Sg_rarepairings fic: Five Ways Kate and Radek Don't Start the Revolution
Title: Five Ways Kate and Radek Don’t Start the Revolution
Author: Gaia (gaiaanarchy)
Characters/Pairing: Zelenka/Heightmeyer in some sections, minimal McShep in others
Rating: PG13
Category: Action, Drama
Content Warnings: Character death in section 3 and 4
Disclaimer: Don’t own SGA and don’t make money.
Spoilers: Hotzone, Critical Mass, Trinity, Michael
Word Count: ~5,600
Auhors Notes: This fic is my entry in the sg_rarepairings ficathon. I wrote for missyvortexdv who requested Radek/Heightmeyer set during/after or mention of Hotzone, Critical Mass or Michael. I’m not sure how well I did with the prompt, but the idea that it gives me inspired section five, with all the other four sections just setting up number five.
And I almost forgot to mention thanks to Rox (victoriaely) for understanding my late realization that I had a fic due and agreeing to beta!
FIVE WAYS KATE AND RADEK DON’T START THE REVOLUTION
By Gaia
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Fall in Prague is all bitter winds and cascading rains, trees almost stripped bare by late October. Kate buries her hands deeper in the fur lining of her coat and tries not to think about summers in California, driving down PCH in her father’s beat up old convertible with the top down and her hair flying in the breeze.
Strangely, she misses Germany more, the old farm in the countryside, the anxious bustle of Berlin like something out of an old black and white spy drama, a wall away from the governments and the world she knows. Prague is different, she supposes, perhaps because the people here were not gifted as the spoils of war, but rather stepped into the sphere of Communist idealism more than willingly. There are theories about this - theories of guilt.
But she isn’t here to deal in theories. Fact and secrecy have become her language now.
She rounds the corner, a gothic cathedral on her left, the circular stone altar of a derelict fountain before her. Movement in the shadows - from the anxious gate of his pacing, she knows it’s him.
The iron gate closes with a soft whine behind her, nothing but gravestones and curious black birds to listen to them as they stroll.
“The wall has fallen,” she says.
“Yes, yes, I know.” He pushes his glasses further up his nose, squinting at her. He always has a nervous energy about him. At first she thought it would make him a security risk, but perhaps the soviets expect a certain amount of jumpiness from the people who they deem too inexpert to deal with their plutonium.
“It’s only a matter of time.”
“No,” he counters. “The time is now. Already there are whispers, yes? Gorbachev is pulling back from empire. And the students . . . they are inspired. Need only a small push and you will see protest.”
She inclines her head. “And you will deliver that push?”
“I did not go from hi-tech theoretical research facility to undergraduates for no good reason.” He smiles at her, eyes laughing behind the frost of his glasses. His teeth are crooked in the smile, but there’s a certain charm about him, a raw devotedness that Kate can admire - in a world of smoke and mirrors, he’s the only one brave enough to hide in plain sight.
“So a few words and you expect to topple an empire?”
“Like dominoes.”
“When?”
“Demonstration is already planned for a week from now. The character of demonstration, however . . .”
“So, if all goes according to plan, this will be the last we see of each other?” She tries not to let her disappointment show. It’s not that getting back to sun and beach and real academic studies won’t be nice, but she’ll miss this - their calm afternoon walks through ghettos and cemeteries and soccer fields, his expressive hands, the whispering song of the language and the excitement he brings to it.
“Yes, I suppose. Yes.”
They amble along for a moment of silent contemplation, birds cooing as they follow along, dancing from tree to tree.
“So what will you do?” she asks.
He frowns. “When all this is over? I suppose I will wait. Undergraduates are not for me, but as interesting as military work might be, in our area of the world . . . who knows?”
She nods. It’s for the best. She can’t stand the idea that they might somehow end up back on opposite sides.
“And you?” he asks. “Surely you will not continue on your so-called exchange program. Even independent we are nothing but a satellite. Berlin must be more exciting.”
“Actually, I was thinking of going back, finish a real degree. In a free world, my services won’t be needed anymore.”
“And they’ll let you go? That simple?”
She smiles a sad smile. To think that he is so used to a world without even that simple freedom. “Yes, they’ll let me go.”
He looks away, at the foreboding fork of the chapel gates or the storm clouds on the horizon. Maybe he’s examining the atmosphere for particles she barely knows exist, let alone has the credentials to ponder. But she doesn’t need a degree to read his nervousness.
“What would you do?” she asks, suddenly self-conscious. “If you were allowed whatever you wanted?”
His smile is bemused, sad. “The same as you. I would study.”
She smiles at that, at a passion she’d thought she’d lost. But then again, if growing up under an oppressive militarized regime can’t make him jaded, then how can she be?
“Maybe you can,” she offers.
“Do not offer what you cannot process, Heidi.” He doesn’t know her real name. She knows his, of course, but she does not use it.
She can’t stand the melancholy in his smile. His eyes, grey against the moody sky, speak the propaganda that will never once leave his lips - even as they stand on the brink of a world reborn, there is no hope for truth and passion and curiosity.
Kate doesn’t know why she does it, but she leans forward, lips just brushing the stubble at the corner of his mouth. “Nothing is too wonderful to be true,” she whispers.
“Michael Faraday,” he acknowledges. “But what would he say to this?” he gestures to the empty graveyard, the thick clouded sky, pregnant with anticipation, a country and a people painted in sepia by the empire for which they set the stage.
“Come back with me,” she offers.
Hope flickers in his eyes like the flame of a candle, struggling against the wind.
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“’Who’s that?” Radek whispers, averting his gaze when the lunch lady looks up to stare at him. Let her. It’s not as though she will speak with any of the scientists and invite rumor anyhow. Epsilons - if nothing else, they are good for silence.
“Who? What?” Rodney asks, raising his head from the lunch line and spilling half of his soup onto Radek’s tray. “Oh, look what you did.”
Radek rolls his eyes. So much for subtle. He should know by now not to expect so much from the human megaphone. Rodney is a strange creature - his brilliance has allowed him even more latitude than the typical Alpha.
“So . . . who?” Rodney tries to whisper. But everyone in about a five-meter radius can hear anyhow.
Radek sighs in resignation. “That woman. The blonde - curly hair.”
Rodney spins around, again conspicuously. “The psychologist?”
Radek’s smile fades. Of course, the psychologist. Radek has little contact with the conditioning staff. He has always fit in perfectly. Even with the soma rationing, he has been perfectly sociable. But looking at her, those intense blue eyes and that bouncing blonde hair, he thinks maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t been.
Rodney picks up his tray and heads over to their usual table in the corner, but not before shooting the psychologist a glare.
“What?” Radek asks, but the second he looks back at her, he knows the question is irrelevant. Sheppard is sitting across from her, looking straight ahead, back stiff and movements calculated and formal. Rodney is turning practically beet-red, chewing so angrily that Radek fears he may have to duck a catapult of mashed potatoes any second now.
“Why can’t she just leave him alone?” Rodney shakes his head.
Normally, Sheppard dines with them, regardless of all the whispers that ensue, but there are days, every month like clockwork, where he moves gingerly, keeping his eyes averted and his shoulders straight. Then, he eats with Ford and the rest of the lower-caste Marines, shoveling food in with a brisk military efficiency before rushing off to train.
One day offworld with Rodney, though, and Sheppard is back to his usual self - joking and grinning and even offering solutions to problems they might encounter, if still looking a little shy while doing so.
Rodney looks pained. “I mean, what is shocking out the few brain cells he has left going to do anyhow? I understand that military men need not to think and be happy following orders. I mean, that’s what the lower castes are for, but pilots need to be able to think in order to fly. And following orders and being stiff and bruised from shocking sessions every month isn’t going to make the Wraith want to kill us less! Why can’t people just stop deluding themselves and see that we’re trying to survive out here!”
What Rodney thinks is no secret. But, the thing about Rodney is that he’s all bark and no bite - everybody knows it. He doesn’t even have the courage to ask Sheppard on a date, even if its completely obvious that Sheppard would do it himself if it wouldn’t be so presumptuous for a Beta to approach an Alpha-plus, like Rodney.
Rodney is right, after all. They’re out here, a galaxy away and no replacement in sight, no soma supply, just them and a bunch of life-sucking aliens and savages who have never even heard of Henry Ford.
Radek sighs, running fingers through his hair. There’s nothing they can do. Elizabeth Weir is an Alpha-plus born for what she does. She was a back-up World Controller, in case of accident, but the next generation has been decantered and is growing now, so they have no need for her back on Earth. No, Elizabeth Weir will never buck the system.
But this new woman, the psychologist . . . . Radek smiles, standing.
“Radek!” Rodney shouts, “Did you get an accidental shock treatment as a child? Where are you going?”
Radek doesn’t answer. He knows what he needs to do.
“Excuse me?”
Sheppard doesn’t even look up at the question, but the woman does.
“Hello, I am Radek Zelenka,” he says, stiff and formal just like he was taught to.
“Pleased to meet you, Radek,” she responds, confusion showing in her eyes, even as she repeats the phrase just like out of their very first etiquette books. “My name is Kate Heightmeyer.”
“I know who you are,” he says, ignoring the fact that it wasn’t true five minutes ago.
She smiles readily back at him, all professional glitz with only a sparkle of confusion betraying her perfectly calm exterior.
“I was wondering if you would not mind a rendezvous with me later tonight? After you are done here,” he gestures to Sheppard, but does not acknowledge him.
She purses her lips for just a brief second before nodding, placidly. “All right, Radek Zelenka. Nineteen hundred hours on the west pier.”
“Thank you. Enjoy your meal.”
“You as well.”
Radek nods and moves off, returning to his table with a grin.
“What the hell was that?” Rodney whispers the second he’s back in his seat.
“I asked her for an evening.”
“Just like that? You walked willing into the psychologist’s den? After all she’s done to John?”
Radek shrugs. “Eat your beats. Without nourishment you will fail to live up to the glory of our Fordship.”
Rodney rolls his eyes but stuffs a forkful of beats down his throat anyway.
<<<>>>
The greenhouses out on the west pier are quiet at this time of night. Back in the beginning, when Dr. Weir first organized the productive output of this expedition, they would have been bustling at all hours. But people keep dying and workers are needed in other areas.
Radek loosens his shirt, the humidity creeping up around his collar.
Kate’s hair sparkles in the mist, standing out even against the exotic lilies and tiger-striped leaves and the lush green of the thick foliage down here.
“How long do you think we can survive like this?” Radek whispers, voice low and pleading.
Kate turns away, stung. “I thought you asked me here for sex.”
“Oh.” Well, that’s a surprise. Radek is small and scruffy for an Alpha. Normally, he could not earn even the glance of a pneumatic beauty like Kate. “No, no . . . this is more important. I do not suggest rebellion. I suggest only that we are cut off from Earth and its leaders. We must start our own production, even if we must sacrifice some standards in order to survive this.”
Kate nods slowly, biting her lip. “And how can I help that?”
“We don’t need a military leader that follows ground-fighting tactics book. We need someone who can think.”
“And Dr. Weir?”
Radek doesn’t know. God, he doesn’t know. Elizabeth is a smart woman, addicted to power, but smart and if she thinks that change is the only way to keep that power then she will change.
“You are the psychologist, are you not?”
Kate thinks about it for a moment, her eyes sparkle as bright as the shine on the newest machine part. “Yes, I am. Would you like to have sex now?”
“What? Oh, yes . . . okay . . .”
He stills her hand when she reaches for her Malthusian belt. In a world where high replacement rates are necessary, one can’t afford to slow production. Not by even a fraction.
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Radek shivers. Even with the fur mittens he was able to make using the bottom of Ronon’s coat, he’s still freezing. He can only imagine how poor Dr. Fernandez must feel, never having lived outside the tropics.
He sighs. Time for a break anyhow. He stretches his aching hands, unfolding the top flaps so he can blow warm heat over his fingertips. Ten years ago, if you’d have asked him where he saw his future, he’d say a big physics program somewhere, a nuclear accelerator, maybe a Nobel (when he was at his daydreaming best) not on some icy rock on the outer rings of a far off galaxy, mining some meaningless shiny rocks for a civilization so backwards that it doesn’t recognize that not even the prettiest of things will save them from the Wraith, when they come.
Radek is lucky, though. On the first day he showed them that he could repair their machines, and it’s been his job ever since. The guards don’t understand it any better than the stones themselves probably do, so they leave him pretty much alone. They’re not afraid he’ll escape - there’s nothing but sub-zero wilderness for miles and miles, and yet it’s somehow completely different than Antarctica. In Antarctica he had polar fleece. And vodka.
The silence of the caverns is confining back here where most of the machinery is nestled. It keeps him from too much contact with the rest of the prisoners. It’d almost be relaxing, if it weren’t twenty below and he weren’t a prisoner here. Vodka would be nice too.
That’s why Radek is so surprised when Rekesta, his burly chimp-brained personal guard comes barreling around the corner, a perverted smirk on his face as he drags a woman behind him.
“Dr. Heightmeyer?” Radek asks, unsure. Kate is wearing even less than he is, hands bound in rags, chapped so much she’s bleeding beneath. She’s not wearing her uniform like all of the other expedition members he’s seen, but rather a white animal pelt wrapped around her upper body, legs bare and shivering.
“Radek,” she says, eyes level and commanding him to meet her gaze. She steps right up to him and embraces him, pulling his face to hers for a kiss on the lips.
Rekesta laughs in the background.
“Just play along,” Kate whispers into his lips, kissing down his lips and dropping the pelt to reveal what he suspected - that she’s naked beneath.
Radek is too stunned to really play along, but Kate’s good, because she stops and looks over her shoulder. “Would you mind?”
Rekesta shakes his head dumbly, but waddles off. That’s one thing Radek will give him credit for - he’s a stupid bastard, but he’s not particularly cruel - not like the guards down in the mines. Last time he saw Carson, half the man’s face was obscured by black bruising.
The second Rekesta’s out of sight, Kate wraps the fur back around herself, letting Radek enfold her in his own long coat.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the . . . er . . . visit, Dr. Heightmeyer, but why are you here?”
Kate looks both ways before whispering. “You need to disrupt the machines.”
“I . . . you know I can’t do that.” They wouldn’t notice him making the adjustments, but if they’re off for too long, then they’ll freeze and there will be no way to get them started again.
“You have to do it, Radek. It’s the only way.”
“Well, it’s time for a Plan B. Or maybe one of Colonel Sheppard’s famous Plan Fs?”
Kate sighs, shaking her head. “No, this is it. We have everything organized. Corrigan and Kusanagi have things in line down in the labor blocks and I have the Prisonmaster’s . . . um . . . harem, ready.” It’s the first time he’s heard her fumble like that. But he doesn’t wonder why. He’s seen the prisonmaster - he wonders if those appendages on top of his head are used for things other than decoration.
“I’m so sorry, Doctor . . . Kate. I didn’t know you had . . . are you all right?”
Kate nods, almost absently. “He hasn’t hurt me.” It’s a non-answer and they both know it - Kate probably more than anyone.
“And the others?”
Kate gulps. “Teyla is a strong woman. And Dr. Roberts. Even Dr. Brown is holding up.” They don’t speak of Elizabeth and how the guards slit her throat on the very first day after they took the Alpha site.
“And Colonel Sheppard?”
Kate is sure to meet his gaze. “He had some trouble adjusting, yes. But, that’s not what’s important, Radek. The Prisonmaster has allowed me to spend the night with you, ‘my husband,’ as a reward for the work you’ve done. He won’t trust you any more than he does now. We have to act.”
“But, Kate, you must understand that the machines are only source of heat in this place. You went to med school, you know not all prisoners can survive those temperatures.”
Kate nods, looking down at her raw knees and her chapped hands. “We understand.”
Radek frowns. He’s not used to these kinds of plans. Sheppard and McKay will risk their own lives, but they have yet to suggest a plan that’s likely to kill a large percentage of the population. “Sheppard okayed this?”
Kate meets his eyes seamlessly. “Yes. He did.”
Radek gulps. There really must be no other choice.
“Okay. I’ll make the adjustments now. We will not see the effects until the boiler is fired up again in the morning.”
<<<>>>
When Radek wakes the next morning, Kate snuggled up against him, curled tightly beneath the snow-white pelt he’d been provided for his pallet. The ground beneath them is shaking, the lights flickering. This is it.
Kate is awake in a second, barely stopping to stretch as she vaults out of bed. He wonders what she must have done in the past for reflexes like that. “Come on, Radek,” she prompts, reaching into her fur and pulling out a small pointed object, before tossing Radek his own wrench. “We have to make it up to the communications center. Ronon and Lorne are securing it, but they might need someone to make sure that we keep of the normal schedule of transmissions until we’re ready to take down a transport.”
“Wait,” Radek splutters, trying to get his glasses on straight. “Isn’t Rodney going to be doing that?”
Kate sighs and grabs his hand. “We have to go.”
<<<>>>
Two days later when he’s carrying Kate over his shoulder through the snow, Ronon standing guard beside him, he sees them. The blizzard is strong, blowing a shiver straight down to his bones, but a body is still a splash of color in the endless field of white.
“Don’t,” Ronon warns. He’s limping, smelling of soot and the charred flesh of all the dead they were forced to burn with motor oil. Radek doesn’t think of Fernandez or Lorne or Kusangi, bloody and frozen and almost peaceful floating there behind his eyes. He’s not sure he can add two more faces to that.
“When?” Radek asks.
“Three days before the revolt. They were exiled to the surface.”
Radek nods, looking at the two bodies, a Canadian flag patch and a mop of dark hair just visible in the banks of soft powdery snow.
If Kate were still consciousness, he might berate her for lying. He might ask her why she did it. But then again, he might not. He’s just so tired.
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“You were right, Dr. McKay really does prefer blondes,” Kate says, smiling as she pulls off her gloves - they’re silky and black and they come up to her elbows - just the way Dr. McKay likes it. He doesn’t like to be touched, skin on skin, except where it’s absolutely necessary. He wouldn’t even kiss her - something about the kiss of death or other such nonsense. Classic narcissistic paranoia. She’s not surprised. If she’d known him, even long before, she might have predicted all of this.
Radek looks up from the papers he’s working on, barely noticing her. “Ruler of the known world and he will still come in his pants if beautiful woman gives him time of day.” He shakes his head.
Kate frowns. He should give her a little more credit than that. After all, everyone knows that Dr. McKay hasn’t taken the time to pick out a bride, or in the very least a respectable harem because he’s married to his work. Or his paranoia. “It wasn’t easy, you know.” She slinks over to him, dropping the gloves on the table as she makes her way over. “You weren’t just asking some high class whore.”
“Yes, yes, I know, I ask trained psychiatrist.” Radek, it seems, is also married to his work. Kate wouldn’t expect anything less from Dr. McKay’s second in command. “Besides, whore would be too obvious.”
“Yes, it would.” Kate moves around behind him, reaching out to knead the tight muscles of his shoulder blades. “You seem tense.”
“And you were supposed to be an idealist,” Radek responds, still not looking up. Kate tries to check out the papers he’s working on, just in case things go south and their little plan is exposed - she needs a bargaining chip.
“Don’t bother. Written in Czech.”
Kate sighs, walking back around to sit herself on the corner of his desk. At least maybe that way he’ll look at her.
“You got it, yes?”
Kate sighs, reaching into her bra to pull out the thin chain and the flat crystal attached to the end. “Right here.”
“Good. That will be all, thank you,” Radek remarks.
Well, this is going to take a little more effort than she’d anticipated as well. Kate plasters on her biggest smile. “I agree with your cause, Radek. I’m not just a warm body for hire. I don’t think that chair and the associated weaponry should go into anyone’s hands, let alone a man like Dr. McKay.”
Radek looks up then, eyes trailing briefly over her body before meeting her eyes. “Rodney is no different than any of us - a scientist, with an academic’s ego, ill-equipped to deal with the power handed to him.”
Stockholm syndrome - identification with your captor. “But you won’t do the same, will you?”
Radek shakes his head. “I cannot operate the chair.” He smiles. “The man I have chosen as my deputy is a medical doctor.”
Kate nods. Radek is the exact kind of wise they have all been waiting for. “You are scared of your own power?”
“I would be a fool not to be.”
“You’d be a fool anyway,” a voice booms from out of the shadows. Kate spins around so fast she almost falls off the desk.
Kate doesn’t need to see the figure to recognize the voice. “General Sheppard.” The man slinks out of the shadows, wearing black from spiked hair to combat boots.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” the voice responds. Sheppard is the classic Peter Pan. Even when he’s murdering and torturing in McKay’s name, he does it with a laugh and a grin on his face.
“What are you doing here, Sheppard?” Radek asks, calmly. “I thought Rodney sent you out to take care of that uprising in Siberia.”
Sheppard laughs. “Come on, Radek. You of all people should know that Rodney would never send me to Siberia. You, maybe. In fact, you’d be lucky right now if that’s what he’ll decide to do.”
Radek looks back down at his papers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheppard. What does McKay do last time you accuse me? Oh, yes, he sends you off to finish war in Iraq. Had fun there, didn’t you?”
Sheppard looks away a bit at that, eyes going dazed for just a second. Interesting. Kate had always thought of Sheppard as this invincible madman - unshakable and deadly, the only one of McKay’s soldiers not constantly hyped-up on tretonin. It’s good to know that there are some things left in this world that can still get to him.
“Rodney apologized for that. Besides, it’s not every day a man gets to single-handedly win a war.” Sheppard shrugs. “Well, not since Rambo. But, how about we cut the crap, Radek? Maybe that time I was getting a little trigger-happy. I’m not too big a man to admit my mistakes. But there’s a difference between then and now. You see, then you were just setting a trap for would be revolutionaries under Rodney’s instructions. Now, you are the revolutionaries.”
Sheppard stalks over, making Kate flinch as he pulls the access crystal out of her hand. “Naughty, naughty. You don’t think Rodney’s so stupid as to fall for a beautiful head of hair and little flattery do you? It’s a bit naïve, even for you, Radek” He takes the crystal, lays it down on the table and then smashes it with the butt of his pistol. “But what’s even more naïve is that you think I need a goddamned crystal to operate the chair weapon.”
This, finally, finally gets Radek’s attention. “What?”
“I’ve got the gene, Radek - the strongest gene out there. Even if you did get poor bumbling Carson Beckett into that thing, it wouldn’t respond to him. We’ve recoded it to respond to me only.”
“And Rodney’s not concerned that you might turn against him?”
Sheppard actually laughs at that, throwing his head back long enough for Kate to shift her hand back to her own thigh, right next to the miniature revolver she keeps fastened under her dress there. She can feel the tretonin thrumming through her, making her itch for action. But she has to wait for her chance, wait until Sheppard’s got his own gun pointed away from Radek.
“I take that as a ‘no,’ then,” Radek grumbles.
“Why would I ever betray Rodney? After all he’s done for this planet. Sure, we’ve made some mistakes, Radek - everyone does. But in the period of a couple of years we’ve virtually eliminated domestic war and soon we’ll be ready to take on the Ori. Rodney’s doing the right thing, Radek. I thought you knew that.”
“Sheppard . . .”
“Shhh . . . Radek, it’s okay. You just have to trust us.”
“Like you’ve trusted me?”
“Come on. Rodney’s an important guy. We have to be careful. Look, just don’t make me kill you, okay? Come willingly and I’ll make sure Rodney will be lenient.”
“And her?” Radek asks, looking over towards Kate.
Sheppard shrugs. “I don’t care either way. What’s a whore like that going to do to people like us?”
Kate shifts forward at this, pulling her skirt up almost to where she can reach the gun. “Hey, I’m not just some nameless . . .”
Radek swears in Czech, but Sheppard is smiling, turning towards here. “So you’d rather be exiled to . . .”
He doesn’t have time to finish, because by the time he’s got the gun pointed at her, she’s already drawn and fired, the tretonin washing through her like pride.
“Good job,” Radek says, bending down and removing a silver chain from around Sheppard’s neck. “I knew Rodney would never be so stupid as to carry the real crystal on his person.” He pulls out a handkerchief. “Now, it is a shame it had to get so bloody.”
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Radek sighs, flattening his palms out against his thighs. He’s been meeting with Kate every other Thursday since the beginning of this expedition, he shouldn’t be so nervous anymore.
“Good morning, Radek,” Kate says in the exact same way she’s said it ever other Thursday for two years. She always looks him straight in the eyes and smiles immediately after the words come out of her mouth. They must have taught her that smile in school.
“Good morning. How are you?” He’s not usually the first to ask this question, but today she looks tired. She’s not wearing makeup like she normally does, her hair is flat and listless and she has dark circles under her eyes.
“I’m fine, Radek. Thank you for asking.” It’s a deflection, but Radek lets her have it. If he were her, he wouldn’t be able to sleep either. They were experimenting on another being. So what if Michael wasn’t always human, for someone who’d taken the Hippocratic oath, it had to have been an awful thing. And then to fail - to prove that there really is nothing to stop the Wraith from their homicidal behavior, even after they were no longer able to feed - Radek knows that he wouldn’t be able to live with that.
“So,” Kate continues. “How are you today?”
Radek shrugs. It’s been a quiet day in the lab, despite the fact that Michael may put them on the Wraith’s radar yet again. McKay is doing his usual ‘we’re all going to die, save my brilliance’ routine, Kusanagi has finally recovered from the Athosian mumps and is able to make her amazing coffee again, and Radek has been pulled from jumper maintenance with a brooding Colonel Sheppard to work with Rodney on boosting power to the shield. “I am actually quite well, Dr. Heightmeyer.”
“I’m glad, Radek. That’s so good to hear. Now, these sessions are for you to speak about what you’d like, so if there’s anything else you might like to discuss . . .”
Radek frowns. There’s not really anything in particular.
“What about yourself and Dr. McKay? We discussed your friendship after what happened with Project Arcturus. Do you feel as though you’ve been able to recover from that?”
He and Rodney? Well, he and Rodney were fine. A lengthy note of apology and a few glorious months of getting to dictate his own projects had solved that one. Sure, it still stung that Rodney had accused him of being jealous, but that was McKay. What was Radek to do? The only one with any control over the man was Colonel Sheppard, and the two of them . . . they were like children - one lead the other astray, and before you knew it you were fighting off alien shrubbery and digging people out of Ancient trash compactors.
In truth, the incident on Doranda wasn’t unexpected. If McKay begged, of course Sheppard was going to listen. In Sheppard’s world, things always worked out - his harebrained schemes always saved the day, McKay always pulled something out of his ass to get them out of the mess they’d gotten into, the hero always rode in on his white horse and saved the kingdom and got the girl too.
Before that, there had been the incident with the nano virus. Yes, Radek was very happy that his brains hadn’t be eaten up by little miniature robots, but he’d later heard (from Rodney of all people) what exactly Sheppard had done to get them there. It was a terrifying thing to know that Elizabeth had absolutely no ultimate control over the man.
In fact, she was increasingly buying in to the whole Sheppard/McKay tag-team of dramatics and heroing rescues and moral principles continuingly twisting in order to justify so-called ‘necessary actions.’ Elizabeth had agreed to torture a Wraith first, and then a human? Sure, it was only Kavanagh, but it could have been anyone - any civilian scientist who fit the profile. Radek was still old enough to remember the old days of the occupation - the fear, the uncertainty, the knowledge that you were just a number, a replicable cog in a system that would be played like a piece on a chess board, with no guarantees whatsoever. He didn’t want that.
And he doubted it had all been Elizabeth’s idea, just as he doubted Carson and Kate had been the one to come up with the idea of doing what they’d done to Michael.
“Can I ask you something?” Radek almost whispered. Everything said here was done in confidence. He trusted Kate that much at least.
“You can ask me anything, though I won’t promise you an answer.”
Radek nods. “Sometimes, do you think that . . . is it possible that certain . . . er . . . leadership decisions on this expedition have . . . well, haven’t recent events crossed a line?”
Kate frowns, not looking at him or at her notepad, but out her long windows, the sun catching the doubt in her features. It’s a long moment before she answers, as sure as she’s always seemed. “Yes, sometimes I do.”
Radek doesn’t know a lot about psychology, but he’s pretty sure that the right answer would have been: ‘do you think we’ve crossed one?’
FIN
***Inspired by:
Number 1 is probably a mix of every spy movie I’ve ever seen (and some of the wonderful contributions of Reel_Sga) and 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being,' because it is the most awesome book, EVER.
Number 2 is, if you didn’t guess it, a complete riff of Brave New World.
Number 3, the world is stolen from Star Trek VI.
Number 4, again with the Bond, mostly Moonraker (and some Austin Powers).
Number 5, well, that's the actual prompt.
Author: Gaia (gaiaanarchy)
Characters/Pairing: Zelenka/Heightmeyer in some sections, minimal McShep in others
Rating: PG13
Category: Action, Drama
Content Warnings: Character death in section 3 and 4
Disclaimer: Don’t own SGA and don’t make money.
Spoilers: Hotzone, Critical Mass, Trinity, Michael
Word Count: ~5,600
Auhors Notes: This fic is my entry in the sg_rarepairings ficathon. I wrote for missyvortexdv who requested Radek/Heightmeyer set during/after or mention of Hotzone, Critical Mass or Michael. I’m not sure how well I did with the prompt, but the idea that it gives me inspired section five, with all the other four sections just setting up number five.
And I almost forgot to mention thanks to Rox (victoriaely) for understanding my late realization that I had a fic due and agreeing to beta!
FIVE WAYS KATE AND RADEK DON’T START THE REVOLUTION
By Gaia
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Fall in Prague is all bitter winds and cascading rains, trees almost stripped bare by late October. Kate buries her hands deeper in the fur lining of her coat and tries not to think about summers in California, driving down PCH in her father’s beat up old convertible with the top down and her hair flying in the breeze.
Strangely, she misses Germany more, the old farm in the countryside, the anxious bustle of Berlin like something out of an old black and white spy drama, a wall away from the governments and the world she knows. Prague is different, she supposes, perhaps because the people here were not gifted as the spoils of war, but rather stepped into the sphere of Communist idealism more than willingly. There are theories about this - theories of guilt.
But she isn’t here to deal in theories. Fact and secrecy have become her language now.
She rounds the corner, a gothic cathedral on her left, the circular stone altar of a derelict fountain before her. Movement in the shadows - from the anxious gate of his pacing, she knows it’s him.
The iron gate closes with a soft whine behind her, nothing but gravestones and curious black birds to listen to them as they stroll.
“The wall has fallen,” she says.
“Yes, yes, I know.” He pushes his glasses further up his nose, squinting at her. He always has a nervous energy about him. At first she thought it would make him a security risk, but perhaps the soviets expect a certain amount of jumpiness from the people who they deem too inexpert to deal with their plutonium.
“It’s only a matter of time.”
“No,” he counters. “The time is now. Already there are whispers, yes? Gorbachev is pulling back from empire. And the students . . . they are inspired. Need only a small push and you will see protest.”
She inclines her head. “And you will deliver that push?”
“I did not go from hi-tech theoretical research facility to undergraduates for no good reason.” He smiles at her, eyes laughing behind the frost of his glasses. His teeth are crooked in the smile, but there’s a certain charm about him, a raw devotedness that Kate can admire - in a world of smoke and mirrors, he’s the only one brave enough to hide in plain sight.
“So a few words and you expect to topple an empire?”
“Like dominoes.”
“When?”
“Demonstration is already planned for a week from now. The character of demonstration, however . . .”
“So, if all goes according to plan, this will be the last we see of each other?” She tries not to let her disappointment show. It’s not that getting back to sun and beach and real academic studies won’t be nice, but she’ll miss this - their calm afternoon walks through ghettos and cemeteries and soccer fields, his expressive hands, the whispering song of the language and the excitement he brings to it.
“Yes, I suppose. Yes.”
They amble along for a moment of silent contemplation, birds cooing as they follow along, dancing from tree to tree.
“So what will you do?” she asks.
He frowns. “When all this is over? I suppose I will wait. Undergraduates are not for me, but as interesting as military work might be, in our area of the world . . . who knows?”
She nods. It’s for the best. She can’t stand the idea that they might somehow end up back on opposite sides.
“And you?” he asks. “Surely you will not continue on your so-called exchange program. Even independent we are nothing but a satellite. Berlin must be more exciting.”
“Actually, I was thinking of going back, finish a real degree. In a free world, my services won’t be needed anymore.”
“And they’ll let you go? That simple?”
She smiles a sad smile. To think that he is so used to a world without even that simple freedom. “Yes, they’ll let me go.”
He looks away, at the foreboding fork of the chapel gates or the storm clouds on the horizon. Maybe he’s examining the atmosphere for particles she barely knows exist, let alone has the credentials to ponder. But she doesn’t need a degree to read his nervousness.
“What would you do?” she asks, suddenly self-conscious. “If you were allowed whatever you wanted?”
His smile is bemused, sad. “The same as you. I would study.”
She smiles at that, at a passion she’d thought she’d lost. But then again, if growing up under an oppressive militarized regime can’t make him jaded, then how can she be?
“Maybe you can,” she offers.
“Do not offer what you cannot process, Heidi.” He doesn’t know her real name. She knows his, of course, but she does not use it.
She can’t stand the melancholy in his smile. His eyes, grey against the moody sky, speak the propaganda that will never once leave his lips - even as they stand on the brink of a world reborn, there is no hope for truth and passion and curiosity.
Kate doesn’t know why she does it, but she leans forward, lips just brushing the stubble at the corner of his mouth. “Nothing is too wonderful to be true,” she whispers.
“Michael Faraday,” he acknowledges. “But what would he say to this?” he gestures to the empty graveyard, the thick clouded sky, pregnant with anticipation, a country and a people painted in sepia by the empire for which they set the stage.
“Come back with me,” she offers.
Hope flickers in his eyes like the flame of a candle, struggling against the wind.
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“’Who’s that?” Radek whispers, averting his gaze when the lunch lady looks up to stare at him. Let her. It’s not as though she will speak with any of the scientists and invite rumor anyhow. Epsilons - if nothing else, they are good for silence.
“Who? What?” Rodney asks, raising his head from the lunch line and spilling half of his soup onto Radek’s tray. “Oh, look what you did.”
Radek rolls his eyes. So much for subtle. He should know by now not to expect so much from the human megaphone. Rodney is a strange creature - his brilliance has allowed him even more latitude than the typical Alpha.
“So . . . who?” Rodney tries to whisper. But everyone in about a five-meter radius can hear anyhow.
Radek sighs in resignation. “That woman. The blonde - curly hair.”
Rodney spins around, again conspicuously. “The psychologist?”
Radek’s smile fades. Of course, the psychologist. Radek has little contact with the conditioning staff. He has always fit in perfectly. Even with the soma rationing, he has been perfectly sociable. But looking at her, those intense blue eyes and that bouncing blonde hair, he thinks maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t been.
Rodney picks up his tray and heads over to their usual table in the corner, but not before shooting the psychologist a glare.
“What?” Radek asks, but the second he looks back at her, he knows the question is irrelevant. Sheppard is sitting across from her, looking straight ahead, back stiff and movements calculated and formal. Rodney is turning practically beet-red, chewing so angrily that Radek fears he may have to duck a catapult of mashed potatoes any second now.
“Why can’t she just leave him alone?” Rodney shakes his head.
Normally, Sheppard dines with them, regardless of all the whispers that ensue, but there are days, every month like clockwork, where he moves gingerly, keeping his eyes averted and his shoulders straight. Then, he eats with Ford and the rest of the lower-caste Marines, shoveling food in with a brisk military efficiency before rushing off to train.
One day offworld with Rodney, though, and Sheppard is back to his usual self - joking and grinning and even offering solutions to problems they might encounter, if still looking a little shy while doing so.
Rodney looks pained. “I mean, what is shocking out the few brain cells he has left going to do anyhow? I understand that military men need not to think and be happy following orders. I mean, that’s what the lower castes are for, but pilots need to be able to think in order to fly. And following orders and being stiff and bruised from shocking sessions every month isn’t going to make the Wraith want to kill us less! Why can’t people just stop deluding themselves and see that we’re trying to survive out here!”
What Rodney thinks is no secret. But, the thing about Rodney is that he’s all bark and no bite - everybody knows it. He doesn’t even have the courage to ask Sheppard on a date, even if its completely obvious that Sheppard would do it himself if it wouldn’t be so presumptuous for a Beta to approach an Alpha-plus, like Rodney.
Rodney is right, after all. They’re out here, a galaxy away and no replacement in sight, no soma supply, just them and a bunch of life-sucking aliens and savages who have never even heard of Henry Ford.
Radek sighs, running fingers through his hair. There’s nothing they can do. Elizabeth Weir is an Alpha-plus born for what she does. She was a back-up World Controller, in case of accident, but the next generation has been decantered and is growing now, so they have no need for her back on Earth. No, Elizabeth Weir will never buck the system.
But this new woman, the psychologist . . . . Radek smiles, standing.
“Radek!” Rodney shouts, “Did you get an accidental shock treatment as a child? Where are you going?”
Radek doesn’t answer. He knows what he needs to do.
“Excuse me?”
Sheppard doesn’t even look up at the question, but the woman does.
“Hello, I am Radek Zelenka,” he says, stiff and formal just like he was taught to.
“Pleased to meet you, Radek,” she responds, confusion showing in her eyes, even as she repeats the phrase just like out of their very first etiquette books. “My name is Kate Heightmeyer.”
“I know who you are,” he says, ignoring the fact that it wasn’t true five minutes ago.
She smiles readily back at him, all professional glitz with only a sparkle of confusion betraying her perfectly calm exterior.
“I was wondering if you would not mind a rendezvous with me later tonight? After you are done here,” he gestures to Sheppard, but does not acknowledge him.
She purses her lips for just a brief second before nodding, placidly. “All right, Radek Zelenka. Nineteen hundred hours on the west pier.”
“Thank you. Enjoy your meal.”
“You as well.”
Radek nods and moves off, returning to his table with a grin.
“What the hell was that?” Rodney whispers the second he’s back in his seat.
“I asked her for an evening.”
“Just like that? You walked willing into the psychologist’s den? After all she’s done to John?”
Radek shrugs. “Eat your beats. Without nourishment you will fail to live up to the glory of our Fordship.”
Rodney rolls his eyes but stuffs a forkful of beats down his throat anyway.
<<<>>>
The greenhouses out on the west pier are quiet at this time of night. Back in the beginning, when Dr. Weir first organized the productive output of this expedition, they would have been bustling at all hours. But people keep dying and workers are needed in other areas.
Radek loosens his shirt, the humidity creeping up around his collar.
Kate’s hair sparkles in the mist, standing out even against the exotic lilies and tiger-striped leaves and the lush green of the thick foliage down here.
“How long do you think we can survive like this?” Radek whispers, voice low and pleading.
Kate turns away, stung. “I thought you asked me here for sex.”
“Oh.” Well, that’s a surprise. Radek is small and scruffy for an Alpha. Normally, he could not earn even the glance of a pneumatic beauty like Kate. “No, no . . . this is more important. I do not suggest rebellion. I suggest only that we are cut off from Earth and its leaders. We must start our own production, even if we must sacrifice some standards in order to survive this.”
Kate nods slowly, biting her lip. “And how can I help that?”
“We don’t need a military leader that follows ground-fighting tactics book. We need someone who can think.”
“And Dr. Weir?”
Radek doesn’t know. God, he doesn’t know. Elizabeth is a smart woman, addicted to power, but smart and if she thinks that change is the only way to keep that power then she will change.
“You are the psychologist, are you not?”
Kate thinks about it for a moment, her eyes sparkle as bright as the shine on the newest machine part. “Yes, I am. Would you like to have sex now?”
“What? Oh, yes . . . okay . . .”
He stills her hand when she reaches for her Malthusian belt. In a world where high replacement rates are necessary, one can’t afford to slow production. Not by even a fraction.
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Radek shivers. Even with the fur mittens he was able to make using the bottom of Ronon’s coat, he’s still freezing. He can only imagine how poor Dr. Fernandez must feel, never having lived outside the tropics.
He sighs. Time for a break anyhow. He stretches his aching hands, unfolding the top flaps so he can blow warm heat over his fingertips. Ten years ago, if you’d have asked him where he saw his future, he’d say a big physics program somewhere, a nuclear accelerator, maybe a Nobel (when he was at his daydreaming best) not on some icy rock on the outer rings of a far off galaxy, mining some meaningless shiny rocks for a civilization so backwards that it doesn’t recognize that not even the prettiest of things will save them from the Wraith, when they come.
Radek is lucky, though. On the first day he showed them that he could repair their machines, and it’s been his job ever since. The guards don’t understand it any better than the stones themselves probably do, so they leave him pretty much alone. They’re not afraid he’ll escape - there’s nothing but sub-zero wilderness for miles and miles, and yet it’s somehow completely different than Antarctica. In Antarctica he had polar fleece. And vodka.
The silence of the caverns is confining back here where most of the machinery is nestled. It keeps him from too much contact with the rest of the prisoners. It’d almost be relaxing, if it weren’t twenty below and he weren’t a prisoner here. Vodka would be nice too.
That’s why Radek is so surprised when Rekesta, his burly chimp-brained personal guard comes barreling around the corner, a perverted smirk on his face as he drags a woman behind him.
“Dr. Heightmeyer?” Radek asks, unsure. Kate is wearing even less than he is, hands bound in rags, chapped so much she’s bleeding beneath. She’s not wearing her uniform like all of the other expedition members he’s seen, but rather a white animal pelt wrapped around her upper body, legs bare and shivering.
“Radek,” she says, eyes level and commanding him to meet her gaze. She steps right up to him and embraces him, pulling his face to hers for a kiss on the lips.
Rekesta laughs in the background.
“Just play along,” Kate whispers into his lips, kissing down his lips and dropping the pelt to reveal what he suspected - that she’s naked beneath.
Radek is too stunned to really play along, but Kate’s good, because she stops and looks over her shoulder. “Would you mind?”
Rekesta shakes his head dumbly, but waddles off. That’s one thing Radek will give him credit for - he’s a stupid bastard, but he’s not particularly cruel - not like the guards down in the mines. Last time he saw Carson, half the man’s face was obscured by black bruising.
The second Rekesta’s out of sight, Kate wraps the fur back around herself, letting Radek enfold her in his own long coat.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the . . . er . . . visit, Dr. Heightmeyer, but why are you here?”
Kate looks both ways before whispering. “You need to disrupt the machines.”
“I . . . you know I can’t do that.” They wouldn’t notice him making the adjustments, but if they’re off for too long, then they’ll freeze and there will be no way to get them started again.
“You have to do it, Radek. It’s the only way.”
“Well, it’s time for a Plan B. Or maybe one of Colonel Sheppard’s famous Plan Fs?”
Kate sighs, shaking her head. “No, this is it. We have everything organized. Corrigan and Kusanagi have things in line down in the labor blocks and I have the Prisonmaster’s . . . um . . . harem, ready.” It’s the first time he’s heard her fumble like that. But he doesn’t wonder why. He’s seen the prisonmaster - he wonders if those appendages on top of his head are used for things other than decoration.
“I’m so sorry, Doctor . . . Kate. I didn’t know you had . . . are you all right?”
Kate nods, almost absently. “He hasn’t hurt me.” It’s a non-answer and they both know it - Kate probably more than anyone.
“And the others?”
Kate gulps. “Teyla is a strong woman. And Dr. Roberts. Even Dr. Brown is holding up.” They don’t speak of Elizabeth and how the guards slit her throat on the very first day after they took the Alpha site.
“And Colonel Sheppard?”
Kate is sure to meet his gaze. “He had some trouble adjusting, yes. But, that’s not what’s important, Radek. The Prisonmaster has allowed me to spend the night with you, ‘my husband,’ as a reward for the work you’ve done. He won’t trust you any more than he does now. We have to act.”
“But, Kate, you must understand that the machines are only source of heat in this place. You went to med school, you know not all prisoners can survive those temperatures.”
Kate nods, looking down at her raw knees and her chapped hands. “We understand.”
Radek frowns. He’s not used to these kinds of plans. Sheppard and McKay will risk their own lives, but they have yet to suggest a plan that’s likely to kill a large percentage of the population. “Sheppard okayed this?”
Kate meets his eyes seamlessly. “Yes. He did.”
Radek gulps. There really must be no other choice.
“Okay. I’ll make the adjustments now. We will not see the effects until the boiler is fired up again in the morning.”
<<<>>>
When Radek wakes the next morning, Kate snuggled up against him, curled tightly beneath the snow-white pelt he’d been provided for his pallet. The ground beneath them is shaking, the lights flickering. This is it.
Kate is awake in a second, barely stopping to stretch as she vaults out of bed. He wonders what she must have done in the past for reflexes like that. “Come on, Radek,” she prompts, reaching into her fur and pulling out a small pointed object, before tossing Radek his own wrench. “We have to make it up to the communications center. Ronon and Lorne are securing it, but they might need someone to make sure that we keep of the normal schedule of transmissions until we’re ready to take down a transport.”
“Wait,” Radek splutters, trying to get his glasses on straight. “Isn’t Rodney going to be doing that?”
Kate sighs and grabs his hand. “We have to go.”
<<<>>>
Two days later when he’s carrying Kate over his shoulder through the snow, Ronon standing guard beside him, he sees them. The blizzard is strong, blowing a shiver straight down to his bones, but a body is still a splash of color in the endless field of white.
“Don’t,” Ronon warns. He’s limping, smelling of soot and the charred flesh of all the dead they were forced to burn with motor oil. Radek doesn’t think of Fernandez or Lorne or Kusangi, bloody and frozen and almost peaceful floating there behind his eyes. He’s not sure he can add two more faces to that.
“When?” Radek asks.
“Three days before the revolt. They were exiled to the surface.”
Radek nods, looking at the two bodies, a Canadian flag patch and a mop of dark hair just visible in the banks of soft powdery snow.
If Kate were still consciousness, he might berate her for lying. He might ask her why she did it. But then again, he might not. He’s just so tired.
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“You were right, Dr. McKay really does prefer blondes,” Kate says, smiling as she pulls off her gloves - they’re silky and black and they come up to her elbows - just the way Dr. McKay likes it. He doesn’t like to be touched, skin on skin, except where it’s absolutely necessary. He wouldn’t even kiss her - something about the kiss of death or other such nonsense. Classic narcissistic paranoia. She’s not surprised. If she’d known him, even long before, she might have predicted all of this.
Radek looks up from the papers he’s working on, barely noticing her. “Ruler of the known world and he will still come in his pants if beautiful woman gives him time of day.” He shakes his head.
Kate frowns. He should give her a little more credit than that. After all, everyone knows that Dr. McKay hasn’t taken the time to pick out a bride, or in the very least a respectable harem because he’s married to his work. Or his paranoia. “It wasn’t easy, you know.” She slinks over to him, dropping the gloves on the table as she makes her way over. “You weren’t just asking some high class whore.”
“Yes, yes, I know, I ask trained psychiatrist.” Radek, it seems, is also married to his work. Kate wouldn’t expect anything less from Dr. McKay’s second in command. “Besides, whore would be too obvious.”
“Yes, it would.” Kate moves around behind him, reaching out to knead the tight muscles of his shoulder blades. “You seem tense.”
“And you were supposed to be an idealist,” Radek responds, still not looking up. Kate tries to check out the papers he’s working on, just in case things go south and their little plan is exposed - she needs a bargaining chip.
“Don’t bother. Written in Czech.”
Kate sighs, walking back around to sit herself on the corner of his desk. At least maybe that way he’ll look at her.
“You got it, yes?”
Kate sighs, reaching into her bra to pull out the thin chain and the flat crystal attached to the end. “Right here.”
“Good. That will be all, thank you,” Radek remarks.
Well, this is going to take a little more effort than she’d anticipated as well. Kate plasters on her biggest smile. “I agree with your cause, Radek. I’m not just a warm body for hire. I don’t think that chair and the associated weaponry should go into anyone’s hands, let alone a man like Dr. McKay.”
Radek looks up then, eyes trailing briefly over her body before meeting her eyes. “Rodney is no different than any of us - a scientist, with an academic’s ego, ill-equipped to deal with the power handed to him.”
Stockholm syndrome - identification with your captor. “But you won’t do the same, will you?”
Radek shakes his head. “I cannot operate the chair.” He smiles. “The man I have chosen as my deputy is a medical doctor.”
Kate nods. Radek is the exact kind of wise they have all been waiting for. “You are scared of your own power?”
“I would be a fool not to be.”
“You’d be a fool anyway,” a voice booms from out of the shadows. Kate spins around so fast she almost falls off the desk.
Kate doesn’t need to see the figure to recognize the voice. “General Sheppard.” The man slinks out of the shadows, wearing black from spiked hair to combat boots.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” the voice responds. Sheppard is the classic Peter Pan. Even when he’s murdering and torturing in McKay’s name, he does it with a laugh and a grin on his face.
“What are you doing here, Sheppard?” Radek asks, calmly. “I thought Rodney sent you out to take care of that uprising in Siberia.”
Sheppard laughs. “Come on, Radek. You of all people should know that Rodney would never send me to Siberia. You, maybe. In fact, you’d be lucky right now if that’s what he’ll decide to do.”
Radek looks back down at his papers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheppard. What does McKay do last time you accuse me? Oh, yes, he sends you off to finish war in Iraq. Had fun there, didn’t you?”
Sheppard looks away a bit at that, eyes going dazed for just a second. Interesting. Kate had always thought of Sheppard as this invincible madman - unshakable and deadly, the only one of McKay’s soldiers not constantly hyped-up on tretonin. It’s good to know that there are some things left in this world that can still get to him.
“Rodney apologized for that. Besides, it’s not every day a man gets to single-handedly win a war.” Sheppard shrugs. “Well, not since Rambo. But, how about we cut the crap, Radek? Maybe that time I was getting a little trigger-happy. I’m not too big a man to admit my mistakes. But there’s a difference between then and now. You see, then you were just setting a trap for would be revolutionaries under Rodney’s instructions. Now, you are the revolutionaries.”
Sheppard stalks over, making Kate flinch as he pulls the access crystal out of her hand. “Naughty, naughty. You don’t think Rodney’s so stupid as to fall for a beautiful head of hair and little flattery do you? It’s a bit naïve, even for you, Radek” He takes the crystal, lays it down on the table and then smashes it with the butt of his pistol. “But what’s even more naïve is that you think I need a goddamned crystal to operate the chair weapon.”
This, finally, finally gets Radek’s attention. “What?”
“I’ve got the gene, Radek - the strongest gene out there. Even if you did get poor bumbling Carson Beckett into that thing, it wouldn’t respond to him. We’ve recoded it to respond to me only.”
“And Rodney’s not concerned that you might turn against him?”
Sheppard actually laughs at that, throwing his head back long enough for Kate to shift her hand back to her own thigh, right next to the miniature revolver she keeps fastened under her dress there. She can feel the tretonin thrumming through her, making her itch for action. But she has to wait for her chance, wait until Sheppard’s got his own gun pointed away from Radek.
“I take that as a ‘no,’ then,” Radek grumbles.
“Why would I ever betray Rodney? After all he’s done for this planet. Sure, we’ve made some mistakes, Radek - everyone does. But in the period of a couple of years we’ve virtually eliminated domestic war and soon we’ll be ready to take on the Ori. Rodney’s doing the right thing, Radek. I thought you knew that.”
“Sheppard . . .”
“Shhh . . . Radek, it’s okay. You just have to trust us.”
“Like you’ve trusted me?”
“Come on. Rodney’s an important guy. We have to be careful. Look, just don’t make me kill you, okay? Come willingly and I’ll make sure Rodney will be lenient.”
“And her?” Radek asks, looking over towards Kate.
Sheppard shrugs. “I don’t care either way. What’s a whore like that going to do to people like us?”
Kate shifts forward at this, pulling her skirt up almost to where she can reach the gun. “Hey, I’m not just some nameless . . .”
Radek swears in Czech, but Sheppard is smiling, turning towards here. “So you’d rather be exiled to . . .”
He doesn’t have time to finish, because by the time he’s got the gun pointed at her, she’s already drawn and fired, the tretonin washing through her like pride.
“Good job,” Radek says, bending down and removing a silver chain from around Sheppard’s neck. “I knew Rodney would never be so stupid as to carry the real crystal on his person.” He pulls out a handkerchief. “Now, it is a shame it had to get so bloody.”
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Radek sighs, flattening his palms out against his thighs. He’s been meeting with Kate every other Thursday since the beginning of this expedition, he shouldn’t be so nervous anymore.
“Good morning, Radek,” Kate says in the exact same way she’s said it ever other Thursday for two years. She always looks him straight in the eyes and smiles immediately after the words come out of her mouth. They must have taught her that smile in school.
“Good morning. How are you?” He’s not usually the first to ask this question, but today she looks tired. She’s not wearing makeup like she normally does, her hair is flat and listless and she has dark circles under her eyes.
“I’m fine, Radek. Thank you for asking.” It’s a deflection, but Radek lets her have it. If he were her, he wouldn’t be able to sleep either. They were experimenting on another being. So what if Michael wasn’t always human, for someone who’d taken the Hippocratic oath, it had to have been an awful thing. And then to fail - to prove that there really is nothing to stop the Wraith from their homicidal behavior, even after they were no longer able to feed - Radek knows that he wouldn’t be able to live with that.
“So,” Kate continues. “How are you today?”
Radek shrugs. It’s been a quiet day in the lab, despite the fact that Michael may put them on the Wraith’s radar yet again. McKay is doing his usual ‘we’re all going to die, save my brilliance’ routine, Kusanagi has finally recovered from the Athosian mumps and is able to make her amazing coffee again, and Radek has been pulled from jumper maintenance with a brooding Colonel Sheppard to work with Rodney on boosting power to the shield. “I am actually quite well, Dr. Heightmeyer.”
“I’m glad, Radek. That’s so good to hear. Now, these sessions are for you to speak about what you’d like, so if there’s anything else you might like to discuss . . .”
Radek frowns. There’s not really anything in particular.
“What about yourself and Dr. McKay? We discussed your friendship after what happened with Project Arcturus. Do you feel as though you’ve been able to recover from that?”
He and Rodney? Well, he and Rodney were fine. A lengthy note of apology and a few glorious months of getting to dictate his own projects had solved that one. Sure, it still stung that Rodney had accused him of being jealous, but that was McKay. What was Radek to do? The only one with any control over the man was Colonel Sheppard, and the two of them . . . they were like children - one lead the other astray, and before you knew it you were fighting off alien shrubbery and digging people out of Ancient trash compactors.
In truth, the incident on Doranda wasn’t unexpected. If McKay begged, of course Sheppard was going to listen. In Sheppard’s world, things always worked out - his harebrained schemes always saved the day, McKay always pulled something out of his ass to get them out of the mess they’d gotten into, the hero always rode in on his white horse and saved the kingdom and got the girl too.
Before that, there had been the incident with the nano virus. Yes, Radek was very happy that his brains hadn’t be eaten up by little miniature robots, but he’d later heard (from Rodney of all people) what exactly Sheppard had done to get them there. It was a terrifying thing to know that Elizabeth had absolutely no ultimate control over the man.
In fact, she was increasingly buying in to the whole Sheppard/McKay tag-team of dramatics and heroing rescues and moral principles continuingly twisting in order to justify so-called ‘necessary actions.’ Elizabeth had agreed to torture a Wraith first, and then a human? Sure, it was only Kavanagh, but it could have been anyone - any civilian scientist who fit the profile. Radek was still old enough to remember the old days of the occupation - the fear, the uncertainty, the knowledge that you were just a number, a replicable cog in a system that would be played like a piece on a chess board, with no guarantees whatsoever. He didn’t want that.
And he doubted it had all been Elizabeth’s idea, just as he doubted Carson and Kate had been the one to come up with the idea of doing what they’d done to Michael.
“Can I ask you something?” Radek almost whispered. Everything said here was done in confidence. He trusted Kate that much at least.
“You can ask me anything, though I won’t promise you an answer.”
Radek nods. “Sometimes, do you think that . . . is it possible that certain . . . er . . . leadership decisions on this expedition have . . . well, haven’t recent events crossed a line?”
Kate frowns, not looking at him or at her notepad, but out her long windows, the sun catching the doubt in her features. It’s a long moment before she answers, as sure as she’s always seemed. “Yes, sometimes I do.”
Radek doesn’t know a lot about psychology, but he’s pretty sure that the right answer would have been: ‘do you think we’ve crossed one?’
FIN
***Inspired by:
Number 1 is probably a mix of every spy movie I’ve ever seen (and some of the wonderful contributions of Reel_Sga) and 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being,' because it is the most awesome book, EVER.
Number 2 is, if you didn’t guess it, a complete riff of Brave New World.
Number 3, the world is stolen from Star Trek VI.
Number 4, again with the Bond, mostly Moonraker (and some Austin Powers).
Number 5, well, that's the actual prompt.