Fic: Mary, Melusine, Mary, Medea [SGA, McKay/Sheppard, PG-13]
I swear to God, this story kicked my ass, but hopefully I kicked it right back. It was a sort of personal challenge - I wanted to see if I could do a, the creepy, and b, a mostly-linear story that didn't involve my usual scene breaks. That part was very hard, I tell you. Anyways, housekeeping: Quite a bit borrowed from Celia Bell's "The Impossible Fate of William Minnafee", though I don't recommend the story. The Mary in question refers to Mary Mallon, otherwise known as "Typhoid Mary".
For the Imprisonment square on my cliche_fic bingo card.
MARY, MELUSINE, MARY, MEDEA
SGA; PG-13. McKay/Sheppard.
"What do you mean, you haven't heard from him in hours?" McKay snaps. "No, he wasn't with me. No, he wasn't with Simpson. Yes, I actually asked her."
"No you didn't," she says.
"Fine. Simpson, was Adukkalil with you?" he says, over-emphasizing each word.
"No," she snaps back.
"Simpson says no. Look, just try his radio. What, you're sure? No answer? Are you pressing the wrong buttons? Well, I don't know, I think you've consistently proven yourself to be morons! Fine, fine," McKay says, "I'm coming," and practically charges out the door. They can still hear distant snatches of his conversation - by any indication has since turned into a shouting match - as he storms down the hallway.
"I'm sure it's fine," Simpson says, looking over to where John stands, jaw clenched, looking out the window. "The radios have - how you say it, been on the fritz, lately? He's probably just late for check-in."
"Yeah," John says. "Nothing to worry about, right? McKay'll sort it out."
*
They left with beer and a shopping bag of Bad Religion cassettes, cans and loose tapes clanking under their feet as they shoved themselves into the housekeeper's station wagon. Janet's braid got caught in the door, and they laughed it off. They were giddy to a man with crisp mountain air and sharper rebellion: most of their parents were away, excluding Patrick Sheppard, which made John even happier. They were young, and thought themselves old. At the time, they all liked to think they were getting away with something.
"Where to, boys and girls?" Abigail had yelled into the backseat, kicking stray tapes away from the accelerator, and beside her, John had muttered:
"Anywhere but here," and Will said, "Yeah, listen to Johnny-boy here," and tried to put him in a headlock around the headrest.
It was afternoon, autumn sunset spilling like a bloody yolk over the edges of the horizon, and the highway was long, and quiet when they got tired of screaming. John folded his arms over the window-rim and put his head down; drifted in and out to the sound of the wind thundering past them, static over Will whispering in his ear and Nancy's soft snores behind him, muffled where her head was in Janet's lap. The landscape bled by in long smears of red and brown, leaves fluttering in their wake like birds startled by a shot, and they blew through one-street towns like bullets. "This one?" Abigail would yell; "this one?" And they looked out at the hidden driveways and boarded-up gas stations and said no, no, no. "This one?" Too rich. "This one?" Too big. "This one?"
Yes. Yes. A sleepy little town with rusting billboards and one grocery store, one bar, no visible means of employment, where the trees outnumbered the people and the houses weren't the mansions of home but patched-up places barely visible from the road - not declarations but whispers, suggestions of occupancy. Like another country, or something he had read about, a long time ago, though he wasn't sure where. It was John who saw the pumpkins, flashes of orange in the shadow of a house. Donahues, the mailbox read. It wasn't particularly impressive; messy, flung-about. Their lawn was studded with flowerpots and iron sheeting and farm equipment, as if every inch of space not occupied by the trees had to be guarded, claimed.
"Pull over," he told Abigail, and they scrambled out after him. Up close, the pumpkins were even better than John had hoped, big-bellied and orange, real beauties.
Will laughed at that. "Beauties. What d'you want to do, Johnny, fuck 'em or carve 'em?"
"Fuck you," John said against the resounding jeers.
"You wish," Will snorted, and John pulled a knife from his boot, and grinned. They cut them off the vine right there, crouched under the crooked window, and rolled them back to the car. John and Will each tried to carry one, and both dropped them. Will's bounced. John's splattered, splashing his feet with ropy orange guts. "Fuck," he said with feeling. They carried Will's pumpkin the rest of the way together. It was heavy, but small. Their hands overlapped.
"There's a cornfield near here," Abigail said. "Should be empty. Come on, He-Men, put 'em in the trunk and let's go!" John's pretty sure it was during that ride that the beer started coming out.
They split the pumpkins open and scooped out their seeds into the long grass, carved crooked faces in their sides with John's knife. Janet's was the best: bruja nose and contorted brows, mouth open like a cave, silent, mid-scream. "It's my mother," she explained. "With John's eyebrows." John's was not the best. He had never been an artist, less so when he was three or possibly four sheets to the wind. In the gloom, his looked like some poor system's dying son, or a pox-victim, face gaping with holes.
They dumped what was left - the seeds and guts and bones and black-mold bits - in the road. They laughed as they did it.
"Do you ever think about what you'll do, when you grow up?" Nancy asked, later, curled on the blanket next to him.
"My dad wants me to take over the family business," John said, unsteady on the vowels. "Become the big fucking CE-O of Sheppard Industries."
"That's not an answer," she said tightly. "What our parents want to be. That's not a fucking answer."
They looked out over the cornfield, ringed by trees, sullen and dark. She had been here as a little girl, Abigail said; she knew all the best places. No one had thought to bring anything like a flashlight, but John was sure that the stars were going to be bright enough. Will was crashing circles through the corn-stumps in his own mad dance, shirt off and already drunk. This is what John will remember, later, just this: lying in Nancy's arms, and watching Will whirl around for lack of a partner, smooth skin and unseeing eyes, hair the color of pumpkins.
"I think I want to help people," Nancy finally said. She was shivering.
"I want to fly," John slurred, and she kissed his forehead, sloppily, as he fell asleep.
That was the night Will streaked through the cut field wearing only a plastic Halloween mask, and disappeared into the woods with hanks of pulp draped over his shoulders and seeds stuck to his ankles. He never came out.
They waited for him, and then called for him, softly at first, then louder, until Janet's nerves broke and she started screaming, reaching for Nancy, for Bill, for John, for anyone she could find, any comfort, and clutched tighter when the trees moved with the wind. It was Abigail who took the SUV and drove back into town, looking for help. In the dark, she said, she could barely find anything, let alone the sheriff's office, if there was one, and besides, it was probably closed; I know these small towns, nothing is open after eight. She skidded out onto the highway and drove until she saw lights. John never forgave her for that: for those hours. Waiting for Will to reappear and howl with laughter at the grand joke he'd pulled, waiting for him to answer their calls; eventually, just waiting, still drunk but the outlines of his narrow world sharp-edged with fear, and excitement.
When Abigail came back it was in a mass of Prince George's County's finest. The field filled with yelling and radios and cops in reflective jackets, with dogs and heavy flashlights - the blue-and-red lights from their cruisers reflecting into the sky and their faces, turning everyone ghoulish and strange. Not people, but phantoms drummed up from the ground. John could see flashes of light through the trees. They reminded him of the stories his nanny had told, before Patrick Sheppard found out what she was doing: a jumble of pumpkin-headed men and La Llorena, crying for her drowned children, will-o-whisps luring unwary travelers to their deaths. Nothing concrete; he was too drunk to recall the stories, but he remembered the desperation of them, the hunger. Things giving all they had - only glimpses - and always leading, enticing, follow me, drawing people and places into their orbits, like gravity, or a mouth - feeding, always feeding, and never being full.
It's a Wednesday, now. What's left of the pumpkins are rotting, flesh dripping back into the ground, and there is no news of Will. They all have their ways of grieving. Bill has taken John's knife, and is opening and closing it against his palm, with all the dedication of a hoodoo sticking pins in a voodoo doll; as if the movement could send Will hurtling back to them like a boomerang, like the closing flash of the knife. He likes things neat. Orderly. Abigail spent Monday screaming obscenities at passing cars. Janet bites her lips bloody, like chewing on hunks of meat. She's always been nervous; loved Will with a fierce dedication from afar. John lounges, badly, muscles corded and twitching, a spring compressed into itself. They didn't talk about Will - even though the whole community is buzzing - or planned this meeting, but skipped school to gather at John's house like it was prearranged, a seance circle in one of the lesser sitting rooms.
Their silence is devouring them. No one knows how to break it, not even John. It's his first time, clumsy and unforgettable. He doesn't yet know what to do.
"We should go look for him," he says, finally.
"Are you fucking nuts?" Bill snaps.
"We can't just give up without even trying," John says.
"John the cops looked," Abigail says, hollowly, "and if they didn't find him, we sure as hell won't."
"Fine, we don't find him," he says. "What's the harm in looking?"
"We could get lost," Bill says. "We could - we could disturb the evidence, yeah, and they'd never find him, because some faggot decided to play hero."
"That's bullshit and you know it," John snaps. They turn away from him all the same, like - what? He's going to play Juliet and hang himself from a poplar tree? He's just another person wanting a good ghost story? At least this time, the silence is hot instead of cold; angry instead of eating. After the others have left, Nancy stays. To John's eyes she is pale and insubstantial, even though she's always been taller than him. When she touches his arm he jumps.
"Let's go," she says. "Let's go right now."
The ride doesn't take long; the road seems shorter for the anticipation, now that they move with purpose and not Sunday night's fierce desire to go anywhere, be anywhere but where the ground's steady and familiar underneath their feet. There's a sign by the field that John didn't notice the last time. Sunshine Developments will apparently be building ten quality homes on this land, and there might be more, but he can't read it; the sign's faded and overgrown with Virginia creeper. COMING SOON! it promises. The sign looks decades old.
He parks the car in the long brittle grass. "Coming?" he asks. She looks frightened, but nods. They go into the woods together. Virginia is hilly and steep; the trees grow in sharp slopes and surges, up and down like the undulating movement of the tides, an ocean of dark shapes grabbing for the sky. They climb to the top of a hill, and can see the next ridge miles away, but barely into the next hundred yards downhill. The sky is the rainy, eerie grey of Will's eyes, and Nancy's brown hair is steadily turning black from drizzle. John turns his collar up at the clamminess trickling down his neck.
"We should head down towards the river," John says. "Everything ends up - everything goes there."
"John," Nancy says, levelly, with no shock or inflection in her voice, "John, look up," and with no surprise at all he lifts his head to the sight of Will's Halloween mask, hanging empty from the branches of an old oak, like a shed skin, its mouth open in a silent shout of horror, or joy.
*
"You never told me about where you grew up," Rodney says, suddenly.
"No," John says. "I didn't." His tone brooks no further arguments. Rodney shoots him a glare over the top of his monitor, but takes the hint all the same.
It's been almost twenty-four hours since Adukkalil failed to check in; eighteen since Elizabeth declared a city-wide emergency. Six since the last time he took his team out for one last desperate sweep of levels E-G of the South Tower and then coordinated the stumbling, sleepy mass of rescuers into shifts, putting his own AR-1 on the first, with the understanding that Rodney would continue to work with the city sensors: bitching and snapping at his science team, like a dog trying to herd a particularly stubborn group of cats. "The Mussolini of Lab Six," one of the scientists - Dr. Anders, John thinks - grumbled at the beginning. Miko and Simpson laughed. It wasn't particularly funny or clever, and normally, would only be met with scorn, as his labmates pounced, sensing ill-advised blood in the water. They'll present a united front against an outside threat, but tribes fight tribes, Botany blood-feuding with Chemistry, and even within their own groups the scientists are about as loyal as a pack of wolves. They follow the strongest, the smartest, and do despise the weak.
The lab is mostly empty by now, though. Silence broken only by the occasional muffled thump in the corner. Rodney may be a bitch but he has teeth, and the scientists respect him, as much as they do anyone, and follow his example; most of them are permanent or occasional fixtures on gate teams, whether exploratory or diplomatic. Even the shut-ins, the on-base scientists, know how to carry a gun and shut up when told, though John will be the first to admit it's a close thing. ("Send out the shut-ins," Lorne had repeated, dubiously. "Yes, Major," Rodney had snapped. "Time to send out the clowns.") John didn't want to use the scientists, at first. The Marines know what they're getting into, or at least the possibility of it; they signed up with the knowledge that on average fifteen of them went home in body bags each calendar year. With few exceptions, scientists don't. For backstabbers they're pretty innocent. The fact is, though, Atlantis is just too damn big. They need the manpower.
He's the military commander of Atlantis; he coordinates search and rescue, assigned where the teams will go, though right now he's just - waiting. Who'll be next, he wonders. Who's the most likely to stray away from their group? Which civilian will wander out of the designated area? Maybe Biro, looking for more gauze to round out the roll-count to an even hundred. Maybe the woman who smiles at him the mess, the guy who hit a home run in the Military/Scientists baseball game last month. Maybe Ramirez. Maybe Radek. John's never liked playing God.
"What's with the sudden line of questioning, buddy?" John asks, when the silence gets to be too much like an accusation, hanging in the sterile air. "Writing the John Sheppard biography like you did Elizabeth's?" He can't resist: leans closer, murmurs: "Do you think you have a unique insight into me, too?"
"Oh, undoubtedly," Rodney says, but his voice breaks, and he coughs to hide it, continues. "And don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject."
"Is this about Adukkalil, McKay? Because we'll find him," John says, earnestly.
(Maybe Nho, who collects almost-conch shells and tries to make bongs out of them. Maybe Misra, sharp-witted and funny.)
"Yes," Rodney says. "No. I don't know." Another thump from the corner. Someone is stomping against the lab floor, like a dirge; a heartbeat; a drum.
(Maybe Bobby Knox, young and in love, so fucking obvious, walking on clouds even when he's pounding bullets into the range.)
"Look, respect the John Sheppard DMZ, I get it, I really do," Rodney says, shortly; laughs, quick and bitter. "I'm not specifically trying to make you talk about your feelings or, or - reminisce or something, but I don't know these things, and the next time, you could -" thump - "Can you stop that?" he shouts over to Simpson.
"Sorry," she whispers. "My foot keeps falling asleep."
Rodney turns back to his monitor with a huff. John considers for a moment.
(Maybe Carson with his sheep calendar. Maybe Elizabeth, regal and strong. Maybe - Maybe -)
"Small town," he says, finally. "Kind of wealthy. Not very interesting."
Rodney's mouth quirks into a grimace that might have been a smile. "Hm," he says, simply, and goes back to work, while John goes back to his pacing.
The lab falls into silence again. It's cool in here, almost morgue-cold; according to Rodney, cool temperatures means constricted blood vessels, less sluggishness, longer hours and faster synaptic connections. Be alert and aware is #14 on his LIST OF WAYS NOT TO DIE, still taped up on the wall. ("The Dummies guide to Pegasus," he always quips when they give the introductory tour. "Number one: you're not paranoid if everyone's actually out to get you which, in fact, they are.")
The cold hasn't seem to have affected Ronon and Teyla, sleeping in a practiced huddle underneath, though John notices that they've both got Ronon's greatcoat slung around them, and weapons where they can reach them. Judging from the disgust in Ronon's expression when he told them to stay put - the disappointment in Teyla's - they thought it was for his own comfort. That he was spooked. They thought they could actually help, and that he was keeping them here out of fear.
He can live with their disapproval. He'd keep Elizabeth in here too, if he could.
"I really want to kiss you right now," he suddenly hears Rodney say, and John looks up - (Maybe, maybe, maybe -). A quick glance shows that Simpson's got her headphones on, listening to the awful punk-rock Rodney floods the labs with, Bad Religion and Dead Kennedys and TSOL. They're safe; he should have known Rodney isn't that careless. Still, he should be feeling nervous; frightened; excited. His heart should be thumping madly away in his chest, like all the other times this has happened.
"Yeah, buddy," he says, hoarsely. "Me too."
What will they find this time, he wonders. A science division coat, another mask? A face?
"Can I?" Rodney asks.
"No," John says, honestly. "Later, okay? After this whole mess is done."
Rodney grins at that - it looks odd on his face, wrong, like a crooked smile carved into a pumpkin's unsmiling visage. In the nighttime lights his eyes aren't blue as much as grey, John thinks, like the sky before a storm, beautiful.
"We're not going to find him, are we," Rodney says, flatly; it's not a question. "Not alive, anyway. Fucking Pegasus. Fucking Ancients. Leaving their messes behind for us to clean up."
No, John wants to say; no, you're wrong, you're so wrong. It's not that complicated. It's not that simple. You don't have to worry. You do.
He thumbs the button on his radio.
"We'll find him," he says, finally. "Remember? Hey, remember? We don't leave anyone behind."
"Right," Rodney says. "Of course we don't."
Across the lab, Simpson has started thumping again, maybe this time to the music, or to the sudden bursts of static from John's radio: the beat steady and measured, keeping time, like a heart under the floorboards.
fin.
For the Imprisonment square on my cliche_fic bingo card.
MARY, MELUSINE, MARY, MEDEA
SGA; PG-13. McKay/Sheppard.
"What do you mean, you haven't heard from him in hours?" McKay snaps. "No, he wasn't with me. No, he wasn't with Simpson. Yes, I actually asked her."
"No you didn't," she says.
"Fine. Simpson, was Adukkalil with you?" he says, over-emphasizing each word.
"No," she snaps back.
"Simpson says no. Look, just try his radio. What, you're sure? No answer? Are you pressing the wrong buttons? Well, I don't know, I think you've consistently proven yourself to be morons! Fine, fine," McKay says, "I'm coming," and practically charges out the door. They can still hear distant snatches of his conversation - by any indication has since turned into a shouting match - as he storms down the hallway.
"I'm sure it's fine," Simpson says, looking over to where John stands, jaw clenched, looking out the window. "The radios have - how you say it, been on the fritz, lately? He's probably just late for check-in."
"Yeah," John says. "Nothing to worry about, right? McKay'll sort it out."
*
They left with beer and a shopping bag of Bad Religion cassettes, cans and loose tapes clanking under their feet as they shoved themselves into the housekeeper's station wagon. Janet's braid got caught in the door, and they laughed it off. They were giddy to a man with crisp mountain air and sharper rebellion: most of their parents were away, excluding Patrick Sheppard, which made John even happier. They were young, and thought themselves old. At the time, they all liked to think they were getting away with something.
"Where to, boys and girls?" Abigail had yelled into the backseat, kicking stray tapes away from the accelerator, and beside her, John had muttered:
"Anywhere but here," and Will said, "Yeah, listen to Johnny-boy here," and tried to put him in a headlock around the headrest.
It was afternoon, autumn sunset spilling like a bloody yolk over the edges of the horizon, and the highway was long, and quiet when they got tired of screaming. John folded his arms over the window-rim and put his head down; drifted in and out to the sound of the wind thundering past them, static over Will whispering in his ear and Nancy's soft snores behind him, muffled where her head was in Janet's lap. The landscape bled by in long smears of red and brown, leaves fluttering in their wake like birds startled by a shot, and they blew through one-street towns like bullets. "This one?" Abigail would yell; "this one?" And they looked out at the hidden driveways and boarded-up gas stations and said no, no, no. "This one?" Too rich. "This one?" Too big. "This one?"
Yes. Yes. A sleepy little town with rusting billboards and one grocery store, one bar, no visible means of employment, where the trees outnumbered the people and the houses weren't the mansions of home but patched-up places barely visible from the road - not declarations but whispers, suggestions of occupancy. Like another country, or something he had read about, a long time ago, though he wasn't sure where. It was John who saw the pumpkins, flashes of orange in the shadow of a house. Donahues, the mailbox read. It wasn't particularly impressive; messy, flung-about. Their lawn was studded with flowerpots and iron sheeting and farm equipment, as if every inch of space not occupied by the trees had to be guarded, claimed.
"Pull over," he told Abigail, and they scrambled out after him. Up close, the pumpkins were even better than John had hoped, big-bellied and orange, real beauties.
Will laughed at that. "Beauties. What d'you want to do, Johnny, fuck 'em or carve 'em?"
"Fuck you," John said against the resounding jeers.
"You wish," Will snorted, and John pulled a knife from his boot, and grinned. They cut them off the vine right there, crouched under the crooked window, and rolled them back to the car. John and Will each tried to carry one, and both dropped them. Will's bounced. John's splattered, splashing his feet with ropy orange guts. "Fuck," he said with feeling. They carried Will's pumpkin the rest of the way together. It was heavy, but small. Their hands overlapped.
"There's a cornfield near here," Abigail said. "Should be empty. Come on, He-Men, put 'em in the trunk and let's go!" John's pretty sure it was during that ride that the beer started coming out.
They split the pumpkins open and scooped out their seeds into the long grass, carved crooked faces in their sides with John's knife. Janet's was the best: bruja nose and contorted brows, mouth open like a cave, silent, mid-scream. "It's my mother," she explained. "With John's eyebrows." John's was not the best. He had never been an artist, less so when he was three or possibly four sheets to the wind. In the gloom, his looked like some poor system's dying son, or a pox-victim, face gaping with holes.
They dumped what was left - the seeds and guts and bones and black-mold bits - in the road. They laughed as they did it.
"Do you ever think about what you'll do, when you grow up?" Nancy asked, later, curled on the blanket next to him.
"My dad wants me to take over the family business," John said, unsteady on the vowels. "Become the big fucking CE-O of Sheppard Industries."
"That's not an answer," she said tightly. "What our parents want to be. That's not a fucking answer."
They looked out over the cornfield, ringed by trees, sullen and dark. She had been here as a little girl, Abigail said; she knew all the best places. No one had thought to bring anything like a flashlight, but John was sure that the stars were going to be bright enough. Will was crashing circles through the corn-stumps in his own mad dance, shirt off and already drunk. This is what John will remember, later, just this: lying in Nancy's arms, and watching Will whirl around for lack of a partner, smooth skin and unseeing eyes, hair the color of pumpkins.
"I think I want to help people," Nancy finally said. She was shivering.
"I want to fly," John slurred, and she kissed his forehead, sloppily, as he fell asleep.
That was the night Will streaked through the cut field wearing only a plastic Halloween mask, and disappeared into the woods with hanks of pulp draped over his shoulders and seeds stuck to his ankles. He never came out.
They waited for him, and then called for him, softly at first, then louder, until Janet's nerves broke and she started screaming, reaching for Nancy, for Bill, for John, for anyone she could find, any comfort, and clutched tighter when the trees moved with the wind. It was Abigail who took the SUV and drove back into town, looking for help. In the dark, she said, she could barely find anything, let alone the sheriff's office, if there was one, and besides, it was probably closed; I know these small towns, nothing is open after eight. She skidded out onto the highway and drove until she saw lights. John never forgave her for that: for those hours. Waiting for Will to reappear and howl with laughter at the grand joke he'd pulled, waiting for him to answer their calls; eventually, just waiting, still drunk but the outlines of his narrow world sharp-edged with fear, and excitement.
When Abigail came back it was in a mass of Prince George's County's finest. The field filled with yelling and radios and cops in reflective jackets, with dogs and heavy flashlights - the blue-and-red lights from their cruisers reflecting into the sky and their faces, turning everyone ghoulish and strange. Not people, but phantoms drummed up from the ground. John could see flashes of light through the trees. They reminded him of the stories his nanny had told, before Patrick Sheppard found out what she was doing: a jumble of pumpkin-headed men and La Llorena, crying for her drowned children, will-o-whisps luring unwary travelers to their deaths. Nothing concrete; he was too drunk to recall the stories, but he remembered the desperation of them, the hunger. Things giving all they had - only glimpses - and always leading, enticing, follow me, drawing people and places into their orbits, like gravity, or a mouth - feeding, always feeding, and never being full.
It's a Wednesday, now. What's left of the pumpkins are rotting, flesh dripping back into the ground, and there is no news of Will. They all have their ways of grieving. Bill has taken John's knife, and is opening and closing it against his palm, with all the dedication of a hoodoo sticking pins in a voodoo doll; as if the movement could send Will hurtling back to them like a boomerang, like the closing flash of the knife. He likes things neat. Orderly. Abigail spent Monday screaming obscenities at passing cars. Janet bites her lips bloody, like chewing on hunks of meat. She's always been nervous; loved Will with a fierce dedication from afar. John lounges, badly, muscles corded and twitching, a spring compressed into itself. They didn't talk about Will - even though the whole community is buzzing - or planned this meeting, but skipped school to gather at John's house like it was prearranged, a seance circle in one of the lesser sitting rooms.
Their silence is devouring them. No one knows how to break it, not even John. It's his first time, clumsy and unforgettable. He doesn't yet know what to do.
"We should go look for him," he says, finally.
"Are you fucking nuts?" Bill snaps.
"We can't just give up without even trying," John says.
"John the cops looked," Abigail says, hollowly, "and if they didn't find him, we sure as hell won't."
"Fine, we don't find him," he says. "What's the harm in looking?"
"We could get lost," Bill says. "We could - we could disturb the evidence, yeah, and they'd never find him, because some faggot decided to play hero."
"That's bullshit and you know it," John snaps. They turn away from him all the same, like - what? He's going to play Juliet and hang himself from a poplar tree? He's just another person wanting a good ghost story? At least this time, the silence is hot instead of cold; angry instead of eating. After the others have left, Nancy stays. To John's eyes she is pale and insubstantial, even though she's always been taller than him. When she touches his arm he jumps.
"Let's go," she says. "Let's go right now."
The ride doesn't take long; the road seems shorter for the anticipation, now that they move with purpose and not Sunday night's fierce desire to go anywhere, be anywhere but where the ground's steady and familiar underneath their feet. There's a sign by the field that John didn't notice the last time. Sunshine Developments will apparently be building ten quality homes on this land, and there might be more, but he can't read it; the sign's faded and overgrown with Virginia creeper. COMING SOON! it promises. The sign looks decades old.
He parks the car in the long brittle grass. "Coming?" he asks. She looks frightened, but nods. They go into the woods together. Virginia is hilly and steep; the trees grow in sharp slopes and surges, up and down like the undulating movement of the tides, an ocean of dark shapes grabbing for the sky. They climb to the top of a hill, and can see the next ridge miles away, but barely into the next hundred yards downhill. The sky is the rainy, eerie grey of Will's eyes, and Nancy's brown hair is steadily turning black from drizzle. John turns his collar up at the clamminess trickling down his neck.
"We should head down towards the river," John says. "Everything ends up - everything goes there."
"John," Nancy says, levelly, with no shock or inflection in her voice, "John, look up," and with no surprise at all he lifts his head to the sight of Will's Halloween mask, hanging empty from the branches of an old oak, like a shed skin, its mouth open in a silent shout of horror, or joy.
*
"You never told me about where you grew up," Rodney says, suddenly.
"No," John says. "I didn't." His tone brooks no further arguments. Rodney shoots him a glare over the top of his monitor, but takes the hint all the same.
It's been almost twenty-four hours since Adukkalil failed to check in; eighteen since Elizabeth declared a city-wide emergency. Six since the last time he took his team out for one last desperate sweep of levels E-G of the South Tower and then coordinated the stumbling, sleepy mass of rescuers into shifts, putting his own AR-1 on the first, with the understanding that Rodney would continue to work with the city sensors: bitching and snapping at his science team, like a dog trying to herd a particularly stubborn group of cats. "The Mussolini of Lab Six," one of the scientists - Dr. Anders, John thinks - grumbled at the beginning. Miko and Simpson laughed. It wasn't particularly funny or clever, and normally, would only be met with scorn, as his labmates pounced, sensing ill-advised blood in the water. They'll present a united front against an outside threat, but tribes fight tribes, Botany blood-feuding with Chemistry, and even within their own groups the scientists are about as loyal as a pack of wolves. They follow the strongest, the smartest, and do despise the weak.
The lab is mostly empty by now, though. Silence broken only by the occasional muffled thump in the corner. Rodney may be a bitch but he has teeth, and the scientists respect him, as much as they do anyone, and follow his example; most of them are permanent or occasional fixtures on gate teams, whether exploratory or diplomatic. Even the shut-ins, the on-base scientists, know how to carry a gun and shut up when told, though John will be the first to admit it's a close thing. ("Send out the shut-ins," Lorne had repeated, dubiously. "Yes, Major," Rodney had snapped. "Time to send out the clowns.") John didn't want to use the scientists, at first. The Marines know what they're getting into, or at least the possibility of it; they signed up with the knowledge that on average fifteen of them went home in body bags each calendar year. With few exceptions, scientists don't. For backstabbers they're pretty innocent. The fact is, though, Atlantis is just too damn big. They need the manpower.
He's the military commander of Atlantis; he coordinates search and rescue, assigned where the teams will go, though right now he's just - waiting. Who'll be next, he wonders. Who's the most likely to stray away from their group? Which civilian will wander out of the designated area? Maybe Biro, looking for more gauze to round out the roll-count to an even hundred. Maybe the woman who smiles at him the mess, the guy who hit a home run in the Military/Scientists baseball game last month. Maybe Ramirez. Maybe Radek. John's never liked playing God.
"What's with the sudden line of questioning, buddy?" John asks, when the silence gets to be too much like an accusation, hanging in the sterile air. "Writing the John Sheppard biography like you did Elizabeth's?" He can't resist: leans closer, murmurs: "Do you think you have a unique insight into me, too?"
"Oh, undoubtedly," Rodney says, but his voice breaks, and he coughs to hide it, continues. "And don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject."
"Is this about Adukkalil, McKay? Because we'll find him," John says, earnestly.
(Maybe Nho, who collects almost-conch shells and tries to make bongs out of them. Maybe Misra, sharp-witted and funny.)
"Yes," Rodney says. "No. I don't know." Another thump from the corner. Someone is stomping against the lab floor, like a dirge; a heartbeat; a drum.
(Maybe Bobby Knox, young and in love, so fucking obvious, walking on clouds even when he's pounding bullets into the range.)
"Look, respect the John Sheppard DMZ, I get it, I really do," Rodney says, shortly; laughs, quick and bitter. "I'm not specifically trying to make you talk about your feelings or, or - reminisce or something, but I don't know these things, and the next time, you could -" thump - "Can you stop that?" he shouts over to Simpson.
"Sorry," she whispers. "My foot keeps falling asleep."
Rodney turns back to his monitor with a huff. John considers for a moment.
(Maybe Carson with his sheep calendar. Maybe Elizabeth, regal and strong. Maybe - Maybe -)
"Small town," he says, finally. "Kind of wealthy. Not very interesting."
Rodney's mouth quirks into a grimace that might have been a smile. "Hm," he says, simply, and goes back to work, while John goes back to his pacing.
The lab falls into silence again. It's cool in here, almost morgue-cold; according to Rodney, cool temperatures means constricted blood vessels, less sluggishness, longer hours and faster synaptic connections. Be alert and aware is #14 on his LIST OF WAYS NOT TO DIE, still taped up on the wall. ("The Dummies guide to Pegasus," he always quips when they give the introductory tour. "Number one: you're not paranoid if everyone's actually out to get you which, in fact, they are.")
The cold hasn't seem to have affected Ronon and Teyla, sleeping in a practiced huddle underneath, though John notices that they've both got Ronon's greatcoat slung around them, and weapons where they can reach them. Judging from the disgust in Ronon's expression when he told them to stay put - the disappointment in Teyla's - they thought it was for his own comfort. That he was spooked. They thought they could actually help, and that he was keeping them here out of fear.
He can live with their disapproval. He'd keep Elizabeth in here too, if he could.
"I really want to kiss you right now," he suddenly hears Rodney say, and John looks up - (Maybe, maybe, maybe -). A quick glance shows that Simpson's got her headphones on, listening to the awful punk-rock Rodney floods the labs with, Bad Religion and Dead Kennedys and TSOL. They're safe; he should have known Rodney isn't that careless. Still, he should be feeling nervous; frightened; excited. His heart should be thumping madly away in his chest, like all the other times this has happened.
"Yeah, buddy," he says, hoarsely. "Me too."
What will they find this time, he wonders. A science division coat, another mask? A face?
"Can I?" Rodney asks.
"No," John says, honestly. "Later, okay? After this whole mess is done."
Rodney grins at that - it looks odd on his face, wrong, like a crooked smile carved into a pumpkin's unsmiling visage. In the nighttime lights his eyes aren't blue as much as grey, John thinks, like the sky before a storm, beautiful.
"We're not going to find him, are we," Rodney says, flatly; it's not a question. "Not alive, anyway. Fucking Pegasus. Fucking Ancients. Leaving their messes behind for us to clean up."
No, John wants to say; no, you're wrong, you're so wrong. It's not that complicated. It's not that simple. You don't have to worry. You do.
He thumbs the button on his radio.
"We'll find him," he says, finally. "Remember? Hey, remember? We don't leave anyone behind."
"Right," Rodney says. "Of course we don't."
Across the lab, Simpson has started thumping again, maybe this time to the music, or to the sudden bursts of static from John's radio: the beat steady and measured, keeping time, like a heart under the floorboards.
fin.