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lobelia321.
I like long Headers. If you want to get straight onto the story, do click on the LJ-cut below. :-)
Or read the entire story (not broken up into LJ-parts) at my niche.
Title: Ichor
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321; lobelia40 @ yahoo.com
Part: 1/3
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Wraith. (This is the gourmet wraith from SGA 2.05, 'Condemned'. In canon, this wraith is not named.)
Rating: NC-17. 18. Adult.
Length: c. 30,900 words. 505 kb.
Spoilers: 2.1, 'The Hive'. 2.12, 'Epiphany'. 2.07, 'Instinct'. 2.20, 'Allies'. A lot of the initial desert dynamic and military outfit is taken from 1.12, 'The Defiant One', but no actual plot spoilers.
Warnings: Wraith. It's not going to be pretty.
Appeasements: On the other hand, this is not a rape fic. Sorry to disappoint. :-) Hurt/comfort.
Feedback: Yes, please. I would love feedback! Even if it's only one line, one word!
Summary: John is trapped, on a desert island, with a wraith.
Relationship to the evolving canon: This story was conceived and drafted in May 2006, many months before I saw SGA 3.07, 'Common Ground'. Sometimes the powers that be can read my mind and give me just what I have long desired.
It appears that the unnamed wraith from 'Condemned' is now widely known under a name. However, this name is mere interview canon, if that. I cleave to episode canon only.
Archive Rights: Wraithbait. My niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fiction. I am not making money. No copyright infringement is intended. These characters do not belong to me, nor does the world of Stargate Atlantis. The island is based on Anak Krakatau, off the West coast of Java, but its detailed alien-ness is my own invention.
Sources: Star names from around the world. Star names. First aid treatment for survivors of disasters at sea.
Apparently, a man cannot survive more than around ten days on 2 ounces of water per day but then, the effect of the wraith enzyme changes all calculations.
Intertextuality: Tannhaeuser Gate quotation adapted from Ridley Scott's movie Blade Runner, as written and spoken by Rutger Hauer (in the role of Roy Batty).
Shades of Shalott's /astolat's fic 'Time in a Bottle'; Marlen Haushofer's novel The Wall; the Zoo of Death in William Goldman's The Princess Bride; and Gabriel García Márquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor may, no doubt, be found herein.
Lexical note: John Sheppard is American but I am not, and I am the narrator. Spelling, capitalisation and diction follow my own idiosyncratic whims and predilections although I have Ameripicked the direct speech.
Orthographical note: In this fic, I do not capitalise 'wraith', just as I do not capitalise 'humans', 'ancients', 'adam's apple' and 'god'. This is both an ethical and an aesthetic decision.
Thanks to:
All the wraith discussants at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_noticeboard and here.
icarusancalion for her useful list of weapons here.
All the respondents to my question 'what is in the combat vest?' here.
synecdochic for her post on military language here.
Andthepouncer for gathering all these posts together here.
And tomoonlash_cc for suggesting that the life giving force of wraith might be very rare.
Awed thanks to my amazing betas: Gloria,viva_gloria. Sheldrake, sheldrake. Resonant, resonant8. Sageness, sageness for Ameripicking.
Inspirational pics: My Ichor gallery.
The story's main picture shows Anak Krakatau ('Child of Krakatau'), the island thrown up by volcanic eruptions near Krakatau, off the West coast of Java, Indonesia, between 1927 and 1930.
Ichor: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
Ichor
by Lobelia
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Ichor noun. [Greek ikhor].
1. A watery discharge from a wound or sore.
2. A fluid supposed to flow like blood in the veins of the gods.
(adapted from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2002)
*
Part 1
The first instinct was run. Run, run, run. Run the fuck away.
So John ran. He ran across black sand; he ran through clouds of midges; he ran up a slope that sucked at his shoes; he slid back down again; he ran with the roar of an off-world ocean in his ears.
His head throbbed. Down seemed to be up; up was down; he stumbled on something, a stone or a root. This planet was hot. Sun spots danced in the air. His balance wavered, confused by the fall and the crash and the sudden jolt back out from hyperspace.
As he ran, he fumbled at his temple. The earpiece was still there.
He hit the comm. "This is Sheppard. Come in, Atlantis. Come in."
A slight declivity upset his feet. Chest heaving, he threw himself into the dell -- puny shelter but better than the bare sand. He rolled onto his belly, pulled out his P-90, wrenched off the safety and braced himself, arms outstretched, finger poised on the trigger, eyes fixed on the crash site down on the shore.
The dart had landed snout forward. Its long spike of a bowsprit had snapped, its body concertinaed into jagged origami rucks. Smoke issued from its guts.
The horizon abutted the sky in an unbroken glittering line. Surf thundered somewhere within earshot but the sea in view was smooth.
He twisted his neck. A mountain rose in smooth hyperbolae: a black volcano.
"Come in, Atlantis. This is Sheppard." Slightly louder now, above the bellowing ocean. "I'm at an unknown location. Crash-landed in a wraith dart." He looked to the left and to the right. Slate-coloured sand stretched along a curving beach. "No idea what planet this is. Or what solar system. Damn. Hello?"
The comm was dead. Not even the faintest static. A cosmic silence screamed at John through the ether.
He tapped the earpiece. "McKay? Teyla? Do you copy?"
He felt faint, and light-bellied. There was a hot sun above. It was only a matter of time; the others would be here soon.
But where the hell was the dart's pilot?
His gun was slippery with sweat. Grit stuck to the folds between his fingers.
The smell of sulphur wafted on the air. Apart from the surf and his own breath inside his head, the day dozed. Silence lay on the land, like a sheet of gauze.
He squinted upwards.
The sky was hazy and blue. Oxygen blue. He dragged in a huge breath.
The sky was empty.
"Atlantis?" he said to the necrotic comm. "Guys?"
A smell of scorched membrane hung over the crash site. There was no sign of the wraith pilot, nor had the crew of drone soldiers rematerialised.
Sweat collected in John's eyebrows. He slipped his fingers into the top left pocket of his tac vest and drew forth his sunglasses. The view formed itself into an array of dark brown and sepia.
A noise, like the ripping of epithelial tissue.
Propelled by adrenaline, John jumped up and crooked his finger around the trigger.
The dart wreck gleamed in the sun.
A sick lurch convulsed John's innards seconds before his eyesight confirmed what his guts already knew.
A figure staggered from the wreckage. A silhouette, black against the fuming hulk.
It had the outline of a man but it wasn't a man.
It was the dart's pilot: tall of stature, sleek of hair, coattails flapping in the wind.
It was the wraith.
The air smelled of singed meat but the wraith was whole and alive.
Run, run, run... but John threw himself into the sand. His knuckles blanched tight around the P-90's grip. With his spare hand, he fumbled for the grenade in his left waist pocket, held it fast under his chin and inserted the pin between his teeth. All without taking his eyes off the wraith even once.
The wraith wove across the sand. It pressed its hands to the sides of its skull. It appeared disoriented. It turned back and dove into the wreckage, bending and picking things up, stepping through the twisted carcass of its dart.
What had happened in that dart? Hadn't John jostled against other cargo just before everything went haywire? Hadn't there been fire, enemy fire, wraith fire? Hadn't they got caught up in a full-on hive-on-hive battle?
All of a sudden, the wraith lifted its head and snarled. It sniffed the air, then it swirled around and stared straight at John.
Without a thought, John leaped up and fired.
He emptied round after round, and when the mag was empty, he yanked the pin out with his teeth, pelted down the slope, sand flying under his heels, gauged his range, and lobbed the shell at the wraith.
The dart wreck pulsed, and then it exploded.
Soot flew by, shrapnel; flaming shards of metal floated on the sea like will'o'wisps. The inside of the fire belched and roared; its outer edges blazed fluorescent green.
He had hit the dart but missed the wraith. Smoke billowed.
John spat out the pin, pulled out a reserve round, reloaded the gun. He didn't hang around to see the wraith rise again. He set off, not running full-speed but going at a trot, angling his legs from the hips, the knife looped through his belt hitting the back of his thigh at a steady beat.
With the crash site behind him, the volcano was at twelve o'clock. The black beach curved smoothly to the left and to the right. John veered right because he could see scrubland in the distance there. No signs of habitation, though: no huts or fences, no plumes of smoke, no trace of village life. The people must be farther inland. And the stargate, too. That's where rescue was to be expected. That's where he'd camp out.
One quick glance at the sky, and then get moving. Reconnoitre the terrain, memorise landmarks, learn the contours of the untried ground.
The beach culminated in a sharp promontory. Rocks tumbled into frothing surf. On the other side, the shore formed a shallow bay. Otherwise, the place was bare: virgin territory.
The scrubland turned out to be a mere clump of stunted shrubs, a pitiful excuse for cover. So he kept going, jogging in long loping strides, always along the flat sand with the mountain on his left. His shadow was now slightly behind him, and then it moved to the right of him, and then he saw smoke clouds in the distance and realised that he had circled round on himself, that he was heading back towards the dart, that this was an island, that there was no shelter and no village and no stargate and no way out.
He was trapped, on a desert island, on an unknown planet, with nobody around but a vicious space alien intent on eating him alive.
*
"Guys? This would be a very good moment to get me out of here. Hello?" The comm yawned mutely into his ear, like a tomb.
To John's left was the silent heat of the volcano. To his right was the clamorous surf.
John tugged his binoculars out from his lower right vest pocket. The sun burnt his nape. Keeping his right hand on the P-90, he unfastened the water canteen from its holster around his left thigh, used his teeth to unscrew the cap and took several deep draughts; he didn't count how many.
He shoved his sunglasses to his forehead with one thumb, raised the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the lenses.
The wraith was nowhere to be seen.
John dropped to the ground. With his bare hands, he started digging himself a hole. He heaped the excavated sand into a low rampart. Within a cubit's depth, the sand became compacted but not, as John expected, cooler. It felt hot to the touch, not sun-warmed but simmering with innate calories. No doubt an underground sea of lava, cooking the island from below.
He hunkered down in his makeshift trench and rested the P-90 on its lip, ready for action. For good measure, he cocked the safety on his handgun and kept it next to the P-90.
Silence. Surf. Hot sand pressed against his belly and groin.
He peered at the sky with naked eyes.
Something gleamed to his right, and for a sick moment he thought it was the wraith, swimming through the sea, but then it was only the sun, striking the side of a wave.
He peered through the binoculars again, and there it was.
A hulked black figure, stalking around among the ruins of its ship. Sifting through the wreckage, crouching down among the embers. Its pale pink waist-length hair singed at the tips.
John flexed his trigger finger.
"Come on," he murmured.
But the wraith didn't come on. The wraith seemed to have no interest in its prey, at least not for the moment.
It dawned on John: the wraith was looking for a way to rematerialise its lost cargo. Those drone soldiers that had crowded into the dart behind John; eight, sixteen, at least twenty-four of them.
"Son of a bitch," John muttered.
He squinted at the horizon, tried to gauge the amount of daylight he had left. He could rush up to the wraith and shoot the crap out of it, and then wait for it to recover and shoot the crap out of it some more. Or he could get himself to some sort of hide-out until the rescue squad arrived. He could get himself to a good vantage point.
He took another swig of his water, jumped out of his hole and headed up the slope of the volcano.
It seemed the logical thing to do.
The ascent took longer than anticipated. The sand was slippery and sucked at John's shoes. He kept slithering back down and loosing thin avalanches of dark-grey dust. He ended up having to inch himself upwards in lateral crabwise scuttles. Sweat drenched his T-shirt's armpits.
The higher he climbed, the stronger the smell of sulphur. About half-way up the mountain, a wind rose. He turned his face into the breeze. A movement caught the corner of his eye: it was the crash site, small and far away. And then, through his binoculars, he saw a very strange sight.
The tide had come in. Long waves lapped around the wreck. Already, parts of the dart had come away. The fuselage was reacting oddly to contact with the water. Some bits looked as if they were melting; others unfurled like tendrils. Gaps appeared in the armature, the dart's skin puckered and melted, and soon, like a mirage, the whole structure sank in on itself, like a sand castle, and dissolved in the surf.
"What the," said John.
The wraith was a black figure on black, making its way around past the rocky promontory, towards the clump of stunted shrubs. Its hair streamed behind it in the gathering breeze.
Nothing else moved. The drones had not materialised.
By the time John reached the volcano's crater, the sun hung low, and then, without warning, it sank into the horizon and night fell. A million stars erupted in the blue-black sky.
John glanced at the illumined dial of his watch. 21:40. Atlantis mean time. The surrounding watch face was set to Atlantean shore time, Athosian time.
He considered the Athosian watch face, then re-set it to 18:00 hours. Six p.m. That would be, he decided, the hour of sunset on this island.
Far below him, breakers spilled onto the land.
The air up on the summit was dry and flatulent. The sky rotated on its spindle, brilliant with strange stars. The crater breathed hot gases. There was no moon.
John took stock. He had:
His water canteen: one-third full; enough for a day, if he was careful. The radio, still clinging hopefully to his ear. Two firearms plus ammo: the P-90 submachine gun with three clips of fifty rounds each, and the P-223 pistol, loaded, and an extra three mags on his left hip ammunition pouch.
Other gear, stowed in his combat vest: Powerbars and energy chocolates, three units each. One flare, one signal mirror, one fuel lighter, one flashlight. A coil of nylon rope, around five yards in length. One spool of duct tape. A medi-kit with band-aids, iodine pills, alcohol preps, field dressing, a blister pack of painkillers. One duo-pack of condoms.
Upon his person: One pair of sunglasses, one pair of binoculars. One combat survival sheath knife. The clothes on his back: one T-shirt, black (good for camouflage on this black-in-black planet, bad for heat reflection); one pair of standard-issue army trousers; one of underpants; and one of brown leather trekking shoes, cross-laced and profile-soled, worn in an entirely non-standard fashion without socks. One pair of ID tags, on a chain around his neck. One length of leather thong tied around his right wrist. One watch, counting out an alien time.
Was it enough for survival? Sure, the team would need to make some calculations, rig up a rescue mission, run some simulations. But how long could it take?
What if he'd ended up in some sort of infernal time loop, a time dilation zone, like that one mission when he got stuck with those ancients who were preparing for ascension, trapped in a valley where time moved 250 times faster than in the outside world? What if ten minutes of time in the outside world was ten weeks of real time on this island?
Ten months?
What if?
But no. These were nocturnal thoughts; fool he who entertained them. If there were time dilation, there would be ancients.
What if these ancients had ascended millennia ago? And the temporal zone stuttered forwards, in eternal repeat mode?
"Rodney?" he said to the comm. "Why don't you get your ass into gear with those simulations or whatever? I would like to be home for breakfast."
Yeah. That would be good.
"Breakfast," he told the useless radio. "Get me home for that."
He scoured the night sky with his binoculars. The constellations blinded him in their magnified radiance.
Now and again, a shiver went through John because one of the stars moved. But it always turned out to be one of two things: a shooting star, or the corner of John's eyelid twitching.
The watch display showed 9:30 Atlantis time. 26:50 island time. Almost eleven hours had elapsed since nightfall.
John didn't know how long the nights might be on this island. No matter, the others didn't need daylight to find him.
How long, really, for them to figure out where he was? He had jumped into the wraith dart with no forethought, as usual. He had seen a chance as it presented itself, and he had taken it. Nobody else had been near to tell, nobody else had been there to see him board ship and stow away in the cargo hold. There'd been no time to radio anyone.
Inside the dart, he'd squashed himself into a crevasse near the aft bulkhead while grists of wraith soldiers swarmed into the loading bay, each drone fizzing out in a puff of molecules as it crossed the threshold. Only John stayed solid, pressed into the labia of matter in the dart's abdomen.
Only John stayed solid -- and the pilot that entered last, zapped shut the door, strapped itself in, flipped on the nav panel, and took off in a shriek of zero-gravity thrust.
Almost at once, the dart rocketed wildly out of the straight and narrow. Missiles buffeted its walls. The pilot, soundlessly, pulled the vector switch all the way back.
John held onto the enveloping sheath for dear death. The dart tipped to and fro. Atoms whizzed in the electric air; sparks and flashes.
The wraith, totally silent, hit knobs and tapped buttons. The nav panel showed them: the other darts, whole battalions of them, an entire skyful of full-on civil war.
Shot after shot, the dart darting in and out of the path of projectiles; John admiring, despite himself, the agility of the pilot's manoeuvres; chaotic veerings; and then the sick surge of falling right out of the third dimension.
And flipping back into it, the wraith screaming now, John screaming, the very walls of the dart screaming and writhing and clutching at John's hands. John hurtled into the cockpit; up was down and down was up; the wraith whirled round and snarled, and then it too flew back and hit the nav panel, its belt ripping off in clouds of pollen. The wraith grabbed hold of a lever; John tumbled against its chest; more screaming, the walls collapsing inwards and ballooning outwards, everything rippling and scorching, "shit, crap", him scrabbling for purchase on the pilot's coat, wraith limbs flailing, as the dart hurtled forwards into gravity.
That they had survived was a miracle.
No, not a miracle. John, crouched on foreign sand, recalled the wraith's claw around that lever. An anti-gravitational device. An emergency flotational counter-pull. The dart had fallen from the stars but its passengers had only crashed from the height of maybe one tall ladder.
So here he was, at the top of a mountain on a strange planet, on an island with no habitation or water or shelter, bruised but breathing; thirsty and hungry and tired, but alive.
*
Dawn broke as suddenly as had dusk. It was signalled by no birds.
John looked at the pink ocean. There was a spell of cool light but already the heat of day bleated into the atmosphere.
He reset his watch to 0:00 island time. He tapped his earpiece and listened to the nothingness. Then he put on his sunglasses and considered his situation.
The lip of the crater was an excellent tactical position. It was high up, assailable only via a laborious climb, yet descent would be fast. Visibility was superb: 360 degrees of horizon, an entire hemisphere of sky and space. More importantly, John could survey all of the island on three sides. The fourth side was occupied by the crater, a wide round funnel with steep sides. At its bottom, there bubbled lime-green slime and purple effervescence. Its rim was encrusted with bile-yellow residue and stank of sulphur. John calculated that it would take the wraith around one hour to ascend to the top, and at least another half-hour to circumambulate the crater, and it would be in full view of John and in range of his firearms the entire time.
The island spread out below. John faced the horizon from which the sun had risen. He decided to call that part of the ocean 'east'.
This meant that the crash site was due 'south', and that the bay bitten out of the shore, near to where he had dug his hiding hole, was in the 'west'. He peered through his binoculars at the stretch of coastline further 'north' of the western hole; it was fringed by an obstacle course of smoking fumaroles. In a flight of fancy, fuelled by the energy of a new day and the certainty of imminent rescue, he decided to call that trail the 'Devil's Run'.
He decided to name the rocky outcrop on the eastern shore 'the promontory', and he decided to name the volcano 'the volcano'. The clump of stunted shrubs to the north of the promontory was the 'copse', and the stunted shrubs could be supremely ironic 'trees'.
Ensconced in the middle of the copse, seated with its back against one of the trees, was the wraith.
John ate half a powerbar, swallowed some water, positioned himself belly-down, and studied the wraith through the binoculars.
The wraith sat very still for a very long time.
It was pale green of complexion. Two gashes, like the gouged-out F-holes of a viola, flanked its snout. Two strips of wispy beard hung down from its chin, growing from the corners of its maw. The wraith's visage was sweatless and expressionless.
As the planet rotated towards its sun and as John's shadow was sucked into a sliver underneath his feet, it became clear that with all its strategic advantages, the mountain top was, in fact, a disastrous location.
There was no food. There was no water. It was true that John had seen neither food nor water anywhere else on the island but the volcano's edge seemed yet a notch drier and harsher. Worst of all, there was no shelter. The only shelter on the entire island was the clump of trees, and that was occupied by the wraith. There wasn't even any sweat; all sweat evaporated as soon as it left John's pores, and he knew what that meant. That meant dehydration.
Soon, the sand was so hot that he couldn't sit down but had to keep walking in his rubber-soled shoes; and after a while, even those were beginning to cook.
He tried to spit onto the underside of his shoe to see if the spit would fizz but he couldn't manage to collect enough saliva in his mouth. His piss was dark brown and reeked; it burnt his cock as it came out in drops of hot acid. He was losing moisture faster than he was producing it; his lips were frayed; his throat was raw.
There were fissures at intervals along the lip of the crater. Volcanic dust blew off the top like freckles off a face.
He spent some time sawing away at the hems of his trousers and fashioning a makeshift turban out of the strips of cloth. Still, by the afternoon, his skin popped with blisters.
The wraith did not stir once from its lair.
8:00 hours, and still the sun was fiery and the sky empty. No sail broke the monotony of the horizon. No cloud floated through the relentless blue.
The sky pressed blue against the top of John's head.
At 9:45 hours, the wraith reached into the folds of its long black coat and withdrew an object. John twisted the lenses of his binoculars. The object was a translucent cylinder, about as thick and as long as a test tube, with a plunger-like attachment at its open end. It looked like some sort of syringe.
The wraith unstoppered the plunger and raised the syringe to its mouth. John sprawled in the sand, the binoculars pressing into his eyes. He drank in the sight of the drinking wraith. He looked at the wraith's throat working. He looked at the trickle of water dribbling from the corner of the wraith's lips. The drops slithered along one of the wispy beards and hung, trembling, at its tip.
John shook his water canister. A few mouthfuls sloshed forlornly against the aluminium.
He watched very carefully, to note where the wraith put the syringe after finishing with it. The gadget was secreted in a barely-visible pocket or slit, near the brute's left hip.
He also noted that the wraith did not appear to have a life signs detector about him. And, more importantly, there was no sign of a stun gun.
Why was there no wraith back-up? John remembered: Didn't wraith telepathy work only within one solar system? Did the absence of wraith ships mean that there were no other wraith within the orbit of this sun?
John glanced up into the shapeless blue. The sky gave nothing away.
The wraith was sheltered in the copse of trees. He, John, was exposed on the top of the mountain, like a bug on a slide.
If he wanted to live beyond the next morning, in this unearthly heat, under this pitiless sun, he needed more to drink than the pittance in his canister. He had to get hold of that water syringe.
Also: He had to drive the wraith from the shade. He had to get rid of that wraith.
*
"Wraith!"
The beast was up in an instant.
"Wraith!" yelled John. "Listen to me, wraith!"
He'd rolled half-way down the mountain and now knelt on its sloped flank, P-90 trained on the copse.
"My people are coming!" he hollered. "A ship's on its way. If you want to save your skin, wraith, you'd better do what I say!"
The wraith stood, its paws twisted into fists. Its slime-hued skin glistened in the shade.
"Move away from the trees! I know you've got a water purifying device. Leave that under the trees!"
The wraith threw back its head and burst out laughing.
John flinched, but only for a second. "It's your choice!" he shouted. "You play nice, and I'll tell my people to spare you. If not--"
"Nobody is coming!" roared the wraith. Its guttural voice was harsh in the sere air. "Do not taunt me with your foolery! Nobody is coming, and I know this, and you know this!"
How? thought John. How do you know this?
"And it is not my choice!" bellowed the wraith. "It is your choice. You can attack me and I shall overcome and feed on you. Or you can stay on your mountain until you are so weak that you cannot lift one hand, and I shall come and feed on you there."
"Fuck you!" yelled John.
The wraith roared and made as if to run at him. John pulled the trigger and emptied another round.
But it had been a feint. The wraith had retreated into the copse. John shot uselessly at the knotted foliage. Then he clambered back up the mountain.
He tried to think but the heat burned into his head. He felt dizzy from the run.
What had the wraith meant when it said 'nobody is coming'?
"Shit," John said. "Shit and crap. Atlantis? Where the fuck are you?" He ripped the earpiece off his head and stared at it. He scratched at its little pockmarked face with his thumbnail. He shook the headset, pulled it, hit it against his gun. He dug around in his trouser pockets for a paperclip, something to twist around in its tiny screws. What he found was:
A mess hall token. Two crumpled-up pieces of paper: the ink was smudged but they looked like remnants of long-forgotten memos. A safety pin. A ballpoint pen with a cracked casing. An old candy of some kind, covered in lint and glued to the inside seam by repeat washings.
Twisting the safety pin around in the comm's screws had no effect besides that of snapping the pin in half.
At 14:00 hours, night came with blessed shadow. The crater cast a putrid glow.
So the night was as long as the day. Fourteen hours under the naked sun. Fourteen hours in the shadowed darkness. He fiddled with the watch to adjust its rhythm to a 28-hour beat.
Fires danced in the dark. He didn't know if they were hallucinations, caused by hypothermia, hunger, thirst, or if they were the mind games of the wraith.
In the noon of night, Rodney, sitting cross-legged on the sand, appeared to John. "Rodney," John said, his tongue thick and dry. Rodney said something in return but John couldn't understand what it was, and when he reached out, the air quivered and the other was gone.
By sun-up, fire rummaged in John's guts. He felt sick and feverish. He shook four painkillers into his palm but his throat wouldn't swallow them; it was too dry. He cut his thumb with his knife and sucked on the blood. It was sluggish and tasted of rancid rust. He forced the tablets down.
The swallowing made him dizzy and nauseous. He spent minutes dry-retching. Vomiting would be the death of him. All that lost moisture. Above all, he must not vomit.
How long could a man survive without water? Was it six days? Ten? And weren't you supposed to drink at least one pint every hour in cases of extreme heat? John tried to remember survival training but all that came to mind was the image of a waterfall; oh, all that sparkling water.
He peered through the binoculars. The wraith was in the copse, sitting against a tree trunk, its heavy-booted legs stretched out in front. Its hair was lanker than it had been. It slipped its claws into the coat pocket, withdrew the syringe and drank. Almost, John thought, it did so ostentatiously, flaunting its treasure, knowing that John was watching greedily.
He dug around in his pockets, took the mess-hall token and sucked on it, and then his fingers touched on something else.
John pulled it out. It was an airbead.
"Hah," he said.
*
The airbead was the size and shape of a kidney bean. It was semi-squashy between his fingers which meant that it was good for at least another thirty hours of air. He looked at it, and then at the ocean, and then at the copse. He had an idea. He had a Plan B.
First, he tanked up on energy. He ate another half of a powerbar and washed it down with a droplet of sunshine-warm water. He tucked his sunglasses into his trouser pocket and adjusted the knife on his belt. And then he buried his equipment.
It seemed the logical thing to do.
He dug a pit and put the firearms inside, wrapped in field dressing, and also his tac vest and his near-empty water canister. he did it carefully and methodically. He even excavated two decoy holes, a few yards apart.
All the time, he told himself the stuff would weigh him down in the water, and the weapons would suffer. Curtains of light hurried from left to right. John rubbed his eyes.
He dug out the old candy and sucked on it until thick syrup gurgled down his shredded throat. He tore off a thread from his trousers and chewed it into a pulped knot. The nylon rope from his vest he coiled around his waist.
He checked that the wraith was still in the copse, and ran down the western slope.
The air was a smidgeon cooler on the beach, and a whole lot fresher. John tore his shoes off and tied them around his neck. His feet were white, with black leather marks across the toes. He tucked his sunglasses into his trouser pocket, hitched fast the knife, and slung the binoculars around his neck.
He took out the airbead, wedged it into the rear recesses of his mouth and bit down on it with his wisdom teeth, hard.
And then, quick, into the sea before the wraith smelled him.
He plunged into the waves and submerged. The water was tepid and murky. Its wetness was a shock.
Salt clotted his ear holes. Beams of sun waved in the aqueous void; grit and motes floated by; everything was green. The air from the bead filled his bronchi with a musty gas.
He met no fish.
He swam out beyond the line of surf, then turned and skirted the island's contours. At intervals, he came up to check his position, emerging only to eye-level. His head skittered; his limbs trembled but he kept going.
He made his way all round the south end of the island, past the crash site, then struck back up north until he was on a level with the copse.
There he stayed, treading water.
The wraith wasn't there.
"Hah," said John again, surfed in on a glassy roller, darted up the beach, and threw himself onto the sand beneath the trees. The shade was blue and delicious.
He pulled out his knife and laid it at the ready, and then tried to climb up one of the trees but they weren't real trees, of course, only stunted shrubs; they couldn't support his weight. He looked around for the water purifier but, of course, found nothing. The shrubs had spiky fronds and flimsy squat trunks, covered in a fibrous substance. John tried scratching some of it off. Then he spied small hard green fruit in the foliage.
He didn't stop to think. He tore the fruit off the branches, one by one. Their skin was smooth; he bit right through it. Inside, the flesh was hard and bitter but he gulped it all down, all of it, even the sharp little seeds at the centre. His starved throat worked in spasms. Ember nuts. He called the fruit 'ember nuts'.
He shoved fruit after fruit into his mouth, and then he noticed a movement in the corner of his eye.
There was the wraith, striding towards the copse in a tall halo of dust and sand and sun, coattails flapping, hair streaming. And dangled loose against its side: John's P-90.
But it didn't aim the gun at John. No, it came right to the edge of the copse, lifted the gun high above its head in both hands, and then it snapped the gun in two and dropped the broken halves onto the ground.
With a ferocious cry, John sprang at the wraith and drove his combat knife into the brute's throat. He thrust the blade upwards and twisted, serrated edge outermost, then yanked it out and jumped out of reach.
The wraith grabbed for its own wound with floundering hands. It reeled, spun, staggered.
Then it fell on the sand with a thud.
In a flash, John was down next to it and felt along its left hip for the slit in the coat. There! -- his hand slipped in. The pocket was deeper than expected; it swallowed his arm up to the elbow but then he had it: the syringe.
It was empty.
John tore the rope from around his waist and bound it round the wraith's wrist in fumbled haste, tied a pile hitch, tugged and pulled until he had yanked the wraith's legs around, and knotted the remainder of the rope around the creature's ankles.
He inspected the syringe. It was smooth, warm to the touch; he tried to get the plunger off but it was sealed shut by some unfamiliar mechanism. He shook the device, turned it upside down.
He jogged down to the sea. He held the object up to the light, ran his fingers up and down its shaft. Then he had it: there was a thin seam up the side of the syringe, barely visible against the sun.
"Human!" bellowed the wraith, in its deep harsh voice. "Do not wet the vial!"
John spun around. "Revived already, have you?" His own voice was hoarse, no more than a croak. He swallowed dry spit and tried again. "I've got your water, so screw you."
"Do you know what it is that you hold in your hand?" The wraith was creeping along the sand on its belly, hands and feet still bound.
"Sure I know what it is."
"Do not put the vial in the water!" growled the wraith.
"And why not?" said John.
"This vial cannot be brought into contact with salt water."
The waves frothed around John's knees.
"You're talking shit," John said. "This is a water purifier. It's a desalination device, so of course it's going to be okay with salt water. Because that's what it does, you asshole: it takes salt water and removes the damn salt from it."
The wraith laughed a hideous snakeskin laugh. "This vial is not a salt water purifier."
"I saw you drink," John said calmly. He lifted the syringe demonstratively and got ready to plunge it into the sea.
"Stop, you fool human!" roared the wraith. " Did you not see the dart disintegrate?"
"Oh yeah?" said John. But his hand stopped mid-plunge. Sun flashed off the dart-like skin of the syringe.
"Give me the vial. It is of no use to you."
All of a sudden, the wraith loomed tall on the shore. It had wrenched the ties from its wrists and ankles, torn right through them with inhuman strength. All that bullshitting had been a trick! To stall John, to keep him there until that demon had freed itself!
John took two steps backward. A wave struck the back of his knees. He tightened his fist around the handle of his knife. "Back off!" he said. "Or I will drop this in the water!" He lifted the syringe.
To his surprise, the wraith did back off. It didn't follow John into the surf. It stayed on the shore, hair waving in the evening breeze.
It was the wraith's reticence, more than anything else, that convinced John that there was something to its claim.
He peered at the device. "So how do I get water out of this, if not through sea water?"
"You cannot. Only I can."
"Is that right? Is there maybe some special gene you need to activate this damn thing? Tell me the trick or you're not getting it back. You'll die of thirst! Because even wraith need to drink, don't they?"
"You will die of thirst," said the wraith. "I have poured all your own water into the crater."
"You son of a wraith bitch!" yelled John.
"I have also consecrated your other firearm to the lava. And your outer garment."
"My vest?" croaked John. "With all my stuff in it?"
"Also your radio. Everything I found."
John staggered. The planet turned underneath his feet. "Who cares? It doesn't matter. I'm being rescued soon."
"No. You are not. There is nobody nearby. You will not be rescued soon."
Shit. The telepathy. What did the wraith know that he didn't know?
"Have you been talking to your hive, have you?"
"No." The wraith's face winced, as if in pain. "There is no hive. There is nobody within reach."
"Right," said John.
The wraith had wasted his water. The wraith had destroyed his vest. The wraith had taken everything he needed for survival.
John had left his stuff behind, and that had been a huge, a phenomenal mistake. How could he have been so blind? Was it the wraith? Had it played with his mind? Or was it the heat and the stifling, aching thirst?
"Right," said the wraith.
"Okay."
"Pass me the vial."
If the wraith had the vial, the wraith would have water but he, John, would have nothing. He would die of thirst.
If the wraith didn't kill him first.
It was the only bargaining chip he had left.
"You say there's nobody nearby?" said John slowly.
"That is so."
"None of my people? But none of your lot, either?"
The wraith snarled in response.
"How do I know you're not lying?"
The wraith said nothing, just lifted half its welted lip in a sneer.
Waves crashed wildly on the rocks further south. Everything teetered. The sun was hot on the back of John's neck.
"In that case," said John and gagged on a dry swallow. "If I give you this, you'll have the water. But..." Blurred spots fizzed in front of his eyes. "...you won't have the food."
Surf heaved against John's legs and sucked his feet into the numb sand.
"Because," said John. He felt sick. "Because I am the food." He added, in a quick rush, "And I propose a deal."
"I do not accept any deal," boomed the wraith. But it stood on the shore, not moving.
"You do whatever you do to make drinking water in this device, and you share that water. With me. And in return, I will. I.
I'll."
The wraith's hair blew in the rising breeze.
"In return, I'll let you feed on me."
Feel the ocean. Feel the sand whirl under your bare feet.
"In bits," John said. "You feed on me in increments."
The wraith hissed.
"Do you understand, wraith? Do you understand?"
"Naturally, I understand."
"Because if I die, you die! I'm all the food there is for you on this island! And..." Talking fast now. "And if it's true that it'll be a while before rescue comes, then you need me. Then you can't afford to kill me all at once. Do you understand me on this, wraith?"
"Yes, of course. You are offering fealty."
"Offering... What?"
"You are offering fealty, as do the devotees of our hive."
"Jesus." John remembered the wraith worshippers on a hive ship, long ago. "Your human slaves."
"They are not slaves."
"Yeah, right." John felt nauseous.
"They give themselves voluntarily for feeding."
"But they die!"
"They will die, anyway. All humans die."
"Eventually! Eventually, yes, we die! But before that, we live. That kind of existence, being fed on, you can't call that living." He stopped. He didn't know why he was allowing himself to be drawn into this. You couldn't argue with a wraith. You couldn't talk sense to a wraith. You could only strike deals. And hope for the best.
And I will live, he thought. I will survive.
"Are you offering fealty voluntarily?" said the wraith.
John thought of his water canister, his powerbars, his broken gun, his medi-kit, his radio, his dreadful, fatal mistake.
The surf reeled. John stepped up and out onto dry land.
*
O MY BRETHREN MY SIBLINGS WHERE ARE YE ALL WHERE ARE YOUR VOICES AMONG THE SIDEREAL WINDS O ALL IS SILENT THE SILENCE PRESSES UPON MINE SKULL O ONTO THE INNER BOWL OF MINE SKULL THE INNER LINING OF MINE SKULL THE HARD MEMBRANE OF MINE THOUGHTS O ALL MILLING ALONE NOW THOUGHTS WITH NOWHERE TO GO O WHEREFORE ALLOTH CHOQUE CHINCHAY OPHLUCCI WHEN WILL MY HUSK EVER TREAD YON PATHS MORE O MY LOST BRETHREN LOST TO MY CALLINGS
**
Part 2.
I like long Headers. If you want to get straight onto the story, do click on the LJ-cut below. :-)
Or read the entire story (not broken up into LJ-parts) at my niche.
Title: Ichor
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321; lobelia40 @ yahoo.comPart: 1/3
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Wraith. (This is the gourmet wraith from SGA 2.05, 'Condemned'. In canon, this wraith is not named.)
Rating: NC-17. 18. Adult.
Length: c. 30,900 words. 505 kb.
Spoilers: 2.1, 'The Hive'. 2.12, 'Epiphany'. 2.07, 'Instinct'. 2.20, 'Allies'. A lot of the initial desert dynamic and military outfit is taken from 1.12, 'The Defiant One', but no actual plot spoilers.
Warnings: Wraith. It's not going to be pretty.
Appeasements: On the other hand, this is not a rape fic. Sorry to disappoint. :-) Hurt/comfort.
Feedback: Yes, please. I would love feedback! Even if it's only one line, one word!
Summary: John is trapped, on a desert island, with a wraith.
Relationship to the evolving canon: This story was conceived and drafted in May 2006, many months before I saw SGA 3.07, 'Common Ground'. Sometimes the powers that be can read my mind and give me just what I have long desired.
It appears that the unnamed wraith from 'Condemned' is now widely known under a name. However, this name is mere interview canon, if that. I cleave to episode canon only.
Archive Rights: Wraithbait. My niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fiction. I am not making money. No copyright infringement is intended. These characters do not belong to me, nor does the world of Stargate Atlantis. The island is based on Anak Krakatau, off the West coast of Java, but its detailed alien-ness is my own invention.
Sources: Star names from around the world. Star names. First aid treatment for survivors of disasters at sea.
Apparently, a man cannot survive more than around ten days on 2 ounces of water per day but then, the effect of the wraith enzyme changes all calculations.
Intertextuality: Tannhaeuser Gate quotation adapted from Ridley Scott's movie Blade Runner, as written and spoken by Rutger Hauer (in the role of Roy Batty).
Shades of Shalott's /
astolat's fic 'Time in a Bottle'; Marlen Haushofer's novel The Wall; the Zoo of Death in William Goldman's The Princess Bride; and Gabriel García Márquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor may, no doubt, be found herein.Lexical note: John Sheppard is American but I am not, and I am the narrator. Spelling, capitalisation and diction follow my own idiosyncratic whims and predilections although I have Ameripicked the direct speech.
Orthographical note: In this fic, I do not capitalise 'wraith', just as I do not capitalise 'humans', 'ancients', 'adam's apple' and 'god'. This is both an ethical and an aesthetic decision.
Thanks to:
All the wraith discussants at
sga_noticeboard and here.icarusancalion for her useful list of weapons here.All the respondents to my question 'what is in the combat vest?' here.
synecdochic for her post on military language here.And
thepouncer for gathering all these posts together here.And to
moonlash_cc for suggesting that the life giving force of wraith might be very rare.Awed thanks to my amazing betas: Gloria,
viva_gloria. Sheldrake, sheldrake. Resonant, resonant8. Sageness, sageness for Ameripicking.Inspirational pics: My Ichor gallery.
The story's main picture shows Anak Krakatau ('Child of Krakatau'), the island thrown up by volcanic eruptions near Krakatau, off the West coast of Java, Indonesia, between 1927 and 1930.
Ichor: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
by Lobelia
Ichor noun. [Greek ikhor].
1. A watery discharge from a wound or sore.
2. A fluid supposed to flow like blood in the veins of the gods.
(adapted from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2002)
*
Part 1
The first instinct was run. Run, run, run. Run the fuck away.
So John ran. He ran across black sand; he ran through clouds of midges; he ran up a slope that sucked at his shoes; he slid back down again; he ran with the roar of an off-world ocean in his ears.
His head throbbed. Down seemed to be up; up was down; he stumbled on something, a stone or a root. This planet was hot. Sun spots danced in the air. His balance wavered, confused by the fall and the crash and the sudden jolt back out from hyperspace.
As he ran, he fumbled at his temple. The earpiece was still there.
He hit the comm. "This is Sheppard. Come in, Atlantis. Come in."
A slight declivity upset his feet. Chest heaving, he threw himself into the dell -- puny shelter but better than the bare sand. He rolled onto his belly, pulled out his P-90, wrenched off the safety and braced himself, arms outstretched, finger poised on the trigger, eyes fixed on the crash site down on the shore.
The dart had landed snout forward. Its long spike of a bowsprit had snapped, its body concertinaed into jagged origami rucks. Smoke issued from its guts.
The horizon abutted the sky in an unbroken glittering line. Surf thundered somewhere within earshot but the sea in view was smooth.
He twisted his neck. A mountain rose in smooth hyperbolae: a black volcano.
"Come in, Atlantis. This is Sheppard." Slightly louder now, above the bellowing ocean. "I'm at an unknown location. Crash-landed in a wraith dart." He looked to the left and to the right. Slate-coloured sand stretched along a curving beach. "No idea what planet this is. Or what solar system. Damn. Hello?"
The comm was dead. Not even the faintest static. A cosmic silence screamed at John through the ether.
He tapped the earpiece. "McKay? Teyla? Do you copy?"
He felt faint, and light-bellied. There was a hot sun above. It was only a matter of time; the others would be here soon.
But where the hell was the dart's pilot?
His gun was slippery with sweat. Grit stuck to the folds between his fingers.
The smell of sulphur wafted on the air. Apart from the surf and his own breath inside his head, the day dozed. Silence lay on the land, like a sheet of gauze.
He squinted upwards.
The sky was hazy and blue. Oxygen blue. He dragged in a huge breath.
The sky was empty.
"Atlantis?" he said to the necrotic comm. "Guys?"
A smell of scorched membrane hung over the crash site. There was no sign of the wraith pilot, nor had the crew of drone soldiers rematerialised.
Sweat collected in John's eyebrows. He slipped his fingers into the top left pocket of his tac vest and drew forth his sunglasses. The view formed itself into an array of dark brown and sepia.
A noise, like the ripping of epithelial tissue.
Propelled by adrenaline, John jumped up and crooked his finger around the trigger.
The dart wreck gleamed in the sun.
A sick lurch convulsed John's innards seconds before his eyesight confirmed what his guts already knew.
A figure staggered from the wreckage. A silhouette, black against the fuming hulk.
It had the outline of a man but it wasn't a man.
It was the dart's pilot: tall of stature, sleek of hair, coattails flapping in the wind.
It was the wraith.
The air smelled of singed meat but the wraith was whole and alive.
Run, run, run... but John threw himself into the sand. His knuckles blanched tight around the P-90's grip. With his spare hand, he fumbled for the grenade in his left waist pocket, held it fast under his chin and inserted the pin between his teeth. All without taking his eyes off the wraith even once.
The wraith wove across the sand. It pressed its hands to the sides of its skull. It appeared disoriented. It turned back and dove into the wreckage, bending and picking things up, stepping through the twisted carcass of its dart.
What had happened in that dart? Hadn't John jostled against other cargo just before everything went haywire? Hadn't there been fire, enemy fire, wraith fire? Hadn't they got caught up in a full-on hive-on-hive battle?
All of a sudden, the wraith lifted its head and snarled. It sniffed the air, then it swirled around and stared straight at John.
Without a thought, John leaped up and fired.
He emptied round after round, and when the mag was empty, he yanked the pin out with his teeth, pelted down the slope, sand flying under his heels, gauged his range, and lobbed the shell at the wraith.
The dart wreck pulsed, and then it exploded.
Soot flew by, shrapnel; flaming shards of metal floated on the sea like will'o'wisps. The inside of the fire belched and roared; its outer edges blazed fluorescent green.
He had hit the dart but missed the wraith. Smoke billowed.
John spat out the pin, pulled out a reserve round, reloaded the gun. He didn't hang around to see the wraith rise again. He set off, not running full-speed but going at a trot, angling his legs from the hips, the knife looped through his belt hitting the back of his thigh at a steady beat.
With the crash site behind him, the volcano was at twelve o'clock. The black beach curved smoothly to the left and to the right. John veered right because he could see scrubland in the distance there. No signs of habitation, though: no huts or fences, no plumes of smoke, no trace of village life. The people must be farther inland. And the stargate, too. That's where rescue was to be expected. That's where he'd camp out.
One quick glance at the sky, and then get moving. Reconnoitre the terrain, memorise landmarks, learn the contours of the untried ground.
The beach culminated in a sharp promontory. Rocks tumbled into frothing surf. On the other side, the shore formed a shallow bay. Otherwise, the place was bare: virgin territory.
The scrubland turned out to be a mere clump of stunted shrubs, a pitiful excuse for cover. So he kept going, jogging in long loping strides, always along the flat sand with the mountain on his left. His shadow was now slightly behind him, and then it moved to the right of him, and then he saw smoke clouds in the distance and realised that he had circled round on himself, that he was heading back towards the dart, that this was an island, that there was no shelter and no village and no stargate and no way out.
He was trapped, on a desert island, on an unknown planet, with nobody around but a vicious space alien intent on eating him alive.
*
"Guys? This would be a very good moment to get me out of here. Hello?" The comm yawned mutely into his ear, like a tomb.
To John's left was the silent heat of the volcano. To his right was the clamorous surf.
John tugged his binoculars out from his lower right vest pocket. The sun burnt his nape. Keeping his right hand on the P-90, he unfastened the water canteen from its holster around his left thigh, used his teeth to unscrew the cap and took several deep draughts; he didn't count how many.
He shoved his sunglasses to his forehead with one thumb, raised the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the lenses.
The wraith was nowhere to be seen.
John dropped to the ground. With his bare hands, he started digging himself a hole. He heaped the excavated sand into a low rampart. Within a cubit's depth, the sand became compacted but not, as John expected, cooler. It felt hot to the touch, not sun-warmed but simmering with innate calories. No doubt an underground sea of lava, cooking the island from below.
He hunkered down in his makeshift trench and rested the P-90 on its lip, ready for action. For good measure, he cocked the safety on his handgun and kept it next to the P-90.
Silence. Surf. Hot sand pressed against his belly and groin.
He peered at the sky with naked eyes.
Something gleamed to his right, and for a sick moment he thought it was the wraith, swimming through the sea, but then it was only the sun, striking the side of a wave.
He peered through the binoculars again, and there it was.
A hulked black figure, stalking around among the ruins of its ship. Sifting through the wreckage, crouching down among the embers. Its pale pink waist-length hair singed at the tips.
John flexed his trigger finger.
"Come on," he murmured.
But the wraith didn't come on. The wraith seemed to have no interest in its prey, at least not for the moment.
It dawned on John: the wraith was looking for a way to rematerialise its lost cargo. Those drone soldiers that had crowded into the dart behind John; eight, sixteen, at least twenty-four of them.
"Son of a bitch," John muttered.
He squinted at the horizon, tried to gauge the amount of daylight he had left. He could rush up to the wraith and shoot the crap out of it, and then wait for it to recover and shoot the crap out of it some more. Or he could get himself to some sort of hide-out until the rescue squad arrived. He could get himself to a good vantage point.
He took another swig of his water, jumped out of his hole and headed up the slope of the volcano.
It seemed the logical thing to do.
The ascent took longer than anticipated. The sand was slippery and sucked at John's shoes. He kept slithering back down and loosing thin avalanches of dark-grey dust. He ended up having to inch himself upwards in lateral crabwise scuttles. Sweat drenched his T-shirt's armpits.
The higher he climbed, the stronger the smell of sulphur. About half-way up the mountain, a wind rose. He turned his face into the breeze. A movement caught the corner of his eye: it was the crash site, small and far away. And then, through his binoculars, he saw a very strange sight.
The tide had come in. Long waves lapped around the wreck. Already, parts of the dart had come away. The fuselage was reacting oddly to contact with the water. Some bits looked as if they were melting; others unfurled like tendrils. Gaps appeared in the armature, the dart's skin puckered and melted, and soon, like a mirage, the whole structure sank in on itself, like a sand castle, and dissolved in the surf.
"What the," said John.
The wraith was a black figure on black, making its way around past the rocky promontory, towards the clump of stunted shrubs. Its hair streamed behind it in the gathering breeze.
Nothing else moved. The drones had not materialised.
By the time John reached the volcano's crater, the sun hung low, and then, without warning, it sank into the horizon and night fell. A million stars erupted in the blue-black sky.
John glanced at the illumined dial of his watch. 21:40. Atlantis mean time. The surrounding watch face was set to Atlantean shore time, Athosian time.
He considered the Athosian watch face, then re-set it to 18:00 hours. Six p.m. That would be, he decided, the hour of sunset on this island.
Far below him, breakers spilled onto the land.
The air up on the summit was dry and flatulent. The sky rotated on its spindle, brilliant with strange stars. The crater breathed hot gases. There was no moon.
John took stock. He had:
His water canteen: one-third full; enough for a day, if he was careful. The radio, still clinging hopefully to his ear. Two firearms plus ammo: the P-90 submachine gun with three clips of fifty rounds each, and the P-223 pistol, loaded, and an extra three mags on his left hip ammunition pouch.
Other gear, stowed in his combat vest: Powerbars and energy chocolates, three units each. One flare, one signal mirror, one fuel lighter, one flashlight. A coil of nylon rope, around five yards in length. One spool of duct tape. A medi-kit with band-aids, iodine pills, alcohol preps, field dressing, a blister pack of painkillers. One duo-pack of condoms.
Upon his person: One pair of sunglasses, one pair of binoculars. One combat survival sheath knife. The clothes on his back: one T-shirt, black (good for camouflage on this black-in-black planet, bad for heat reflection); one pair of standard-issue army trousers; one of underpants; and one of brown leather trekking shoes, cross-laced and profile-soled, worn in an entirely non-standard fashion without socks. One pair of ID tags, on a chain around his neck. One length of leather thong tied around his right wrist. One watch, counting out an alien time.
Was it enough for survival? Sure, the team would need to make some calculations, rig up a rescue mission, run some simulations. But how long could it take?
What if he'd ended up in some sort of infernal time loop, a time dilation zone, like that one mission when he got stuck with those ancients who were preparing for ascension, trapped in a valley where time moved 250 times faster than in the outside world? What if ten minutes of time in the outside world was ten weeks of real time on this island?
Ten months?
What if?
But no. These were nocturnal thoughts; fool he who entertained them. If there were time dilation, there would be ancients.
What if these ancients had ascended millennia ago? And the temporal zone stuttered forwards, in eternal repeat mode?
"Rodney?" he said to the comm. "Why don't you get your ass into gear with those simulations or whatever? I would like to be home for breakfast."
Yeah. That would be good.
"Breakfast," he told the useless radio. "Get me home for that."
He scoured the night sky with his binoculars. The constellations blinded him in their magnified radiance.
Now and again, a shiver went through John because one of the stars moved. But it always turned out to be one of two things: a shooting star, or the corner of John's eyelid twitching.
The watch display showed 9:30 Atlantis time. 26:50 island time. Almost eleven hours had elapsed since nightfall.
John didn't know how long the nights might be on this island. No matter, the others didn't need daylight to find him.
How long, really, for them to figure out where he was? He had jumped into the wraith dart with no forethought, as usual. He had seen a chance as it presented itself, and he had taken it. Nobody else had been near to tell, nobody else had been there to see him board ship and stow away in the cargo hold. There'd been no time to radio anyone.
Inside the dart, he'd squashed himself into a crevasse near the aft bulkhead while grists of wraith soldiers swarmed into the loading bay, each drone fizzing out in a puff of molecules as it crossed the threshold. Only John stayed solid, pressed into the labia of matter in the dart's abdomen.
Only John stayed solid -- and the pilot that entered last, zapped shut the door, strapped itself in, flipped on the nav panel, and took off in a shriek of zero-gravity thrust.
Almost at once, the dart rocketed wildly out of the straight and narrow. Missiles buffeted its walls. The pilot, soundlessly, pulled the vector switch all the way back.
John held onto the enveloping sheath for dear death. The dart tipped to and fro. Atoms whizzed in the electric air; sparks and flashes.
The wraith, totally silent, hit knobs and tapped buttons. The nav panel showed them: the other darts, whole battalions of them, an entire skyful of full-on civil war.
Shot after shot, the dart darting in and out of the path of projectiles; John admiring, despite himself, the agility of the pilot's manoeuvres; chaotic veerings; and then the sick surge of falling right out of the third dimension.
And flipping back into it, the wraith screaming now, John screaming, the very walls of the dart screaming and writhing and clutching at John's hands. John hurtled into the cockpit; up was down and down was up; the wraith whirled round and snarled, and then it too flew back and hit the nav panel, its belt ripping off in clouds of pollen. The wraith grabbed hold of a lever; John tumbled against its chest; more screaming, the walls collapsing inwards and ballooning outwards, everything rippling and scorching, "shit, crap", him scrabbling for purchase on the pilot's coat, wraith limbs flailing, as the dart hurtled forwards into gravity.
That they had survived was a miracle.
No, not a miracle. John, crouched on foreign sand, recalled the wraith's claw around that lever. An anti-gravitational device. An emergency flotational counter-pull. The dart had fallen from the stars but its passengers had only crashed from the height of maybe one tall ladder.
So here he was, at the top of a mountain on a strange planet, on an island with no habitation or water or shelter, bruised but breathing; thirsty and hungry and tired, but alive.
*
Dawn broke as suddenly as had dusk. It was signalled by no birds.
John looked at the pink ocean. There was a spell of cool light but already the heat of day bleated into the atmosphere.
He reset his watch to 0:00 island time. He tapped his earpiece and listened to the nothingness. Then he put on his sunglasses and considered his situation.
The lip of the crater was an excellent tactical position. It was high up, assailable only via a laborious climb, yet descent would be fast. Visibility was superb: 360 degrees of horizon, an entire hemisphere of sky and space. More importantly, John could survey all of the island on three sides. The fourth side was occupied by the crater, a wide round funnel with steep sides. At its bottom, there bubbled lime-green slime and purple effervescence. Its rim was encrusted with bile-yellow residue and stank of sulphur. John calculated that it would take the wraith around one hour to ascend to the top, and at least another half-hour to circumambulate the crater, and it would be in full view of John and in range of his firearms the entire time.
The island spread out below. John faced the horizon from which the sun had risen. He decided to call that part of the ocean 'east'.
This meant that the crash site was due 'south', and that the bay bitten out of the shore, near to where he had dug his hiding hole, was in the 'west'. He peered through his binoculars at the stretch of coastline further 'north' of the western hole; it was fringed by an obstacle course of smoking fumaroles. In a flight of fancy, fuelled by the energy of a new day and the certainty of imminent rescue, he decided to call that trail the 'Devil's Run'.
He decided to name the rocky outcrop on the eastern shore 'the promontory', and he decided to name the volcano 'the volcano'. The clump of stunted shrubs to the north of the promontory was the 'copse', and the stunted shrubs could be supremely ironic 'trees'.
Ensconced in the middle of the copse, seated with its back against one of the trees, was the wraith.
John ate half a powerbar, swallowed some water, positioned himself belly-down, and studied the wraith through the binoculars.
The wraith sat very still for a very long time.
It was pale green of complexion. Two gashes, like the gouged-out F-holes of a viola, flanked its snout. Two strips of wispy beard hung down from its chin, growing from the corners of its maw. The wraith's visage was sweatless and expressionless.
As the planet rotated towards its sun and as John's shadow was sucked into a sliver underneath his feet, it became clear that with all its strategic advantages, the mountain top was, in fact, a disastrous location.
There was no food. There was no water. It was true that John had seen neither food nor water anywhere else on the island but the volcano's edge seemed yet a notch drier and harsher. Worst of all, there was no shelter. The only shelter on the entire island was the clump of trees, and that was occupied by the wraith. There wasn't even any sweat; all sweat evaporated as soon as it left John's pores, and he knew what that meant. That meant dehydration.
Soon, the sand was so hot that he couldn't sit down but had to keep walking in his rubber-soled shoes; and after a while, even those were beginning to cook.
He tried to spit onto the underside of his shoe to see if the spit would fizz but he couldn't manage to collect enough saliva in his mouth. His piss was dark brown and reeked; it burnt his cock as it came out in drops of hot acid. He was losing moisture faster than he was producing it; his lips were frayed; his throat was raw.
There were fissures at intervals along the lip of the crater. Volcanic dust blew off the top like freckles off a face.
He spent some time sawing away at the hems of his trousers and fashioning a makeshift turban out of the strips of cloth. Still, by the afternoon, his skin popped with blisters.
The wraith did not stir once from its lair.
8:00 hours, and still the sun was fiery and the sky empty. No sail broke the monotony of the horizon. No cloud floated through the relentless blue.
The sky pressed blue against the top of John's head.
At 9:45 hours, the wraith reached into the folds of its long black coat and withdrew an object. John twisted the lenses of his binoculars. The object was a translucent cylinder, about as thick and as long as a test tube, with a plunger-like attachment at its open end. It looked like some sort of syringe.
The wraith unstoppered the plunger and raised the syringe to its mouth. John sprawled in the sand, the binoculars pressing into his eyes. He drank in the sight of the drinking wraith. He looked at the wraith's throat working. He looked at the trickle of water dribbling from the corner of the wraith's lips. The drops slithered along one of the wispy beards and hung, trembling, at its tip.
John shook his water canister. A few mouthfuls sloshed forlornly against the aluminium.
He watched very carefully, to note where the wraith put the syringe after finishing with it. The gadget was secreted in a barely-visible pocket or slit, near the brute's left hip.
He also noted that the wraith did not appear to have a life signs detector about him. And, more importantly, there was no sign of a stun gun.
Why was there no wraith back-up? John remembered: Didn't wraith telepathy work only within one solar system? Did the absence of wraith ships mean that there were no other wraith within the orbit of this sun?
John glanced up into the shapeless blue. The sky gave nothing away.
The wraith was sheltered in the copse of trees. He, John, was exposed on the top of the mountain, like a bug on a slide.
If he wanted to live beyond the next morning, in this unearthly heat, under this pitiless sun, he needed more to drink than the pittance in his canister. He had to get hold of that water syringe.
Also: He had to drive the wraith from the shade. He had to get rid of that wraith.
*
"Wraith!"
The beast was up in an instant.
"Wraith!" yelled John. "Listen to me, wraith!"
He'd rolled half-way down the mountain and now knelt on its sloped flank, P-90 trained on the copse.
"My people are coming!" he hollered. "A ship's on its way. If you want to save your skin, wraith, you'd better do what I say!"
The wraith stood, its paws twisted into fists. Its slime-hued skin glistened in the shade.
"Move away from the trees! I know you've got a water purifying device. Leave that under the trees!"
The wraith threw back its head and burst out laughing.
John flinched, but only for a second. "It's your choice!" he shouted. "You play nice, and I'll tell my people to spare you. If not--"
"Nobody is coming!" roared the wraith. Its guttural voice was harsh in the sere air. "Do not taunt me with your foolery! Nobody is coming, and I know this, and you know this!"
How? thought John. How do you know this?
"And it is not my choice!" bellowed the wraith. "It is your choice. You can attack me and I shall overcome and feed on you. Or you can stay on your mountain until you are so weak that you cannot lift one hand, and I shall come and feed on you there."
"Fuck you!" yelled John.
The wraith roared and made as if to run at him. John pulled the trigger and emptied another round.
But it had been a feint. The wraith had retreated into the copse. John shot uselessly at the knotted foliage. Then he clambered back up the mountain.
He tried to think but the heat burned into his head. He felt dizzy from the run.
What had the wraith meant when it said 'nobody is coming'?
"Shit," John said. "Shit and crap. Atlantis? Where the fuck are you?" He ripped the earpiece off his head and stared at it. He scratched at its little pockmarked face with his thumbnail. He shook the headset, pulled it, hit it against his gun. He dug around in his trouser pockets for a paperclip, something to twist around in its tiny screws. What he found was:
A mess hall token. Two crumpled-up pieces of paper: the ink was smudged but they looked like remnants of long-forgotten memos. A safety pin. A ballpoint pen with a cracked casing. An old candy of some kind, covered in lint and glued to the inside seam by repeat washings.
Twisting the safety pin around in the comm's screws had no effect besides that of snapping the pin in half.
At 14:00 hours, night came with blessed shadow. The crater cast a putrid glow.
So the night was as long as the day. Fourteen hours under the naked sun. Fourteen hours in the shadowed darkness. He fiddled with the watch to adjust its rhythm to a 28-hour beat.
Fires danced in the dark. He didn't know if they were hallucinations, caused by hypothermia, hunger, thirst, or if they were the mind games of the wraith.
In the noon of night, Rodney, sitting cross-legged on the sand, appeared to John. "Rodney," John said, his tongue thick and dry. Rodney said something in return but John couldn't understand what it was, and when he reached out, the air quivered and the other was gone.
By sun-up, fire rummaged in John's guts. He felt sick and feverish. He shook four painkillers into his palm but his throat wouldn't swallow them; it was too dry. He cut his thumb with his knife and sucked on the blood. It was sluggish and tasted of rancid rust. He forced the tablets down.
The swallowing made him dizzy and nauseous. He spent minutes dry-retching. Vomiting would be the death of him. All that lost moisture. Above all, he must not vomit.
How long could a man survive without water? Was it six days? Ten? And weren't you supposed to drink at least one pint every hour in cases of extreme heat? John tried to remember survival training but all that came to mind was the image of a waterfall; oh, all that sparkling water.
He peered through the binoculars. The wraith was in the copse, sitting against a tree trunk, its heavy-booted legs stretched out in front. Its hair was lanker than it had been. It slipped its claws into the coat pocket, withdrew the syringe and drank. Almost, John thought, it did so ostentatiously, flaunting its treasure, knowing that John was watching greedily.
He dug around in his pockets, took the mess-hall token and sucked on it, and then his fingers touched on something else.
John pulled it out. It was an airbead.
"Hah," he said.
*
The airbead was the size and shape of a kidney bean. It was semi-squashy between his fingers which meant that it was good for at least another thirty hours of air. He looked at it, and then at the ocean, and then at the copse. He had an idea. He had a Plan B.
First, he tanked up on energy. He ate another half of a powerbar and washed it down with a droplet of sunshine-warm water. He tucked his sunglasses into his trouser pocket and adjusted the knife on his belt. And then he buried his equipment.
It seemed the logical thing to do.
He dug a pit and put the firearms inside, wrapped in field dressing, and also his tac vest and his near-empty water canister. he did it carefully and methodically. He even excavated two decoy holes, a few yards apart.
All the time, he told himself the stuff would weigh him down in the water, and the weapons would suffer. Curtains of light hurried from left to right. John rubbed his eyes.
He dug out the old candy and sucked on it until thick syrup gurgled down his shredded throat. He tore off a thread from his trousers and chewed it into a pulped knot. The nylon rope from his vest he coiled around his waist.
He checked that the wraith was still in the copse, and ran down the western slope.
The air was a smidgeon cooler on the beach, and a whole lot fresher. John tore his shoes off and tied them around his neck. His feet were white, with black leather marks across the toes. He tucked his sunglasses into his trouser pocket, hitched fast the knife, and slung the binoculars around his neck.
He took out the airbead, wedged it into the rear recesses of his mouth and bit down on it with his wisdom teeth, hard.
And then, quick, into the sea before the wraith smelled him.
He plunged into the waves and submerged. The water was tepid and murky. Its wetness was a shock.
Salt clotted his ear holes. Beams of sun waved in the aqueous void; grit and motes floated by; everything was green. The air from the bead filled his bronchi with a musty gas.
He met no fish.
He swam out beyond the line of surf, then turned and skirted the island's contours. At intervals, he came up to check his position, emerging only to eye-level. His head skittered; his limbs trembled but he kept going.
He made his way all round the south end of the island, past the crash site, then struck back up north until he was on a level with the copse.
There he stayed, treading water.
The wraith wasn't there.
"Hah," said John again, surfed in on a glassy roller, darted up the beach, and threw himself onto the sand beneath the trees. The shade was blue and delicious.
He pulled out his knife and laid it at the ready, and then tried to climb up one of the trees but they weren't real trees, of course, only stunted shrubs; they couldn't support his weight. He looked around for the water purifier but, of course, found nothing. The shrubs had spiky fronds and flimsy squat trunks, covered in a fibrous substance. John tried scratching some of it off. Then he spied small hard green fruit in the foliage.
He didn't stop to think. He tore the fruit off the branches, one by one. Their skin was smooth; he bit right through it. Inside, the flesh was hard and bitter but he gulped it all down, all of it, even the sharp little seeds at the centre. His starved throat worked in spasms. Ember nuts. He called the fruit 'ember nuts'.
He shoved fruit after fruit into his mouth, and then he noticed a movement in the corner of his eye.
There was the wraith, striding towards the copse in a tall halo of dust and sand and sun, coattails flapping, hair streaming. And dangled loose against its side: John's P-90.
But it didn't aim the gun at John. No, it came right to the edge of the copse, lifted the gun high above its head in both hands, and then it snapped the gun in two and dropped the broken halves onto the ground.
With a ferocious cry, John sprang at the wraith and drove his combat knife into the brute's throat. He thrust the blade upwards and twisted, serrated edge outermost, then yanked it out and jumped out of reach.
The wraith grabbed for its own wound with floundering hands. It reeled, spun, staggered.
Then it fell on the sand with a thud.
In a flash, John was down next to it and felt along its left hip for the slit in the coat. There! -- his hand slipped in. The pocket was deeper than expected; it swallowed his arm up to the elbow but then he had it: the syringe.
It was empty.
John tore the rope from around his waist and bound it round the wraith's wrist in fumbled haste, tied a pile hitch, tugged and pulled until he had yanked the wraith's legs around, and knotted the remainder of the rope around the creature's ankles.
He inspected the syringe. It was smooth, warm to the touch; he tried to get the plunger off but it was sealed shut by some unfamiliar mechanism. He shook the device, turned it upside down.
He jogged down to the sea. He held the object up to the light, ran his fingers up and down its shaft. Then he had it: there was a thin seam up the side of the syringe, barely visible against the sun.
"Human!" bellowed the wraith, in its deep harsh voice. "Do not wet the vial!"
John spun around. "Revived already, have you?" His own voice was hoarse, no more than a croak. He swallowed dry spit and tried again. "I've got your water, so screw you."
"Do you know what it is that you hold in your hand?" The wraith was creeping along the sand on its belly, hands and feet still bound.
"Sure I know what it is."
"Do not put the vial in the water!" growled the wraith.
"And why not?" said John.
"This vial cannot be brought into contact with salt water."
The waves frothed around John's knees.
"You're talking shit," John said. "This is a water purifier. It's a desalination device, so of course it's going to be okay with salt water. Because that's what it does, you asshole: it takes salt water and removes the damn salt from it."
The wraith laughed a hideous snakeskin laugh. "This vial is not a salt water purifier."
"I saw you drink," John said calmly. He lifted the syringe demonstratively and got ready to plunge it into the sea.
"Stop, you fool human!" roared the wraith. " Did you not see the dart disintegrate?"
"Oh yeah?" said John. But his hand stopped mid-plunge. Sun flashed off the dart-like skin of the syringe.
"Give me the vial. It is of no use to you."
All of a sudden, the wraith loomed tall on the shore. It had wrenched the ties from its wrists and ankles, torn right through them with inhuman strength. All that bullshitting had been a trick! To stall John, to keep him there until that demon had freed itself!
John took two steps backward. A wave struck the back of his knees. He tightened his fist around the handle of his knife. "Back off!" he said. "Or I will drop this in the water!" He lifted the syringe.
To his surprise, the wraith did back off. It didn't follow John into the surf. It stayed on the shore, hair waving in the evening breeze.
It was the wraith's reticence, more than anything else, that convinced John that there was something to its claim.
He peered at the device. "So how do I get water out of this, if not through sea water?"
"You cannot. Only I can."
"Is that right? Is there maybe some special gene you need to activate this damn thing? Tell me the trick or you're not getting it back. You'll die of thirst! Because even wraith need to drink, don't they?"
"You will die of thirst," said the wraith. "I have poured all your own water into the crater."
"You son of a wraith bitch!" yelled John.
"I have also consecrated your other firearm to the lava. And your outer garment."
"My vest?" croaked John. "With all my stuff in it?"
"Also your radio. Everything I found."
John staggered. The planet turned underneath his feet. "Who cares? It doesn't matter. I'm being rescued soon."
"No. You are not. There is nobody nearby. You will not be rescued soon."
Shit. The telepathy. What did the wraith know that he didn't know?
"Have you been talking to your hive, have you?"
"No." The wraith's face winced, as if in pain. "There is no hive. There is nobody within reach."
"Right," said John.
The wraith had wasted his water. The wraith had destroyed his vest. The wraith had taken everything he needed for survival.
John had left his stuff behind, and that had been a huge, a phenomenal mistake. How could he have been so blind? Was it the wraith? Had it played with his mind? Or was it the heat and the stifling, aching thirst?
"Right," said the wraith.
"Okay."
"Pass me the vial."
If the wraith had the vial, the wraith would have water but he, John, would have nothing. He would die of thirst.
If the wraith didn't kill him first.
It was the only bargaining chip he had left.
"You say there's nobody nearby?" said John slowly.
"That is so."
"None of my people? But none of your lot, either?"
The wraith snarled in response.
"How do I know you're not lying?"
The wraith said nothing, just lifted half its welted lip in a sneer.
Waves crashed wildly on the rocks further south. Everything teetered. The sun was hot on the back of John's neck.
"In that case," said John and gagged on a dry swallow. "If I give you this, you'll have the water. But..." Blurred spots fizzed in front of his eyes. "...you won't have the food."
Surf heaved against John's legs and sucked his feet into the numb sand.
"Because," said John. He felt sick. "Because I am the food." He added, in a quick rush, "And I propose a deal."
"I do not accept any deal," boomed the wraith. But it stood on the shore, not moving.
"You do whatever you do to make drinking water in this device, and you share that water. With me. And in return, I will. I.
I'll."
The wraith's hair blew in the rising breeze.
"In return, I'll let you feed on me."
Feel the ocean. Feel the sand whirl under your bare feet.
"In bits," John said. "You feed on me in increments."
The wraith hissed.
"Do you understand, wraith? Do you understand?"
"Naturally, I understand."
"Because if I die, you die! I'm all the food there is for you on this island! And..." Talking fast now. "And if it's true that it'll be a while before rescue comes, then you need me. Then you can't afford to kill me all at once. Do you understand me on this, wraith?"
"Yes, of course. You are offering fealty."
"Offering... What?"
"You are offering fealty, as do the devotees of our hive."
"Jesus." John remembered the wraith worshippers on a hive ship, long ago. "Your human slaves."
"They are not slaves."
"Yeah, right." John felt nauseous.
"They give themselves voluntarily for feeding."
"But they die!"
"They will die, anyway. All humans die."
"Eventually! Eventually, yes, we die! But before that, we live. That kind of existence, being fed on, you can't call that living." He stopped. He didn't know why he was allowing himself to be drawn into this. You couldn't argue with a wraith. You couldn't talk sense to a wraith. You could only strike deals. And hope for the best.
And I will live, he thought. I will survive.
"Are you offering fealty voluntarily?" said the wraith.
John thought of his water canister, his powerbars, his broken gun, his medi-kit, his radio, his dreadful, fatal mistake.
The surf reeled. John stepped up and out onto dry land.
*
O MY BRETHREN MY SIBLINGS WHERE ARE YE ALL WHERE ARE YOUR VOICES AMONG THE SIDEREAL WINDS O ALL IS SILENT THE SILENCE PRESSES UPON MINE SKULL O ONTO THE INNER BOWL OF MINE SKULL THE INNER LINING OF MINE SKULL THE HARD MEMBRANE OF MINE THOUGHTS O ALL MILLING ALONE NOW THOUGHTS WITH NOWHERE TO GO O WHEREFORE ALLOTH CHOQUE CHINCHAY OPHLUCCI WHEN WILL MY HUSK EVER TREAD YON PATHS MORE O MY LOST BRETHREN LOST TO MY CALLINGS
**
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 10:38 pm (UTC)*recs*
*downloads to PDA*
*exit stage left*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 10:46 pm (UTC)You are very sweet. And here I was wondering how best to pimp this... :-)
It's hardly changed since you saw it. Actually, I have no idea how much it has changed. I have been revising and revising and revising. I lose track of what draft you saw.
*licks your icon*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 11:31 pm (UTC)It's really strange reading it again now that I know who Sheppard is. Strange, but good.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 03:21 pm (UTC)I can now not remember my reaction to fanon before I knew canon. I read loads and loads before I saw any canon, and what I do remember is my reaction to canon. I was at first rather resistant! Compared to the awesomeness of much SGA fic, the canon was... underwhelming. And John was... so wooden. (Shades of Bloom?? *gg*) And there was no chemistry between the fanon OTP...
But I can't talk. Now I'm into soap fandom. And Joe Flanigan is Marlon Brandon and method acting. *snorts*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-01 10:14 pm (UTC)I remember finishing Ichor that first time and going off to Wikipedia to find out what this Sheppard bloke looked like. Teh pretteh, though he is oddly proportioned. (And then I went through a few recs posts and the rest is history.)
Have commented elsewhere that I'd not have looked twice at SG:A canon without a thorough grounding in fanon. Fanon is where all the really interesting things happen: canon just showed me what the characters looked like, and -- something I am increasingly aware of, despite not doing TV / film very much -- the physical traits and tics and body language. In this case mostly Mr Flanigan's gallery of smirks and quirks.
'Ichor' was where I had my first 'Oh, John' moments. It will always be special.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 03:22 pm (UTC)