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TITLE: Yield
SUMMARY: They will never break him. To yield means to give in; to give in means to give up. John won't give up.
CATEGORY: angst, drama
CHARACTERS: Sheppard, Teyla
RATING: R
WARNINGS: non-consensual sex, sex scenes
CHALLENGE: An entry for the John&Teyla![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanfic100, keyword #071 - 'broken'. The whole table can be found here
NOTES: Frankly, I'm extremely interested to see who'll read/comment on this given the pairing and the warnings - most will likely avoid it like the plague.
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
allisnow who introduced me to the catchphrase of the story, and with many thanks to dzurlady who rocketh muchly as a beta.
Yield
They will never break him.
He repeats the words to himself as another woman runs her painted nails down his cheek and over his bare shoulder. Her touch is delicate, almost sensuous, but it takes all his self-control not to shudder.
The teasing is deliberate, a cruelty they save specifically for him. The other men are slapped around, a sweet viciousness that they delight in, but they save gentleness specifically for him.
And he will never yield.
To yield means to give in; to give in means to give up. John won't give up.
Time doesn't mean a lot here. Days of hatred. Days of despair. He hasn't given up counting, but it's been almost two months. At night he wonders if they've given up looking for him, if he's been left behind, written off, forgotten.
They wouldn't.
He needs to believe that. It's his lifeline and the only thing that keeps him sane. Elizabeth wouldn't. Rodney wouldn't. Teyla wouldn't. Ronon wouldn't. His people wouldn't leave him behind.
Would they?
The question echoes in the darkness and the morning brings no certainties.
--
"They're not coming for you."
He glances up, meets the tired expression of one of his cell-mates here. Toren has been in and out of here since the day John arrived. He knows what John is waiting for. He thinks it's hopeless.
John won't let himself think that.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he says. The words grind in his throat, choking him on ash and dust for all that they're true. Toren doesn't know John's team: Teyla, Rodney, Ronon. Toren doesn't know of Atlantis: Elizabeth, Carson, Caldwell.
"You've been here two months," Toren reminds him. "You're public property until you give in to one of them."
It's the rule here. Slaves are public property until such a time as they yield to their preferred owner. It's a choice, but not much of one to John's mind.
And because he won't yield, because he doesn't dare give in to any one of these women, he's the village bicycle. Every woman's had a ride. Drug him up, tie him down, take him any way they want.
Two fucking months. Or two months fucking.
Steel or not, he's not sure how much more he can take.
"I won't," he says. "I'm not--" He wants to say 'weak' but that would insult the only friendly person in these walls.
Still, Toren knows what he means. The other man shrugs. "That which yields is not always weak."
--
John would kill to be out of here.
He tried killing a woman once. Had his chains around her neck for the briefest of moments, felt the surge of satisfaction as his fingers clenched - then he got a chop to the throat that left him gasping for an hour. He also got five lashes from a bullwhip in punishment.
They know the male body in exquisite detail. How to hurt, how to cause pain. And even John Sheppard has his limits.
When he gave his team time to get back to the Stargate, he didn't expect this. Death, yes; living hell, no.
"It's not that bad," Toren says in the bathing room.
John points out the welts on Toren's back. "That's not bad?"
"Not compared to what you're doing," the other man says. "I know you don't believe me, but these friends of yours will never find you. The slave traders go through a dozen planets before they come here. And even if your friends found you here, what could they do?"
For some reason, his mind casts up Teyla shooting her P-90 with a sniper's calm precision, Rodney blowing up a solar system, Ronon running from the Wraith and fighting them back at every step.
Privately, John thinks they could do a lot.
--
Veils flutter down around the four-poster, misty-white. John can hear people moving about in the room beyond, but the only thing that fills his vision is the woman who sits on the bed beside him, silver-blonde and stunning, her hands moving across his skin in lazy patterns.
Her voice is rich and full as she asks, "Will you yield?"
Even through the drug they gave him, he knows his answer. "Fuck off."
She takes him at his word.
He hisses at the sensations that crawl though him as she climbs on him and begins to move. The instincts of his body say that this is pleasure, but his mind rejects it as pain. Welcome and unwelcome, loved and loathed, he doesn't want to think about what this is doing to him psychologically.
Thought is shattered, senses are brutalised, patterns are reformed, and John Sheppard no longer exists as he was. There's a core of him that remains untouched – that he clings to, but the rest of him shifts and roils, broken, battered.
Heitmeyer will have a field day if-- when he gets back.
If he can stand to look another woman in the eyes ever again.
Elizabeth, Heitmeyer, Cadman, the enlisted women, the female scientists and medical personnel... If they knew what he'd done, what he was doing, what was being done to him...
He closes his eyes and tries to shut off his mind. He should be used to this by now. But every time is a new shame.
--
When one is finished, another one comes in to use him. He's used without mercy, without kindness, without any personal consideration.
And each time, the woman asks, "Will you yield?"
The answer is always the same.
The dark-haired one is the worst. Possibly because she reminds him a bit of Elizabeth, possibly because she has a talent for cruelty.
Greenish eyes look into his, brush back his hair, trace his face. "I'd be good to you," she says as she strokes her fingers down his body.
It's a measure of how far gone in the drug he is that he's tempted to say yes.
And even in the agony of self-hate, in the disgust of his body's reactions, unprompted, unwilling, but oh-so-eager, John knows he'd have any woman who wouldn't treat him like a plaything.
In moments like these, he thinks he'd have any woman who had a little kindness in her.
These women have none as they use him, take him, break him all the way down to the steel of his soul.
Again and again and again.
--
Later, scrubbing himself off with hands that shake, John remembers Teyla.
In the litany of women he would never be able to look in the eye again, he forgot Teyla.
Maybe it's because she's his team-mate and falls in a different category to the others. He tries not to think of her as a woman. Most of the time, he succeeds.
Maybe it's because she was born in this galaxy and was bred on survival. She knows what can happen - what must be endured to live - and he remembers the fighting spirit that he trusted to watch his back and keep everything together.
Maybe it's just because she's Teyla.
Ronon rarely speaks of the seven years he spent running from the Wraith. In a way, he doesn't need to - it's all there in his hatred of the Wraith, in the way he trains, the way he moves, his instincts. But the women of Atlantis are wary of him. They admire him, they eye him, they'd like to approach him, but he scares them.
He doesn't scare Teyla.
As the water burnishes his skin red with the heat, John wonders if he'll become like Ronon. A man to watch, to admire, to want, but not to touch - a man who scares the women for what's been done to him.
John wonders if Teyla would be scared of him.
Or if he'll be terrified of her.
--
The small one corners him during the party.
She's pretty, but black hair, moonlight skin and a smattering of freckles don't make up for the fact that she takes every opportunity to tease him, driving him wild.
John wishes his body didn't remember her little kindnesses, her little cruelties. It would make resistance that much easier.
Every movement is exquisite, calculated to tease him. She knows he can see straight down the front of her dress. And she knows that even being out here, being molested, is better than being inside right now, with the covetous eye of nearly fifty women waiting for him to yield.
It's a game to them. It's survival to him.
To yield is to give in, to give in is to give up, to give up would be weak. He won't yield.
There's a cough from the door. A servant - not a slave, but a servant - has appeared, and his eyes rest on the woman. "Lady..."
Her eyes narrow, but the fingernail that traces his lip has a sharp edge to it. A flick of her finger leaves a scratch in his mouth, and he stiffens with the effort of not lashing out. Not yet.
The curtains to the main room slither down behind her, cutting off the noise inside, but the servant hasn't left.
"What?" His voice is hard, scraping the edges of sanity.
The man regards him for a long moment, then speaks quietly and softly. "If you want your freedom, for the love of the ancestors, don't recognise her."
And with a ripple of curtains, he's gone.
--
For the love of the ancestors...
He hasn't heard of 'the ancestors' in all the time he's been here. The Wraith are a distant presence. These people soon realised that the Wraith would go for the easiest target - why chase your dinner further than you had to? This civilisation is about as far from the Stargate as the Arctic Circle is from Antarctica.
For the love of the ancestors...
Teyla's words, the first time he met her. Her people's words, over and over again. The words of so many cultures in the Pegasus galaxy - those that looked to Atlantis for a protection that would never come; the legend of the Ancients, passed down in oral tales until they grew thin with the wearing of time.
For the love of the ancestors...
Inside the house, the noises change, to surprise and interest and curiosity. A bubbling current swirls through those within, like a tide that catches and holds their interest.
John pauses at the curtains, torn between hope and fear. His fingers trace the velvet parting of the draperies. Hope is a beautiful and terrible thing, fragrant in the miasma of despair. His breath burns in his lungs, tinged with fear.
He draws the curtain back.
If you want your freedom, for the love of the ancestors, don't recognise her.
There's no way he wouldn't recognise her.
The most the servant's words did was give him warning.
--
Her dress trembles over her skin like a spill of water. It looks good on her, and John drags his mind away from that thought. He has other concerns.
"How's Atlantis?"
"We survive," she says. "We've been looking for you between skirmishes."
"What took you so long?" There's an edge to his words. Bitterness stings, like salt in his mouth, staining his tongue.
"You are not the only one who has been frustrated by the delay in finding you." Teyla says. She's calm, implacable, but there's an edge in her voice as well.
John doesn't care.
But he wishes she would look at him.
When she first saw him, her eyes slid across him as though he didn't exist. Even when he finally edged around to asking her for a dance, she wouldn't meet his eyes for more than a second - and the dismissal cuts deep.
She doesn't want to acknowledge what's been done to him. She doesn't want to acknowledge him.
He wishes he could ignore it. He doesn't get the luxury.
"I'm the one having his brains screwed out, here," he hisses.
Teyla lifts her face to hold his gaze then, and John can't look away. "We found you," she says. Her hand tightens a little on his shoulder. Warning or comfort? John doesn't know, but it helps.
"So," he asks, "What's the plan?"
They dance with the fluidity of long-time partners, a side-effect of sparring against each other. It's making an impression on the gathering. He can feel the eyes on him, sleekly covetous. He can see the eyes on her, bitterly jealous.
Her expression is as inscrutable as ever, and she doesn't say anything more than, "What do you think?"
"I can't walk out of here," he says. "I've tried."
"Then it will have to be done the usual way."
--
"There is no price on his head," says the silver-blonde. "All you have to do is claim him."
John stiffens as Teyla arches a brow. "Claim him?"
A murmur of astonishment runs through the crowd. After the night before, there are more than a few people nursing hangovers, and more than a few people nursing a growing dislike of Teyla. She came accompanied by two Athosians – a servant and a guard. They belong to her, she claims them with a brand, and neither is on the table. John is.
The dark-haired one leans back in her chair, the scarlet slash of her mouth curving at the corners with malicious amusement that echoes in her green eyes. "He must yield to you."
His head aches, his throat closes up, and the world is spinning with horror.
Will you yield?
They know he recognises Teyla from before. Somehow, they know he won't touch her, not that way – not after every woman in this place has screwed him nine ways to Sunday.
Their terms are simple: one more soul-shattering fuck. One more and he's free.
Just one.
He can't. The thought of fucking Teyla sends him into a cold sweat, makes him shake the way he does when they untie him after the drug.
He's been strong so far, but every man has his breaking point. Steel can splinter, shatter, crack. And if he breaks this time, there won't be enough of him to put back together afterwards.
--
"No." It's flat and final, and painful to say.
She's inside, attempting to negotiate a price she can actually pay.
He's out here, in the cold, with the two men Teyla brought along on this 'rescue mission' that's just taken a twist deep into John's own personal hell.
The first Athosian regards him with disbelief. John recognises him from visits to the mainland. Riyan is tall and muscular enough to give any marine pause before taking him on. "It's the easiest way."
"No."
"Teyla will do it." Riyan says mildly.
"I know she will," John snaps. His gut cramps at the thought and it's all he can do to breathe. "I won't."
"Why not? It's the only thing they recognise." The second man – the servant who warned him not to react - is a physical contrast to Riyan. Marak is small, slender and wiry, but no less deadly in a fight.
He knows why she didn't bring Rodney or Ronon. But he wishes they were here nevertheless. They'd understand. Teyla understands.
The Athosians don't.
"You can't walk out of here if they don't let you."
"And they won't let you until you surrender to Teyla."
Will you yield?
Riyan frowns. "She's not that terrible a bedmate." John sourly reflects that the Athosian would know. Riyan and Teyla have 'history'. Old history, if you believe the rumours, but history nevertheless. The dark eyes study John. "Unless you have a partner in Atlantis?"
He doesn't. But that isn't what holds him back.
"I can't!" There's no way to explain what he is, who he was, and how much of himself he's lost. They don't understand that it's not Teyla that's the problem - it's John.
Even to get out of here, he can't bring himself to yield.
--
Tonight, for the first time in weeks, he fights when they try to drug him.
He knows why they want him tonight - no great leap of understanding. They want him humiliated, spreadeagled on his back like the whore he is.
They fuck him one by one, everything from torturously slow, to fast and hard, and he clenches his fingers around the ties, grits his teeth, and shuts his eyes against the sight of them. So close to freedom, and yet so far away…
Material settles around the bed as the last woman leaves, and he concentrates on the rasp of his breathing, too loud in the cube of solitude that is his prison and his torture chamber.
The veil is lifted with a rustle of material.
It does not fall.
By the grace of the drug, his gaze is blurred when he opens his eyes. White and dark bleed and blur at the edges, but the woman who stands at the foot of the bed is perfectly clear to his sight.
Teyla looks at him with eyes that take in his state, used, abused, aroused, but whatever she feels is hidden.
Shame writhes through him, a worm eating his gut. It strips his pride down to the skin, leaving him without even the scraps of dignity. From a long-ago childhood, his mind digs up a fragment of a Sunday school story: And they saw that they were naked and were ashamed.
John bites back her name. An appeal, a curse, an acknowledgement of her presence...
The veil falls behind her as she turns away.
When the next woman climbs onto the bed, he's bitten through his lip.
--
John forces himself to breathe as he walks down the path to the garden where Teyla is practising her staves.
"Hey."
She doesn't look up from her exercises. "Last night did not need to happen."
"I can't." His voice is rough and it hurts to speak. Watching her produces an ache in his blood, in his bones. The life he lived when he was Colonel John Sheppard, commanding officer of Atlantis, seems so far away, a time and a place that seems so distant - too distant.
Wood whips through the air with careful precision. "I know," she says when she turns to face him again. Her gaze is dark and steady, without pity. "I am sorry I could not keep you from that."
There's more to her words than just last night.
"You made it home."
"We did. Rodney complained all the way..." Her head tilts a little to the side as a smile touches her mouth - sunrise in the grey dawn. "His convalescence was long."
"And nobody killed him?"
"Ronon threatened it. Elizabeth reined him in." She's solemn again, but gentle. "We missed you."
"Yeah, well..." He manages to make the words light. "Did they write me off as a bad debt?"
Her reply carries all the weight he couldn't voice. "We did not. None of us did." A gesture of her sticks encompasses the palace and the city surrounds. "We are here."
"I'd rather be somewhere else."
The look she gives him is earnest. "I would rather you were somewhere else," she says with all the gravity of a child. "But it is not so."
She returns to her exercises, unceasing in her drive. The staves whirl around her, their carved edges cutting through the air while John watches.
Maybe he forgot the lines of her in absence, the smooth movement and coiled strength, but she seems...exquisite. Bone china and forged steel, grace and elegance in unending motion, delicate as a violet and deadly as a viper, John is mesmerised by the conflicts that churn in his perceptions of her.
Something in his stomach roils, but not painful, just...distracting.
Teyla catches him watching as she turns, and takes his look for annoyance that they aren't doing anything yet.
Her voice is gentle as she reaches out and rests one hand lightly touches his arm. "We are looking at other options, Colonel."
So is he.
--
It's the afternoon when he walks into the room.
She stops in the middle of her conversation when he takes her hand and pulls her up. Her fingers are cool in his as she follows him through the people there, but her expression is puzzled.
Sweat beads on his skin, a warm mist, but he fixes his eyes ahead, even as he waits for her to pull back when she realises what he's going to do.
He can feel the tension in her when he bends to kiss her and slips his hand around her neck. If he's afraid she'll pull away from him, she's not so convinced about this course of action, either.
Don't think. Don't let her think.
The veils fall down around them as he draws her onto the bed, not quite closing out the world around them. And then he seduces her, inch by careful inch. Every kiss, every lick, every touch is his own choice, given freely.
It makes his breath short, fills his gut with terror, cramps his chest. But fear is not the only goad that works in his body.
Teyla can't quite bring herself to seize what he's offering, but she can respond to him. Response is enough to assure him that it's not rape. And John makes it easy for her.
His skin drags where it slips against hers. His mouth clings where it touches her body. His tongue tingles where it tastes her flesh. And slowly, she responds, her hands circling his shoulders, her leg crooking over his hip, her mouth opening to his. Desire is slow, but assured.
John is in control, but he yields to her wish.
Her comfort, her pleasure, her desire: the only thing that matters is Teyla.
He's doing this of his own choice, of his own free will, of his own need.
There may be hell to pay later - afterwards - but he's not thinking of that right now. He's thinking that she tastes salty and sweet and very, very hot, and if he scrapes his teeth along her flesh just so...
She arches into his mouth, crying out something that he can't hear.
Her body shudders beneath him, her hand convulses reflexively in his hair, and John's mouth curves in a smile.
I yield.
--
Beyond the veils, he can hear the mutters of the people in the room. He's just gone down on Teyla Emmagen of the Athosians in the middle of a room full of women, most of whom have fucked him blind.
Do you yield?
She didn't even ask him. She didn't need to.
That should scare him. A day ago the merest thought had every muscle frozen in terror. Now, it doesn't. He wonders if it should, then dismisses the thought.
Then she pushes him over onto his back and her mouth slides along his jaw.
John stills. He can't help it. His blood is pounding, his heartbeat is erratic, and the memories of lying on his back are too strong to be overcome. Two months isn't going to vanish overnight. But it's far too late to go back.
He's unbearably tense as her mouth slides down his throat. They played this game, too, getting him hard with easy sensuality before riding him without mercy.
Teyla teases him into desperate need, but doesn't straddle him. Instead, she slips onto the bed beside him, mouth and hands and body encouraging him to turn towards her. Her thigh slides up the outside of his thigh, crooking over his hip, and he can feel her pressing against him, encouraging his possession.
This isn't a taking, it's a giving. And John's the one on top this time.
Her head digs back into the pillows as he sheathes himself slowly. Breathe, John.
It's not like he hasn't had sex lately. But this is his own choice, his own free will, and a woman he cares about.
And Teyla yields to him. Her head arches back as her body receives his, supple flesh sheathing his hunger, and his mind casts up what Toren said days ago.
That which yields is not always weak.
--
In the end, they didn't break him.
John broke himself. The mould into which they forced him was shattered through his own actions and his trust of Teyla. Hunger, desire, affection, and the balance of faith, teetering on the needle-fine point of their friendship.
Things won't be the same again. Not least because of what was done to him, what he did to her, what she did to him. The awareness of her quivers all through his body as she leads him out to where the 'jumper is cloaked. Riyan and Marak accompany them, slipping out through the scrub.
She hasn't looked him in the eye since he lifted himself up on his elbows to push sweat-soaked hair from her face. Then, there was wonder, pleasure. Now, there's only guardedness.
Their team-mates are waiting for them in a field that lies half a day's hike out of town.
"Sheppard!" Rodney gapes at him. "God, what are you wearing?"
Ronon looks at Rodney with an expression of disbelief, then casually cuffs him on the back on the head.
"Ow!" Rodney glares at Ronon. "What was that for?"
The Satedan doesn't answer. He doesn't look any more civilised than he did when John left. "Sheppard."
"Ronon." It's all the acknowledgement that's needed between them right now. It's enough. John turns to Rodney. "I was hoping you'd learned tact while I was gone."
"Asking too much," Ronon comments with a slight smile.
"Wait until the next time you need rescuing," sneers the scientist, but without any real animosity.
He missed this. God, he missed this.
Teyla's already vanished inside to check that they have everything. John waits for her to come out again where once he would have followed to double-check everything over her shoulder. After a moment, she emerges. "We are ready to go, Rodney. Ronon."
The other men accept her authority and go into the ship, although not before Rodney hugs him, an uncharacteristic gesture. John is both touched and freaked by it and hopes Ronon doesn't also expect a hug.
One hand is thrust out and the wolfish smile glitters beneath the beard as they grip - hard enough to become a competition, long enough to convey wordless appreciation. On the whole, John prefers this 'welcome back'.
Then his team-mates are inside the jumper, while Marak and Riyan walk up the ramp at a look from Teyla.
And then it's just him and her.
--
Her stance is tense as she pauses at the bottom of the ramp, without her usual fluid grace.
"I am sorry it came to that."
How's he going to say this? "I'm not."
She flushes - the most delicate of pink casts to her dusky skin. "John--"
There'll be hell to pay. Sex doesn't make everything better. Heitmeyer will still have a field day. John isn't so sure he's not broken, but he thinks he's on the mend - he hopes he's on the mend.
It's something to worry about later.
John doesn't care if the guys can see him as he bends down to kiss her, silencing whatever protest she had. The fingers she wraps around his wrist conflict with the way her lips move against his. Her body remembers, even if she's not so eager.
John remembers and he is eager.
Strength in pliancy, authority in gentleness, dominance in surrender.
He yielded to her, but she yielded to him, too.
That which yields is not always weak.
- fin -
SUMMARY: They will never break him. To yield means to give in; to give in means to give up. John won't give up.
CATEGORY: angst, drama
CHARACTERS: Sheppard, Teyla
RATING: R
WARNINGS: non-consensual sex, sex scenes
CHALLENGE: An entry for the John&Teyla
fanfic100, keyword #071 - 'broken'. The whole table can be found hereNOTES: Frankly, I'm extremely interested to see who'll read/comment on this given the pairing and the warnings - most will likely avoid it like the plague.
For
allisnow who introduced me to the catchphrase of the story, and with many thanks to dzurlady who rocketh muchly as a beta.Yield
They will never break him.
He repeats the words to himself as another woman runs her painted nails down his cheek and over his bare shoulder. Her touch is delicate, almost sensuous, but it takes all his self-control not to shudder.
The teasing is deliberate, a cruelty they save specifically for him. The other men are slapped around, a sweet viciousness that they delight in, but they save gentleness specifically for him.
And he will never yield.
To yield means to give in; to give in means to give up. John won't give up.
Time doesn't mean a lot here. Days of hatred. Days of despair. He hasn't given up counting, but it's been almost two months. At night he wonders if they've given up looking for him, if he's been left behind, written off, forgotten.
They wouldn't.
He needs to believe that. It's his lifeline and the only thing that keeps him sane. Elizabeth wouldn't. Rodney wouldn't. Teyla wouldn't. Ronon wouldn't. His people wouldn't leave him behind.
Would they?
The question echoes in the darkness and the morning brings no certainties.
--
"They're not coming for you."
He glances up, meets the tired expression of one of his cell-mates here. Toren has been in and out of here since the day John arrived. He knows what John is waiting for. He thinks it's hopeless.
John won't let himself think that.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he says. The words grind in his throat, choking him on ash and dust for all that they're true. Toren doesn't know John's team: Teyla, Rodney, Ronon. Toren doesn't know of Atlantis: Elizabeth, Carson, Caldwell.
"You've been here two months," Toren reminds him. "You're public property until you give in to one of them."
It's the rule here. Slaves are public property until such a time as they yield to their preferred owner. It's a choice, but not much of one to John's mind.
And because he won't yield, because he doesn't dare give in to any one of these women, he's the village bicycle. Every woman's had a ride. Drug him up, tie him down, take him any way they want.
Two fucking months. Or two months fucking.
Steel or not, he's not sure how much more he can take.
"I won't," he says. "I'm not--" He wants to say 'weak' but that would insult the only friendly person in these walls.
Still, Toren knows what he means. The other man shrugs. "That which yields is not always weak."
--
John would kill to be out of here.
He tried killing a woman once. Had his chains around her neck for the briefest of moments, felt the surge of satisfaction as his fingers clenched - then he got a chop to the throat that left him gasping for an hour. He also got five lashes from a bullwhip in punishment.
They know the male body in exquisite detail. How to hurt, how to cause pain. And even John Sheppard has his limits.
When he gave his team time to get back to the Stargate, he didn't expect this. Death, yes; living hell, no.
"It's not that bad," Toren says in the bathing room.
John points out the welts on Toren's back. "That's not bad?"
"Not compared to what you're doing," the other man says. "I know you don't believe me, but these friends of yours will never find you. The slave traders go through a dozen planets before they come here. And even if your friends found you here, what could they do?"
For some reason, his mind casts up Teyla shooting her P-90 with a sniper's calm precision, Rodney blowing up a solar system, Ronon running from the Wraith and fighting them back at every step.
Privately, John thinks they could do a lot.
--
Veils flutter down around the four-poster, misty-white. John can hear people moving about in the room beyond, but the only thing that fills his vision is the woman who sits on the bed beside him, silver-blonde and stunning, her hands moving across his skin in lazy patterns.
Her voice is rich and full as she asks, "Will you yield?"
Even through the drug they gave him, he knows his answer. "Fuck off."
She takes him at his word.
He hisses at the sensations that crawl though him as she climbs on him and begins to move. The instincts of his body say that this is pleasure, but his mind rejects it as pain. Welcome and unwelcome, loved and loathed, he doesn't want to think about what this is doing to him psychologically.
Thought is shattered, senses are brutalised, patterns are reformed, and John Sheppard no longer exists as he was. There's a core of him that remains untouched – that he clings to, but the rest of him shifts and roils, broken, battered.
Heitmeyer will have a field day if-- when he gets back.
If he can stand to look another woman in the eyes ever again.
Elizabeth, Heitmeyer, Cadman, the enlisted women, the female scientists and medical personnel... If they knew what he'd done, what he was doing, what was being done to him...
He closes his eyes and tries to shut off his mind. He should be used to this by now. But every time is a new shame.
--
When one is finished, another one comes in to use him. He's used without mercy, without kindness, without any personal consideration.
And each time, the woman asks, "Will you yield?"
The answer is always the same.
The dark-haired one is the worst. Possibly because she reminds him a bit of Elizabeth, possibly because she has a talent for cruelty.
Greenish eyes look into his, brush back his hair, trace his face. "I'd be good to you," she says as she strokes her fingers down his body.
It's a measure of how far gone in the drug he is that he's tempted to say yes.
And even in the agony of self-hate, in the disgust of his body's reactions, unprompted, unwilling, but oh-so-eager, John knows he'd have any woman who wouldn't treat him like a plaything.
In moments like these, he thinks he'd have any woman who had a little kindness in her.
These women have none as they use him, take him, break him all the way down to the steel of his soul.
Again and again and again.
--
Later, scrubbing himself off with hands that shake, John remembers Teyla.
In the litany of women he would never be able to look in the eye again, he forgot Teyla.
Maybe it's because she's his team-mate and falls in a different category to the others. He tries not to think of her as a woman. Most of the time, he succeeds.
Maybe it's because she was born in this galaxy and was bred on survival. She knows what can happen - what must be endured to live - and he remembers the fighting spirit that he trusted to watch his back and keep everything together.
Maybe it's just because she's Teyla.
Ronon rarely speaks of the seven years he spent running from the Wraith. In a way, he doesn't need to - it's all there in his hatred of the Wraith, in the way he trains, the way he moves, his instincts. But the women of Atlantis are wary of him. They admire him, they eye him, they'd like to approach him, but he scares them.
He doesn't scare Teyla.
As the water burnishes his skin red with the heat, John wonders if he'll become like Ronon. A man to watch, to admire, to want, but not to touch - a man who scares the women for what's been done to him.
John wonders if Teyla would be scared of him.
Or if he'll be terrified of her.
--
The small one corners him during the party.
She's pretty, but black hair, moonlight skin and a smattering of freckles don't make up for the fact that she takes every opportunity to tease him, driving him wild.
John wishes his body didn't remember her little kindnesses, her little cruelties. It would make resistance that much easier.
Every movement is exquisite, calculated to tease him. She knows he can see straight down the front of her dress. And she knows that even being out here, being molested, is better than being inside right now, with the covetous eye of nearly fifty women waiting for him to yield.
It's a game to them. It's survival to him.
To yield is to give in, to give in is to give up, to give up would be weak. He won't yield.
There's a cough from the door. A servant - not a slave, but a servant - has appeared, and his eyes rest on the woman. "Lady..."
Her eyes narrow, but the fingernail that traces his lip has a sharp edge to it. A flick of her finger leaves a scratch in his mouth, and he stiffens with the effort of not lashing out. Not yet.
The curtains to the main room slither down behind her, cutting off the noise inside, but the servant hasn't left.
"What?" His voice is hard, scraping the edges of sanity.
The man regards him for a long moment, then speaks quietly and softly. "If you want your freedom, for the love of the ancestors, don't recognise her."
And with a ripple of curtains, he's gone.
--
For the love of the ancestors...
He hasn't heard of 'the ancestors' in all the time he's been here. The Wraith are a distant presence. These people soon realised that the Wraith would go for the easiest target - why chase your dinner further than you had to? This civilisation is about as far from the Stargate as the Arctic Circle is from Antarctica.
For the love of the ancestors...
Teyla's words, the first time he met her. Her people's words, over and over again. The words of so many cultures in the Pegasus galaxy - those that looked to Atlantis for a protection that would never come; the legend of the Ancients, passed down in oral tales until they grew thin with the wearing of time.
For the love of the ancestors...
Inside the house, the noises change, to surprise and interest and curiosity. A bubbling current swirls through those within, like a tide that catches and holds their interest.
John pauses at the curtains, torn between hope and fear. His fingers trace the velvet parting of the draperies. Hope is a beautiful and terrible thing, fragrant in the miasma of despair. His breath burns in his lungs, tinged with fear.
He draws the curtain back.
If you want your freedom, for the love of the ancestors, don't recognise her.
There's no way he wouldn't recognise her.
The most the servant's words did was give him warning.
--
Her dress trembles over her skin like a spill of water. It looks good on her, and John drags his mind away from that thought. He has other concerns.
"How's Atlantis?"
"We survive," she says. "We've been looking for you between skirmishes."
"What took you so long?" There's an edge to his words. Bitterness stings, like salt in his mouth, staining his tongue.
"You are not the only one who has been frustrated by the delay in finding you." Teyla says. She's calm, implacable, but there's an edge in her voice as well.
John doesn't care.
But he wishes she would look at him.
When she first saw him, her eyes slid across him as though he didn't exist. Even when he finally edged around to asking her for a dance, she wouldn't meet his eyes for more than a second - and the dismissal cuts deep.
She doesn't want to acknowledge what's been done to him. She doesn't want to acknowledge him.
He wishes he could ignore it. He doesn't get the luxury.
"I'm the one having his brains screwed out, here," he hisses.
Teyla lifts her face to hold his gaze then, and John can't look away. "We found you," she says. Her hand tightens a little on his shoulder. Warning or comfort? John doesn't know, but it helps.
"So," he asks, "What's the plan?"
They dance with the fluidity of long-time partners, a side-effect of sparring against each other. It's making an impression on the gathering. He can feel the eyes on him, sleekly covetous. He can see the eyes on her, bitterly jealous.
Her expression is as inscrutable as ever, and she doesn't say anything more than, "What do you think?"
"I can't walk out of here," he says. "I've tried."
"Then it will have to be done the usual way."
--
"There is no price on his head," says the silver-blonde. "All you have to do is claim him."
John stiffens as Teyla arches a brow. "Claim him?"
A murmur of astonishment runs through the crowd. After the night before, there are more than a few people nursing hangovers, and more than a few people nursing a growing dislike of Teyla. She came accompanied by two Athosians – a servant and a guard. They belong to her, she claims them with a brand, and neither is on the table. John is.
The dark-haired one leans back in her chair, the scarlet slash of her mouth curving at the corners with malicious amusement that echoes in her green eyes. "He must yield to you."
His head aches, his throat closes up, and the world is spinning with horror.
Will you yield?
They know he recognises Teyla from before. Somehow, they know he won't touch her, not that way – not after every woman in this place has screwed him nine ways to Sunday.
Their terms are simple: one more soul-shattering fuck. One more and he's free.
Just one.
He can't. The thought of fucking Teyla sends him into a cold sweat, makes him shake the way he does when they untie him after the drug.
He's been strong so far, but every man has his breaking point. Steel can splinter, shatter, crack. And if he breaks this time, there won't be enough of him to put back together afterwards.
--
"No." It's flat and final, and painful to say.
She's inside, attempting to negotiate a price she can actually pay.
He's out here, in the cold, with the two men Teyla brought along on this 'rescue mission' that's just taken a twist deep into John's own personal hell.
The first Athosian regards him with disbelief. John recognises him from visits to the mainland. Riyan is tall and muscular enough to give any marine pause before taking him on. "It's the easiest way."
"No."
"Teyla will do it." Riyan says mildly.
"I know she will," John snaps. His gut cramps at the thought and it's all he can do to breathe. "I won't."
"Why not? It's the only thing they recognise." The second man – the servant who warned him not to react - is a physical contrast to Riyan. Marak is small, slender and wiry, but no less deadly in a fight.
He knows why she didn't bring Rodney or Ronon. But he wishes they were here nevertheless. They'd understand. Teyla understands.
The Athosians don't.
"You can't walk out of here if they don't let you."
"And they won't let you until you surrender to Teyla."
Will you yield?
Riyan frowns. "She's not that terrible a bedmate." John sourly reflects that the Athosian would know. Riyan and Teyla have 'history'. Old history, if you believe the rumours, but history nevertheless. The dark eyes study John. "Unless you have a partner in Atlantis?"
He doesn't. But that isn't what holds him back.
"I can't!" There's no way to explain what he is, who he was, and how much of himself he's lost. They don't understand that it's not Teyla that's the problem - it's John.
Even to get out of here, he can't bring himself to yield.
--
Tonight, for the first time in weeks, he fights when they try to drug him.
He knows why they want him tonight - no great leap of understanding. They want him humiliated, spreadeagled on his back like the whore he is.
They fuck him one by one, everything from torturously slow, to fast and hard, and he clenches his fingers around the ties, grits his teeth, and shuts his eyes against the sight of them. So close to freedom, and yet so far away…
Material settles around the bed as the last woman leaves, and he concentrates on the rasp of his breathing, too loud in the cube of solitude that is his prison and his torture chamber.
The veil is lifted with a rustle of material.
It does not fall.
By the grace of the drug, his gaze is blurred when he opens his eyes. White and dark bleed and blur at the edges, but the woman who stands at the foot of the bed is perfectly clear to his sight.
Teyla looks at him with eyes that take in his state, used, abused, aroused, but whatever she feels is hidden.
Shame writhes through him, a worm eating his gut. It strips his pride down to the skin, leaving him without even the scraps of dignity. From a long-ago childhood, his mind digs up a fragment of a Sunday school story: And they saw that they were naked and were ashamed.
John bites back her name. An appeal, a curse, an acknowledgement of her presence...
The veil falls behind her as she turns away.
When the next woman climbs onto the bed, he's bitten through his lip.
--
John forces himself to breathe as he walks down the path to the garden where Teyla is practising her staves.
"Hey."
She doesn't look up from her exercises. "Last night did not need to happen."
"I can't." His voice is rough and it hurts to speak. Watching her produces an ache in his blood, in his bones. The life he lived when he was Colonel John Sheppard, commanding officer of Atlantis, seems so far away, a time and a place that seems so distant - too distant.
Wood whips through the air with careful precision. "I know," she says when she turns to face him again. Her gaze is dark and steady, without pity. "I am sorry I could not keep you from that."
There's more to her words than just last night.
"You made it home."
"We did. Rodney complained all the way..." Her head tilts a little to the side as a smile touches her mouth - sunrise in the grey dawn. "His convalescence was long."
"And nobody killed him?"
"Ronon threatened it. Elizabeth reined him in." She's solemn again, but gentle. "We missed you."
"Yeah, well..." He manages to make the words light. "Did they write me off as a bad debt?"
Her reply carries all the weight he couldn't voice. "We did not. None of us did." A gesture of her sticks encompasses the palace and the city surrounds. "We are here."
"I'd rather be somewhere else."
The look she gives him is earnest. "I would rather you were somewhere else," she says with all the gravity of a child. "But it is not so."
She returns to her exercises, unceasing in her drive. The staves whirl around her, their carved edges cutting through the air while John watches.
Maybe he forgot the lines of her in absence, the smooth movement and coiled strength, but she seems...exquisite. Bone china and forged steel, grace and elegance in unending motion, delicate as a violet and deadly as a viper, John is mesmerised by the conflicts that churn in his perceptions of her.
Something in his stomach roils, but not painful, just...distracting.
Teyla catches him watching as she turns, and takes his look for annoyance that they aren't doing anything yet.
Her voice is gentle as she reaches out and rests one hand lightly touches his arm. "We are looking at other options, Colonel."
So is he.
--
It's the afternoon when he walks into the room.
She stops in the middle of her conversation when he takes her hand and pulls her up. Her fingers are cool in his as she follows him through the people there, but her expression is puzzled.
Sweat beads on his skin, a warm mist, but he fixes his eyes ahead, even as he waits for her to pull back when she realises what he's going to do.
He can feel the tension in her when he bends to kiss her and slips his hand around her neck. If he's afraid she'll pull away from him, she's not so convinced about this course of action, either.
Don't think. Don't let her think.
The veils fall down around them as he draws her onto the bed, not quite closing out the world around them. And then he seduces her, inch by careful inch. Every kiss, every lick, every touch is his own choice, given freely.
It makes his breath short, fills his gut with terror, cramps his chest. But fear is not the only goad that works in his body.
Teyla can't quite bring herself to seize what he's offering, but she can respond to him. Response is enough to assure him that it's not rape. And John makes it easy for her.
His skin drags where it slips against hers. His mouth clings where it touches her body. His tongue tingles where it tastes her flesh. And slowly, she responds, her hands circling his shoulders, her leg crooking over his hip, her mouth opening to his. Desire is slow, but assured.
John is in control, but he yields to her wish.
Her comfort, her pleasure, her desire: the only thing that matters is Teyla.
He's doing this of his own choice, of his own free will, of his own need.
There may be hell to pay later - afterwards - but he's not thinking of that right now. He's thinking that she tastes salty and sweet and very, very hot, and if he scrapes his teeth along her flesh just so...
She arches into his mouth, crying out something that he can't hear.
Her body shudders beneath him, her hand convulses reflexively in his hair, and John's mouth curves in a smile.
I yield.
--
Beyond the veils, he can hear the mutters of the people in the room. He's just gone down on Teyla Emmagen of the Athosians in the middle of a room full of women, most of whom have fucked him blind.
Do you yield?
She didn't even ask him. She didn't need to.
That should scare him. A day ago the merest thought had every muscle frozen in terror. Now, it doesn't. He wonders if it should, then dismisses the thought.
Then she pushes him over onto his back and her mouth slides along his jaw.
John stills. He can't help it. His blood is pounding, his heartbeat is erratic, and the memories of lying on his back are too strong to be overcome. Two months isn't going to vanish overnight. But it's far too late to go back.
He's unbearably tense as her mouth slides down his throat. They played this game, too, getting him hard with easy sensuality before riding him without mercy.
Teyla teases him into desperate need, but doesn't straddle him. Instead, she slips onto the bed beside him, mouth and hands and body encouraging him to turn towards her. Her thigh slides up the outside of his thigh, crooking over his hip, and he can feel her pressing against him, encouraging his possession.
This isn't a taking, it's a giving. And John's the one on top this time.
Her head digs back into the pillows as he sheathes himself slowly. Breathe, John.
It's not like he hasn't had sex lately. But this is his own choice, his own free will, and a woman he cares about.
And Teyla yields to him. Her head arches back as her body receives his, supple flesh sheathing his hunger, and his mind casts up what Toren said days ago.
That which yields is not always weak.
--
In the end, they didn't break him.
John broke himself. The mould into which they forced him was shattered through his own actions and his trust of Teyla. Hunger, desire, affection, and the balance of faith, teetering on the needle-fine point of their friendship.
Things won't be the same again. Not least because of what was done to him, what he did to her, what she did to him. The awareness of her quivers all through his body as she leads him out to where the 'jumper is cloaked. Riyan and Marak accompany them, slipping out through the scrub.
She hasn't looked him in the eye since he lifted himself up on his elbows to push sweat-soaked hair from her face. Then, there was wonder, pleasure. Now, there's only guardedness.
Their team-mates are waiting for them in a field that lies half a day's hike out of town.
"Sheppard!" Rodney gapes at him. "God, what are you wearing?"
Ronon looks at Rodney with an expression of disbelief, then casually cuffs him on the back on the head.
"Ow!" Rodney glares at Ronon. "What was that for?"
The Satedan doesn't answer. He doesn't look any more civilised than he did when John left. "Sheppard."
"Ronon." It's all the acknowledgement that's needed between them right now. It's enough. John turns to Rodney. "I was hoping you'd learned tact while I was gone."
"Asking too much," Ronon comments with a slight smile.
"Wait until the next time you need rescuing," sneers the scientist, but without any real animosity.
He missed this. God, he missed this.
Teyla's already vanished inside to check that they have everything. John waits for her to come out again where once he would have followed to double-check everything over her shoulder. After a moment, she emerges. "We are ready to go, Rodney. Ronon."
The other men accept her authority and go into the ship, although not before Rodney hugs him, an uncharacteristic gesture. John is both touched and freaked by it and hopes Ronon doesn't also expect a hug.
One hand is thrust out and the wolfish smile glitters beneath the beard as they grip - hard enough to become a competition, long enough to convey wordless appreciation. On the whole, John prefers this 'welcome back'.
Then his team-mates are inside the jumper, while Marak and Riyan walk up the ramp at a look from Teyla.
And then it's just him and her.
--
Her stance is tense as she pauses at the bottom of the ramp, without her usual fluid grace.
"I am sorry it came to that."
How's he going to say this? "I'm not."
She flushes - the most delicate of pink casts to her dusky skin. "John--"
There'll be hell to pay. Sex doesn't make everything better. Heitmeyer will still have a field day. John isn't so sure he's not broken, but he thinks he's on the mend - he hopes he's on the mend.
It's something to worry about later.
John doesn't care if the guys can see him as he bends down to kiss her, silencing whatever protest she had. The fingers she wraps around his wrist conflict with the way her lips move against his. Her body remembers, even if she's not so eager.
John remembers and he is eager.
Strength in pliancy, authority in gentleness, dominance in surrender.
He yielded to her, but she yielded to him, too.
That which yields is not always weak.
- fin -
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Bone china and forged steel, grace and elegance in unending motion, delicate as a violet and deadly as a viper
This description of Teyla is gorgeous.
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John wonders if Teyla would be scared of him.
Or if he'll be terrified of her.
I love those two lines. So evocative.
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That which yields is not always weak.
I love that. Is it from a book or something? I feel like I've heard/read it before and can't put my finger on it.
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Wonderful job with this story, Sel. Creepy and disturbing and evocative and awesome; I'm really impressed.
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Let's start there: "Whoa, this *is* really good."
I'm reminded of many sci-fi stories I've read over the years where men placed in matriarchal situations. "Yeild" reminded me of both Catherine Asaro's "The Last Hawk" and Marian Zimmer Bradley's "The Ruins of Isis." Mostly because of that issue of women being in the position of using men solely for their own sexual pleasure and the resulting fall out from that.
I was very glad you chose to focus on John's evolution throughout this story. It became clear that in order for John to survive this he'd have to make a choice, but it's almost a false one on the surface: he can't go back to who he was before his two months of captivity. He can only go forward but who is the John Sheppard that will come out on the other side?
When John thinks about what the other women on Atlantis will think of him if they find out what was done to him, my heart ached. Because in my heart of hearts, I think most of the women of Atlantis wouldn't judge him or fear him. I do think that they'd be unsure of exactly what to say but given the precariousness of their situation in the Pegasus Galaxy, the loss of even one member of the expedition cuts deep. Just getting John back would be a big deal. Yes, Kate Heightmeyer will have her hands full but I could see Cadman and some of the other women in the military contingent being quite helpful in that recovery. They're women and they're soldiers; the possiblity of rape looms in the background for them in a way that it doesn't for male soldiers.
I appreciate the complexity and gravity of how you write Teyla and John. That was so evident in this fic. Teyla knew that John just wasn't going to have sex with her and go skipping merrily back to Atlantis. She also had to be very aware of her own heart engagement in regards to him. Seeing him used and abused couldn't have been easy, yet she respects him and doesn't press him to make a choice, which in the end, allows him to make the choice he does. What will happen after that is anyone's guess.
There was a part of me that felt sorry for the women we met in this story because of this one part:
They dance with the fluidity of long-time partners, a side-effect of sparring against each other. It's making an impression on the gathering. He can feel the eyes on him, sleekly covetous. He can see the eyes on her, bitterly jealous.
They were so focused on breaking John that this part took them by surprise. But it wasn't about the sex: it was about friendship, partnership, warriorship. Being able to stand side by side by Teyla as her equal and she his. Somewhere in their distant past, those women may have had something like this with the men in their society but not any more. All they had left were petty cruelties (or at least that's what we've seen here). For Teyla to come in and move John in a way that their drugs and compulsion could not had to make them stop for a moment and wonder what could create that kind of relationship and make them hate Teyla for inspring it.
Or maybe I'm just reading more into this than there is. Which makes me like this even more because this story allows that kind of reading. Good writing does that.
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Love this: He yielded to her, but she yielded to him, too. It's the only thing that makes the sex OK with me. Even if it is John and Teyla. I also like the acknowledgement that he's not just over what happened to him, that it's more complicated than that.
Yield
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For me, the healing starts a bit too early, though. The kiss at the end was very sudden in my opinion and I didn't quite buy it. Maybe that's just how John would handle a situation like that, but I... well, it#s the only part of this story I do not like.
Other than that, very good writing.
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Sheyla