Work Text:
David stood at the observation window overlooking the Atlantis surgery. He pressed his forehead to the arm he had resting against the glass and blinked back tears as he leaned as close as he could to see what was going on. How had this all gone so wrong? This should not be happening, not to Evan.
But it was, and there was nothing David could do about it, he was as helpless as Evan right now and forced to rely on Doctor Beckett and his team to take care of his partner.
He really should not have been surprised to find out that there were renegade Protectors loose in the cosmos. For every system of law, there were those who broke the laws set down. The quarry he and Evan had been sent after had been prepared for them, well prepared. Before Evan could devise a plan to snare the bastard, Onjou, he had done something to strip them of their powers. In the blink of an eye, they were back in Evan’s quarters in Atlantis, and were stuck in their mortal forms, unable to shift or call on any of their abilities, not even their halos.
Onjou had followed them to Atlantis, making a grand entrance through the Gate, right through the shield. When Lorne arrived in the Gate Room armed only with his service revolver, Onjou struck him with a bolt of energy. Evan had gone hurtling across the Gate Room and hit the wall with great force, resulting in numerous injuries, including a skull fracture.
The renegade Protector had laughed and strolled back through the Gate, the rain of bullets fired after him doing no damage at all.
Evan didn’t wake up after the surgery; he was lying comatose in the infirmary, hooked up to every machine imaginable. Sitting beside the bed, David kept his head bowed as he prayed constantly, hoping someone above would hear him, that someone would know it was him despite the lack of power behind the prayer.
“You have to wake up. I can’t carry on here by myself, not knowing what I know now. It’s different now, scarier without you,” he said as he grabbed onto Evan’s foot and squeezed his toes. Evan’s hands were splinted, broken when he hit the wall face first.
His prayers went unanswered for days as he stood watching Evan sleep. Doctor Beckett shook his head sadly every time he came to check the monitoring machines. Lorne was showing no sign of waking. Stripped of his Heaven blessed powers, Evan would die if this mortal body died. His spirit would move on to the next plane and he would no longer be a Protector.
“Don’t leave me,” David begged on the twentieth day, no longer caring who heard him. “Don’t take him!” he prayed aloud.
The machines pinged and beeped and continued to monitor the deteriorating condition of Evan Lorne as he slept on.
David didn’t know what was going to happen to either of them. His experience as a Protector was severely limited; he was still learning, still raw and new to it all. Without Evan’s guidance, he was lost.
“Are you dreaming? Doctor Beckett thinks you have brain damage. What if you don’t remember anything when you wake up?” David whispered as he leaned over Evan, brushing back the hair that had grown too long. “You are going to wake up, do you hear me?”
“David?” A soft hand touched his face and he woke. He blinked as he looked up to see CeCe looking at him with concern. “What has happened? Foolish me, I should have thought to find you both here. We could not see you; we have been searching for you with all the resources of the Sanctum.”
“Took you long enough!” he exclaimed, though he was overjoyed to see her. He pointed to Evan. “Help him, please! He’s been in a coma for two months; the doctor says he’s dying.”
CeCe moved to the edge of the bed and stroked a hand across Evan’s forehead. “How has he come to be in such a state? You as well? I sense nothing of Heaven ‘s Touch upon either you.”
David had risen to stand beside her, crowding her as she leaned over Evan. “Onjou. He set a trap. One moment we were following him and then the next we were here, Evan said Onjou had stripped us of our abilities. We couldn’t even call our halos to hand. He came after us and attacked Evan. Doctor Beckett had to do surgery; Ev was bleeding in his brain. Please fix him, CeCe, I need him.”
Her lips were pressed tightly together in annoyance as she listened to him. “That one is trouble. I thought perhaps since there were two of you that it would be enough, but Onjou was always clever. I will request help from above, this might take the power of the Seraphim to resolve. Now, let me see what I might do about Evan.”
Watching silently as she closed her eyes and laid hands on his partner, David hoped she had found them in time. The machines around the bed began to go wild, beeping loudly and flashing all sorts of medical warnings, Evan surged up against CeCe’s hands, his body coming off the mattress.
Doctor Beckett and two nurses ran over in response to the alarms, but a glance from CeCe froze them in their tracks, they stood like statues as the First Rank Protector worked. They would remember nothing of the encounter; their memory of it had already been taken from their minds. Hugging his arms around his middle, David watched Evan fearfully. “Please be all right,” he whispered.
“Keep praying, David,” CeCe said without looking back at him. He closed his eyes, slapped his hands together - figuring it couldn’t hurt, his mom had taught him to pray like that, so he did. He began to pray in earnest, reciting every prayer he knew, and some he only knew parts of.
“David,” Evan’s voice was barely audible. “Where’s David?”
He remembered. Relieved, David leaned over so Evan could see him around CeCe and squeezed his leg. “Right here, I’m right here.”
“Hurts,” Evan whispered, keeping his eyes tightly shut against the pain.
“Give me a chance, I’m doing a great deal of work here, Evan,” CeCe chastised gently as she continued to move her hands over his head.
Evan breathed out, “CeCe? Must be bad.”
“It is. You were barely holding on by a thread. It is a good thing you had David praying for you.”
After a time, the grimace faded away and Evan opened his eyes and looked at David, offering him a tremulous smile. “It’ll be okay, David,” he said to reassure him.
“You wouldn’t wake up. You scared me.”
“Sorry. What happened to Onjou?”
David frowned. “He got away. He walked right back out through the Gate, according to the stories I heard.” He had not been there to witness it, which was good; he would have had nightmares if he had seen Evan hurt, if he had seen the impact that had caused the injuries that had nearly killed him.
“Well, you should mend now,” CeCe declared, straightening up and pushing her curls back over her shoulder. “I cannot do anything about your lost abilities yet, not until Onjou is out of the way and his interference is gone. I think perhaps it is better that he thinks you are vanquished, you are both safer.”
“So we’re completely mortal again?” Evan asked as David raised the head of the bed to let him sit up.
“For the time being. We could not find you before now. I sense Onjou, I shall be able to follow his trail and give the seraphim a way to find him. Keep yourselves out of trouble until you hear from us again. David would return to the Sanctum should something happen, but as you know Evan, your soul would move on.”
Clasping David’s hand, Evan replied, “Yeah. We’ll be careful. Good luck finding Onjou, he’s a nasty piece of work.”
CeCe frowned, her eyes sad. “He was once a very good Protector, a pure soul. Farewell my friends, I will see you soon.” She disappeared and Beckett and the nurses were released from her hold. They ran forward and confusion ensued over Evan’s remarkable sudden recovery.
Days later, they stood on the balcony outside Evan’s quarters. Evan leaned on the rail and inhaled the salty air of the Lantean sea.
“Do you think they got him yet?”
Chuckling, Evan squeezed his eyes shut and wrinkled his nose in an exaggerated fashion. He glanced over his shoulder and then at David. “Nope. No wings yet.”
“I miss it,” David whispered. “I miss going up there.” He jerked a thumb skywards.
“Me too, buddy.” Evan wrapped an arm around David’s shoulders and pulled him close, kissing the side of his face.
From behind them came the sound of someone clearing their throat. CeCe grinned at them as they turned around. “You can return to the Sanctum. Onjou is being held, but it is proving difficult to undo the damages he did to you and many others. If you are in the Sanctum, you are closer to the changes being made that might help you regain what you have lost.”
If they left and recovered, they could return to Atlantis with no one the wiser for any absence. Evan looked to David and when his partner nodded, Evan turned to CeCe. “Okay, let’s go.”
Onjou proved to be quite difficult to break, but eventually, in one painful flash, Evan and David found themselves completely transformed into their celestial forms. It was a good thing they had decided to return to the Sanctum to wait everything out, suddenly changing into full Protector regalia, complete with wings and flaming halos would have been a bit hard to gloss over, had it happened in the Mess Hall in Atlantis.
After they got over the initial rush of power, Evan dragged David to the edge of the Sanctum walkway and dove off, twisting in midair to pull David close and kiss him. “Back to normal!” he cried happily and David laughed along with him as they hit the air currents that swept around the Sanctum.
The End