The Wraith Queen by zooropa
Author's Notes:
In which we learn what really goes through Sheppard's mind when faced with a Wraith Queen.
The mental onslaught is sudden and brutal.
Fight the battles you can win. Why resist something as meaningless as kneeling if it means saving your strength to mount a mental defense?
Each Queen’s approach is different, he’s found. Some merely seek to crush the will quickly. Others enjoy toying with their prey. The ones that attempt to seduce may be the most frightening of all.
The Wraith can make you see things that aren’t there.
A Queen can make you say things you don’t want to say.
Feel things you don’t want to feel.
Think about things that scare the crap out of you.
Like clowns. Stephen King’s “It.” John Wayne Gacy. Ronald McDonald. And the most terrifying of all : Bozo.
It’s his own anti-interrogation tactic that works just as well against Wraith as it does against Taliban.
An argument can be made in favor of The Litany Against Fear — if you can remember all the damn words while an unescapable pressure bears down on your mind like so many tons of ocean.
Approaching the breaking point, flippancy becomes indespensible. Place an inconsequential truth between two lies. Blurt out bullshit nonsense instead of useful, verifiable information.
The worst part, ironically, is the touch. The back of the fingers caressing the line from his temple to his jaw. First cold, then heat, physical contact implying compassion in contrast to the psychic assault. Pleasure and pain. Desire and dread. Relief and revulsion.
Her voice echoes in his ears and through his mind, touching off chords of despair and longing with promises of comfort and release, power and elevation.
A certain sense of self-loathing comes in handy at this point.
The most powerful minds were unafraid to show you glimpses of their terrible beauty. God help him if one of them figures out the complexities of human desire.
‘Get up, John.’
Pushing back only saps one’s strength. Evasion is the key : bait and switch. Get her to chase her own tail.
‘John, fight.’ He gets one foot beneath him. The air is crushed out of his lungs.
‘Fight her, John.’
He looks up through a blood red veil of rage and unsheaths his knife.
‘Go, John. Get up.’
He pushes off the floor, stumbles forward a step and plunges the knife into the Queen’s heart. She raises her feeding hand. He twists the knife with the last of his anger and collapses beside her on his hands and knees.
“Sheppard!” His hand meets Ronon’s sword in the air. The weight and gravity of it do the work as he guides the blade to cleave her neck, decapitating her.
“That,” he gasps, “will definitely kill you.” He underhands the sword back to Ronon to finish off the last drone soldier. Losing consciousness, his body hits the floor.
He wakes up in the back of the jumper to discover his plan has gone as well as he’d hoped. The Queen is dead with all the Wraith who witnessed her demise cut down before they could convey those images to others in the hive. With her ship destroyed, the other hives don’t know a Queen has been assassinated by a ‘mere human.’
The shockwave from the explosion rocks the jumper as Rodney concentrates on stablising the jumper’s approach to the gate. John’s eyes roll back to look toward the cockpit, “I gotta get up there.” Teyla places her hand in the center of his chest, “Stay. You’re in no condition to fly.”
Hearing Ronon dialing the gate, John mumbles, “You may be right,” and passes out again.
Fight the battles you can win. Why resist something as meaningless as kneeling if it means saving your strength to mount a mental defense?
Each Queen’s approach is different, he’s found. Some merely seek to crush the will quickly. Others enjoy toying with their prey. The ones that attempt to seduce may be the most frightening of all.
The Wraith can make you see things that aren’t there.
A Queen can make you say things you don’t want to say.
Feel things you don’t want to feel.
Think about things that scare the crap out of you.
Like clowns. Stephen King’s “It.” John Wayne Gacy. Ronald McDonald. And the most terrifying of all : Bozo.
It’s his own anti-interrogation tactic that works just as well against Wraith as it does against Taliban.
An argument can be made in favor of The Litany Against Fear — if you can remember all the damn words while an unescapable pressure bears down on your mind like so many tons of ocean.
Approaching the breaking point, flippancy becomes indespensible. Place an inconsequential truth between two lies. Blurt out bullshit nonsense instead of useful, verifiable information.
The worst part, ironically, is the touch. The back of the fingers caressing the line from his temple to his jaw. First cold, then heat, physical contact implying compassion in contrast to the psychic assault. Pleasure and pain. Desire and dread. Relief and revulsion.
Her voice echoes in his ears and through his mind, touching off chords of despair and longing with promises of comfort and release, power and elevation.
A certain sense of self-loathing comes in handy at this point.
The most powerful minds were unafraid to show you glimpses of their terrible beauty. God help him if one of them figures out the complexities of human desire.
‘Get up, John.’
Pushing back only saps one’s strength. Evasion is the key : bait and switch. Get her to chase her own tail.
‘John, fight.’ He gets one foot beneath him. The air is crushed out of his lungs.
‘Fight her, John.’
He looks up through a blood red veil of rage and unsheaths his knife.
‘Go, John. Get up.’
He pushes off the floor, stumbles forward a step and plunges the knife into the Queen’s heart. She raises her feeding hand. He twists the knife with the last of his anger and collapses beside her on his hands and knees.
“Sheppard!” His hand meets Ronon’s sword in the air. The weight and gravity of it do the work as he guides the blade to cleave her neck, decapitating her.
“That,” he gasps, “will definitely kill you.” He underhands the sword back to Ronon to finish off the last drone soldier. Losing consciousness, his body hits the floor.
He wakes up in the back of the jumper to discover his plan has gone as well as he’d hoped. The Queen is dead with all the Wraith who witnessed her demise cut down before they could convey those images to others in the hive. With her ship destroyed, the other hives don’t know a Queen has been assassinated by a ‘mere human.’
The shockwave from the explosion rocks the jumper as Rodney concentrates on stablising the jumper’s approach to the gate. John’s eyes roll back to look toward the cockpit, “I gotta get up there.” Teyla places her hand in the center of his chest, “Stay. You’re in no condition to fly.”
Hearing Ronon dialing the gate, John mumbles, “You may be right,” and passes out again.