Author's Note: Please, with all humility, forgive my insane audacity in naming this pathetic attempt at entertainment after the classic Faulkner novel! I mean only to play with the oddly relevant literal meaning of the phrase, and perhaps admit to a bit of foreshadowing of just how bizzare this tale is turning out to be for me. But don't get too worried, there are no maternal fish... yet.
- Faulker forgive me (may he lay properly positioned within his casket...)
Your comments are appreciated, even if they only amount to... "huh?"
The bullet slammed into his chest, the force of the impact throwing him backwards and off his feet.
A bullet? John Sheppard thought wryly. I travel a billion miles from home using technology that makes the space shuttle look like a twirled stick and I get taken out by a bullet?
His shoulders slammed into the dusty, hard-packed earth and the back of his head snapped down after, sending sparks of light into his vision and whiting out the mostly green landscape around him. He didn't feel anything like pain, yet, just the dull sensation of muffled impacts against his body, as if he were being pummelled while wearing a padded suit. His hearing faded too, the equally muffled shouts and screams around him glancing off his consciousness unregistered. For a long moment he just lay in an unfeeling, unseeing sprawl. His lazy thoughts skimmed from the benign to the absurd. At some point, he began to realize that the sparks were fading into ghostly black spots against a brilliant blue-white sky. The spots began to swim.
What the hell? Still relaxed in the shock-induced stupor, John willed the spots to stop dancing. Oh, sure. I just need to breathe. That'll help.
Fear! Panic! He couldn't breathe. He tried again to force his lungs to work, to draw in the oxygen his mind and his body were beginning to plead for with alarming insistence. He tried to turn his head, to look around for help, but his whole body betrayed him and his eyes remained locked on the blue above him. No force of will seemed to be able to move any muscles, twitch any nerves. A puffy cloud that looked like a stalking cat drifted by.
John lay suffocating in terror, unable to even blink, when the brightness of the sky was suddenly occluded by the stern, concerned face of Teyla Emmagan. He saw her lips move, form the syllable of his name, "John!" The sound of her voice -- fearful, panicky, controlled -- etched itself clearly and brightly into his mind. She fumbled at his vest zipper, yanked down hard on the cold metal. She already held an untwisted field bandage in her hand and John watched her slap the absorbent pad into his chest. His silent, motionless chest.
Oh...shit. A half-remembered lesson drifted through his again-wandering consciousness. CPR: If no respiration, check for pulse. If no pulse, do you check for respiration? It was a trick question. No pulse No respiration. Period. When the heart stops, everything stops. Trick question, Teyla. Trick question. Trick...
Teyla held the pad firmly in place, dug her fingers into John's neck, then flung herself into position over him, flexing her elbows and pressing firmly into his chest with rhythmic compressions. John could feel the movement, but only as a dull vibration. Like the feeling of thunder through your feet from a distant, muggy thunderstorm. A device was placed over his mouth, Teyla paused and John felt air forced into the lungs he couldn't force to move on his own.
For an instant the fresh oxygen delighted the wounded cells of the lungs so long at rest. Then they screamed with the first felt pain as nerves deadened by neglect were suddenly revived.
Pain consumed him. Teyla's forceful thrusts bit into his mind, each compression a new expression of torture. Each artificial breath prolonged and fed the agony. The still-swimming ghostly dots began to collect and merge, sticking to the edges of the blue sky and Teyla's face centered in his sight. Stop! Stop! Stop! John screamed the words in his mind. The shouts were so loud they almost drowned out the same words that finally came from another voice close to his ear.
"Stop."
Teyla shook her head, continued compression after agonizing compression. John saw tears spill down her cheek.
"He's right, Teyla. You need to stop. There's no... there's no point. Just look at him."
Teyla finally turned her face to John's. She finally met his eyes.
Stop, his mind whispered. She stopped, her eyes remaining locked with his, her face framed by the blackness that continued to grow at the edges.
The pain eased as the wounded nerves again quickly deadened from oxygen deprivation. John felt the stillness, the utter peacefulness of his body and was suddenly afraid, but Teyla held him in her gaze and the fear lessoned. In that moment before his death, John believed everything he'd ever heard about being able to see one's soul through one's eyes. He read Teyla's every thought, saw her sorrow, her fury, her indomitable will that would carry her through.
Thank you, John. Your life has touched me more than any other soul I have known.
Teyla! I wish... I wish I had gone out fighting. The regret spilled into his own eyes.
You feel that the manner of your death is what gives your life meaning? You are wrong. Your life has meant more than you can possibly know. That is not what you regret, John Sheppard.
I regret dying.
Your spirit will live to fight again.
I wish I could believe that...
You do.
John's vision was only a pinprick of light. Teyla's face finally moved from the center and all he saw was blue sky, then utter black.