5 Secrets John Sheppard’s Wristband Keeps


The Tattoo


There were a lot of excuses for the tattoo. John had been young, and foolish, and riding the high of having just graduated flight school with incredibly high scores. Those were the reasons he’d give, if pressed. Then there was the real reason: he’d been drunk off his ass and hadn’t known it was happening until the next morning when he woke up and found a gauze pad taped to the back of his wrist.

It had taken the better part of a day, 6 aspirin, and close to 2 liters of water before he’d found the courage to lift the gauze. It was exactly as bad as he’d feared.

Situated on the back of his right wrist, just high enough to almost be covered by his BDUs and thus not get him a reprimand for being out of uniform, was a shooting star. With a rainbow tail. Surrounded by a heart.

He was going to kill them. As soon as he remembered who they were.

 

The Scar


John doesn’t like to talk about the scar. He keeps it covered when he can, which is just about all of the time, and pretends it’s not there the rest.

Teyla asked about it once, when his wristband rode up as she was teaching him the Bantos Rods. It was a measure of his trust that he told her anything.

“I was twelve. I had a really bad year, and I just wanted to make everything go away. It, uh, wasn’t my brightest idea.”

She had nodded solemnly at his explanation. Questions were visible in her eyes, but instead of voicing them she raised her sticks to the ready position. “Shall we?”

He’d never been more grateful for her sense of tact.

The ‘Mark’


The mission to P3C-557 had been on the calmer end of the spectrum, all things considered. SGA-1 hadn’t been shot, stabbed, poisoned, or forced to engage in ritual sex practices. They’d even come away with a successful trade agreement for something like soybeans. All-in-all, John considered it a win.

So when the tribal elders requested that their new allies receive the ‘marks of friendship’ before departure, John was feeling magnanimous and agreed (After having Teyla grill the natives on the nature of the paints. He was feeling magnanimous, not stupid).

John reconsidered his benevolent thoughts when the skin on his wrist tried to crawl off his arm two hundred feet from the Gate. A moment later, Rodney began complaining with the sincerity of a man in serious pain, and John knew they were screwed.

It took Beckett almost an hour to find something to neutralize the reaction; apparently a chemical produced by the ATA gene bonded to a chemical in the paint and formed an organic acid – The more of the chemical in your system, the more quickly the acid was produced. As a result, John ended up with a permanent reminder of the people of P3C-557 and a personal vow to never ever let people put strange things onto his skin again.

Elizabeth was kind enough to translate the ancient lettering which made up the ‘mark.’ It turned out to be three words, separated by unrecognizable illustrations. The three words were:

“Peace. Love. Happiness.”

There were days when John was convinced that there was some massive intergalactic conspiracy against his sanity. Really convinced

The ‘Bracelet’


The Mancalans had some kind of really neat-looking liquid metal; they called it a ‘living metal’, and apparently it actually grew in an organic manner under the right circumstances.

The stuff had Rodney salivating, and John had to admit it did look kind of cool.

It turned out that the Mancalans only used it in what they called “Bonding Bracelets” – Jewelry worn by married pairs. In the name of science (And because Rodney had promised him a really spectacular blow-job if he’d just shut up and go with it), John had undergone Public Marriage to McKay #4 and they’d been graced with a pair of bonding bracelets in celebration of their union.

The problem came when they got back to Atlantis and couldn’t get the things off.

John started wearing his wristband obsessively, because there were certain discussions with one’s CO that it was just easier to avoid.

The Burn


John had a rule about his childhood. He didn’t talk about it. Ever.

When they noticed at all, he let people draw their own conclusions about his silence on the topic. Most people assumed that John’s problems came from his military father; that Colonel Mark Sheppard had been as much of a hardass with his son as he was reputed to be with the trainee pilots.

Most people were wrong.

John’s dad just hadn’t been around when he was young, he hadn’t been abusive. That lovely distinction fell to his mother, who hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d been an RN, and a lovely caring woman with a desperate need for attention. His father hadn’t figured out what was going on until John had nearly died of a diabetic coma at the age of eight. Looking back, John was just grateful that he’d been an only child.

Most people didn’t know that John had spent a year fighting with the USAF Medical system in order to gain medical clearance to attend the Academy. He’d had to prove that he didn’t have mild hemophilia, wasn’t severely hypoglycemic, and didn’t have serious and chronic gastro-intestinal problems before they’d finally cleared him.

The odd thing was that the only physical scar that John carried from his childhood, out of everything, really did come from an accident. When he was five, John had knocked a lit candle off the dining room table and burnt the inside of his wrist on the melted wax. It left a teardrop-shaped scar.

John hid it anyway, just like he hid everything else.

~ Finis ~

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