April is the cruellest month by kisahawklin (Must be dreaming challenge)
Title: April is the cruellest month
Author: kisahawklin
Rating: 13+ for mild language
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Spoilers: Vague season four spoilers
Word count: ~2000
A/N: Thanks to soleta, the_wanlorn, and all_my_fandoms for help flushing out the idea, spot checking, pointing out the obvious, and beta duties.
The wormhole winks out as soon as Rodney’s through it. It’s unexpected, as is the stark emptiness of the gate room. Everything is deathly quiet, like he’s wearing sound-muffling headphones from the shooting range.
“Hello?”
His voice echoes, bouncing off the walls and coming back to him.
Without the light from the wormhole, the gate room is shadowed and creepy. Rodney checks his pockets, which turn out to be empty. Damn it. He left in too much of a hurry, didn’t really think about it, didn’t realize what he’d need. He takes a deep breath and definitely does not panic.
He hurries up the stairs to the dialing console, groaning as he gives it a once-over. The power crystals are put in haphazardly; some are charred, some cracked and others missing altogether. It’s dead beyond even the most prodigious recircuiting. It's like a child tried to reorganize the crystals, or someone with a limited knowledge of engineering. Someone like Sheppard.
Rodney.
The sound doesn't echo, but he's certain he heard his name. It's like the chokingly still air whispered it in his ear. “Sheppard?” he asks the room tentatively. He’s not sure if the silence that answers him is better or worse than the eerie disembodied voice.
Staring at the crystal display, Rodney thinks about what he’s going to need to find Sheppard, fix the console, and get them out of here. Life signs detector, tools, spare crystals… he needs to get to his lab.
He navigates his way through the barren corridors to the stairs, calling out Sheppard's name every ten meters or so. Third time's the charm, and an inhuman wail tears through the hallways, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his pulse race. “Of course there’s a terrifying monster, what rescue mission would be complete without one?” Rodney complains, and walks faster. Much faster. “I wish I had a gun.”
A door two steps in front of him swishes open. He enters the room, surprised at the sheer volume of firepower. He thought he knew where the colonel stashed all the weapons on Atlantis, but apparently not. Maybe this is his secret hoard. He picks up a 9mm and puts it in his thigh holster, leaving it unsnapped, and grabs a P90 for good measure, tucking it under his arm. “Thanks,” he mutters.
A transporter door opens as he passes it; he really really doesn’t want to take a transporter. The display flashes the map of Atlantis at him, the simplistic bird’s eye view with thick red outlines. The dot representing the transporter nearest Rodney’s lab pulses with a halo of white light.
“Oh, come on,” Rodney says, determinedly not thinking about who he’s talking to. “You can't guarantee there won't be any data loss.”
The monitor flashes insistently, but it’s the blood-curdling howl that’s much closer than the last one that makes him decide to step in. The door closes behind him and he catches a shadow galloping down the hallway as he turns around. Please God, he thinks feverishly, don’t let me die from something as stupid as a transporter accident or a monster from Resident Evil.
He opens his eyes when he hears the doors whoosh open, and there - that’s the hallway that leads to his lab. The lights are on and the lab looks strangely inviting despite the utter absence of people. The oddest details stand out: the three empty coffee mugs next to his favorite computer, Zelenka’s pile of legal pads with every nonsensical bit of inspiration he’s ever had, the box of Ancient crap that not even Sheppard’s gene can get to work.
He goes over to the locked closet, the one only he and Radek have the keys to and - shit. Keys. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, concentrating. The keys are… in the top drawer of his desk. He approaches his desk, eyeing the top drawer intently. He pulls it open and the keys are there, sitting on top of a pile of his own notes scribbled in Sharpie and a hangman game that Zelenka and Sheppard played last week while waiting for Rodney to finish up his simulation before movie night. UNDERA_ _RE_IATED _ENIUS AT _OR_.
He snags the keys and brings them to the closet, mentally running down the list of equipment as he crosses the room. Four spare life signs detectors, check. Eighteen perfectly smooth balls of naquadah Sheppard thought might be grenades, check. Piles of cannibalized crystals from non-working consoles, check. Six dead ZPMs, check. He opens the doors to the walk-in closet he always assumed was a pantry and finds everything on his mental list and a huge array of Ancient tech they haven’t figured out yet. He stuffs his pockets with crystals and a single maybe-grenade, grabs a life signs detector and takes a last, soulful look at his coffee stash before relocking the doors.
One glance at the life signs detector shows himself in his lab and someone in the gate room. He curses himself for not looking around more carefully while he was there. “Hang on, Sheppard, I’m coming.”
He really hopes the flickering lights are a power issue and not Atlantis telling him to hurry up. And if the flickering lights weren’t enough, a chorus of growls reverberates down the hallway. Rodney starts back to the transporter, the red warmth of the closet calling and his destination slowly pulsing on the monitor like it’s waiting for him. It feels like it’s taken him hours to gear up.
Getting to the transporter feels like he’s in slow motion. He’s only two steps out of the lab when he hears the pounding of paws behind him. He takes off, his heart rate climbing dangerously high. His legs extend, and he tries to remember everything Ronon has ever taught him about running for his life.
He keeps his eyes focused on the monitor and the blinking dot. It blinks faster, like it’s sympathetic to his growing panic. The fear that’s building in the back of his mind spikes when he hears the creatures breathing harshly behind him, and he puts his head down and runs faster yet, his legs screaming. He narrows his focus to the blinking dot, willing his body to move faster.
The transporter room comes closer in a rush, he leaps headlong into it, pressing the monitor with his whole hand and hoping Atlantis will meet him halfway. He hears the muffled thump of something slamming full speed into the metal of the transporter doors right before a different set of doors opens and he’s somewhere else. He cringes back in the transporter to catch his breath and make sure the hallway is clear.
Adrenaline courses through him, making him shaky and prickling on the backs of his hands. He has to get his vitals under control or else -
“Wait a minute,” he says, looking from the datapad to the entryway in front of him. Someone - Sheppard - should be right here.
Rodney - okay, that’s not his imagination.
“Where the hell are you?” he asks, and stops dead to listen. Nothing. He follows the life signs detector to a wall opposite a bank of windows. Sheppard should be right here. He shakes the life signs detector once, and the screen fritzes for a second. When it comes back online, it stubbornly tells him the same thing: Sheppard should be there, right in front of him, leaning lazily against that wall.
He walks right up to the wall and runs his hands over it. There’s an unfamiliar coolness to the touch. It’s not quite smooth, either, not like the metal the city is actually made of. It feels like… drywall. Rodney taps a line across it with his knuckles and yes! There are studs in the wall. He stops when he thinks he hears his name again.
“Colonel?” he yells. It’s as good as calling ‘here, kitty’ to the monsters, but it won’t matter if he can get Sheppard out in time. “Sheppard!”
He stands absolutely still and waits. It feels like forever before he hears a faint knocking from behind the sheetrock.
“You are fifty kinds of messed up,” Rodney tells the wall.
He swings his P90 over his head and into the wall a foot or two above where he calculates Sheppard’s head should be, assuming he’s standing. It makes a decent hole and he can hear Sheppard coughing from the fallout. He digs his hands into the thin layer of drywall and yanks, pulling a chunk of the wall down. It crumbles easily and relief washes over him when he hears Sheppard’s voice, rough and dry-sounding. “Hurry up!”
“Oh yes, I’m taking my time out here, having tea with the monsters roaming around,” Rodney snaps as he pulls away a chunk of drywall and Sheppard’s hair appears, white with dust and sticking straight up. He’s caught tight between two studs, boxed in by the wooden frame.
He can hear the monsters running for the gate room, a thundering cadence of heavy four-legged creatures and he shoves down the panic that’s making his heart rate jump. He focuses on pulling out the chunks of sheetrock, unearthing Sheppard’s grimacing face.
Sheppard’s eyes go huge as he looks over Rodney’s right shoulder. He struggles to get free, yelling for Rodney to run. Rodney doesn’t answer, can’t answer, can’t leave Sheppard here, not when he’s so close. He scrabbles to get Sheppard’s arms free so he can help. Thirty seconds more, that’s all he needs to get Sheppard out, he can do it, he can -
A swipe of the creature’s claws splits open the back of Rodney’s shirt. The first thing to hit him is that it’s easier to move, and the second that there’s a cool breeze on his back. Then his flayed nerves scream and holy shit does that hurt - he bellows for a second before he clamps his mouth shut and digs back in.
“Get out of here, Rodney!” Sheppard yells, and he’s got enough leverage that he’s shoving his chest forward, the drywall disintegrating as he strains to get out.
“You’re coming with me.” Rodney concentrates all of his formidable focus on freeing Sheppard’s arms, only fifteen more seconds, ten, not even that, get -
Sharp fangs rip into his rib cage and he sucks in a breath that sears his lungs. He can hear Sheppard yelling his name, but it’s Sheppard’s arms that he notices, flailing, knocking over the last of the wall. Rodney laughs, feeling the blood gurgle in his lungs before the blackness takes over.
The first thing Rodney processes as he crawls up from the cave of unconsciousness is Sheppard's voice. “Damn it, McKay, wake up!”
The steady beep-beep-beep of the monitors, the scratchy feel of new scrubs on his skin, the smell of disinfectant all let him know they’re alive and safe. He turns his head toward Sheppard’s voice and cracks an eye open. The leads are disconnected from Sheppard’s head, but he still has the Frankenstein attachments from the machine on his temples. He’s fighting Keller to sit up and losing.
Rodney looks up and down Sheppard’s rail thin body and can hardly believe it’s only been a week - a week of wheedling, threatening and bargaining with Carter, Keller, and what’s-her-name, the new psychiatrist. To get them to agree to him going after Sheppard, that he’d been in Sheppard’s head before and it’s positively spartan compared to his own psyche. He had expected Sheppard’s mind to be an empty Atlantis, but he hadn’t expected the thrumming layer of loneliness that’s still resonating with him like the sound fading away from a plucked harp string.
Rodney’s glad he insisted their bunks be closer together this time; he can reach out and put a hand on Sheppard’s arm. Sheppard stops struggling and looks over at Rodney, the relief palpable.
“Hey,” Rodney croaks, releasing Sheppard’s arm.
“Hey,” Sheppard answers.
Rodney debates bringing up the bleak wasteland of Sheppard’s mind and decides not here. Not now. Maybe not ever. Instead he asks, “Drywall? Are you kidding me?”
Author: kisahawklin
Rating: 13+ for mild language
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Spoilers: Vague season four spoilers
Word count: ~2000
A/N: Thanks to soleta, the_wanlorn, and all_my_fandoms for help flushing out the idea, spot checking, pointing out the obvious, and beta duties.
The wormhole winks out as soon as Rodney’s through it. It’s unexpected, as is the stark emptiness of the gate room. Everything is deathly quiet, like he’s wearing sound-muffling headphones from the shooting range.
“Hello?”
His voice echoes, bouncing off the walls and coming back to him.
Without the light from the wormhole, the gate room is shadowed and creepy. Rodney checks his pockets, which turn out to be empty. Damn it. He left in too much of a hurry, didn’t really think about it, didn’t realize what he’d need. He takes a deep breath and definitely does not panic.
He hurries up the stairs to the dialing console, groaning as he gives it a once-over. The power crystals are put in haphazardly; some are charred, some cracked and others missing altogether. It’s dead beyond even the most prodigious recircuiting. It's like a child tried to reorganize the crystals, or someone with a limited knowledge of engineering. Someone like Sheppard.
Rodney.
The sound doesn't echo, but he's certain he heard his name. It's like the chokingly still air whispered it in his ear. “Sheppard?” he asks the room tentatively. He’s not sure if the silence that answers him is better or worse than the eerie disembodied voice.
Staring at the crystal display, Rodney thinks about what he’s going to need to find Sheppard, fix the console, and get them out of here. Life signs detector, tools, spare crystals… he needs to get to his lab.
He navigates his way through the barren corridors to the stairs, calling out Sheppard's name every ten meters or so. Third time's the charm, and an inhuman wail tears through the hallways, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his pulse race. “Of course there’s a terrifying monster, what rescue mission would be complete without one?” Rodney complains, and walks faster. Much faster. “I wish I had a gun.”
A door two steps in front of him swishes open. He enters the room, surprised at the sheer volume of firepower. He thought he knew where the colonel stashed all the weapons on Atlantis, but apparently not. Maybe this is his secret hoard. He picks up a 9mm and puts it in his thigh holster, leaving it unsnapped, and grabs a P90 for good measure, tucking it under his arm. “Thanks,” he mutters.
A transporter door opens as he passes it; he really really doesn’t want to take a transporter. The display flashes the map of Atlantis at him, the simplistic bird’s eye view with thick red outlines. The dot representing the transporter nearest Rodney’s lab pulses with a halo of white light.
“Oh, come on,” Rodney says, determinedly not thinking about who he’s talking to. “You can't guarantee there won't be any data loss.”
The monitor flashes insistently, but it’s the blood-curdling howl that’s much closer than the last one that makes him decide to step in. The door closes behind him and he catches a shadow galloping down the hallway as he turns around. Please God, he thinks feverishly, don’t let me die from something as stupid as a transporter accident or a monster from Resident Evil.
He opens his eyes when he hears the doors whoosh open, and there - that’s the hallway that leads to his lab. The lights are on and the lab looks strangely inviting despite the utter absence of people. The oddest details stand out: the three empty coffee mugs next to his favorite computer, Zelenka’s pile of legal pads with every nonsensical bit of inspiration he’s ever had, the box of Ancient crap that not even Sheppard’s gene can get to work.
He goes over to the locked closet, the one only he and Radek have the keys to and - shit. Keys. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, concentrating. The keys are… in the top drawer of his desk. He approaches his desk, eyeing the top drawer intently. He pulls it open and the keys are there, sitting on top of a pile of his own notes scribbled in Sharpie and a hangman game that Zelenka and Sheppard played last week while waiting for Rodney to finish up his simulation before movie night. UNDERA_ _RE_IATED _ENIUS AT _OR_.
He snags the keys and brings them to the closet, mentally running down the list of equipment as he crosses the room. Four spare life signs detectors, check. Eighteen perfectly smooth balls of naquadah Sheppard thought might be grenades, check. Piles of cannibalized crystals from non-working consoles, check. Six dead ZPMs, check. He opens the doors to the walk-in closet he always assumed was a pantry and finds everything on his mental list and a huge array of Ancient tech they haven’t figured out yet. He stuffs his pockets with crystals and a single maybe-grenade, grabs a life signs detector and takes a last, soulful look at his coffee stash before relocking the doors.
One glance at the life signs detector shows himself in his lab and someone in the gate room. He curses himself for not looking around more carefully while he was there. “Hang on, Sheppard, I’m coming.”
He really hopes the flickering lights are a power issue and not Atlantis telling him to hurry up. And if the flickering lights weren’t enough, a chorus of growls reverberates down the hallway. Rodney starts back to the transporter, the red warmth of the closet calling and his destination slowly pulsing on the monitor like it’s waiting for him. It feels like it’s taken him hours to gear up.
Getting to the transporter feels like he’s in slow motion. He’s only two steps out of the lab when he hears the pounding of paws behind him. He takes off, his heart rate climbing dangerously high. His legs extend, and he tries to remember everything Ronon has ever taught him about running for his life.
He keeps his eyes focused on the monitor and the blinking dot. It blinks faster, like it’s sympathetic to his growing panic. The fear that’s building in the back of his mind spikes when he hears the creatures breathing harshly behind him, and he puts his head down and runs faster yet, his legs screaming. He narrows his focus to the blinking dot, willing his body to move faster.
The transporter room comes closer in a rush, he leaps headlong into it, pressing the monitor with his whole hand and hoping Atlantis will meet him halfway. He hears the muffled thump of something slamming full speed into the metal of the transporter doors right before a different set of doors opens and he’s somewhere else. He cringes back in the transporter to catch his breath and make sure the hallway is clear.
Adrenaline courses through him, making him shaky and prickling on the backs of his hands. He has to get his vitals under control or else -
“Wait a minute,” he says, looking from the datapad to the entryway in front of him. Someone - Sheppard - should be right here.
Rodney - okay, that’s not his imagination.
“Where the hell are you?” he asks, and stops dead to listen. Nothing. He follows the life signs detector to a wall opposite a bank of windows. Sheppard should be right here. He shakes the life signs detector once, and the screen fritzes for a second. When it comes back online, it stubbornly tells him the same thing: Sheppard should be there, right in front of him, leaning lazily against that wall.
He walks right up to the wall and runs his hands over it. There’s an unfamiliar coolness to the touch. It’s not quite smooth, either, not like the metal the city is actually made of. It feels like… drywall. Rodney taps a line across it with his knuckles and yes! There are studs in the wall. He stops when he thinks he hears his name again.
“Colonel?” he yells. It’s as good as calling ‘here, kitty’ to the monsters, but it won’t matter if he can get Sheppard out in time. “Sheppard!”
He stands absolutely still and waits. It feels like forever before he hears a faint knocking from behind the sheetrock.
“You are fifty kinds of messed up,” Rodney tells the wall.
He swings his P90 over his head and into the wall a foot or two above where he calculates Sheppard’s head should be, assuming he’s standing. It makes a decent hole and he can hear Sheppard coughing from the fallout. He digs his hands into the thin layer of drywall and yanks, pulling a chunk of the wall down. It crumbles easily and relief washes over him when he hears Sheppard’s voice, rough and dry-sounding. “Hurry up!”
“Oh yes, I’m taking my time out here, having tea with the monsters roaming around,” Rodney snaps as he pulls away a chunk of drywall and Sheppard’s hair appears, white with dust and sticking straight up. He’s caught tight between two studs, boxed in by the wooden frame.
He can hear the monsters running for the gate room, a thundering cadence of heavy four-legged creatures and he shoves down the panic that’s making his heart rate jump. He focuses on pulling out the chunks of sheetrock, unearthing Sheppard’s grimacing face.
Sheppard’s eyes go huge as he looks over Rodney’s right shoulder. He struggles to get free, yelling for Rodney to run. Rodney doesn’t answer, can’t answer, can’t leave Sheppard here, not when he’s so close. He scrabbles to get Sheppard’s arms free so he can help. Thirty seconds more, that’s all he needs to get Sheppard out, he can do it, he can -
A swipe of the creature’s claws splits open the back of Rodney’s shirt. The first thing to hit him is that it’s easier to move, and the second that there’s a cool breeze on his back. Then his flayed nerves scream and holy shit does that hurt - he bellows for a second before he clamps his mouth shut and digs back in.
“Get out of here, Rodney!” Sheppard yells, and he’s got enough leverage that he’s shoving his chest forward, the drywall disintegrating as he strains to get out.
“You’re coming with me.” Rodney concentrates all of his formidable focus on freeing Sheppard’s arms, only fifteen more seconds, ten, not even that, get -
Sharp fangs rip into his rib cage and he sucks in a breath that sears his lungs. He can hear Sheppard yelling his name, but it’s Sheppard’s arms that he notices, flailing, knocking over the last of the wall. Rodney laughs, feeling the blood gurgle in his lungs before the blackness takes over.
The first thing Rodney processes as he crawls up from the cave of unconsciousness is Sheppard's voice. “Damn it, McKay, wake up!”
The steady beep-beep-beep of the monitors, the scratchy feel of new scrubs on his skin, the smell of disinfectant all let him know they’re alive and safe. He turns his head toward Sheppard’s voice and cracks an eye open. The leads are disconnected from Sheppard’s head, but he still has the Frankenstein attachments from the machine on his temples. He’s fighting Keller to sit up and losing.
Rodney looks up and down Sheppard’s rail thin body and can hardly believe it’s only been a week - a week of wheedling, threatening and bargaining with Carter, Keller, and what’s-her-name, the new psychiatrist. To get them to agree to him going after Sheppard, that he’d been in Sheppard’s head before and it’s positively spartan compared to his own psyche. He had expected Sheppard’s mind to be an empty Atlantis, but he hadn’t expected the thrumming layer of loneliness that’s still resonating with him like the sound fading away from a plucked harp string.
Rodney’s glad he insisted their bunks be closer together this time; he can reach out and put a hand on Sheppard’s arm. Sheppard stops struggling and looks over at Rodney, the relief palpable.
“Hey,” Rodney croaks, releasing Sheppard’s arm.
“Hey,” Sheppard answers.
Rodney debates bringing up the bleak wasteland of Sheppard’s mind and decides not here. Not now. Maybe not ever. Instead he asks, “Drywall? Are you kidding me?”