Heroes and Villains
Heroes and Villains
By Darian
Summary: Eli and Rush have a conversation about the needs of the crew.
Dedicated to: Casey Toh for her Alphabet Soup fic 8o)))
Eli was carefully maneuvering through the Destiny's narrow hallways from the mess hall to his and Dr. Rush's usual working space. He was just as carefully carrying a mug full of black coffee.
Well, at least the thing that passed as coffee in this far far faaaaaaar away corner of the universe.
When last month one of the teams brought it back though the gate, the whole crew threw a big party. The team managed to collect almost fifty kilos of it and a whole new crop was already growing in one of their many greenhouses.
There is nothing worse than a bunch of scientists confined in a really small space without a regular dose of caffeine. Also everyone was secretly hoping that it would improve Dr. Rush's notorious moods.
Eli was the one who was appointed by the crew to feed it to the beast… ehm Doc; to get it to him as regularly as possible, to keep him well supplied.
And it did work. Well, at least a little. Maybe next time they could manage to find some alien tobacco. That would probably cut down the screaming matches between Dr. Rush and colonel Young to at least half.
When Eli turned the corner he could already see the scientist's back as he was working at his console like usual.
Today there were just him and Rush.
Brody was checking some relays on the level below them. At least that's what he told Young that he was doing but Eli was pretty sure that he was probably just in his room trying to improve that moonshine of his. It got quite popular among whole crew.
Beggars can't be choosers.
Eli didn't even bother to try walking quietly because when Dr. Rush was working like this, he didn't notice anything else other than the screen right in front of him. Even if the ship would come under attack, somebody would probably have to tell him that there was something going on in the real world.
He went straight to the console and was going to put the iron mug right in front the good doctor.
Rush never acknowledged his presence but it was like he had an inbuilt coffee detector. It never took longer than two minutes before he would reach for it, never even wondering how it magically appeared here.
When Eli started to retreat, he got a glimpse of the calculations on the screen and suddenly froze. He must have made some sound because Rush turned around and looked at his rapidly palling face.
"Eli, what are you doing here? You were supposed to check the FTL calculations."
The Scottish doctor frowned and tried to shield the ancient screen with his body so Eli couldn't see it anymore.
"That's… those are the calculations for the gate when we first got here… but that isn't possible,"
Eli whispered quietly, still stunned with the information that he had seen. He looked at Rush expecting him to agree with him, but the scientist just looked grim.
"So much power, it would…it would…"
"Destroy any Milky Way gate we could have used and a pretty big chunk of the planet with it. Yes I know, that's why I told you to dial Destiny. All that extra power was almost all used during our traveling through the wormhole. We still exited it really fast but that was nothing compared to what would have happened to our bodies if we exited in the Milky Way."
"We would be all dead. If you hadn't told me to dial the ninth chevron we would have died…" Eli looked at Rush in awe.
"You saved us, you saved us all… We have to tell Young and Scot…TJ..." The young man started to hyperventilate.
"Eli, calm down. You can't tell anybody about it. Nobody not even Chloe."
"But everyone thinks that we got stuck here because of you, they think it's your fault that we didn't get to go home. You have to tell them, it's not fair that they all blame you for something that you didn't do."
"They have to blame someone, Eli. No, they need to blame someone, to focus their anger. If people don't have any villains they often starts to blame themselves. We need the crew as mentally healthy as possible or we will never survive. It's better this way."
"But you aren't a villain, you are a hero. You saved us. You keep saving us all the time."
Rush snorted loudly.
"I´m certainly no hero. I think that I make a much better villain than hero, just ask anybody who knows me. People already do hate me so it doesn't matter anyway."
Eli looked at the scientist thoughtfully for a long while and then suddenly grinned.
"So you are like Batman in the Dark Knight, you pretend to be bad so you can protect people. That's so cool."
Rush's deep laugher echoed through the room. "I've been called many things in my life, but nobody's ever called me a Batman."
"Well , but it suits you. He is a genius and invents all his gadgets that help him to stop the bad guys and he is really scary like you and growling all the time…"
Eli's eyes widened when he realized that he had probably put his foot in his mouth again and glanced quickly towards the exit before the famous Mt. Rushmore exploded.
Rush tried to look angry, but at the sight of the terrified youth the corner of his mouth twitched with amusement.
"Come on Robin, let's take a look at these FTL equations"
Eli let out a deep breath and finally relaxed when he realized that the crisis was over and followed Rush to the console he usually used. They quietly worked for several minutes but Eli never could keep quiet for long.
"By the way there was no Robin in the Dark Knight, you know. He was in the older Burton movies"
The glare that he got for interrupting during work was definitely Batman-like.
End
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