Fic- Comfort in Knowledge (SGA)
Jun. 1st, 2009 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_lucy21Title: Comfort in Knowledge (Stargate: Atlantis)
Rating: Oh, PG-13, maybe?
Warnings: There is mention of a non-con act off screen. Not rape, and not sex, exactly, either. Nothing graphic, but this is the aftermath.
Pairing: none
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer- not mine, not making money, everyone belongs to who they belong to.
Notes: First fic in quite a long time. I think I'm a little rusty like.
“Oh, thank God,” Carson said, smiling with relief as he saw the four people tramping into his infirmary. Elizabeth had called down to say the captured team had been released, finally, and were on their way back through the gate, but he never quite believed it until he saw them with his own eyes when they’d gone missing.
“Miss us?” Sheppard said, smiling tiredly. He pulled himself up onto a bed with a bit of a wince. “We weren’t gone *that* long.”
“Long enough,” Carson said, letting John wave him towards his teammates first. “Are any of you hurt?”
“I believe we are all uninjured,” Teyla said. “It was certainly not our harshest stint in captivity.”
“I almost never say it, but she’s right,” Rodney agreed.
“Then it must *not* have been so bad as all that, if you’re saying so, Rodney!” Carson said. He glanced at the other two. Ronon shrugged, but John’s smile was beginning to look a little pasted on. Something *had* happened, then, Carson thought. But he didn’t say anything as he moved to do the post-mission exams on them all.
“Dr. Beckett,” Teyla said softly as he took her blood sample. “I believe something may have happened with John that he did not share with us. They took him from where we were being held for several hours. He does not seem injured, but he would not say what they did.”
“Aye, lass, I’ll check it out,” Carson said. “Thank you for telling me. I don’t always get the full story from the Colonel, either.”
“I know,” Teyla smiled. “He is very stubborn and he does not like to tell us when something is wrong because he does not want us to worry.”
“Except he doesn’t understand we worry more when he doesn’t tell us,” Carson nodded.
“I have tried to explain this many times,” Teyla agreed.
“Oh well, we usually get him sorted in the end,” Carson sighed. “You look fine, love, you can go. I’m sure you’re anxious for a shower and something to eat.”
“That would be good, yes,” Teyla said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Carson said, smiling at her as she left. “All right, Colonel, your turn,” he said as he turned towards where John was still sitting, watching his team be cleared. “Everyone else is a bit tired and a little dehydrated, but nothing a good meal and a night’s sleep won’t fix.”
“Good,” John said. He looked casual, but there was a hint of tension to it. “That’s good.”
“You all right?” Carson asked, pulling the stool over and sitting down. Aside from the fact that John almost always insisted his team get their post-mission exams done first, Carson liked to save him for last because he could often coax more details out of him if the team was no longer in earshot.
“I’m fine,” John said automatically. Carson raised his eyebrows at him and waited. “I am, really. Just something kinda happened and I didn’t want…” he trailed off, shrugging.
“What happened?” Carson asked gently, when it was clear that John wasn’t going to continue.
“The second day we were there, the guards pulled me out of the room we were all in. They took me down to this clinic where this woman said they knew I had the ATA gene and, um, kinda wanted me to be like a sperm donor,” he said in a rush.
Carson blinked. “As in, have sex with her?” he asked.
“No, as in jerk off into a cup,” John said, twisting his fingers into the sides of his pants.
“Ah,” Carson said. “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
“I said I wouldn’t,” John said. “I didn’t want to. That’s…that’s when things got a bit weird.”
“Weird, how?” Carson asked, not entirely sure he liked where this was going.
“She had the guards strap me down to the exam bed and drugged me and, well, did it for me,” John mumbled, not looking up. “Gave me something I guess was like Viagra or something. So I couldn’t not, y’know, perform.”
“Oh,” Carson said.
“She didn’t really *do* anything to me,” John said, hastily. “Just, see, she didn’t use any lube or anything and it took awhile, and it, well, kinda chafed.”
Carson winced. “I’m going to have to have a look, I’m afraid.”
John groaned, but pulled himself off the exam bed and dropped his pants as Carson pulled the privacy curtain. “It’s a little better than it was,” he said, sitting back down.
“It still looks pretty uncomfortable,” Carson said, frowning. “I don’t want to think about what it was like if this is better. I’ll give you something to relieve the irritation, but you’re going to be sore a few days yet, I think.”
“Probably,” John shrugged.
“Are you telling me everything?” Carson asked, looking at his friend.
“Yeah, I am. Promise,” John nodded.
“All right, then,” Carson said. “Go ahead and get dressed. I’ll get you some cream and a shot of antibiotics just to be on the safe side.” He slipped past the curtains to go over to the dispensary to get the medication and found John sitting fully dressed when he returned. “I think you should…”
“No,” John said, interrupting, shaking his head firmly. “I’m not talking to Kate.”
Carson sighed as he rolled John’s sleeve up for the shot. “I thought you’d say as much,” he said. He hadn’t really expected anything different, but there was always hope. “All right, I’ll let you off the hook for now. But, you know my door is open anytime, right?”
“I know,” John replied. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Carson repeated. “I mean it.” John nodded. “Go eat something and get some sleep. I wouldn’t go running for a day or two if I were you.”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” John admitted, smiling a little.
Carson returned the smile. “Off with you then. Come back if the irritation isn’t getting better.”
“Will do. Thanks, Doc,” John said, swinging off the bed and out of the infirmary without a second glance.
Carson sighed again as he watched him go. He wasn’t at all surprised that John treating the whole thing as though the chafing was the worst bit of it. It was hardly like anyone *wanted* to admit to having been molested. But Carson knew John well enough to know that pushing him would only make things worse. John could compartmentalize and suppress better than anyone else Carson had ever met. Quite aside from John’s natural tendencies, though, Carson wasn’t sure if the lack of control in being forced into therapy would do much good in this situation. He’d just have to keep an eye on him for the next little while. If it looked like John was heading into a spiral, he’d insist on a visit to Kate Heightmeyer. Otherwise, he’d let the man deal with it his own way. It wasn’t how he’d handle the situation if it were anyone else, but the Pegasus galaxy had certainly taught him that sometimes doing no harm meant throwing the rule book out the window.
**
Unsurprisingly, since Carson wanted to keep an eye on John, he didn’t see him for several days. But Carson had his spies and knew how to watch John by watching his team, so he knew that John was being maybe a bit quiet and a little off balance, but not in any way that was out of the ordinary after they’d been held captive for any length of time. So, he didn’t worry much about it, until he noticed someone sitting out on the balcony late one night. Winter was coming, and while Lantean winter wasn’t anything remotely like a Scottish winter, it still got pretty bloody cold when the sun went down, and it had been raining all day, so it had never been very warm to begin with. He sighed as he stepped up to the door and recognized John’s spiky dark hair.
“Colonel, you’ll catch your death out here,” he warned, as he stepped out onto the balcony.
John looked up at him. It was a little too dark to do make out his expression. “’s not so bad,” he said softly.
“That may be, but it’s late. Come on in here,” Carson said, holding the door open. John’s shoulders hunched up as he pulled himself up off of the ground and stumbled towards the door. “Och, you’re freezing,” Carson said, catching his arm as he came close.
“I’m fine,” John said, automatically.
Carson shook his head. “Let’s get you warmed up,” he said, steering John towards a transporter.
“I don’t need to go to the infirmary,” John protested, trying to pull away.
“I’m not taking you to the infirmary. I’ve got plenty of blankets and hot tea in my quarters,” Carson replied. “You can get warm there as well as the infirmary, and you can tell me what you were doing out there in the cold.”
John was silent as Carson dragged him to his quarters. “Sit,” he said, pointing at the couch. He grabbed the comforter off of his bed and tossed it in John’s direction as he went to retrieve his hot pot from the cabinet. He filled the pot and set it to boil before pulling out his tea accoutrements. John kept his silence as Carson finished making the tea, pouring a generous dollop of scotch into one mug. “Here, drink this down,” he said, handing John the tea with scotch. He sat down in the chair facing the couch and sipped his own tea.
John looked both every bit of his years and very young at the same time as he sat wrapped up in Carson’s comforter with the mug clenched between both hands. Carson didn’t ask any questions. He definitely intended John to talk, but he wanted to hear what he might say on his own, first. “You’re a geneticist,” John said, finally.
“Yes,” Carson agreed, wondering why John was stating something they both clearly knew so well.
“So, you know about assisted reproductive technologies, then?” John asked, staring into his mug.
“Not as much as a reproductive endocrinologist or gynecologist would know, but I know some, yes,” Carson said, slowly, curious as to where John was going. ART was not what he had expected John to be musing over.
“Can they…On that planet, if they use my sperm…will they be able to tell if it’s not going to work before they make anyone pregnant?” John asked, still not looking up.
Carson blinked. Maybe ART made more sense than he’d thought. “It depends on what they’re doing. Depends on the level of technology they have.”
“I couldn’t tell,” John said. “I don’t know how much you need.”
“John,” Carson said, gently. He waited until John looked up at him before asking “Can you tell me why you’re wondering?”
John pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and sat silent for a very long moment. “I was married before, did you know that?”
Carson nodded. “It’s in your medical files. That you’re divorced.”
“Yeah,” John nodded. “We…we wanted to have a baby, right after we got married. But, she couldn’t stay pregnant for some reason. There were three miscarriages I knew about, there may have been more, I don’t know. She was only 26, there wasn’t any good reason for why it was happening, her doctor said, so they sent us to an infertility specialist. They did a bunch of tests and decided to try an IVF. So, I did the, you know, specimen thing, and she took the drugs and they did the procedure and it worked.”
John fell silent for a moment after that. Carson knew his medical file didn’t mention any children, so he suspected the IVF was unsuccessful. “What happened?” he asked finally.
“She got further than we ever had, into the second trimester and we started to think it was going to be ok. Bought baby clothes and all that stuff, you know?” John said, his lips quirking into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “But she went into labor at about 27 weeks. They couldn’t stop it, so the baby was born. Andrew…Andrew lived for 23 minutes,” he whispered. “I held him the whole time- Nancy was, she didn’t want to see him.”
“Oh, John,” Carson said, softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” John said, his voice a little high and a little tight. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “They did an autopsy, found there was some genetic defect that they thought must have been passed along the…my chromosomes. I don’t…I didn’t understand so much. But they thought it was likely that had been why Nancy had had the miscarriages before, and they said they…didn’t recommend we try again unless we used donor sperm. We’d…it had been almost two years of trying, and it was my fault. And then I started doing a bunch of classified stuff, stuff I couldn’t talk about, and well, everything kinda started to fall apart. So, she left me, said it would be better that way,” he said, softly.
“They told you it was your fault?” Carson asked, feeling angry on his friend’s behalf. While, yes, it was certainly possible to trace chromosomal anomalies, there was no cause to tell someone that their genes had caused the death of his child.”
John shrugged. “Maybe not in so many words. I don’t know. I don’t remember everything they said, it’s all kind of a blur. But I can’t have kids, right, Carson? I mean, even if that wasn’t all my fault then, there was the all the radiation exposure from the nuke I took to the hive ship, and then the 302s on the Daedelus, and, and, God knows what else, huh? So, my sperm are probably screwed all to hell, right? I mean, I don’t want those…people to make babies that are mine without me knowing about them, but I really don’t want them to make babies that *die*,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word as he looked up. His eyes were wide and pain-filled.
Carson blinked. He didn’t know quite what to say to that. He had expected fallout from the molestation, but not along these lines. “John,” he said, quietly, moving to sit on the couch. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I just don’t know enough to answer those questions.”
John nodded, jerkily. “It’s all right.”
“I can tell you,” Carson said, gently, “that you are *not* a carrier for any of the usual birth defects or anomalies that most doctors test for. I’ve been over your DNA more than a couple of times, you know. I don’t know what happened with your son, but sometimes odd things happen in fetal development. It’s incredibly sad, but nearly one in four pregnancies results in miscarriages. It is possible that for some reason the combination of your genetics and your ex-wife’s genetics just did not work well together. It happens and we don’t always know why. But it is certainly *not* your fault that it did happen. It’s not something you had any control over,” he said, reaching out to squeeze John’s shoulder.
“Ok,” John whispered. He didn’t shrug Carson’s hand off or flinch away, so Carson moved a little closer to put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. When John didn’t flinch, it usually meant he needed the touch.
“It is possible,” Carson said after a moment, “to do some genetic analysis before inserting blastocysts in IVF to ensure a blast doesn’t have a certain genetic problem. It’s not infallible, but it does often raise the chances of a healthy pregnancy. But it’s pretty recent technology on Earth. I don’t have any idea whether it would be something available on the planet you were on, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s likely not.”
“So, they’re gonna impregnate women and there’s no way to tell if the babies will die or not,” John said.
“No, there’s not,” Carson said. “But I have no reason to think that there would be any greater chance that using your sperm would cause a problem. Remember, John, there’s two sets of chromosomes involved.”
“What about the radiation. Or the retrovirus?” John asked.
Carson shrugged. “There’s no reason to believe the retrovirus would cause any problems. Remember, your DNA is 100% John Sheppard. No Wraith, no Iratus bug. Just you.”
“Right,” John said softly.
“More than likely, the effects of the radiation would be on sperm count, not any genetic changes,” Carson added. “So, that shouldn’t make a difference, either.”
“So…they’ll probably be ok?” John asked.
“They will probably be ok,” Carson said. John didn’t say anything, but Carson could feel him start to shiver a little. He hugged John a little closer. “It’s all right, John,” he said softly.
“I don’t…I don’t like the idea of having kids out there, but I didn’t…no one should have to have their baby die,” John said, in a trembling voice.
“No, they shouldn’t,” Carson agreed.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about Nancy and Andrew and these women whose babies would just die and they wouldn’t know why it happened,” he continued.
Carson nodded, but didn’t say anything. They sat there quietly for a few more moments until John pulled away. “Thanks,” he mumbled without looking up.
“You’re welcome,” Carson said, standing up to take the mug from John. “Are you feeling a little better?”
“Yeah, a bit,” John admitted, nodding. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Carson admonished.
John nodded. “I’m kinda tired.”
“You should go get some sleep then,” Carson said. “You haven’t gotten much the past couple of days, have you?”
John shrugged. “Some.”
“Go sleep,” Carson said. “Let me know if you need anything,” he added, watching his friend make his way to the door.
“Ok. Thanks again,” John said, smiling a little bit as he reached the door.
Carson smiled back and watched John disappear into the hallway. Always an enigma, that one, he thought. But he was glad to be able to reassure him even a little bit. Nodding to himself, he turned back to clean up the tea and smooth the comforter back onto his bed, satisfied that his friend would work his way through things once again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
comfort in knowledge
Date: 2009-06-02 12:57 am (UTC)Re: comfort in knowledge
Date: 2009-06-02 04:17 am (UTC)I think John's not any too thrilled by the knowledge that there will probably be these kids out there he won't have any knowledge of or be part of their lives, but the idea of being the cause of more babies dying was even scarier. He's got enough dead people on his plate. And really, no one ever told him that it wasn't his fault to begin with, so even though there's new nightmare material, at least an older one can be put to rest.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 04:21 am (UTC)*sniff*
Date: 2009-06-02 01:39 am (UTC)Tracy-TheNaggingOne
Re: *sniff*
Date: 2009-06-02 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 04:17 am (UTC)