Chapter Eight

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

"So, you gonna eat that?" I asked McKay. He had brought a sandwich from the mess, and I was starving. Beckett was trying to keep me on a liquid diet, still, though it'd been two days since I'd returned to a sane state of mind.

McKay looked at his turkey sandwich, then back at me, and debated with himself. He shrugged, and handed it over. "You could use it more," he said.

I grabbed it, eagerly unwrapping the plastic, and raised it to my mouth, when out of nowhere, it was grabbed out of my hands, mere inches from my taking a big bite. "What the -"

"I told you, no solid food, Major, for at least another day," Beckett scolded. He was holding the offending object in his hand, and he didn't look happy.

I couldn't believe my luck. He'd been gone all morning. I had no idea where, and I didn't care. When McKay had wandered in with that turkey, I had thought my chance had arrived, and I had taken it, only to get foiled just shy of my goal. "You suck, you know that," I said spitefully.

I don't know who was more surprised by my outburst; me, McKay or Beckett. Carson folded his arms, which kind of looked ridiculous, because my bootlegged bounty was still clenched in his hand, and it was getting kind of squished now because his fist was balled up. "I see this little episode hasn't improved your behavior any," he replied. He unfolded his arms, and pointed a hand at me, "Tomorrow, no sooner."

I was grinning like I hadn't done in days, because he was pointing with the hand that held the sandwich, and it was a mangled piece of food by now. He glared, and threw the thing in the trashcan, disgusted with me, and stomped away.

Rodney whistled through his teeth. "I think you're making him mad."

"Who cares, he's just a big teddy bear anyway," I said, tossing my head carelessly back against the pillow.

McKay didn't seem to know what to think of that. "You've changed," he said, finally.

"What?"

"You're more…loose, a little bit on the wild side," Rodney explained.

Was I? Maybe, I was still struggling with processing what had happened. I had recently discovered that my stomach was peppered with tiny scabs. It had looked like someone had splattered reddish brown paint across my abdomen, and it hurt a lot worse than it looked. I figured it was part of the reason for the liquid diet, but I'd still been leery of getting answers, so I had accepted the mess with unflinching calm, and continued to observe.

"Would you quit doing that," McKay snapped.

I realized I'd been staring off again, into nothing. I had to admit, I was doing it a lot. "Doing what?" I asked, but I knew what he was talking about.

"You keep staring, your eyes unfocused, and you act like your some alien observer from another world communing with his buddies on another plane."

That was a mouthful, even more than usual for McKay. I sighed, and adjusted my shoulders in the bed. I was starting to get that itch to move, and it was depressing because I knew Beckett wouldn't even consider it for another couple of days.

I was also getting looks from everyone, these long, painful looks. And it was like they were trying to store away who I was, so they'd never lose me again. I had to know. I needed to know. If I was ever going to put this behind me, and get back to normal, I had to find out what'd happened. "Tell me," I said, and the words were reluctant to leave, but I did it anyway.

"Are you sure?" Rodney was the coward now. When it came down to it, he didn't want to tell me, or maybe he was afraid to tell me now that a couple of days had passed. Or maybe he was worried how I'd react.

"No, I'm not sure," I snapped. I ran an angry hand through my hair, reminded of the IV line when it pulled at my skin, and the tape caught the hair on my wrist. "Just…do it, before I lose my nerve."

He seemed surprised at my admission. So was I. It just goes to show that everyone has limits, and I'd reached mine. And maybe, possibly, McKay was becoming more to me than a guy that had been put on my team. I remembered scenes from earlier, and McKay had been there, and regardless of what was going on around me, he kept trying to reassure, and protect, which was weird, because if you'd had asked me before this all went down, he would've been the last one I'd have pegged for sticking when the going gets rough. I was starting to trust him, and by admitting a weakness to him, I was awkwardly showing that trust, and opening up to the growing friendship.

McKay seemed ready to say something, but then he shrugged. "This is going to take a while," he said instead.

"I'm not going anywhere," I retorted, and attempted a real smile. I think it probably didn't quite make it, but it seemed to bolster Rodney's nerve.

"You remember the East pier, the one where we found the room next to the prison cell for the Wraith?"

I did. When Elizabeth had confronted me about a possible spy, we'd started looking for a way to contain the culprit. We'd found the containment cells, and a lot more. Then it ended up being a lesson in humility and irony, because the spy had been me, inadvertently, when I'd trigged the tracking beacon inside the locket, and handed it to Teyla.

I was still trying to come to terms with that entire debacle, and realizing that my screw-up, because of the gene, was behind the Wraith's awakening. I had known it was my fault they'd woke in their hive ship, but to know that the only reason they showed up on Teyla's planet when they did, was because I'd activated that stupid locket, well, even my optimistic side had taken a beating.

McKay realized I was falling back into not-so great memories, and he continued. "After you questioned…Steve," he used the moniker I had given our guest, "we set out to see if there was any weaponry in an area that looked promising. What we found was a biological weapon."

I put a hand against my gut. The pain medication was wearing thin, and the hurt was gaining in intensity. "Biological weapon?"

Rodney was getting uncomfortable. Must be the bad stuff was about to begin. "Let me guess, I let it loose?" That stupid, annoying, fantastic ability I had, and one I was still learning to control.

"You picked up this thing, you said it reminded you of a rocket launcher from back home, a " McKay searched for the right designation.

"M1?" I supplied. It was a common launcher used in World War II, and because of its popularity, it was the most often recognized.

"Whatever," he dismissed, clearly, rocket launchers weren't high on his list of important things to know. "When you touched it, something shot out and hit you, like some kind of pulse blast. You went flying, but it only knocked you out."

Something occurred to me. "You asked me to help you, and I told you to wait, didn't I?"

"You always tell me to wait," he said, and he was irritated because I kept interrupting.

But this was important. Things had started to go all crazy after I'd gone to help McKay, maybe that whole electricity pad thing wasn't real? "Was there a pad on the ground, kind of like a Star Trek transporter thingy?" I sat forward, despite the twinge that was more than a twinge, in my belly.

Rodney looked upset. "What are you talking about? Oh God, you're having a relapse," he stood, but I caught his wrist.

"Stay, I'm not having a relapse."

"Then what is this Star Trek "

"Everything started going nuts, not long after Weir told me to help you, but I begged off and got breakfast, and took a nap first." I explained. I hoped that'd really happened.

He seemed to accept what I said, so it must've. At least I could pinpoint the time frame a little better. "Then what?"

"I got Beckett. They took you to the infirmary, but you kept…saying stuff. Weird, and you were fighting everyone half of the time, when you were awake. It was like you were living something else, somewhere else."

I felt a lump in my throat, because I had been. It had seemed so horribly real, even when things were wrong, I could feel the people in my hallucinations, I could touch, and breathe them. If something that doesn't exist can fool you so totally, so completely, how could you trust in what you had, right now? How could you say, this is real, and believe in it, because just maybe you'd wake up tomorrow, and it wouldn't be the same? "It was so real," I whispered, and bits of it played back, without conscious recall.

That seemed to piss McKay off. "It wasn't real, Major, none of it, ever. I tried to tell you that we were real, but you wouldn't listen."

"I know. You were always there, well, most of the time." I remembered some of the things I'd said to McKay in my psychotic world. "How did Beckett fix me? And, out of morbid curiosity, what are all the holes from?"

Here he heaved a great, body-wrenching, sigh, and he stretched his arms back, cracked his neck, which I winced at, because that was just gross. Finally, he seemed to have gotten himself settled. "Actually, he didn't. I did."

I raised an eyebrow at that revelation. I hadn't seen that one coming. "Really?"

"Yes, you'd be happy to know the resident genius figured it out, just in the nick of time to save you, I might add," he bragged, but I took the bragging for what it was, a layer of protection he was so used to using that he never thought twice.

"McKay," I warned, and I was tired. This was taking a lot out of me.

He scowled because I was taking the wind from his sails, and I almost grouched to him that if my infirm state was annoying him, he could finish later. "It was parasites, little, tiny parasites, and they were growing in your stomach, the byproduct of their metabolism happened to be an incredibly strong hallucinogen."

You know, I've seen a lot since picking up General O'Neill, but the thought that my gut had been full of parasites was creepy, and disturbing, in a whole new way that this entire experience had been. "Parasites?" I repeated, numbly.

Rodney was unwrapping a power bar. "You should've seen how huge they got!" he crowed, and took a bite of the food.

I didn't want to know how big they got, but I did want to know how they got out, and I also wanted to know if they were sure that all of them were gone. "They're gone, right, all of them?"

"Mhm," he said, with a mouthful. He chewed it down to a talkable level. "The trick was to use the weapon to extract them. It had a two-way trigger. One way would shoot the victim full of a packet of the parasites, the other way, it'd suck them back out, of course, they left a few holes," he pointed at my stomach.

"A few?" I said, a little louder than I meant too, but there were more than a few holes.

"Or so," he replied defensively.

Jesus. I closed my eyes. The truth was stranger than fiction. I heard McKay stand. I knew I looked bad. As he'd been explaining it to me, I could feel myself growing more strained, pale, washed out, twisted and hung out to dry. Why couldn't it ever be something simple around here? Everything was always so damn complicated, and heartbreaking.

I felt Beckett arrive. I hadn't opened my eyes, because the pain had risen to that level where it was really causing me grief, and I hated to admit that I wanted more medication. Nobody wanted to ask for more drugs, least of all me. But I wanted them more than anything right now, and not to just take away the pain, I wanted to take away this whole entire week, or however many days it was. Maybe I could just pretend it hadn't happened, and wipe that time away from my memory…and I suppose McKay could learn to be humble, as in, not in a million years. I was stuck with the memories.

I felt tugging on my tubing, and knew Carson was taking care of the physical side for me. I heard him whispering to McKay. I had one last question, before McKay left, or drugged sleep carried me away. I forced my tired eyes open. "McKay," I said, bringing his attention away from Beckett, who must've heard from the wonderboy himself that I'd just been served up a slice of amazing stories.

"Yeah?"

"The gun, whatever it is, where is it now?" I needed to know it was somewhere I'd never have to see it again, though the funny thing was, I had no memory of it at all.

"Locked away, Major." He knew what I was thinking. "No one will find it again for a long, long time."

There was something else that was bugging me. "That thing," I coughed, and clenched a sluggish hand against my wounds, trying to keep the agony bearable from the movement. "It could've only had one purpose."

McKay must've realized it as well because I didn't see any hint of confusion in his deep blue eyes, and he stared back at me, and didn't look away. "I know."

I nodded. I knew he knew. He was smart. "Those Ancients weren't so nice." I was drifting away, and let myself succumb to the beckoning sleep. Before I lost all thought, I heard Beckett ask McKay what purpose, and heard Rodney's stark reply, interrogation, torture. Nope, the Ancients weren't so innocent after all, and neither were we.

THE END

AN: Just wanted to say again, thank you for taking the time to read, and review! This is my first really dark fic, except for my Enterprise fic The End of the World, which is a depressing different fic. I had so much fun writing this one, and now that it's out of my head, I'm going to get Paradigm finished up in short order, so thank you for being patient.