Fic: Albatross (The Ancient Mariner's Remix) (SGA, John/Rodney, soft R)
Title: Albatross (The Ancient Mariner's Remix)
Author: wojelah
Remix of: Panic Response by troutkitty
Characters: Sheppard + McKay = McShep
Timeline: Wherever you care to place it
Word count: ~2,300
Rating: Very, very soft R.
Summary: "Right now, standing by the gate on MX-whatever-the-hell, John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, is looking just as freaked out as Rodney feels, because something on this planet is not right, which means it is well-past time to get the hell back to Atlantis."
Author's Notes: Thank god for smittywing and her mad betaing.
They have been there for eternity, a doomed race, trapped by their own madness and despair, vaporized and bound. Ghosts in the machine, quite literally.
He pitied them, even as they cut his throat, using his blood to power their machine in a desperate last bid for Ascension.
He pities them still, even as they rage and cry and gibber.
He pities the people who dial the gate still more.
Rodney McKay does not believe in the supernatural. Instead, Rodney engages in a forceful, irritated refusal to believe of the sort that, if directed at fairies, would cause legions to drop dead in milliseconds. Rodney had never really liked Peter Pan when he was a kid.
Rodney McKay -does- believe in blinding terror, because, well, hello and welcome to the Pegasus galaxy, and he defies anyone with half a brain not to be terrified on a daily basis. Rodney is also stubborn, however, and has a decided and sensible aversion to sudden death, which means Rodney has learned to suck it up and deal with the day's crisis. Most of the time. Given a few gentle reminders. And a power bar to stave off impending hypoglycemia. And possibly, just possibly, given the smart-assed and yet oddly reassuring presence of one John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, who is usually idling away Rodney's precious time with some smart-assed remark. Ignorance can be bliss. Also, it's not a good idea to encourage the man with the ridiculous self-sacrificing deathwish, because there is such a thing as avoiding positive reinforcement of negative behaviors, not that Rodney will ever admit that psychology is in any other way a valid science.
Only right now, standing by the gate on MX-whatever-the-hell, John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, is looking just as freaked out as Rodney feels, because something on this planet is not right, which means it is well-past time to get the hell back to Atlantis. Because if Sheppard's jittery, Rodney is totally, totally willing to let the spirit of scientific exploration wither and fade in favor of "not dying today."
For once, they do the sane thing and get the hell out. But this is Pegasus, and the trouble never, never, just stays where they found it. Ever. It's been hours now since they got back, and Rodney cannot shake the feeling that someone is watching him - someone, or multiple someones. Rodney is beginning to reach a state of extreme annoyance usually associated with bureaucrats and/or Kavanagh. It is patently ridiculous that Rodney cannot focus on the latest inefficiencies in the power grid because of some stupid sense of paranoia. He jerks his head around for the seventeenth time that afternoon, ready to verbally flay whatever idiot's decided to interrupt him this time, but the only person around is Zelenka, twelve feet away, looking at Rodney curiously from over by the coffee-pot.
"Not to worry, McKay," Radek says dryly, "I have it on good authority that all crack ninja squadrons live in too much fear of your temper to try and steal your research."
"Very funny," Rodney snaps, turning back to his work. "It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you," he adds, but it's half-hearted at best, because oh my god, that felt like someone brushing against his shoulder, and maybe he really is going crazy. That's when Sheppard shows up, and Rodney doesn't know whether to be terrified or relieved, because on the one hand, he's not the only one, but on the other, Sheppard's not exactly holding up well under the strain either.
Rodney, however, also believes in practicality. He leans towards John and John must be leaning towards him, because eventually their shoulders press and touch, and Rodney doesn't feel quite as exposed, not with John at his back. The fact that it's Sheppard, Rodney tells himself, is just a bonus. They stay that way as long as they can - and they manage to find excuses to stay in each other's vicinity the rest of the day, and well into the evening - so far into the evening that by the time they're out of delaying tactics, it's practically early in the morning.
Rodney's pretty sure his relief is painfully, horribly obvious when Sheppard asks to spend the night on the floor. The fact that Rodney then asks to join him there is just something Rodney chalks up under the heading, "ways the universe is out to make a fool of me." He's hoping they'll be sane enough in the morning to never talk about this again. Except for the part of him that isn't.
But the feeling isn't getting better - far from it. It's claustrophobic and creepy and it's got him wound so tight he can feel his eye threatening to twitch. When Rodney finds the machine that's causing it he is going to 1) turn it off and then 2) shatter it into a hundred billion pieces. Because Rodney still doesn't believe in ghosts, but whatever's messing with their heads right now is enough that Sheppard asked to camp out on his floor and Rodney found himself asking to join him, and while there are some interesting bonuses to this situation that Rodney never thought he'd encounter, this is also not normal, and if Rodney weren't so busy being terrified, he'd have more energy to devote to being really, really annoyed.
When they both wake up in the dead of the night, sweaty and shaking and terrified out of their individual minds - when Rodney gives up on practicality and stubbornness and just reaches out for Sheppard in the dark as a point of fragile stability - the fact that it's Sheppard is a fucking necessity. There isn't anybody else to chase away whatever tonight's demons are.
Sheppard's clinging to him just as hard. If Rodney was more sane and less terrified out of his skull, he'd regret not having time to process that fact. Instead, they both just hold on, and somehow, some way, they make it through to morning.
It is so different here - so different that he hardly recognizes he's home, so different that his home, his own home, doesn't recognize that he's here. The strangers in Atlantis know they've come - can hear his murderers, can dream of their hatred and despair and wake screaming. He would try to break through if he could, to offer explanation and solution, but he has been one against many for thousands on thousands of years.
He would try harder if he weren't so tired - if they weren't so strong in their anger and despair that they cloud any lingering connection he might have retained to his city. But they are strong, and they are still as mindless in their desire for power as they ever were in life - certain that they are just the smallest distance from true Ascension. They are greedy, and they are angry - angry that the people who now live here have such untold reserves of power and that they can absorb so little, so slowly. They are angry, and they are terrified, still trapped, after all these millenia, by their fear of death and dying.
He has been dying for so long that all he fears now is that it will never end in death.
Rodney has goddamned well had enough of this. He cannot think - all right, he can think, because he is a genius, but his skin is crawling and the back of his neck is tingling and he is listening for insane little whispers at the edge of his hearing, and it makes thinking far harder than it should be for someone of his mental caliber. He cannot think, not fast enough, not far enough ahead, and frankly, faced with the truth of this whole horrible situation, Rodney McKay is simply appalled.
They'd gone back to the planet. They'd gone back, and Rodney had Control-Alt-Deleted the mysterious grey Ancient device, because again, genius and also first rule of computer repair and also desperation. Because Rodney McKay doesn't believe in the supernatural, but he does - most of the time - believe his five senses, and they'd been telling him to get the hell out of there. It wasn't like the clues were hidden: choking, roiling clouds and the oppressive, slow burn of the bloody sun; a sense of building pressure, like a storm about to burst; and John Sheppard, wild-eyed and stiff-backed, saying Rodney's name in a desperate plea like Rodney'd never heard before and never, ever wanted to hear again. That voice had stopped Rodney in his tracks; had made him look at Sheppard, who refused to leave him. Sheppard, who was terrified like Rodney hadn't seen him in five years of regularly terrifying situations, and yet who had stuck with Rodney while he fiddled and cursed and wrestled with that damn grey box. Sheppard, who'd said Rodney's name - just his name - and when Rodney had turned around, the look on Sheppard's face had brought Rodney's panic screaming to the forefront. He'd grabbed the damn box and they'd gone.
They'd gone, and now they're back, and it was Sheppard who put the last pieces of the puzzle together: that planet - its people - they'd killed a man and bound him to the machine, bound him as he lay dying, all because of the gene in his Ancient DNA. They'd killed him, millennia ago, trying to use him to power the Ascension machine that would allow them to escape the Wraith, only it hadn't worked. They'd killed him, and damned themselves. They'd killed him, and the machine had broken, and instead of Ascending, they'd been trapped. Virtual intelligences who knew there was life outside the holodeck.
Rodney's read his share of science fiction. This isn't supernatural. This is entirely plausible. This is fucking terrifying, and it's interfering with his ability to think straight.
He cannot think, which is why he almost makes the enormous, enormous mistake of kissing John Sheppard as they curl up on Rodney's floor for a second night. It would have been an enormous mistake, revealing a lot of information that had been accumulating over the course of five years, but they are both tired and exhausted and frustrated, and it's five years worth of.... something. Rodney is terrified, but the idea that he might accidentally slip up and let that out is an entirely different kind of fear.
Fortunately, Rodney is still a genius, and he comes up with the solution before it's too late. On either count.
Only: he gets it right. They power down Atlantis and lure the... things through the gate. They're gone. The scans prove it. They're gone, but Rodney - Rodney is still terrified. The edge is worn off, and he can feel it beginning to dissipate around the edges, but the core of it is still there. It's fizzing through him, and with the problem solved, with the pressure gone, there's nothing to turn it to - no puzzle to attack, no life-or-death dilemma to resolve - there's nothing but a sudden and bone-deep awareness of just how scared he really has been this whole time. Rodney doesn't believe in the supernatural, but those things, trapped for centuries, worn away by time till they had nothing left but the blindness of the rage that trapped them in the first place - if there are demons, if there is a hell, Rodney has seen it.
Saw it, and faced it, and made it through, and yet again, Sheppard's been along for the entire ride. And while Rodney is not good at reading Sheppard nine times out of ten, this time is the tenth, because Rodney knows that Sheppard feels exactly the same.
In the end, that's what makes it so easy to follow Sheppard back to the quarters they've been sharing for three days. It's what makes it so easy and so desperately, desperately important to reach out - to feel the stubble on Sheppard's skin, the knot of tension riding under his shoulders, the fine tremor of exhaustion just barely beginning in their fingers where their hands tangle together. It's what makes it so incredibly important to come together, skin and blankets and muscle and sweat, until the reassurance - that they are alive, that they are sane, that the last few days are not the future - takes hold. In the end, it is sheer relief that drags Rodney down into sleep; it is John beneath him that lets him stay there.
It is so quiet, when they leave - when the people in his city (but not of his city) finally send them back from whence they came. It is so quiet, and he is so alone, for the first time in an eternity, and it is a blessing. He had not thought he would ever know it.
He is alone, and he is thankful, but he has no desire to remain here in his city that cannot hear him, that listens now to the voices of the living, of these strangers who are only beginning to know her. It is not his city, not any more, and he is not the person he was when he last walked her halls.
He has changed, but not enough. Too much to stay, not enough to move on.
So he finds a chink in a dreaming man's mind and does what he could not among the clamor of the masses: he explains, and tells them how to send him home. He tries hard not to frighten, but this man, and the one curled around him - he has watched them live through fear. And later - hours, minutes, he cannot tell, it is so short compared to the span of his delay - later, as he hurtles towards Ascension and his people, he thinks that to such men as these, he can leave his city, and know they will do well.
Author: wojelah
Remix of: Panic Response by troutkitty
Characters: Sheppard + McKay = McShep
Timeline: Wherever you care to place it
Word count: ~2,300
Rating: Very, very soft R.
Summary: "Right now, standing by the gate on MX-whatever-the-hell, John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, is looking just as freaked out as Rodney feels, because something on this planet is not right, which means it is well-past time to get the hell back to Atlantis."
Author's Notes: Thank god for smittywing and her mad betaing.
They have been there for eternity, a doomed race, trapped by their own madness and despair, vaporized and bound. Ghosts in the machine, quite literally.
He pitied them, even as they cut his throat, using his blood to power their machine in a desperate last bid for Ascension.
He pities them still, even as they rage and cry and gibber.
He pities the people who dial the gate still more.
Rodney McKay does not believe in the supernatural. Instead, Rodney engages in a forceful, irritated refusal to believe of the sort that, if directed at fairies, would cause legions to drop dead in milliseconds. Rodney had never really liked Peter Pan when he was a kid.
Rodney McKay -does- believe in blinding terror, because, well, hello and welcome to the Pegasus galaxy, and he defies anyone with half a brain not to be terrified on a daily basis. Rodney is also stubborn, however, and has a decided and sensible aversion to sudden death, which means Rodney has learned to suck it up and deal with the day's crisis. Most of the time. Given a few gentle reminders. And a power bar to stave off impending hypoglycemia. And possibly, just possibly, given the smart-assed and yet oddly reassuring presence of one John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, who is usually idling away Rodney's precious time with some smart-assed remark. Ignorance can be bliss. Also, it's not a good idea to encourage the man with the ridiculous self-sacrificing deathwish, because there is such a thing as avoiding positive reinforcement of negative behaviors, not that Rodney will ever admit that psychology is in any other way a valid science.
Only right now, standing by the gate on MX-whatever-the-hell, John Sheppard, Lt. Col., USAF, is looking just as freaked out as Rodney feels, because something on this planet is not right, which means it is well-past time to get the hell back to Atlantis. Because if Sheppard's jittery, Rodney is totally, totally willing to let the spirit of scientific exploration wither and fade in favor of "not dying today."
For once, they do the sane thing and get the hell out. But this is Pegasus, and the trouble never, never, just stays where they found it. Ever. It's been hours now since they got back, and Rodney cannot shake the feeling that someone is watching him - someone, or multiple someones. Rodney is beginning to reach a state of extreme annoyance usually associated with bureaucrats and/or Kavanagh. It is patently ridiculous that Rodney cannot focus on the latest inefficiencies in the power grid because of some stupid sense of paranoia. He jerks his head around for the seventeenth time that afternoon, ready to verbally flay whatever idiot's decided to interrupt him this time, but the only person around is Zelenka, twelve feet away, looking at Rodney curiously from over by the coffee-pot.
"Not to worry, McKay," Radek says dryly, "I have it on good authority that all crack ninja squadrons live in too much fear of your temper to try and steal your research."
"Very funny," Rodney snaps, turning back to his work. "It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you," he adds, but it's half-hearted at best, because oh my god, that felt like someone brushing against his shoulder, and maybe he really is going crazy. That's when Sheppard shows up, and Rodney doesn't know whether to be terrified or relieved, because on the one hand, he's not the only one, but on the other, Sheppard's not exactly holding up well under the strain either.
Rodney, however, also believes in practicality. He leans towards John and John must be leaning towards him, because eventually their shoulders press and touch, and Rodney doesn't feel quite as exposed, not with John at his back. The fact that it's Sheppard, Rodney tells himself, is just a bonus. They stay that way as long as they can - and they manage to find excuses to stay in each other's vicinity the rest of the day, and well into the evening - so far into the evening that by the time they're out of delaying tactics, it's practically early in the morning.
Rodney's pretty sure his relief is painfully, horribly obvious when Sheppard asks to spend the night on the floor. The fact that Rodney then asks to join him there is just something Rodney chalks up under the heading, "ways the universe is out to make a fool of me." He's hoping they'll be sane enough in the morning to never talk about this again. Except for the part of him that isn't.
But the feeling isn't getting better - far from it. It's claustrophobic and creepy and it's got him wound so tight he can feel his eye threatening to twitch. When Rodney finds the machine that's causing it he is going to 1) turn it off and then 2) shatter it into a hundred billion pieces. Because Rodney still doesn't believe in ghosts, but whatever's messing with their heads right now is enough that Sheppard asked to camp out on his floor and Rodney found himself asking to join him, and while there are some interesting bonuses to this situation that Rodney never thought he'd encounter, this is also not normal, and if Rodney weren't so busy being terrified, he'd have more energy to devote to being really, really annoyed.
When they both wake up in the dead of the night, sweaty and shaking and terrified out of their individual minds - when Rodney gives up on practicality and stubbornness and just reaches out for Sheppard in the dark as a point of fragile stability - the fact that it's Sheppard is a fucking necessity. There isn't anybody else to chase away whatever tonight's demons are.
Sheppard's clinging to him just as hard. If Rodney was more sane and less terrified out of his skull, he'd regret not having time to process that fact. Instead, they both just hold on, and somehow, some way, they make it through to morning.
It is so different here - so different that he hardly recognizes he's home, so different that his home, his own home, doesn't recognize that he's here. The strangers in Atlantis know they've come - can hear his murderers, can dream of their hatred and despair and wake screaming. He would try to break through if he could, to offer explanation and solution, but he has been one against many for thousands on thousands of years.
He would try harder if he weren't so tired - if they weren't so strong in their anger and despair that they cloud any lingering connection he might have retained to his city. But they are strong, and they are still as mindless in their desire for power as they ever were in life - certain that they are just the smallest distance from true Ascension. They are greedy, and they are angry - angry that the people who now live here have such untold reserves of power and that they can absorb so little, so slowly. They are angry, and they are terrified, still trapped, after all these millenia, by their fear of death and dying.
He has been dying for so long that all he fears now is that it will never end in death.
Rodney has goddamned well had enough of this. He cannot think - all right, he can think, because he is a genius, but his skin is crawling and the back of his neck is tingling and he is listening for insane little whispers at the edge of his hearing, and it makes thinking far harder than it should be for someone of his mental caliber. He cannot think, not fast enough, not far enough ahead, and frankly, faced with the truth of this whole horrible situation, Rodney McKay is simply appalled.
They'd gone back to the planet. They'd gone back, and Rodney had Control-Alt-Deleted the mysterious grey Ancient device, because again, genius and also first rule of computer repair and also desperation. Because Rodney McKay doesn't believe in the supernatural, but he does - most of the time - believe his five senses, and they'd been telling him to get the hell out of there. It wasn't like the clues were hidden: choking, roiling clouds and the oppressive, slow burn of the bloody sun; a sense of building pressure, like a storm about to burst; and John Sheppard, wild-eyed and stiff-backed, saying Rodney's name in a desperate plea like Rodney'd never heard before and never, ever wanted to hear again. That voice had stopped Rodney in his tracks; had made him look at Sheppard, who refused to leave him. Sheppard, who was terrified like Rodney hadn't seen him in five years of regularly terrifying situations, and yet who had stuck with Rodney while he fiddled and cursed and wrestled with that damn grey box. Sheppard, who'd said Rodney's name - just his name - and when Rodney had turned around, the look on Sheppard's face had brought Rodney's panic screaming to the forefront. He'd grabbed the damn box and they'd gone.
They'd gone, and now they're back, and it was Sheppard who put the last pieces of the puzzle together: that planet - its people - they'd killed a man and bound him to the machine, bound him as he lay dying, all because of the gene in his Ancient DNA. They'd killed him, millennia ago, trying to use him to power the Ascension machine that would allow them to escape the Wraith, only it hadn't worked. They'd killed him, and damned themselves. They'd killed him, and the machine had broken, and instead of Ascending, they'd been trapped. Virtual intelligences who knew there was life outside the holodeck.
Rodney's read his share of science fiction. This isn't supernatural. This is entirely plausible. This is fucking terrifying, and it's interfering with his ability to think straight.
He cannot think, which is why he almost makes the enormous, enormous mistake of kissing John Sheppard as they curl up on Rodney's floor for a second night. It would have been an enormous mistake, revealing a lot of information that had been accumulating over the course of five years, but they are both tired and exhausted and frustrated, and it's five years worth of.... something. Rodney is terrified, but the idea that he might accidentally slip up and let that out is an entirely different kind of fear.
Fortunately, Rodney is still a genius, and he comes up with the solution before it's too late. On either count.
Only: he gets it right. They power down Atlantis and lure the... things through the gate. They're gone. The scans prove it. They're gone, but Rodney - Rodney is still terrified. The edge is worn off, and he can feel it beginning to dissipate around the edges, but the core of it is still there. It's fizzing through him, and with the problem solved, with the pressure gone, there's nothing to turn it to - no puzzle to attack, no life-or-death dilemma to resolve - there's nothing but a sudden and bone-deep awareness of just how scared he really has been this whole time. Rodney doesn't believe in the supernatural, but those things, trapped for centuries, worn away by time till they had nothing left but the blindness of the rage that trapped them in the first place - if there are demons, if there is a hell, Rodney has seen it.
Saw it, and faced it, and made it through, and yet again, Sheppard's been along for the entire ride. And while Rodney is not good at reading Sheppard nine times out of ten, this time is the tenth, because Rodney knows that Sheppard feels exactly the same.
In the end, that's what makes it so easy to follow Sheppard back to the quarters they've been sharing for three days. It's what makes it so easy and so desperately, desperately important to reach out - to feel the stubble on Sheppard's skin, the knot of tension riding under his shoulders, the fine tremor of exhaustion just barely beginning in their fingers where their hands tangle together. It's what makes it so incredibly important to come together, skin and blankets and muscle and sweat, until the reassurance - that they are alive, that they are sane, that the last few days are not the future - takes hold. In the end, it is sheer relief that drags Rodney down into sleep; it is John beneath him that lets him stay there.
It is so quiet, when they leave - when the people in his city (but not of his city) finally send them back from whence they came. It is so quiet, and he is so alone, for the first time in an eternity, and it is a blessing. He had not thought he would ever know it.
He is alone, and he is thankful, but he has no desire to remain here in his city that cannot hear him, that listens now to the voices of the living, of these strangers who are only beginning to know her. It is not his city, not any more, and he is not the person he was when he last walked her halls.
He has changed, but not enough. Too much to stay, not enough to move on.
So he finds a chink in a dreaming man's mind and does what he could not among the clamor of the masses: he explains, and tells them how to send him home. He tries hard not to frighten, but this man, and the one curled around him - he has watched them live through fear. And later - hours, minutes, he cannot tell, it is so short compared to the span of his delay - later, as he hurtles towards Ascension and his people, he thinks that to such men as these, he can leave his city, and know they will do well.