This is my first story so chapters will probably be short. Sorry ahead of time. Enjoy.

BACKWARDS

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1. OPENER

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It was like one of those really, really bad B horror flicks from the '80s. The wraiths were the aliens trying to take over the world and Sheppard was the good guy leading a small ragtag team against the invaders and all the odds were stacked against them, only unlike the movies, the good guys were going to die. And they were going to stay dead and there wasn't going to be any sequels because how would you have a sequel when there weren't any more people around to take part in it? Well OK, maybe the wraiths would make the sequel on the next world they culled. Sheppard could see the title now. The Return of the Wraith from the Pegasus Galaxy. That'd definitely be Oscar worthy. Sheppard snickered quietly to himself. Sheppard wished the wraiths believed in burial. Then he'd ask them to put Comedic Genius,or Witty 'til the Very End or something like those on his tombstone. But no they just had to be the type of monsters to suck the life out of people 'til they shriveled into nothing but bones and Sheppard honestly didn't want just bones in his grave. He wanted a full body, flesh and all, dammit!

He paced in his cell angrily, hands clasped tightly behind him. The hive ship walls pulsated; annoyingly reminding Sheppard it was alive. It was a stupid and useless fact to be honest. It was stupid because ships weren't supposed to be alive. They were supposed to be man-made and therefore not organic. But hive ships weren't man-made. That's what made it stupid. What made it useless, however, was that even knowing the vessel was on some level self-aware, it didn't help Sheppard's situation any because the stupid hive ship didn't think like a person. It only cared that it was a hive ship, anything else just went flying out the window.

Sheppard glared at the passing wraith guards going about whatever business wraiths did when they weren't culling anything. He figured they'd just hibernate again like that one time Todd and his crew did while they'd been struck by Carson's retrovirus thing but apparently culling didn't make the wraiths tired, just super hungry and restless. And dang it now he was thinking about Carson again when he told himself he wouldn't. Carson wasn't part of Sheppard's small resistance group. He wondered if he'd been culled with 90% of earth or if he was found by other survivors. It was possible there were more groups hiding underground Sheppard wasn't aware of. Unlikely, but possible. He hoped there were. And he hoped everyone in his underground fort-like thing was OK. Everyone probably realized Sheppard was gone longer than he was supposed to be and were panicking right now. But he knew Zelenka could calm everyone down because Sheppard showed him how. He taught Zelenka for this moment in fact.

Zelenka did well in practice. He showed a lot of potential. And even if Zelenka couldn't handle the pressure, Lorne was there as backup. Sheppard was confident in their abilities to lead. He had to be actually, because Sheppard knew he wasn't coming back. Not this time.

And where the hell was the Daedalus with McKay?

"Unhand me this instant, you ungrateful–!"

The familiar voice drifted from just ahead of him. Sheppard snapped his head up and squinted. It couldn't be. He gripped the cell bars tightly. A man in a familiar white lab coat, flanked with two wraith guards on either side, came into view. Sheppard drew in a sharp breath when Zelenka was shoved into his cell. God freakin' damn it.

"Well what do we have here? Doc," Sheppard drawled.

Zelenka rose to his feet quickly but before he could say anything, Sheppard grabbed a fistful of his shirt and roughly shoved him up the wall, brown eyes glinting dangerously. "I thought I made myself clear not to abandon the fort after dark. What the hell are you doing here?"

Zelenka grimaced, "To get you back obviously."

Sheppard glared up at him. "I explicitly said not to come after me."

Zelenka nodded sagely, ignoring the glare. "Yes I am aware."

"If you're so aware, then why'd you come back?"

"Because it is what friends do," Zelenka snapped, trembling hands clutching painfully to Sheppard's. "What ever happened to no man gets left behind, Colonel?"

Sheppard's lips curved into an ugly snarl as he dropped the man from the wall and backed up a few steps. "Yeah well that rule doesn't apply to me, not when I'm the one trying to save your butt!"

Zelenka furrowed his brows, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about me making a deal with the damned wraith," Sheppard said icily. "I told them I'd forfeit my life in exchange for them leaving you guys alone. And now you're freakin' here!"

"How do you even know they are not just lying to you to keep you complacent?" Zelenka demanded.

Annoyance crept up Sheppard's features because he knew exactly what Zelenka was doing right now. Zelenka was trying to get Sheppard to admit what they both already knew, that Sheppard didn't actually know if the wraiths would hold their end of the bargain, that they more probably wouldn't. But damn it, Sheppard was getting desperate here and Zelenka had to see that –that this time around, the wraiths already won and were just dragging out checkmate.

"I don't," Sheppard said finally, giving just a little.

Zelenka didn't say anything, just considered Sheppard silently, sitting against a pulsating wall on the other side of their cell. Sheppard was glad the scientist didn't have any more to say. In the stretched silence, he turned his thoughts back to the wraiths.

The worst case scenario to all this was that the wraiths wouldn't hold their end of the deal and would just kill Sheppard and Zelenka –though Sheppard's death was inevitable, it was highly plausible they wouldn't send Zelenka back –and hunt down the rest of the survivors whom were all underground at this point, which the wraiths didn't know and hopefully, just hopefully that'd buy them enough time for McKay to arrive back with the Daedalus. That is, assuming McKay didn't just ditch them here for the wraiths to eat. Sheppard admit it'd be a pretty smart move, but also downright cowardly and disloyal. And while Sheppard was aware McKay could sometimes act like a coward, he was anything but disloyal.

But dang it, McKay sure had bad timings with all these 'save the world/galaxy/Atlantis' type stuff. He was one of those stupid, reluctant heroes because he would usually waste half his time or resources –sometimes even both –trying to come up with all kinds of crappy nightmarish apocalypse scenarios and scare the shit out of everyone. Sheppard sometimes wondered how he could put up with McKay for so long because usually Sheppard wasn't immune to McKay's shit, not like how he was to pain at least –if Carson was still alive, he'd vouch.

Sheppard stretched, shaking off the numbness he felt in his feet. He heard Zelenka shift positions trying to get more comfortable. It felt like hours since Zelenka was hauled into Sheppard's cell. The scientist hadn't spoken a word since Sheppard informed him of his deal with the wraiths. He figured Zelenka was still mad. In a way, Sheppard supposed he had a right to be.

Sheppard sighed and leaned his head back against the soft pulsating wall. Never in his life did he imagine he'd be sitting here in a hive ship, waiting, for death to claim him instead of the other way around. If he'd known ahead of time, he'd have thought to bring along his PSP.