Fic: Dragonwell part 2
Dec. 2nd, 2007 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so_jangTitle: Dragonwell part 2
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oparu
Rating: R, blood, violence
Pairing: John/Elizabeth, John/Vala
Beta:lanna_kitty who is awesome. (and her lapkitten)
Summary: John collects information from Vala and deals with a wayward son. Elizabeth has to put her medical skills to the test.
part one
Vala was exceedingly beautiful naked. Actually, beautiful was one of John's bigger understatements. A certain part of his profession required a professional level of detachment. He usually made an attempt not to think of his clients of anything more than means to a end. John occasionally needed to remind himself that beauty or the lack of it was simply an artistic state. Every woman was beautiful.
Vala had the kind of beauty that made him glad he did what he did. Her eyes were screwed shut, a single tear ran down the side of her face and he could see it glow on her chin before he thrust, knocking it free of her skin. She ground against his fingers, working herself towards the type of gasping orgasm she was most found of. John reminded himself to relax and concentrated on watching the tiny muscles of her back in the candlelight.
Sweat pooled in the dimples just above the curve of her butt and he watched as it washed away the ink on her back. He'd already memorized the map of the Egyptian fleet movements. He'd forced it into his mind and made the picture indelible. The fact that it was scrawled on the near perfect skin of one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen would have made it easier. Hell, did make it easier, but he usually was not allowed to admit he liked his job.
They all did it for a reason. When the world fell and the Egyptians changed the ways they lived their lives, he could have just stayed in the Navy like every other malcontent brat he'd known growing up. The adolescent aristocracy had finished their educations only to enter a world where the wealth that had seemed so certain had already been redistributed. John frequently admitted that if he didn't have the continuous challenge of the client, he'd be bored out of his overly intellectual mind.
Most of his flock had found their way to him for similar reasons. Evan could read people. He could see more into the heart of a stranger in the set of a jaw that some people knew for their lifetimes. Laura liked to play, and she was young enough that John couldn't fault her. Kate had once intended to use her education to help people. Before the war, she'd been a student at the university. Now she was the only one who got through to his most difficult clients. He had a few other prospects, and trainees. Chuck's empathic nature would be an advantage when he had finished his training.
John bit his lip and felt sweat run down his face. Vala was tightening around him in the throes of an orgasm he'd missed in his reverie. Groaning and feeling his own eyes smart a bit, he released into her accepting flesh. Dropping away from him, she curled on the bed, laughing as she sprawled on her side.
"Being a spy was so much less fun before you," Vala mused as she pulled the sheet to her chest to absorb the sweat of her skin. "Even if you aren't paying attention."
"Shouldn't bother you any," he offered curtly as he lifted a towel from the rack on the wall and began drying his skin. He couldn't smell of her when he went back. It wouldn't be professional.
"Most people wouldn't notice," Vala murmured as she settled back against her pillows. "If I was an ordinary woman you'd probably be trying to convince me not to leave my husband and run away with you."
"You'd never leave your husband for me," John teased as he started pulling on his shirt over his newly dry chest. The black linen felt good against his skin, and he remembered how safe he felt in it. The uniform of his position was a series of subtle signals. The neat black collar of his shirt, a red cloth he kept tucked in his lapel and a series of circles tattooed on his chest. Most people didn't get a chance to see his mark, but Vala knew it too well. "He makes too much money, and much more than I."
"Ba'al is a better man than he admits to be," Vala insisted as she dug into a box by the bed for gold. "How much am I paying you these days? Ninety? One hundred?"
"You know very well Ba'al would not believe we're not having an affair if you do not pay me at least one hundred fifty," he reminded her as he shoved his feet into his boots.
Vala tossed a few gold coins his way and thought for a moment before added a golden necklace with a glistening blue stone to the pile. "Keep it, it no longer amuses me," she purred as she curled more comfortably in her bed. "Give it to one of your girls."
"My girls can get better on their own," John teased as he tucked the jewel into his boot.
"Maybe you can use it to entice a poppet of your own," she drank slowly from a flask of liquor and laughed when he kissed the residue of it off her lips.
Stealing the flask, John took a long drink and grinned. "Just why would I want one of those?"
There was blood on the flagstones outside of his home and John's good mood collapsed as soon as he saw it. He stopped whistling and searched the stones nearby with his eyes. The blood came from the right, and only his people used this door. He tried to remember who would be coming from that way. Lorne had an engagement with a gentleman, but that had been in house. Kate and Laura both had engagements that took them out of house, but neither of them should have any trouble.
Depending on the injury, he'd have to risk contacting Carson and begging for help. The little Scottish doctor would come, but the more contact they had with Ba'al's house the more suspicions they made themselves. John turned his key in the door quickly and shoved his way in. The front lights were low, Chuck had already closed up for visitors so things had to be rough. There was still blood on the floor, but less of it than outside.
John knelt and touched it with two fingers. It was still wet, but only barely. Hurrying after the trail, he found his house crowded around a table. Over Chuck's shoulder, John saw the blue satin of the skirt Laura was wearing when he'd left that morning. There was blood on the fabric. Laura was one of his, had been since she was barely more than a child.
He slipped around the edge and the others to stand behind her head. Kate was holding her head and she looked concerned. Laura's color was off, and her lips are bluish. The blood was all coming from a wound in her chest, but it seemed to be slowing. Evan had his hands over it and they were solid.
"I think it's her lung," Evan offered calmly. "There was blood on her lips and I can't hear anything on the right side of her chest." The cloth beneath his hands is soaked with blood, but none of it seems to be fresh. "She's in and out."
"She came back late from her engagement," Chuck started to explain as he turned the poker in the fire, sending up sparks as he got ready to cauterize the wound. John touched his shoulder and shook his head. This was more than they could handle. He'd seen men die from pistol shot in their lungs before and the last thing they did was cough up frothy blood before they drowned. It wasn't something he intended to watch.
"Are you going try to for Doctor Beckett?" Kate asked as she slipped silently behind John. "Vala might be able to help us."
Running his hand through his unruly hair, John shook his head. Too much contact with Vala was one thing. If Ba'al's personal physician had a house call to the bad part of town, and Ba'al didn't execute him for it, Ba'al's position would be in danger. They couldn't risk that. Hundreds of lives and years of planning relied on keeping Ba'al where he was as governor of Cheyenne. Anything that shook up the fragile balance of power in the Egyptian Empire would make things harder for everyone who mattered.
"Can't risk it," John sighed heavily and brushed Laura's red hair away from the blood drying on her shoulder. "Even for Laura." He wracked his mind; letting her die wasn't an option either. "I might have to go for Janet."
Kate's sharp intake of breath suggested that she thought the idea was as crazy as he did. "How would you?"
"Let myself be captured?" John thought aloud as he tried to come up with a probable way he could mix with the likes of Jack O'Neill's crew. Pirates had a bad reputation, worse than even common prostitutes, and anyone belonging to Jack was a step lower than normal pirates. They were outlaws, renegades and only survived in Cheyenne because they were possibly more deadly than Ba'al's officers. "Sneak her out somehow?"
"He'd never let you go," Kate reminded him as she pulled him back from the group. "You'd be leaving us to fend for ourselves, forcing Evan to pick up your contracts--" Leaning closer as a hint of a smile touched her lips, she purred. "He's not ready for Vala."
Smiling weakly at her attempt at humor, John put his hand on her shoulder and tried to imagine Evan leading the house. It was understood that he'd assume the responsibility someday but it might just be too early to force him to take over.
"I was engaged by a doctor yesterday," Evan volunteered suddenly
ing John's thoughts. "His name is Simon Wallace, he's staying at an inn by the docks. The Golden Dog I think."
"Do you trust him?" John asked simply and watched as Evan's eyes flashed through something he was keeping hidden. Anyone who wasn't John wouldn't have seen the moment of hesitation, but John knew his man.
"He has his own secrets," Evan offered as his face solidified. "He'll be trustworthy."
"Will he come for you?" Kate asked practically. John heard the lilt return to her voice and realized she was starting to hope.
"He'll come," Evan answered as he traded his hands for Chuck's and moved to clean himself up. "He seemed a good man."
"Hurry," Kate warned as Evan started to run up the stairs. Evan stopped for a moment, meting her eyes long enough to promise her he knew how serious the situation was.
"I always have impeccable timing," he teased but there was some truth in his voice. John sank into a chair and let Chuck keep Laura's wounds covered. Kate spent a moment saying goodbye to Evan before she returned to his side.
"Aiden did this," Kate began slowly trusting him not to need her to cloak it. She sank to the floor next to him and dropped her chin to his knee. Aiden's departure had hurt them all, but Kate had taken it personally. The last time anyone had seen him, she'd spoken to him alone and come back with the simple truth that he was beyond redemption.
John hadn't killed him. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd brought Aiden out of stealing and fighting for scraps in the gutters and tried to teach him that there was a better way. He thought he'd gotten through and taken Aiden in to the trusted parts of the house.
Then he'd fallen in with the Lucians, their drugs and the enough opium to forget he'd been a whore. Running drugs seemed better, less mess and more like he was doing something.
"I couldn't tell him," John reminded her as he ran his hand through her wavy blonde hair. "He wasn't ready to know, and I still don't believe that would have kept him here."
"Sometimes nothing can," Kate sighed and remained be his side. He let his hand stay on the back of her neck and tried to remember when he'd had hope in the world. When he was young the world still had hope to have, he reminded himself. The Egyptian Empire was still far in the east and he'd joined the Navy as a youth to find a new world.
Instead of riches and new horizons, he'd found a military that conquered without room for thought. The Egyptians preached new dogma, that Osiris was the god-king and no other could stand in his place. Isis was subservient to her god, and slowly other men began to see that women should be as the queen. Students like Kate were removed from universities, women who had been doctors and sailors were suddenly housewives. Hundreds of years of change and struggle was undone in a manner of years and John found himself ashore in a world he wanted no part of.
Maybe Jack and his kin had it right. No respect for anything but gold and drink. It was certainly getting harder all the time to make an honest living. No soldier had intervened to stop Aiden from stabbing Laura and leaving her to die in the gutter. No soldiers had been spared to see why blood led to the trail of John's house. No one inside was Jaffa, and without one of the sacred believers, Ba'al's men were not motivated to keep the peace. Lucians fighting ordinary folk was like squabbling children until one of the Jaffa got involved.
"Where are we going?" Kate asked softly, turning her head down to his boot and not expecting his answer. "What is this, all of this, going to be worth?"
John surprised himself by kissing her forehead. "Everything," he promised as he reminded himself to believe. "That's why we hope."
Elizabeth was reading her way through one of Simon's books on anatomy and trying not to imagine the stench of the cadavers he'd practiced on when he was training. She forced herself to draw the winding of the brachial artery and memorized the nerves that ran along it. She wasn't required to know it, but that was what made it so fascinating. She pushed her dishes from her supper aside and nodded when the server gave her another glass of wine.
After her journey, the waiting was nearly more exhausting. Elizabeth liked the freedom of the sea and being on land again was like giving up her wings. She finished the cup of wine and waved for another. The hotel was empty enough, she could drink herself into a stupor and remember when she'd had better things to look forward too than Simon. If her contact showed up while she was drunk, she had a feeling he was the type of man who'd see that as a bonus.
The server filled her glass and started to stare over by the desk. Craning her head to see who the girl was staring at, Elizabeth was pleasantly surprised to see Evan charming the desk clerk into letting him in.
He headed for her table with purpose, surprising her as he tossed an arm around her shoulders and started to hug her. "I should have known a rascal like you would have found the prettiest girl in the docks to eat with," Evan teased as he winked at the server. Elizabeth watched in amusement as the girl blushed and backed away.
He kept his arms around her shoulders and dropped his mouth just next to her ear. "I need you to help a friend of mine, and I need you to come now," he whispered without losing his smile. "We will pay able to pay you, if necessary. The master of my house is a good man and a powerful ally, you would do well to make a friend of him."
"Will I do poorly as his enemy?" Elizabeth asked through her teeth, testing Evan's response as she tried to keep her expression friendly.
"A friend of mine will die without your help," Evan explained softly and Elizabeth was filled with a rush of sympathy. "But no one, including myself, will think ill of you. The world is a difficult place and we all have to keep ourselves above water."
Elizabeth wiped her mouth and left her napkin and a few coins on the table. "My things are in my room," she whispered as Evan winked at the girl again. Evan started a conversation about nothing and she nodded along as they headed upstairs. Evan was out of his uniform, visiting her as a nobleman would visit a counterpart. When they were shut in her room, Elizabeth grabbed her bag and turned on him.
"Are you going to blackmail me?" she demanded as she felt through the leather for hte knife within. "Is this what this is?"
"My friend will die without your help," Evan offered again as he held his hands level and empty. "Who you are, and what you're hiding mean nothing to me or the master of my house. I need you to trust me and save her life."
"Who is she?" Elizabeth asked as she released the handle of the knife and reached for her coat.
"Laura," Evan explained softly smiling gratefully as she got her hat and prepared to leave. "The one who thought you had a baby face."
Though she tried not to show her concern, Elizabeth knew he could see it in her eyes. "What happened?"
"She had a run in with the Lucians," Evan explained as he opened the door and led her downstairs. "John thinks she has a collapsed lung and she is lucky to be alive."
"John?" Elizabeth asked softly as they slipped out into the darkened street. She didn't remember hearing that name, but it felt like it should mean something to her.
Evan kept a step ahead of her, leading her through dark alleys she wouldn't have dared on her own. "John is the master of my house now. I met him many years ago when I was recruited into the flock." he let her walk in the puddles on the street and didn't keep her from walking into the other men on the street.
Elizabeth appreciated his attention to detail and that he was making no effort to treat her as woman. "How old were you?"
"Fourteen," Evan explained with a tiny smile. "My parents died of cholera when I was a child. I was getting ready to join the Egyptian Navy when I met John and Cameron. They took me out for drinks one night and brought me here. It's been my home ever since." He smiled at touched her shoulder and Elizabeth wondered if she'd let her concern show in her eyes. "It's not a bad life."
"I suppose not," Elizabeth murmured as they slipped behind a street vendor and in through a dark recess to the back door of the house. "I haven't--" she stopped Evan for a moment. "I haven't been formally trained as a doctor."
"I didn't think you had been," Evan whispered back paitently. "We know three doctors in Cheyenne, calling one would get John killed, contacting the other would put John into hiding indefinitely," he paused and grinned as he dug for his key in his coat. "Can you save a punctured lung?"
"I'll do my best," Elizabeth replied as she felt her hands start to sweat. She'd done it before, for men on ships who trusted her to save their lives. Evan was the first person in a long time who knew what she really was and that made something stir forgotten in the pit of her stomach.
"I thought you would," Evan finished as he ushered her into the house.
He led her quickly through a dark, curtained hallway and into the dining room. The red head, Laura, was stretched out on the table. A blonde woman was moving towels and laying out scraps of fabric. There was steam on the stove as well, and the man from the front, Chuck, was standing in front of the fire.
"This is Doctor Wallace," Evan announced as he removed her coat. Elizabeth nodded to the others quickly, but the voice behind her startled her.
"We're putting a lot of faith in you," the deeper voice began behind her. "Laura is dear to all of us."
When she turned, she saw him as if he was a ghost. He was wearing all black and standing behind her in the darkened doorway. His hazel eyes were carefully guarded, but there were secrets there greater than hers. His dark hair was pulled back, but the edges of it were ruefully trying to escape. Even in crisis, his lips were threatening to smile. It was fairly disarming.
"I'll do what I can," she offered as she set down her bag. Picking out what she thought she'd need, Elizabeth dropped all the gleaming metal into the boiling pot of water. Laura was still unconscious, and her pulse was thready as she touched her neck. The neck and slipped over her collarbone and slammed hard into her ribs just above the fleshy part of her breast.
"I need to remove her dress," elizabeth warned careful to keep the pretense that she was a man and she wasn't intimately acquainted with breasts of her own.
"I've got it," the dark man answered without introducing himself. He had to be John, Elizabeth realized when he stepped into the light. He was taller than Evan, and slight wthin his black linen shirt. While Evan's hair was long and richly beautiful, it seemed John's was wishing to escape the confines of the strap that held it. There was stubble on his face and strong lines around his eyes. As he tore Laura's dress free from her chest, he slid it down carefully, as gentle as if she were a child.
He had beautiful hands; fingers that were delicate for a man's and fine, dark hair on his arms. Elizabeth felt her lip twitch and she forced the unnatural sensation away. She was not allowed to feel anything for him. It was his job to turn her stomach to butterflies and sound like he knew everything about her.
Blood was rank in the air as she peeled the dressing from Laura's shoulder. His hands helped clean the blood from Laura's pale skin and he was a steady presence behind her. "What do you need?"
Elizabeth touched the edges of the wound, feeling the heat of the damaged flesh beneath her hands. The fourth rib was broken, and that sharp end had collapsed the lung. Laura was bleeding into her chest, strangling her lung and heart in the process. "I need a tube, a pen, a piece of metal, something--"
John nodded his head towards Evan and the other man hurried to obey.
"Scalpel," she requested as she found the best point of entry. If she cut along the broken rib, she could keep the scar from marring Laura's breast. It was a small concession but it was something she'd want a physician to take with her own body.
John only had to look at Chuck, then the younger man dumped out the tools on into the sink and pulled the scalpel from the steaming water. John placed it gently into her hand.
"I need rum or some other strong alcohol, the stronger the better," Elizabeth asked as she studied the line of Laura's rib again. Her chest was too stiff and the entire left side didn't move when the woman struggled to breathe. Aside from the blood, there was too much air and she had to deal with that first.
Kate brought the alcohol and Elizabeth poured it over her hands, than John's and finally Laura's pale skin. When Evan returned with what seemed to be part of an extravagantly delicate flute, she soaked that as well.
Making a tiny cut to the side of the gash, Elizabeth jammed the metal tube into Laura's chest as hard as she could. She lowered her head and listened to the slickness of metal against flesh until she broke into the cavity with a hiss of blood-dampened air. Laura moaned slightly in her sleep and Kate went to her head. John's hands went to her shoulders, prepared to hold her down.
Giving her chest a few moments to air out, Elizabeth felt the broken rib again. The edges were ragged through the flesh and fresh blood welled up bright whenever she pressed near it. Her neck was starting to ache from the angle, but she needed to keep working. Cutting through the skin was easy enough, but the muscle below was tougher. Biting her lip helped her concentrate as she worked her way down to the bone.
John's hand wiped sweat from the back of her neck as he watched her work out the stubborn ends of the bone. Elizabeth barely felt it and couldn't tell what he was doing until she caught his eyes on her. He was still watching, acutely aware of everything she was doing. She wasn't used to that. Her hand slipped over the bone when she hit a artery and blood sprayed up across her face.The sharp bone must have nicked into the blood vessel, and she'd disturbed it with her fingers. Laura's blood was hot and sticky on her cheek and chin; some of it was even in her eyelashes, making it hard to blink.
Strong fingers closed over hers and over the artery as she caught her breath in surprise. Biting her lip kept her from making a sound in surprise that would have given her away. John held the bone steady and let her work her way in towards the artery. Elizabeth couldn't see for a moment, than Evan moved the lantern. Her fingers ached as she tried to tease out the tiny stitches she needed to close the artery.
Her shoulders were starting to sting. Someone, Evan, changed the lantern as she tried to repair the exceedingly fragile lung tissue. It felt like bread dough under her fingers; tiny threads that needed to be sewn back together and held fast. John's head was near her ear and when Elizabeth's senses expanded to the point that she allowed herself to hear anything but the insistent beat of her patient's heart, she could hear him breathing. He was so close she could hear him breathing--
Elizabeth had to focus. Her hands weren't strong enough to force the rib back into the neat sheath of muscle that sines that held it in place.
"Can you?" she asked him as she removed her hands and guided his in instead. John was patient, but she couldn't help wondering if he'd notice the difference in their hands He nodded and let her tuck his fingers around the rib.
"Pull it up and hold it while I suture," Elizabeth requested firmly, shaking the blood from her hands and taking another needle. "After that I think we're all right."
John snapped the rib back into place with a grunt. Laura mercifully remained unconscious through it. Elizabeth was starting to be concerned that the blood loss might be more severe than she thought, but she could do little to help her except repair the damage and wait. Working around his strong fingers, she tried not to notice when she touched him. Her hands were tiny and delicate next to his and there was no escaping it. Even wrist deep in blood, he'd know she was a woman.
She took a moment to stretch her hands before she set to work repairing the skin. If she kept the stitches small, there was a chance the scar wouldn't be horrible. John stayed with her, brushed against her side as he put his hands down firmly on Laura's chest. Elizabeth caught him biting his lip as the only side that the rankness of blood bothered him at all. Her eyes hurt from the strain. Her fingers were nearly numb from stitching, and her throat was dry.
She had just finished when the smoke from the lantern and the stench of blood finally overwhelmed her. The coughing fit was decidedly undignified, but she couldn't help it. Her throat burned as Elizabeth turned away and John ordered Kate and Evan to wrap Laura's chest. When she finally caught her breath, John was standing behind her at the sink. He washed his hands in the cold water and then poured fresh for her.
"You're very thorough," he murmured behind her head, startling her as he took her hands into his. Elizabeth fought the motion for a moment, then let him take over whne he started to chuckle. "I wouldn't have known, except for your knuckles," he explained as he ran his hands over hers and found the rough spots she'd worked hard to maintain. "No amount of deck scars could masculinize these."
"You won't?" she begged with a higher lilt in her voice than she usually allowed.
"Tell me your real name," he countered and there was hope in his face. Something beyond professional had aroused him and Elizabeth didn't know what to do with it. Evan had been one kind of overwhelming, but this was something else. This was the inability to breath properly and she wasn't sure she'd even had that before.
"Elizabeth," she gave in finally as her voice caught in her throat.
Leaning closer, terribly, viciously close, John cleaned blood from her face with cold water and a piece of cloth. Elizabeth had forgotten the blood was there. Her eyelashes were sticky and it was drying in her hair. No wonder she stank of blood, she realized as she stared at her clothes. She couldn't go back to the inn like this. She couldn't even go outside like this.
"John Sheppard," he offered lazily kissing the side of her neck. It was almost dirty, but he had taken great care to find clean skin. "Let me get you cleaned up," his offered with an outstretched hand.
Elizabeth could have said no. She could have come up with a story and snuck back to the hotel, but instead she put the palm of her hand into his. "All right," she agreed as her heart beat uncomfortably in her throat.
Author:
oparuRating: R, blood, violence
Pairing: John/Elizabeth, John/Vala
Beta:
lanna_kitty who is awesome. (and her lapkitten)Summary: John collects information from Vala and deals with a wayward son. Elizabeth has to put her medical skills to the test.
part one
Vala was exceedingly beautiful naked. Actually, beautiful was one of John's bigger understatements. A certain part of his profession required a professional level of detachment. He usually made an attempt not to think of his clients of anything more than means to a end. John occasionally needed to remind himself that beauty or the lack of it was simply an artistic state. Every woman was beautiful.
Vala had the kind of beauty that made him glad he did what he did. Her eyes were screwed shut, a single tear ran down the side of her face and he could see it glow on her chin before he thrust, knocking it free of her skin. She ground against his fingers, working herself towards the type of gasping orgasm she was most found of. John reminded himself to relax and concentrated on watching the tiny muscles of her back in the candlelight.
Sweat pooled in the dimples just above the curve of her butt and he watched as it washed away the ink on her back. He'd already memorized the map of the Egyptian fleet movements. He'd forced it into his mind and made the picture indelible. The fact that it was scrawled on the near perfect skin of one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen would have made it easier. Hell, did make it easier, but he usually was not allowed to admit he liked his job.
They all did it for a reason. When the world fell and the Egyptians changed the ways they lived their lives, he could have just stayed in the Navy like every other malcontent brat he'd known growing up. The adolescent aristocracy had finished their educations only to enter a world where the wealth that had seemed so certain had already been redistributed. John frequently admitted that if he didn't have the continuous challenge of the client, he'd be bored out of his overly intellectual mind.
Most of his flock had found their way to him for similar reasons. Evan could read people. He could see more into the heart of a stranger in the set of a jaw that some people knew for their lifetimes. Laura liked to play, and she was young enough that John couldn't fault her. Kate had once intended to use her education to help people. Before the war, she'd been a student at the university. Now she was the only one who got through to his most difficult clients. He had a few other prospects, and trainees. Chuck's empathic nature would be an advantage when he had finished his training.
John bit his lip and felt sweat run down his face. Vala was tightening around him in the throes of an orgasm he'd missed in his reverie. Groaning and feeling his own eyes smart a bit, he released into her accepting flesh. Dropping away from him, she curled on the bed, laughing as she sprawled on her side.
"Being a spy was so much less fun before you," Vala mused as she pulled the sheet to her chest to absorb the sweat of her skin. "Even if you aren't paying attention."
"Shouldn't bother you any," he offered curtly as he lifted a towel from the rack on the wall and began drying his skin. He couldn't smell of her when he went back. It wouldn't be professional.
"Most people wouldn't notice," Vala murmured as she settled back against her pillows. "If I was an ordinary woman you'd probably be trying to convince me not to leave my husband and run away with you."
"You'd never leave your husband for me," John teased as he started pulling on his shirt over his newly dry chest. The black linen felt good against his skin, and he remembered how safe he felt in it. The uniform of his position was a series of subtle signals. The neat black collar of his shirt, a red cloth he kept tucked in his lapel and a series of circles tattooed on his chest. Most people didn't get a chance to see his mark, but Vala knew it too well. "He makes too much money, and much more than I."
"Ba'al is a better man than he admits to be," Vala insisted as she dug into a box by the bed for gold. "How much am I paying you these days? Ninety? One hundred?"
"You know very well Ba'al would not believe we're not having an affair if you do not pay me at least one hundred fifty," he reminded her as he shoved his feet into his boots.
Vala tossed a few gold coins his way and thought for a moment before added a golden necklace with a glistening blue stone to the pile. "Keep it, it no longer amuses me," she purred as she curled more comfortably in her bed. "Give it to one of your girls."
"My girls can get better on their own," John teased as he tucked the jewel into his boot.
"Maybe you can use it to entice a poppet of your own," she drank slowly from a flask of liquor and laughed when he kissed the residue of it off her lips.
Stealing the flask, John took a long drink and grinned. "Just why would I want one of those?"
There was blood on the flagstones outside of his home and John's good mood collapsed as soon as he saw it. He stopped whistling and searched the stones nearby with his eyes. The blood came from the right, and only his people used this door. He tried to remember who would be coming from that way. Lorne had an engagement with a gentleman, but that had been in house. Kate and Laura both had engagements that took them out of house, but neither of them should have any trouble.
Depending on the injury, he'd have to risk contacting Carson and begging for help. The little Scottish doctor would come, but the more contact they had with Ba'al's house the more suspicions they made themselves. John turned his key in the door quickly and shoved his way in. The front lights were low, Chuck had already closed up for visitors so things had to be rough. There was still blood on the floor, but less of it than outside.
John knelt and touched it with two fingers. It was still wet, but only barely. Hurrying after the trail, he found his house crowded around a table. Over Chuck's shoulder, John saw the blue satin of the skirt Laura was wearing when he'd left that morning. There was blood on the fabric. Laura was one of his, had been since she was barely more than a child.
He slipped around the edge and the others to stand behind her head. Kate was holding her head and she looked concerned. Laura's color was off, and her lips are bluish. The blood was all coming from a wound in her chest, but it seemed to be slowing. Evan had his hands over it and they were solid.
"I think it's her lung," Evan offered calmly. "There was blood on her lips and I can't hear anything on the right side of her chest." The cloth beneath his hands is soaked with blood, but none of it seems to be fresh. "She's in and out."
"She came back late from her engagement," Chuck started to explain as he turned the poker in the fire, sending up sparks as he got ready to cauterize the wound. John touched his shoulder and shook his head. This was more than they could handle. He'd seen men die from pistol shot in their lungs before and the last thing they did was cough up frothy blood before they drowned. It wasn't something he intended to watch.
"Are you going try to for Doctor Beckett?" Kate asked as she slipped silently behind John. "Vala might be able to help us."
Running his hand through his unruly hair, John shook his head. Too much contact with Vala was one thing. If Ba'al's personal physician had a house call to the bad part of town, and Ba'al didn't execute him for it, Ba'al's position would be in danger. They couldn't risk that. Hundreds of lives and years of planning relied on keeping Ba'al where he was as governor of Cheyenne. Anything that shook up the fragile balance of power in the Egyptian Empire would make things harder for everyone who mattered.
"Can't risk it," John sighed heavily and brushed Laura's red hair away from the blood drying on her shoulder. "Even for Laura." He wracked his mind; letting her die wasn't an option either. "I might have to go for Janet."
Kate's sharp intake of breath suggested that she thought the idea was as crazy as he did. "How would you?"
"Let myself be captured?" John thought aloud as he tried to come up with a probable way he could mix with the likes of Jack O'Neill's crew. Pirates had a bad reputation, worse than even common prostitutes, and anyone belonging to Jack was a step lower than normal pirates. They were outlaws, renegades and only survived in Cheyenne because they were possibly more deadly than Ba'al's officers. "Sneak her out somehow?"
"He'd never let you go," Kate reminded him as she pulled him back from the group. "You'd be leaving us to fend for ourselves, forcing Evan to pick up your contracts--" Leaning closer as a hint of a smile touched her lips, she purred. "He's not ready for Vala."
Smiling weakly at her attempt at humor, John put his hand on her shoulder and tried to imagine Evan leading the house. It was understood that he'd assume the responsibility someday but it might just be too early to force him to take over.
"I was engaged by a doctor yesterday," Evan volunteered suddenly
ing John's thoughts. "His name is Simon Wallace, he's staying at an inn by the docks. The Golden Dog I think."
"Do you trust him?" John asked simply and watched as Evan's eyes flashed through something he was keeping hidden. Anyone who wasn't John wouldn't have seen the moment of hesitation, but John knew his man.
"He has his own secrets," Evan offered as his face solidified. "He'll be trustworthy."
"Will he come for you?" Kate asked practically. John heard the lilt return to her voice and realized she was starting to hope.
"He'll come," Evan answered as he traded his hands for Chuck's and moved to clean himself up. "He seemed a good man."
"Hurry," Kate warned as Evan started to run up the stairs. Evan stopped for a moment, meting her eyes long enough to promise her he knew how serious the situation was.
"I always have impeccable timing," he teased but there was some truth in his voice. John sank into a chair and let Chuck keep Laura's wounds covered. Kate spent a moment saying goodbye to Evan before she returned to his side.
"Aiden did this," Kate began slowly trusting him not to need her to cloak it. She sank to the floor next to him and dropped her chin to his knee. Aiden's departure had hurt them all, but Kate had taken it personally. The last time anyone had seen him, she'd spoken to him alone and come back with the simple truth that he was beyond redemption.
John hadn't killed him. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd brought Aiden out of stealing and fighting for scraps in the gutters and tried to teach him that there was a better way. He thought he'd gotten through and taken Aiden in to the trusted parts of the house.
Then he'd fallen in with the Lucians, their drugs and the enough opium to forget he'd been a whore. Running drugs seemed better, less mess and more like he was doing something.
"I couldn't tell him," John reminded her as he ran his hand through her wavy blonde hair. "He wasn't ready to know, and I still don't believe that would have kept him here."
"Sometimes nothing can," Kate sighed and remained be his side. He let his hand stay on the back of her neck and tried to remember when he'd had hope in the world. When he was young the world still had hope to have, he reminded himself. The Egyptian Empire was still far in the east and he'd joined the Navy as a youth to find a new world.
Instead of riches and new horizons, he'd found a military that conquered without room for thought. The Egyptians preached new dogma, that Osiris was the god-king and no other could stand in his place. Isis was subservient to her god, and slowly other men began to see that women should be as the queen. Students like Kate were removed from universities, women who had been doctors and sailors were suddenly housewives. Hundreds of years of change and struggle was undone in a manner of years and John found himself ashore in a world he wanted no part of.
Maybe Jack and his kin had it right. No respect for anything but gold and drink. It was certainly getting harder all the time to make an honest living. No soldier had intervened to stop Aiden from stabbing Laura and leaving her to die in the gutter. No soldiers had been spared to see why blood led to the trail of John's house. No one inside was Jaffa, and without one of the sacred believers, Ba'al's men were not motivated to keep the peace. Lucians fighting ordinary folk was like squabbling children until one of the Jaffa got involved.
"Where are we going?" Kate asked softly, turning her head down to his boot and not expecting his answer. "What is this, all of this, going to be worth?"
John surprised himself by kissing her forehead. "Everything," he promised as he reminded himself to believe. "That's why we hope."
Elizabeth was reading her way through one of Simon's books on anatomy and trying not to imagine the stench of the cadavers he'd practiced on when he was training. She forced herself to draw the winding of the brachial artery and memorized the nerves that ran along it. She wasn't required to know it, but that was what made it so fascinating. She pushed her dishes from her supper aside and nodded when the server gave her another glass of wine.
After her journey, the waiting was nearly more exhausting. Elizabeth liked the freedom of the sea and being on land again was like giving up her wings. She finished the cup of wine and waved for another. The hotel was empty enough, she could drink herself into a stupor and remember when she'd had better things to look forward too than Simon. If her contact showed up while she was drunk, she had a feeling he was the type of man who'd see that as a bonus.
The server filled her glass and started to stare over by the desk. Craning her head to see who the girl was staring at, Elizabeth was pleasantly surprised to see Evan charming the desk clerk into letting him in.
He headed for her table with purpose, surprising her as he tossed an arm around her shoulders and started to hug her. "I should have known a rascal like you would have found the prettiest girl in the docks to eat with," Evan teased as he winked at the server. Elizabeth watched in amusement as the girl blushed and backed away.
He kept his arms around her shoulders and dropped his mouth just next to her ear. "I need you to help a friend of mine, and I need you to come now," he whispered without losing his smile. "We will pay able to pay you, if necessary. The master of my house is a good man and a powerful ally, you would do well to make a friend of him."
"Will I do poorly as his enemy?" Elizabeth asked through her teeth, testing Evan's response as she tried to keep her expression friendly.
"A friend of mine will die without your help," Evan explained softly and Elizabeth was filled with a rush of sympathy. "But no one, including myself, will think ill of you. The world is a difficult place and we all have to keep ourselves above water."
Elizabeth wiped her mouth and left her napkin and a few coins on the table. "My things are in my room," she whispered as Evan winked at the girl again. Evan started a conversation about nothing and she nodded along as they headed upstairs. Evan was out of his uniform, visiting her as a nobleman would visit a counterpart. When they were shut in her room, Elizabeth grabbed her bag and turned on him.
"Are you going to blackmail me?" she demanded as she felt through the leather for hte knife within. "Is this what this is?"
"My friend will die without your help," Evan offered again as he held his hands level and empty. "Who you are, and what you're hiding mean nothing to me or the master of my house. I need you to trust me and save her life."
"Who is she?" Elizabeth asked as she released the handle of the knife and reached for her coat.
"Laura," Evan explained softly smiling gratefully as she got her hat and prepared to leave. "The one who thought you had a baby face."
Though she tried not to show her concern, Elizabeth knew he could see it in her eyes. "What happened?"
"She had a run in with the Lucians," Evan explained as he opened the door and led her downstairs. "John thinks she has a collapsed lung and she is lucky to be alive."
"John?" Elizabeth asked softly as they slipped out into the darkened street. She didn't remember hearing that name, but it felt like it should mean something to her.
Evan kept a step ahead of her, leading her through dark alleys she wouldn't have dared on her own. "John is the master of my house now. I met him many years ago when I was recruited into the flock." he let her walk in the puddles on the street and didn't keep her from walking into the other men on the street.
Elizabeth appreciated his attention to detail and that he was making no effort to treat her as woman. "How old were you?"
"Fourteen," Evan explained with a tiny smile. "My parents died of cholera when I was a child. I was getting ready to join the Egyptian Navy when I met John and Cameron. They took me out for drinks one night and brought me here. It's been my home ever since." He smiled at touched her shoulder and Elizabeth wondered if she'd let her concern show in her eyes. "It's not a bad life."
"I suppose not," Elizabeth murmured as they slipped behind a street vendor and in through a dark recess to the back door of the house. "I haven't--" she stopped Evan for a moment. "I haven't been formally trained as a doctor."
"I didn't think you had been," Evan whispered back paitently. "We know three doctors in Cheyenne, calling one would get John killed, contacting the other would put John into hiding indefinitely," he paused and grinned as he dug for his key in his coat. "Can you save a punctured lung?"
"I'll do my best," Elizabeth replied as she felt her hands start to sweat. She'd done it before, for men on ships who trusted her to save their lives. Evan was the first person in a long time who knew what she really was and that made something stir forgotten in the pit of her stomach.
"I thought you would," Evan finished as he ushered her into the house.
He led her quickly through a dark, curtained hallway and into the dining room. The red head, Laura, was stretched out on the table. A blonde woman was moving towels and laying out scraps of fabric. There was steam on the stove as well, and the man from the front, Chuck, was standing in front of the fire.
"This is Doctor Wallace," Evan announced as he removed her coat. Elizabeth nodded to the others quickly, but the voice behind her startled her.
"We're putting a lot of faith in you," the deeper voice began behind her. "Laura is dear to all of us."
When she turned, she saw him as if he was a ghost. He was wearing all black and standing behind her in the darkened doorway. His hazel eyes were carefully guarded, but there were secrets there greater than hers. His dark hair was pulled back, but the edges of it were ruefully trying to escape. Even in crisis, his lips were threatening to smile. It was fairly disarming.
"I'll do what I can," she offered as she set down her bag. Picking out what she thought she'd need, Elizabeth dropped all the gleaming metal into the boiling pot of water. Laura was still unconscious, and her pulse was thready as she touched her neck. The neck and slipped over her collarbone and slammed hard into her ribs just above the fleshy part of her breast.
"I need to remove her dress," elizabeth warned careful to keep the pretense that she was a man and she wasn't intimately acquainted with breasts of her own.
"I've got it," the dark man answered without introducing himself. He had to be John, Elizabeth realized when he stepped into the light. He was taller than Evan, and slight wthin his black linen shirt. While Evan's hair was long and richly beautiful, it seemed John's was wishing to escape the confines of the strap that held it. There was stubble on his face and strong lines around his eyes. As he tore Laura's dress free from her chest, he slid it down carefully, as gentle as if she were a child.
He had beautiful hands; fingers that were delicate for a man's and fine, dark hair on his arms. Elizabeth felt her lip twitch and she forced the unnatural sensation away. She was not allowed to feel anything for him. It was his job to turn her stomach to butterflies and sound like he knew everything about her.
Blood was rank in the air as she peeled the dressing from Laura's shoulder. His hands helped clean the blood from Laura's pale skin and he was a steady presence behind her. "What do you need?"
Elizabeth touched the edges of the wound, feeling the heat of the damaged flesh beneath her hands. The fourth rib was broken, and that sharp end had collapsed the lung. Laura was bleeding into her chest, strangling her lung and heart in the process. "I need a tube, a pen, a piece of metal, something--"
John nodded his head towards Evan and the other man hurried to obey.
"Scalpel," she requested as she found the best point of entry. If she cut along the broken rib, she could keep the scar from marring Laura's breast. It was a small concession but it was something she'd want a physician to take with her own body.
John only had to look at Chuck, then the younger man dumped out the tools on into the sink and pulled the scalpel from the steaming water. John placed it gently into her hand.
"I need rum or some other strong alcohol, the stronger the better," Elizabeth asked as she studied the line of Laura's rib again. Her chest was too stiff and the entire left side didn't move when the woman struggled to breathe. Aside from the blood, there was too much air and she had to deal with that first.
Kate brought the alcohol and Elizabeth poured it over her hands, than John's and finally Laura's pale skin. When Evan returned with what seemed to be part of an extravagantly delicate flute, she soaked that as well.
Making a tiny cut to the side of the gash, Elizabeth jammed the metal tube into Laura's chest as hard as she could. She lowered her head and listened to the slickness of metal against flesh until she broke into the cavity with a hiss of blood-dampened air. Laura moaned slightly in her sleep and Kate went to her head. John's hands went to her shoulders, prepared to hold her down.
Giving her chest a few moments to air out, Elizabeth felt the broken rib again. The edges were ragged through the flesh and fresh blood welled up bright whenever she pressed near it. Her neck was starting to ache from the angle, but she needed to keep working. Cutting through the skin was easy enough, but the muscle below was tougher. Biting her lip helped her concentrate as she worked her way down to the bone.
John's hand wiped sweat from the back of her neck as he watched her work out the stubborn ends of the bone. Elizabeth barely felt it and couldn't tell what he was doing until she caught his eyes on her. He was still watching, acutely aware of everything she was doing. She wasn't used to that. Her hand slipped over the bone when she hit a artery and blood sprayed up across her face.The sharp bone must have nicked into the blood vessel, and she'd disturbed it with her fingers. Laura's blood was hot and sticky on her cheek and chin; some of it was even in her eyelashes, making it hard to blink.
Strong fingers closed over hers and over the artery as she caught her breath in surprise. Biting her lip kept her from making a sound in surprise that would have given her away. John held the bone steady and let her work her way in towards the artery. Elizabeth couldn't see for a moment, than Evan moved the lantern. Her fingers ached as she tried to tease out the tiny stitches she needed to close the artery.
Her shoulders were starting to sting. Someone, Evan, changed the lantern as she tried to repair the exceedingly fragile lung tissue. It felt like bread dough under her fingers; tiny threads that needed to be sewn back together and held fast. John's head was near her ear and when Elizabeth's senses expanded to the point that she allowed herself to hear anything but the insistent beat of her patient's heart, she could hear him breathing. He was so close she could hear him breathing--
Elizabeth had to focus. Her hands weren't strong enough to force the rib back into the neat sheath of muscle that sines that held it in place.
"Can you?" she asked him as she removed her hands and guided his in instead. John was patient, but she couldn't help wondering if he'd notice the difference in their hands He nodded and let her tuck his fingers around the rib.
"Pull it up and hold it while I suture," Elizabeth requested firmly, shaking the blood from her hands and taking another needle. "After that I think we're all right."
John snapped the rib back into place with a grunt. Laura mercifully remained unconscious through it. Elizabeth was starting to be concerned that the blood loss might be more severe than she thought, but she could do little to help her except repair the damage and wait. Working around his strong fingers, she tried not to notice when she touched him. Her hands were tiny and delicate next to his and there was no escaping it. Even wrist deep in blood, he'd know she was a woman.
She took a moment to stretch her hands before she set to work repairing the skin. If she kept the stitches small, there was a chance the scar wouldn't be horrible. John stayed with her, brushed against her side as he put his hands down firmly on Laura's chest. Elizabeth caught him biting his lip as the only side that the rankness of blood bothered him at all. Her eyes hurt from the strain. Her fingers were nearly numb from stitching, and her throat was dry.
She had just finished when the smoke from the lantern and the stench of blood finally overwhelmed her. The coughing fit was decidedly undignified, but she couldn't help it. Her throat burned as Elizabeth turned away and John ordered Kate and Evan to wrap Laura's chest. When she finally caught her breath, John was standing behind her at the sink. He washed his hands in the cold water and then poured fresh for her.
"You're very thorough," he murmured behind her head, startling her as he took her hands into his. Elizabeth fought the motion for a moment, then let him take over whne he started to chuckle. "I wouldn't have known, except for your knuckles," he explained as he ran his hands over hers and found the rough spots she'd worked hard to maintain. "No amount of deck scars could masculinize these."
"You won't?" she begged with a higher lilt in her voice than she usually allowed.
"Tell me your real name," he countered and there was hope in his face. Something beyond professional had aroused him and Elizabeth didn't know what to do with it. Evan had been one kind of overwhelming, but this was something else. This was the inability to breath properly and she wasn't sure she'd even had that before.
"Elizabeth," she gave in finally as her voice caught in her throat.
Leaning closer, terribly, viciously close, John cleaned blood from her face with cold water and a piece of cloth. Elizabeth had forgotten the blood was there. Her eyelashes were sticky and it was drying in her hair. No wonder she stank of blood, she realized as she stared at her clothes. She couldn't go back to the inn like this. She couldn't even go outside like this.
"John Sheppard," he offered lazily kissing the side of her neck. It was almost dirty, but he had taken great care to find clean skin. "Let me get you cleaned up," his offered with an outstretched hand.
Elizabeth could have said no. She could have come up with a story and snuck back to the hotel, but instead she put the palm of her hand into his. "All right," she agreed as her heart beat uncomfortably in her throat.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 10:26 pm (UTC)*gasp* I wanna have more now, that's soo evil of you to end here. *runs in circles* Gets all mushy! *ggg*
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I love the whole atmosphere of the story. WOW!
I hope you won't torture us so long?!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 10:46 pm (UTC)they're working on getting together. ;) it's a fun place to play.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 01:37 am (UTC)What time period is this set?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 01:42 am (UTC)And thank you!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 03:51 pm (UTC)*ducks and works on fic*
there actually is a lot of it because I did it for nanowrimo, which I did end up winning. it's just messy and needs work.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-07 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 02:34 am (UTC)Katherine
Date: 2008-03-17 10:39 pm (UTC)