was kind of an excuse out our ancestors.”
“How bad will it get?” Ronon asked practically. He had heard of the compulsion, but never seen somebody directly subjected to it. It was something that came up in stories, in the old stories of the Ancestors, and the great wars.
“I can keep it in check.” Jir said. “But I’ll have to be careful. It took only an indirect question to trigger it full strength.”
“Perhaps we should warn John.” Ronon said after a moment. “it might make things easier, if he knows to be careful.”
“No!” Jircandor said forcefully. “I can handle it. Alone. It will be only a few days anyway, then we leave to our separate ways and perhaps will never meet again. End of story and end of problem.”
“Not if all Cayelan told me about the compulsion was true.”
“I CAN handle it.” Jir repeated. “Go up and take care of your friend, Ronon. I’ll take a look around, check the area.”
The silence told John that there was no enemy in close proximity long before Ronon came back. Trying to stand was still a hazard, and John had decided to save his strength for the moment he would need it again to run. He sat down again, trying to sort through all the impressions, it was too much to take in. Not all the stuff Jircanor had told him, it had only half registered with him, there were the dreams, those dreams he had, that were still lurking somewhere in this mind. His own nightmares, reawakened to a frighteningly real state, and Ronon’s… he still had to try hard to somehow handle the raw emotions of those. Not only had Ronon lost his wife on Sateda, but also his son, his friends… his whole world. John had never claimed he could actually understand what it must mean, much as he had tried to emphasize with his friend, but now he knew how it felt, and he wasn’t sure if he could handle it. “Don’t dwell on it.”
Ronon’s gruff voice brought Sheppard out of his musings. Ronon was sitting directly in front of him, staring at him. “You won’t change it, by letting yourself getting hurt by those memories.”
John blinked, Ronon wasn’t just worried. He had accepted the pain. “The pain will be with you for a long time. Accept it, treasure it. As long as you feel the pain, you have not lost yourself. As long as you feel the pain, you will remember. The dead are only lost when we forget them.” The voice rang painfully clear in John’s head, he didn’t know who had said this to Ronon, but he knew Ronon had thought of it. He tried to keep his mind calm, somehow and focus on the speaking. “Ronon, I…” he just wanted to say thank you, thanking Ronon for coming after him, for not giving up on him, for getting him out of that dark place, but the words, like so many times before failed him. He found himself unable to put into words what he felt.
“Yeah, don’t make much of it, you would have done the same for me.” Ronon had guessed what Sheppard tried to say.
A brilliant idea sprang up in John’s mind. Perhaps this one time, it was not necessary to wrestle with words, that would only sound awkward and stupid. This one time, he did not need them. He focused on his friend and tried to convey all what he wanted to say in his thoughts.
***
Night over Atlantis, the lights shone out far into the darkness, making Atlantis a glittering jewel on the dark waters. Teyla slowly walked along the eastern pier, her eyes on the dark waters of the sea. The events of those last days had left her tired, but she found herself unable to rest. It was not the shock of the culling, not the fear for loosing Kanaan or little Torren John, it was something else that unsettled her.
Teyla had been raised never to judge quickly or lightly, in all her life she had studied people first before she judged them. She often had seen changes in others, for good or bad, and sometimes changed her opinion of them along the way. Now she found herself having judged too quickly. She had been sure her distrust in General O’Neill was very much justified, and that his henchman was another puppet of the IOA. Now she wondered if she had been too harsh, too eager to distrust, too quick in seeing what she wanted to see.
All her life Teyla had been honest with herself. And while she walked along the pier, listening to the waves singing their eternal song, she examined her decisions of the last some days. Like in meditation, she took a step back and watched from the outside, what had transpired. What she saw startled her. She had reacted like Woolsey would have – ready to distrust, eager to cast blame and passing judgement quickly.
Teyla stopped, staring out on the dark waters. Determination rose in her. She would not give Woolsey the final victory by making herself into something that she was not. She would not let Woolsey win in the end, by letting fear and distrust disrupt Atlantis. She owed it to John, who was somewhere out there in the darkness. Teyla raised her hand, like she could touch the stars. “Do not fear, John,” she whispered into the cold night air. “There is a light, at the end of every dark journey.” Her eyes went up, to the familiar constellations in the night sky. She could not even begin to guess where John was this night, but somewhere, deep down in her heart she knew he was alive. Now it was up to them, to bring him home.
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i adore that you've not only flushed out their backgrounds, but made both John's military days and Ronon's days as a Runner rich enough that they could stand as stories on their own.
you've managed to turn the entire runner thing from "just something that the wraith do to f*** with people," into something much larger, and more interesting, than what's seen in canon.
off to read on!
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