FIC: We Outgrow Love Like Other Things (2/3) (Stargate Universe)
Title: We Outgrow Love Like Other Things (2/3) (Stargate Universe) (Part I can be found here.)
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Rush/Chloe
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: set during (and prior to) the first three episodes of the series.
Spoilers: spoilers for "Air" Parts I, II & III.
Wordcount: 4,000
Author's notes: what if Rush and Chloe were secretly in a relationship during the first three episodes?
Summary: hard times and stressful situations lead to that line between love and hate getting a bit blurry.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate. I'm also not Lewis Carroll, although a line or two from Through the Looking-Glass ended up in this.
It happens so fast.
The attack, the roof collapse. She's screaming for her father, making noises she didn't even know she could make. Reality takes on a fractured, nightmarish taste and she can't move. It feels like the world is slipping beneath her feet, or that she's lost control of her arms and legs.
The structure shudders above them, the tremors echoing through her bones. Metal is screaming in her ears, and when her father's hand reaches hers through the burning smoke, barely more substantial than a ghost, she knows she's crying, and she knows it doesn't matter. So is everyone else.
They reach the Stargate. The ninth chevron, dialed successfully. She doesn't know it then, but she knows somehow, instinctively, that they are not going to Earth. The shining liquid surface ripples in front of them. She can't do it. It's too much like walking through the look-glass.
Her father is leaning on her so heavily it frightens her worse than the explosions and the collapsing base and the panic in the people all around them. She grips his arm tightly enough to hurt both of them, her heart in her throat.
It's her earliest memory. They're sitting together on the couch, he's got the book open in front of them, and he reads slowly, his finger running over the words so that she can follow.
"Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare!..."
"It's okay," her father says, shouting into her ear, above the tumult she can barely hear him, "everything's going to be okay, sweetheart!"
But she has a bad feeling in her stomach, like coils of darkness tightening. The platform rattles beneath them as they run with the rest of the crowd, towards the Gate. People are crying. Rush is already gone. If Death has a taste and a texture, it's what she's tasting in the back of her throat, what she's feeling against her face.
She squeezes her father's arm and presses her head into his shoulder, as they run, supporting each other. As they reach the rippling, reality-bending surface, she shuts her eyes, tight as she can. There are somethings she doesn't want to see.
"It'll be okay, Chloe," her father says.
They hit the Gate.
She strikes the ground painfully, the air knocked out of her lungs. Her father falls beside her, gasping in pain. He's sick. Sicker than she's ever seen him.
"Dad! Dad!" She tries to support him, her hands are shaking so badly she can't even hold on to him.
Soldiers are shouting at them to move, to get out of the way, people are still pouring through the Gate, everywhere, hurt, bloody. Chaos.
Around them, the Ancient vessel creaks. It's black and foreboding and for one wild, frantic second she imagines they're all buried together in one mass grave. It's horrible. It's the most horrible place she's ever been. It's Hell.
~*~
It's magnificent. It's utterly beautiful - an enigma, stark and unknowable and vast beyond comprehension.
"The ship goes on forever," babbles Eli, and he's not wrong. The ship is forever. Ancient, in the truest sense of the word.
The others are panicking, whining, crying, wanting to go home. Predictable, puerile, they're adding to the problem, rather than doing anything productive. Shouting, of all things, which will accomplish nothing, but drain their already precarious oxygen supply.
"Someone's gotta go in there, and close this door."
Everyone's head is pounding, they all know the situation, but they're still just standing around, doing nothing, wasting what little time they have left. Chloe is standing across the control room from where Rush sits, arms crossed pensively in front of her. She's not quite pacing, not quite still. Finally, she shakes her head a little and crosses the room, looking down at him.
"What's another day going to buy us?" she asks.
Rush doesn't want to be talking to her, right now. The rich, pretty girl with her eyes full of tears and her frowning at him, like she blames him, like the others, for bringing them here. He supposes they'd have all rather burned to death in the attack, ground into bloody smears beneath collapsing concrete and steel.
He turns to Lieutenant Johansen instead, pointedly ignoring Chloe. "May I see the list?"
"What? What list?" asks Chloe, looking between them as the lieutenant passes him her clipboard.
He notices Johansen doesn't respond to her either, but to him she says: "I've marked the names of anyone injured," she says it quietly, like she's ashamed. So far she's the only one who's done anything useful.
"We'll have to find out people's skill, their backgrounds, areas of experience, that sort of thing," he tells her. He rubs his eyes and doesn't look at the list, without his glasses there's not much point.
"It doesn't take any special skills to die of asphyxiation!" Lieutenant Scott yells. He's teetering on the verge of hysteria, most of them are.
Rush stands slowly, trying to think of a way to say what he's thinking that will sound marginally less horrible. Part of him can't believe they haven't already thought of this themselves.
"What I'm saying is, it shouldn't be someone with potentially valuable knowledge."
Chloe stands in front of him again, blocking his path. He knows he shouldn't have slept with her; he hopes she doesn't think he owes her anything. "Are you really suggesting what I think?" her voice is shrill.
Panic, then, he thinks, but for the love of God do it somewhere else. But no, she wants to play at being the politician, at saying utterly useless things because they sound good, because they're the sort of things people don't feel they can argue with.
"You can't ask someone to sacrifice themselves, period!" she yells, like if she says the words any louder they'll be true, or they'll make a good soundbite.
He swallows back his first, instinctive response. He can do this without shouting. She wants to play at being a politician. She doesn't even know what that means.
"Politicians ask military personnel to sacrifice themselves for the good of others all the time," he says evenly.
Lieutenant Johansen looks away, like she didn't hear it, doesn't even want to get involved. Chloe looks pained, like the facts leave a sour taste in her mouth.
"If someone doesn't go in there and close that door, we're all going to die, period." He practically spits the word back at her, like its poison, daring her to argue with him again. She doesn't though, she turns away.
He doesn't have time for her childish anger, or panic, or need to assert herself, or whatever the hell it is. He turns back to Johansen.
"I'll talk to Wray about...what you said," she says quietly, "and maybe she can spread the word, explain the situation. Maybe someone will volunteer," she says, but she doesn't sound very hopeful.
Rush nods. "Good, thank you."
Scott follows her, giving him a dirty look as he leaves, and even Eli shuffles past, the kino trailing behind him, leaving only Chloe standing facing him, her eyes bright and her bottom lip quivering. She uncrosses her arms, shifts her weight and recrosses them, nervously.
"We're all going to die, aren't we? You've killed us all."
He feels his lips twitch and fights not to sneer at her. "I suppose you would have rather stayed at the base?"
"I would have rather gone back to Earth!"
"Earth wasn't an option!" he's snarling now, their faces are inches apart.
She doesn't back down, her hands clenched into little fists. Her eyes narrow at him. "I don't believe you!"
"Right, of course!" he says, "that makes perfect sense. I wanted to strand us here! I enjoy the prospect of suffocating to death a billion light years from home."
Her lips twist into something that's not a smile, and they stand like that, eyes locked. He's breathing heavily, stupid to be yelling, there's not enough air. Her chest is rising and falling rapidly beneath her jacket. She licks her lips. His fingers twitch and he fights the urge to grab her and slam her up against the console. There's not enough air, he tells himself, he's not thinking clearly - none of them are.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, fighting to keep his voice even, "we're not friends. We're not partners, in any sense of the word."
Her lip curls. "Don't flatter yourself," she says. He think he reads the hurt in her eyes, part of him even hopes for it.
"Don't get in my way again. You must realize you, yourself, have nothing to offer the people on this ship. You're nothing more than a pretty little idiot."
This time he knows he sees the pain. He offers her a conciliatory smile. And then she hits him. Shoves him, really, but it's so unexpected he finds himself stumbling backwards, and loses his balances. He falls against the console, hitting the metal with his shoulder. The blow sends a sharp lance of pain through his back, and he looks up at her, momentarily stunned.
Chloe looks down at him, unblinking. "If you'll excuse me, Doctor Rush, I need to go and see my father now," she says and turns on her heel.
She brushes past Eli, who is on his way in, kino bobbing along beside him.
"Uh...if this is a bad time," he says, staring at Rush. "Well, it's just that Franklin wants you to come take a look at the control pad by the shuttle, and, well, given the imminent threat of death and suffocation and doom, I thought, uh..."
"Yeah, yeah," he says, shaking his head and rubbing his bruised shoulder. "I'll be there in a minute."
"So what's going on with you and Chloe?"
He doesn't succeed in keeping the aggravation out of his voice when he answers. "Nothing."
~*~
She's screaming.
And regardless of what he said, he wouldn't have wished that pain on her. Wouldn't have wished it on anyone.
Chloe Armstrong's screams are filling the control room. They reverberate over metal and steel, echoing around the chamber. It's the sort of noise you can't tune out, you can't think over. It triggers emotions buried too deep in the human psyche to ignore. Chill, biting coldness, sorrow.
Humans are empathetic animals, her screams go on and on, like blades tearing up the corners of his sanity. Part of him wonders why no one turns the radio off. No, no, she lives this, the least they can do is listen.
God help him, he's going to hell for this.
As soon as she stops, he'll be able to think, he'll realize the value of her father's sacrifice, and he'll remember that he hardly had a hand in it at all. He's a witness, but no more a participant in the Senator's death than Franklin, who failed to fix the door manually, or Eli, who couldn't open it again.
But while Chloe's screaming - while those cries are sluicing through the pathways of his brain, shuddering like ice-water waves into his core - he can't seem to think of any of that, just her eyes, and her indignation at the idea of sacrificing someone, and his indifference, and that makes him guilty. It won't, in five minutes, in ten minutes, he doesn't know it then, but it won't keep him up at night. Only in those moments, while she's crying and over the radio, her sobs and pleading with them to open the door, and begging her father to come back, and finally dissipating into wordless, senseless noises, in those moments, he feels guilty. In those moments, he feels terrible.
Then there is silence.
Blessed silence, it washes over them like a wave. The others begin to breathe again. Eli is ashen-faced and trembling, Park and Brody are both quietly horrified, but he's already considering what this means for them - it's bought them several more hours of life, and with that perhaps they can find a way to correct the ship's life support systems.
He's barely begun to voice this, when Chloe charges into the control room, her hair streaming behind her, a look of pure rage distorting her face. She crashes into him, knocking him down for the second time that day. One of her boots connects sharply with his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. She's kicking him, and hitting him and her screaming fills his brain: "You did this! You killed him! You killed all of us!"
Scott and Johansen pull her off of him, and she fights against them, screaming. He stands, shakily, trying to think of what to say. Park, Brody and Eli are all staring at them, wide-eyed.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, and for the first time he regrets not being able to call her 'Chloe,' and there are things he would say, that he can't express in front of an audience like this.
"You're in shock. Believe me, I understand." He hopes she can hear the sincerity in his words, hopes that she realizes it's true. They both know something about grief, now. He tries to explain to her. "Everyone deals with tragedy in different ways. You're looking for someone to blame."
"I'm not looking," she snarls, breaking out of Scott's grasp. He backs away as Johansen holds her still.
"I'm sorry about your father," he says, "I truly am. He was a good man, and he certainly wouldn't have been my choice."
She's staring at him, her face is ghostly white, her eyes red from crying. After a moment, she sways, collapsing against Johansen. The lieutenant helps her to a seat, and sits beside her, rubbing her back while she cries.
He looks down at her, hunched, weeping figure. This is not what he wanted. He crouches in front of her, fights the urge to reach out and touch her. Johansen is already looking down at him, stern and protective of her new charge. And besides, none of them would understand, perhaps not even Chloe.
He crouches in front of her. He wants her to look him in the eye. She doesn't. She's crying, her hair falling in front of her face.
"Miss Armstrong, I know you don't want to hear this just now. But this ship could be the most important discovery mankind has made since the Stargate itself. You know the Icarus Project was something your father truly believed in. Enough to risk his career to support."
She chokes at that, shaking her head.
He tries to explain to her, the importance of her father's sacrifice, the necessity even. That it won't have been in vain.
"Please, give me a chance," he tells her.
She stands up, staring at him with cold, pure hatred. When she walks past him, there's a chill in the air, and if there ever was anything between them, he's certain that it snaps.
~*~
Space isn't black, like she expected. It's like the ocean, or maybe some impressionist painter's idea of the ocean - swirling blues, mauves and indigos. Deep streams of green and violet. Violent flashes of stars. It's moving around them like driving through a painting before it's dried, with the oils all running together. Something faster-than-light and slower-than-hyperspace.
The colours wash over her. At least the room is dark, black, like the pain in her chest. There are tears running down her face, and she's too tired to fight the hopeless battle of trying to keep them at bay.
She keeps replaying it in her mind, it's like a movie reel, going over and over. Her running down that corridor, the metal doors sliding shut. If she'd just been a little faster. If she'd just been a little faster.
Chloe knows she'll replay that scene in her mind, somehow, somewhere, until the day she dies. Chloe also knows that no matter how fast she flies down that corridor, it will never be fast enough. Every time, her father will die. And he'll die alone, in a damaged space shuttle, suffocating.
And Rush. Rush dares to say "Please give me a chance."
She closes her eyes, shuddering.
~*~
She's sitting in the observation room when he finds her, watching space, even though they've dropped out of FTL and the stars are motionless. Rush hasn't stared at the night sky, just to stare it, in years. Feels like a lifetime. These stars are all wrong though, but he doesn't suppose Chloe would know enough astronomy to tell the difference.
She doesn't look at him, doesn't acknowledge his presence in anyway. Rush doesn't even know why he's bothering, except that he might die on whatever alien planet they've found. He doesn't feel like he owes her much, but closure is maybe something he can give, and whatever this well and truly fucked up thing they have between them is, it's something that should have been killed before it was born. And maybe that's all he wants to say to her.
"Miss Armstrong, I-"
"Don't talk to me," she says, her voice is cold and brittle. She doesn't glance in his direction, but he sees her shoulders tense.
"I realize you probably want to be alone right now."
"Then leave."
"I will be, very shortly. The Gate's dialed the address of a planet within range, and a team of us will be departing to see if we can locate a solution to the current life support crisis."
She laughs, humourlessly. "It won't work," she says, "we're all going to die."
He stares down at her, a surge of annoyance running through him, and before he can stop himself he's grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, dragging her to her feet.
"Let go of me! Don't touch me!" she screams, trying to jerk out of his grasp.
Her shoulders are bone-thin and smooth beneath his hands. He's haunted by the memory of the soft curves of her body, the pliant warmth of her skin, the sensations ghosting beneath his palms, memory and dream.
"Your father wanted you to live! Don't you see that? If he hadn't closed that door we would all be very dead right now. He knew that. He realized-"
"Shut up!" she shrieks, shaking her head frantically. "Shut up! Don't talk about my father. Don't talk about him!"
He feels like there's something here he's missing, some vital piece, but then she sobs, the sound bubbling up from deep in her chest. Tears spill down her cheeks, and the next moment she's crying against him, loud choking sobs shaking her body.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, "for what it's worth, I am sorry for your loss."
"It's not worth anything," she says, changing abruptly, again, pulling away from him. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. "I hate you."
He nods, slightly, "Yes, I imagine you do," he tells her. "I should go now, the away team is waiting, and the current situation demands my attention."
"No!" she grabs his arm, suddenly lashing out, her nails gouging little crescent moons into his skin. "No," she says again, "don't you dare. I hate you!"
She hits him across the face, and he reacts on instinct, before he can stop himself, backhanding her. The sound ricochets across the deck, and she staggers backwards unsteadily, staring at him with wide eyes. He looks at her, shocked with his own actions. He's never hit a woman before, never wanted to. Before he can think of what to say, or what to do, she's thrown herself at him again, latching onto his vest, only this time, she's kissing him - angrily, desperately, clawing at him like she's possessed.
He tries to wrestle her back, at least that's what he tells himself, his hands seem to be following their own agenda: wandering down her arms, over her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress, following the vertebrae of her spine, down. He's kissing back, just as roughly, a mess of lips and tongues and teeth biting and clashing sending little sparks of pain along his jaw.
Her nails scratch at him, and he grabs her wrist hard enough to make her gasp. There's a second where he can, should, ask her what the hell she thinks she's doing, push her away, walk out of the room, but he doesn't. He shoves her against the nearest wall, taking her mouth in bruising, punishing kisses. She's moaning into him, grabbing at him, pulling him closer.
Rush knows grief, he knows drowning in grief, being mad with grief, like it's a disease crawling through his skin, eating at his brain, and Chloe is on fire with it, and it's consuming her, burning her away. Alarm bells are ringing in the back of his head, this is wrong, very wrong, so close to all sorts of lines that shouldn't be crossed, but then she's pulling his belt open and she's got a hand down the front of his pants and reason and logic abruptly shut up.
Chloe pulls at him in vicious, impatient strokes, and he's already so hard, wanting her. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder, and she makes a wet, strangled sound. He's grabbing at her, pushing up her skirt,and pressing her back against the wall. Chloe clings to him, shouting curses and obscenities and pulling him closer, hips bucking and rising to meet his with every thrust.
Rush is inside her, and she's tight and hot and good, so fucking good, There are red hot splinters of pain in his mouth, where she's biting at his lips and her nails are scratching the sides of his face, and somehow that's part of it, that's good, too. He shoves back into her, and they're all tangled up in body parts, and limbs and hate; pleasure and pain.
Chloe screams, her body clenching and releasing around him in shudders of ecstasy. He comes after her, spilling deep inside her with a groan. He feels himself running down the hot insides of her thighs and breathes heavily against her. They're sticky and slick with sweat and sex, and he runs a hand down the back of her skirt, the material hopelessly crumpled. He still has another hand buried thickly in her hair, the long mass of dark curls tangled over his knuckles, his wrist, his fingers pressing into her scalp.
This was such an obviously, monumentally, stupid thing to do. In the aftermath he can think that, for a number of reasons. Also, someone could have easily walked in, they're probably already looking for him, and he can just imagine Young's reaction - he knows the Colonel would love an excuse to deck him.
"I need to go," he says, disentangled their sweaty, quivering limbs. He tries to remember kindness, or something like it. "Are you alright?"
"No," she says quietly, "but this time it's not your fault."
"What changed?" he asks her, he reaches for her face, but she jerks away, turning on her side, staring out the window, again, into the black of space.
"Go," she says, her voice weary, "fix the air, or whatever you have to do."
He steps backwards, pulling up his pants, studies her tear-stained profile. Her hair is falling in front of her, dark snarls and ripples obscuring her features.
He shouldn't have come here, he's accomplished nothing that he meant to and this is even worse.
This is so much worse.
Part III
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Rush/Chloe
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: set during (and prior to) the first three episodes of the series.
Spoilers: spoilers for "Air" Parts I, II & III.
Wordcount: 4,000
Author's notes: what if Rush and Chloe were secretly in a relationship during the first three episodes?
Summary: hard times and stressful situations lead to that line between love and hate getting a bit blurry.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate. I'm also not Lewis Carroll, although a line or two from Through the Looking-Glass ended up in this.
It happens so fast.
The attack, the roof collapse. She's screaming for her father, making noises she didn't even know she could make. Reality takes on a fractured, nightmarish taste and she can't move. It feels like the world is slipping beneath her feet, or that she's lost control of her arms and legs.
The structure shudders above them, the tremors echoing through her bones. Metal is screaming in her ears, and when her father's hand reaches hers through the burning smoke, barely more substantial than a ghost, she knows she's crying, and she knows it doesn't matter. So is everyone else.
They reach the Stargate. The ninth chevron, dialed successfully. She doesn't know it then, but she knows somehow, instinctively, that they are not going to Earth. The shining liquid surface ripples in front of them. She can't do it. It's too much like walking through the look-glass.
Her father is leaning on her so heavily it frightens her worse than the explosions and the collapsing base and the panic in the people all around them. She grips his arm tightly enough to hurt both of them, her heart in her throat.
It's her earliest memory. They're sitting together on the couch, he's got the book open in front of them, and he reads slowly, his finger running over the words so that she can follow.
"Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare!..."
"It's okay," her father says, shouting into her ear, above the tumult she can barely hear him, "everything's going to be okay, sweetheart!"
But she has a bad feeling in her stomach, like coils of darkness tightening. The platform rattles beneath them as they run with the rest of the crowd, towards the Gate. People are crying. Rush is already gone. If Death has a taste and a texture, it's what she's tasting in the back of her throat, what she's feeling against her face.
She squeezes her father's arm and presses her head into his shoulder, as they run, supporting each other. As they reach the rippling, reality-bending surface, she shuts her eyes, tight as she can. There are somethings she doesn't want to see.
"It'll be okay, Chloe," her father says.
They hit the Gate.
She strikes the ground painfully, the air knocked out of her lungs. Her father falls beside her, gasping in pain. He's sick. Sicker than she's ever seen him.
"Dad! Dad!" She tries to support him, her hands are shaking so badly she can't even hold on to him.
Soldiers are shouting at them to move, to get out of the way, people are still pouring through the Gate, everywhere, hurt, bloody. Chaos.
Around them, the Ancient vessel creaks. It's black and foreboding and for one wild, frantic second she imagines they're all buried together in one mass grave. It's horrible. It's the most horrible place she's ever been. It's Hell.
~*~
It's magnificent. It's utterly beautiful - an enigma, stark and unknowable and vast beyond comprehension.
"The ship goes on forever," babbles Eli, and he's not wrong. The ship is forever. Ancient, in the truest sense of the word.
The others are panicking, whining, crying, wanting to go home. Predictable, puerile, they're adding to the problem, rather than doing anything productive. Shouting, of all things, which will accomplish nothing, but drain their already precarious oxygen supply.
"Someone's gotta go in there, and close this door."
Everyone's head is pounding, they all know the situation, but they're still just standing around, doing nothing, wasting what little time they have left. Chloe is standing across the control room from where Rush sits, arms crossed pensively in front of her. She's not quite pacing, not quite still. Finally, she shakes her head a little and crosses the room, looking down at him.
"What's another day going to buy us?" she asks.
Rush doesn't want to be talking to her, right now. The rich, pretty girl with her eyes full of tears and her frowning at him, like she blames him, like the others, for bringing them here. He supposes they'd have all rather burned to death in the attack, ground into bloody smears beneath collapsing concrete and steel.
He turns to Lieutenant Johansen instead, pointedly ignoring Chloe. "May I see the list?"
"What? What list?" asks Chloe, looking between them as the lieutenant passes him her clipboard.
He notices Johansen doesn't respond to her either, but to him she says: "I've marked the names of anyone injured," she says it quietly, like she's ashamed. So far she's the only one who's done anything useful.
"We'll have to find out people's skill, their backgrounds, areas of experience, that sort of thing," he tells her. He rubs his eyes and doesn't look at the list, without his glasses there's not much point.
"It doesn't take any special skills to die of asphyxiation!" Lieutenant Scott yells. He's teetering on the verge of hysteria, most of them are.
Rush stands slowly, trying to think of a way to say what he's thinking that will sound marginally less horrible. Part of him can't believe they haven't already thought of this themselves.
"What I'm saying is, it shouldn't be someone with potentially valuable knowledge."
Chloe stands in front of him again, blocking his path. He knows he shouldn't have slept with her; he hopes she doesn't think he owes her anything. "Are you really suggesting what I think?" her voice is shrill.
Panic, then, he thinks, but for the love of God do it somewhere else. But no, she wants to play at being the politician, at saying utterly useless things because they sound good, because they're the sort of things people don't feel they can argue with.
"You can't ask someone to sacrifice themselves, period!" she yells, like if she says the words any louder they'll be true, or they'll make a good soundbite.
He swallows back his first, instinctive response. He can do this without shouting. She wants to play at being a politician. She doesn't even know what that means.
"Politicians ask military personnel to sacrifice themselves for the good of others all the time," he says evenly.
Lieutenant Johansen looks away, like she didn't hear it, doesn't even want to get involved. Chloe looks pained, like the facts leave a sour taste in her mouth.
"If someone doesn't go in there and close that door, we're all going to die, period." He practically spits the word back at her, like its poison, daring her to argue with him again. She doesn't though, she turns away.
He doesn't have time for her childish anger, or panic, or need to assert herself, or whatever the hell it is. He turns back to Johansen.
"I'll talk to Wray about...what you said," she says quietly, "and maybe she can spread the word, explain the situation. Maybe someone will volunteer," she says, but she doesn't sound very hopeful.
Rush nods. "Good, thank you."
Scott follows her, giving him a dirty look as he leaves, and even Eli shuffles past, the kino trailing behind him, leaving only Chloe standing facing him, her eyes bright and her bottom lip quivering. She uncrosses her arms, shifts her weight and recrosses them, nervously.
"We're all going to die, aren't we? You've killed us all."
He feels his lips twitch and fights not to sneer at her. "I suppose you would have rather stayed at the base?"
"I would have rather gone back to Earth!"
"Earth wasn't an option!" he's snarling now, their faces are inches apart.
She doesn't back down, her hands clenched into little fists. Her eyes narrow at him. "I don't believe you!"
"Right, of course!" he says, "that makes perfect sense. I wanted to strand us here! I enjoy the prospect of suffocating to death a billion light years from home."
Her lips twist into something that's not a smile, and they stand like that, eyes locked. He's breathing heavily, stupid to be yelling, there's not enough air. Her chest is rising and falling rapidly beneath her jacket. She licks her lips. His fingers twitch and he fights the urge to grab her and slam her up against the console. There's not enough air, he tells himself, he's not thinking clearly - none of them are.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, fighting to keep his voice even, "we're not friends. We're not partners, in any sense of the word."
Her lip curls. "Don't flatter yourself," she says. He think he reads the hurt in her eyes, part of him even hopes for it.
"Don't get in my way again. You must realize you, yourself, have nothing to offer the people on this ship. You're nothing more than a pretty little idiot."
This time he knows he sees the pain. He offers her a conciliatory smile. And then she hits him. Shoves him, really, but it's so unexpected he finds himself stumbling backwards, and loses his balances. He falls against the console, hitting the metal with his shoulder. The blow sends a sharp lance of pain through his back, and he looks up at her, momentarily stunned.
Chloe looks down at him, unblinking. "If you'll excuse me, Doctor Rush, I need to go and see my father now," she says and turns on her heel.
She brushes past Eli, who is on his way in, kino bobbing along beside him.
"Uh...if this is a bad time," he says, staring at Rush. "Well, it's just that Franklin wants you to come take a look at the control pad by the shuttle, and, well, given the imminent threat of death and suffocation and doom, I thought, uh..."
"Yeah, yeah," he says, shaking his head and rubbing his bruised shoulder. "I'll be there in a minute."
"So what's going on with you and Chloe?"
He doesn't succeed in keeping the aggravation out of his voice when he answers. "Nothing."
~*~
She's screaming.
And regardless of what he said, he wouldn't have wished that pain on her. Wouldn't have wished it on anyone.
Chloe Armstrong's screams are filling the control room. They reverberate over metal and steel, echoing around the chamber. It's the sort of noise you can't tune out, you can't think over. It triggers emotions buried too deep in the human psyche to ignore. Chill, biting coldness, sorrow.
Humans are empathetic animals, her screams go on and on, like blades tearing up the corners of his sanity. Part of him wonders why no one turns the radio off. No, no, she lives this, the least they can do is listen.
God help him, he's going to hell for this.
As soon as she stops, he'll be able to think, he'll realize the value of her father's sacrifice, and he'll remember that he hardly had a hand in it at all. He's a witness, but no more a participant in the Senator's death than Franklin, who failed to fix the door manually, or Eli, who couldn't open it again.
But while Chloe's screaming - while those cries are sluicing through the pathways of his brain, shuddering like ice-water waves into his core - he can't seem to think of any of that, just her eyes, and her indignation at the idea of sacrificing someone, and his indifference, and that makes him guilty. It won't, in five minutes, in ten minutes, he doesn't know it then, but it won't keep him up at night. Only in those moments, while she's crying and over the radio, her sobs and pleading with them to open the door, and begging her father to come back, and finally dissipating into wordless, senseless noises, in those moments, he feels guilty. In those moments, he feels terrible.
Then there is silence.
Blessed silence, it washes over them like a wave. The others begin to breathe again. Eli is ashen-faced and trembling, Park and Brody are both quietly horrified, but he's already considering what this means for them - it's bought them several more hours of life, and with that perhaps they can find a way to correct the ship's life support systems.
He's barely begun to voice this, when Chloe charges into the control room, her hair streaming behind her, a look of pure rage distorting her face. She crashes into him, knocking him down for the second time that day. One of her boots connects sharply with his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. She's kicking him, and hitting him and her screaming fills his brain: "You did this! You killed him! You killed all of us!"
Scott and Johansen pull her off of him, and she fights against them, screaming. He stands, shakily, trying to think of what to say. Park, Brody and Eli are all staring at them, wide-eyed.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, and for the first time he regrets not being able to call her 'Chloe,' and there are things he would say, that he can't express in front of an audience like this.
"You're in shock. Believe me, I understand." He hopes she can hear the sincerity in his words, hopes that she realizes it's true. They both know something about grief, now. He tries to explain to her. "Everyone deals with tragedy in different ways. You're looking for someone to blame."
"I'm not looking," she snarls, breaking out of Scott's grasp. He backs away as Johansen holds her still.
"I'm sorry about your father," he says, "I truly am. He was a good man, and he certainly wouldn't have been my choice."
She's staring at him, her face is ghostly white, her eyes red from crying. After a moment, she sways, collapsing against Johansen. The lieutenant helps her to a seat, and sits beside her, rubbing her back while she cries.
He looks down at her, hunched, weeping figure. This is not what he wanted. He crouches in front of her, fights the urge to reach out and touch her. Johansen is already looking down at him, stern and protective of her new charge. And besides, none of them would understand, perhaps not even Chloe.
He crouches in front of her. He wants her to look him in the eye. She doesn't. She's crying, her hair falling in front of her face.
"Miss Armstrong, I know you don't want to hear this just now. But this ship could be the most important discovery mankind has made since the Stargate itself. You know the Icarus Project was something your father truly believed in. Enough to risk his career to support."
She chokes at that, shaking her head.
He tries to explain to her, the importance of her father's sacrifice, the necessity even. That it won't have been in vain.
"Please, give me a chance," he tells her.
She stands up, staring at him with cold, pure hatred. When she walks past him, there's a chill in the air, and if there ever was anything between them, he's certain that it snaps.
~*~
Space isn't black, like she expected. It's like the ocean, or maybe some impressionist painter's idea of the ocean - swirling blues, mauves and indigos. Deep streams of green and violet. Violent flashes of stars. It's moving around them like driving through a painting before it's dried, with the oils all running together. Something faster-than-light and slower-than-hyperspace.
The colours wash over her. At least the room is dark, black, like the pain in her chest. There are tears running down her face, and she's too tired to fight the hopeless battle of trying to keep them at bay.
She keeps replaying it in her mind, it's like a movie reel, going over and over. Her running down that corridor, the metal doors sliding shut. If she'd just been a little faster. If she'd just been a little faster.
Chloe knows she'll replay that scene in her mind, somehow, somewhere, until the day she dies. Chloe also knows that no matter how fast she flies down that corridor, it will never be fast enough. Every time, her father will die. And he'll die alone, in a damaged space shuttle, suffocating.
And Rush. Rush dares to say "Please give me a chance."
She closes her eyes, shuddering.
~*~
She's sitting in the observation room when he finds her, watching space, even though they've dropped out of FTL and the stars are motionless. Rush hasn't stared at the night sky, just to stare it, in years. Feels like a lifetime. These stars are all wrong though, but he doesn't suppose Chloe would know enough astronomy to tell the difference.
She doesn't look at him, doesn't acknowledge his presence in anyway. Rush doesn't even know why he's bothering, except that he might die on whatever alien planet they've found. He doesn't feel like he owes her much, but closure is maybe something he can give, and whatever this well and truly fucked up thing they have between them is, it's something that should have been killed before it was born. And maybe that's all he wants to say to her.
"Miss Armstrong, I-"
"Don't talk to me," she says, her voice is cold and brittle. She doesn't glance in his direction, but he sees her shoulders tense.
"I realize you probably want to be alone right now."
"Then leave."
"I will be, very shortly. The Gate's dialed the address of a planet within range, and a team of us will be departing to see if we can locate a solution to the current life support crisis."
She laughs, humourlessly. "It won't work," she says, "we're all going to die."
He stares down at her, a surge of annoyance running through him, and before he can stop himself he's grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, dragging her to her feet.
"Let go of me! Don't touch me!" she screams, trying to jerk out of his grasp.
Her shoulders are bone-thin and smooth beneath his hands. He's haunted by the memory of the soft curves of her body, the pliant warmth of her skin, the sensations ghosting beneath his palms, memory and dream.
"Your father wanted you to live! Don't you see that? If he hadn't closed that door we would all be very dead right now. He knew that. He realized-"
"Shut up!" she shrieks, shaking her head frantically. "Shut up! Don't talk about my father. Don't talk about him!"
He feels like there's something here he's missing, some vital piece, but then she sobs, the sound bubbling up from deep in her chest. Tears spill down her cheeks, and the next moment she's crying against him, loud choking sobs shaking her body.
"Miss Armstrong," he says, "for what it's worth, I am sorry for your loss."
"It's not worth anything," she says, changing abruptly, again, pulling away from him. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. "I hate you."
He nods, slightly, "Yes, I imagine you do," he tells her. "I should go now, the away team is waiting, and the current situation demands my attention."
"No!" she grabs his arm, suddenly lashing out, her nails gouging little crescent moons into his skin. "No," she says again, "don't you dare. I hate you!"
She hits him across the face, and he reacts on instinct, before he can stop himself, backhanding her. The sound ricochets across the deck, and she staggers backwards unsteadily, staring at him with wide eyes. He looks at her, shocked with his own actions. He's never hit a woman before, never wanted to. Before he can think of what to say, or what to do, she's thrown herself at him again, latching onto his vest, only this time, she's kissing him - angrily, desperately, clawing at him like she's possessed.
He tries to wrestle her back, at least that's what he tells himself, his hands seem to be following their own agenda: wandering down her arms, over her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress, following the vertebrae of her spine, down. He's kissing back, just as roughly, a mess of lips and tongues and teeth biting and clashing sending little sparks of pain along his jaw.
Her nails scratch at him, and he grabs her wrist hard enough to make her gasp. There's a second where he can, should, ask her what the hell she thinks she's doing, push her away, walk out of the room, but he doesn't. He shoves her against the nearest wall, taking her mouth in bruising, punishing kisses. She's moaning into him, grabbing at him, pulling him closer.
Rush knows grief, he knows drowning in grief, being mad with grief, like it's a disease crawling through his skin, eating at his brain, and Chloe is on fire with it, and it's consuming her, burning her away. Alarm bells are ringing in the back of his head, this is wrong, very wrong, so close to all sorts of lines that shouldn't be crossed, but then she's pulling his belt open and she's got a hand down the front of his pants and reason and logic abruptly shut up.
Chloe pulls at him in vicious, impatient strokes, and he's already so hard, wanting her. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder, and she makes a wet, strangled sound. He's grabbing at her, pushing up her skirt,and pressing her back against the wall. Chloe clings to him, shouting curses and obscenities and pulling him closer, hips bucking and rising to meet his with every thrust.
Rush is inside her, and she's tight and hot and good, so fucking good, There are red hot splinters of pain in his mouth, where she's biting at his lips and her nails are scratching the sides of his face, and somehow that's part of it, that's good, too. He shoves back into her, and they're all tangled up in body parts, and limbs and hate; pleasure and pain.
Chloe screams, her body clenching and releasing around him in shudders of ecstasy. He comes after her, spilling deep inside her with a groan. He feels himself running down the hot insides of her thighs and breathes heavily against her. They're sticky and slick with sweat and sex, and he runs a hand down the back of her skirt, the material hopelessly crumpled. He still has another hand buried thickly in her hair, the long mass of dark curls tangled over his knuckles, his wrist, his fingers pressing into her scalp.
This was such an obviously, monumentally, stupid thing to do. In the aftermath he can think that, for a number of reasons. Also, someone could have easily walked in, they're probably already looking for him, and he can just imagine Young's reaction - he knows the Colonel would love an excuse to deck him.
"I need to go," he says, disentangled their sweaty, quivering limbs. He tries to remember kindness, or something like it. "Are you alright?"
"No," she says quietly, "but this time it's not your fault."
"What changed?" he asks her, he reaches for her face, but she jerks away, turning on her side, staring out the window, again, into the black of space.
"Go," she says, her voice weary, "fix the air, or whatever you have to do."
He steps backwards, pulling up his pants, studies her tear-stained profile. Her hair is falling in front of her, dark snarls and ripples obscuring her features.
He shouldn't have come here, he's accomplished nothing that he meant to and this is even worse.
This is so much worse.
Part III