The U.S.S. Indianapolis by trinityofone (Shark Challenge)
Jaws is one of my all-time favorite movies, so: a little tribute. *g*
Title: The U.S.S. Indianapolis
Author: trinityofone
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘Epiphany’
Length: ~2250 words
Summary: What’s that one, there, on your arm?//Oh, that’s a tattoo. I got it removed.
The U.S.S. Indianapolis
The first is one of the marine biologists, a Dr. Watkins; Rodney has to struggle to put a face to the name. Anyway, from what little Elizabeth and Heightmeyer are able to get out of the hysterical Sgt. Cassidy, who was with her when it happened, Watkins hadn’t exactly been doing much marine biology. And while it’s a tragedy, sure, these things happen. Especially here.
The second is one of Caldwell’s people, both name and face unfamiliar to Rodney. They burn what’s left of Lt. Grossman and hold the service in orbit, aboard the Daedalus. Solemn and dignified, Caldwell presses the button that releases the ashes into space. Ted would want to be among the stars, he says: the implication being, and not in the sea, where he died.
Dr. Biro, who’d examined the remains before turning them over, confirms in private what they’d all suspected. It’s a closed meeting, essential personnel only, but someone talks, or more likely the people of Atlantis are not quite that stupid and they simply figure it out. Someone splices the contents of a John Williams CD into the city’s sound system; Elizabeth cracks down on iPod use, and people get twitchy and nervous, not sure yet whether it’s funny or sad. Their senses of humor are all gallows-twinged by now.
The third is Dr. Gardner, who Rodney knows (knew) quite well: he’s an engineer, a good one, and Rodney was the one who told him to go down to the south pier and check some slightly anomalous readings from the city’s sensors in that region. A minor thing; Rodney could have let it go, but he figured: better safe than sorry.
Gardner must have slipped and fallen into the water, Major Lorne reports; the rungs on the maintenance ladder were wet, slick. Bad luck, could have happened to anyone. Sure, Rodney thinks. I could have sent Gary or Hamilton or Kramer. I could have sent Radek.
He doesn’t like playing God.
Elizabeth makes an announcement in which she speaks favorably of the dead, gently reprimands practical jokers (Williams has proved remarkably unquashable), and declares that recreational swimming has been disallowed until further notice. Those who work near or around the water are to suspend all unessential activity and exercise extreme caution. Rodney knows he would think: Scary thing in the water? Don’t go near the damn water, stupid! But he knows, now, that it isn’t that simple.
Jinto is the fourth.
Rodney has seen: Gaul drained with the cool weight of a pistol in his hand; the spark of insanity in Ford’s remaining human eye; the looks on Carson and Elizabeth’s faces when the enzyme finally left his system, with everything he had been, become, reflected back. But none of that compares to the wreck of a man in Halling’s skin, haunting the gateroom and the control tower; or even to Elizabeth, thinking herself alone and quietly breaking down, because in the confusion, she’d forgotten to get word to the mainland in time.
He finds Sheppard in the armory, clearly taking a cue from Ronon and loading himself down with more weapons than should be physically possible. What are you doing? he asks, although he already knows the answer: I’m going after it, Sheppard says. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.
You’re skipping ahead, Rodney thinks. He says, You have a plan?
I will. Sheppard tightens the laces on his boots.
You’re going alone, Rodney says, flatly. That’s your plan. That’s your idea of a plan.
I’m going to take care of it, Sheppard repeats.
Rodney wants to say: This isn’t a Western, John. Stop playing Gary Cooper. Stop playing John Wayne.
He says: She was having an affair, you know.
Sheppard barely glances at him. What?
In the book, Brody’s wife. She was fooling around with Hooper.
Hmm, Sheppard says. Maybe I ought to regrow that beard.
And that’s how he leaves him. Like there’s a contest, a challenge to see if each successive non-goodbye can be more and more inane.
Sheppard takes a puddlejumper, rising up, vanishing through the roof. Rodney paces the control room like a widow’s walk, fists tight and clenched. Not a comfort that Elizabeth is doing the same thing; it makes it worse, actually, because everyone acts like her grief and fear are more expected, more genuine. More appropriate; and that really stings, because deep down, Rodney can’t shake the feeling that that, at least, is true.
He was never stupid enough to think it would get easier. But for it to get harder, exponentially harder... Just take me with you next time, Rodney imagines saying, knowing he will never say any such thing. That would be merciful.
It should be a mercy that Sheppard comes back, and comes back triumphant. Puddlejumper intact, no less, which puts him one up on the crew of the Orca. Rodney watches him walk through the gateroom, receiving congratulatory pats on the back; watches Elizabeth pause just short of giving him another awkward hug; watches as he goes in to talk to Halling, and then--then Rodney turns away.
He runs into Sheppard much later, in line at the mess. He has to say something, and so: You’d think you would have the decency to loose a leg, at the very least.
Sheppard blinks for a moment. But you’d still follow me, he says finally, wouldn’t you, Starbuck?
It’s not funny. It’s really, really not funny.
Rodney laughs.
*
Sheppard makes a big deal about going swimming, proving to everyone that it’s safe, that they’re secure, that he’s fixed things for them. Rodney would like to be self-righteous and say that he’s glad Halling’s not there to see, but in truth, Sheppard seems to be doing something right: Atlantis starts to calm down, to breathe again. Sheppard even coaxes Elizabeth out, just a short swim from which she returns smiling and shaking drops of water from hair that suddenly seems girlish instead of matronly severe. Colonel Sheppard knows what he’s doing, she says to his scowl: This is how we begin to heal. And Rodney mumbles something, something unmemorable and unheroic, and they both let the subject drop.
But Rodney still won’t go near the water.
Why won’t you come in the water, Rodney? Sheppard asks. Has asked, repeatedly. You have to know how to swim; don’t they teach the doggie paddle in Canada?
No, because Canada’s known as being the Northern Hemisphere’s Sahara, Rodney snaps.
Sheppard smirks. Oh, I know you have water. I just figured it was frozen all the time.
I can swim just fine, Colonel, Rodney says. And after a pause, in which he almost reconsiders: I simply prefer to risk my life only when there might be an appreciable gain.
Every last trace of laziness leaves Sheppard’s face. And what exactly do you think I was doing? he says, voice dangerously controlled.
Rodney can’t quite match his tone, gives himself away with a slight vibrato. What you always do.
And what’s that? Sheppard asks, stepping closer, getting in Rodney’s personal space. But Rodney’s spent too long being afraid for him to be afraid of.
He plants his hand on Sheppard’s shoulder, gives him a firm push. Feels the reverberation of his back connecting with the wall. Elsewhere in the empty lab, he can hear a faucet drip: a gentle plock plock plock, the quiet echo of water on steel.
Reckless, Rodney says, you’re so damn reckless (shaking now) you’re going to get yourself killed. And then...
And then? Sheppard says. He isn’t moving; is, in fact, holding unnaturally still. He stares into Rodney’s face, dark eyes like drowning pools, deadly and deep.
Rodney gives him another shove, pushing away, turning around. He feels his hands, suddenly cold, clench into fists. Damn you, he says. Goddamn you.
A whisper of something, maybe nothing; impossible to distinguish noise in all this silence. But maybe, maybe a movement: Sheppard’s hand reaching out and parting the air like a fin the waves. And yet--he can’t move in for the kill any more than Rodney can. But Rodney can execute his escape: four steps forward, no looking back, and the doors swoosh open in front of him, silent and sterile and safe.
*
Rodney has his movies, his monsters confused: he dreams violent splashes, soaked in red and choked in silence; just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water no one can hear you scream. He wakes with a gasp that catches in his throat: something is standing over him, a vision in deadly white.
Look, says Sheppard, look. He’s shirtless, his pants riding low on his hips. He jerks the waistband further down, pointing to the space just above his left hipbone. An angry red mark, stitched through with white. Do you see? Sheppard says. Rodney nods, mute. And this? (Raised white ridge on the inside of his forearm.) And this? (Pale blush of a bite mark on the side of his neck.) And this? (Scratch like the path of a ghostly fingernail, bisecting his heart.) Do you think I don’t know the cost of recklessness? Do you think I don’t get it?
Rodney has to struggle to find his voice. And this--the fact that you’re stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster--this is supposed to make me feel better?
No! Sheppard says. His shirt, Rodney notices, is in his hand, knotted into a tight ball. It’s--
Why are you here? Rodney says, realizing with a start what he should have led with: You think you can just come barging into my room in the middle of the night? Get out!
There’s something akin to panic in Sheppard’s eyes, and maybe Rodney was wrong: maybe he can be scared of, still. Sheppard shakes the clump of cotton in his fist. Come swimming with me! he demands.
What? No!
Rodney...
He advances, both sudden and slow, crawling up on onto the bed. Rodney would scramble back, but he has nowhere to go. Rodney, Sheppard repeats, looming over him, voice low, loaded. Come swimming with me.
Rodney stares up into his eyes: swirling green and brown; a rough, violent sea. He feels his lips part, dry lips wetted by a thirsty tongue as the words form, as they come into being.
He says:
“I can’t.”
A flash of something across Sheppard’s face, too fast for Rodney to catch, to make any sense of if he did. He thinks it looks like a lightning-quick show of teeth, lips peeling back over gums, white lines jagged and sharp.
Then it’s gone and Sheppard’s flopping down next to him on the bed. Their arms don’t touch; almost, but not quite.
You see this? Sheppard says, pointing to a line, just one line out of many, the one like the path of a white-hot finger: Right there. Mary Ellen Moffit. She broke my heart.
Rodney wants to say: So this is weird. He doesn’t say anything, though. He’s forgotten his lines.
After a moment, Sheppard fills the gap. What’s that one? he says. That one, there, on your arm?
It says a lot about the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney thinks, that he has to pause and consider, Which arm? But it’s the left that Sheppard’s pointing to, not the right; and besides, Sheppard knows the other, knows Kolya’s handiwork better than almost anyone.
Oh, well, he says, trying for casual. That’s a tattoo. I got it removed.
Sheppard smiles. Change your mind about somebody?
Rodney doesn’t answer. Sheppard rolls with it, however; he’s an expert, it seems, at covering for other actors when they fall down on the job.
Now he tilts his head back. Looking at the ceiling, and in a voice wavery and worn, but still somehow fitting: staring up into space, he sings.
Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain...
And Rodney knows this one, recognizes this cue. He starts in, a whisper at first but steadily growing, building when Sheppard’s voice slips in under his, off-key but there, there; there for the second verse, same as the first:
Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Well I had a little drink about an hour ago and it went right to my head. For wherever I may roam, by land or sea or foam, you can always hear me singing this song: show me the way to go home...
Sheppard reaches out and touches the mark on Rodney’s arm, the mark that isn’t a knife wound and isn’t a tattoo. Rodney would tell him, he thinks, if he asked again: tell him about those long hours not-long-enough, working side by side with Zelenka, trying to turn hunks of Genii metal into their last stand, their salvation. Both of them were clumsy and over-tired, far too graceless for that kind of work. But despite their...their recklessness, the only accident that had occurred was the brief moment when Rodney’s arm had brushed against a split wire: a slight burn, nothing more; through the haze of drugs and panic, he’d barely felt it.
Rodney would tell John if he asked. But Sheppard was tired and a bed was found, and he lies beside Rodney now, head propped on his own scarred forearm, dead to the world. Rodney stares at his face, both hardened and vulnerable, watching lips curved and gently parted, expelling each hard-won breath.
Rodney lowers his own head until he’s lying next to him, as close as he dares to get. Anyway, he says and does not say: Anyway. We delivered the bomb.
*************
Title: The U.S.S. Indianapolis
Author: trinityofone
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘Epiphany’
Length: ~2250 words
Summary: What’s that one, there, on your arm?//Oh, that’s a tattoo. I got it removed.
The U.S.S. Indianapolis
The first is one of the marine biologists, a Dr. Watkins; Rodney has to struggle to put a face to the name. Anyway, from what little Elizabeth and Heightmeyer are able to get out of the hysterical Sgt. Cassidy, who was with her when it happened, Watkins hadn’t exactly been doing much marine biology. And while it’s a tragedy, sure, these things happen. Especially here.
The second is one of Caldwell’s people, both name and face unfamiliar to Rodney. They burn what’s left of Lt. Grossman and hold the service in orbit, aboard the Daedalus. Solemn and dignified, Caldwell presses the button that releases the ashes into space. Ted would want to be among the stars, he says: the implication being, and not in the sea, where he died.
Dr. Biro, who’d examined the remains before turning them over, confirms in private what they’d all suspected. It’s a closed meeting, essential personnel only, but someone talks, or more likely the people of Atlantis are not quite that stupid and they simply figure it out. Someone splices the contents of a John Williams CD into the city’s sound system; Elizabeth cracks down on iPod use, and people get twitchy and nervous, not sure yet whether it’s funny or sad. Their senses of humor are all gallows-twinged by now.
The third is Dr. Gardner, who Rodney knows (knew) quite well: he’s an engineer, a good one, and Rodney was the one who told him to go down to the south pier and check some slightly anomalous readings from the city’s sensors in that region. A minor thing; Rodney could have let it go, but he figured: better safe than sorry.
Gardner must have slipped and fallen into the water, Major Lorne reports; the rungs on the maintenance ladder were wet, slick. Bad luck, could have happened to anyone. Sure, Rodney thinks. I could have sent Gary or Hamilton or Kramer. I could have sent Radek.
He doesn’t like playing God.
Elizabeth makes an announcement in which she speaks favorably of the dead, gently reprimands practical jokers (Williams has proved remarkably unquashable), and declares that recreational swimming has been disallowed until further notice. Those who work near or around the water are to suspend all unessential activity and exercise extreme caution. Rodney knows he would think: Scary thing in the water? Don’t go near the damn water, stupid! But he knows, now, that it isn’t that simple.
Jinto is the fourth.
Rodney has seen: Gaul drained with the cool weight of a pistol in his hand; the spark of insanity in Ford’s remaining human eye; the looks on Carson and Elizabeth’s faces when the enzyme finally left his system, with everything he had been, become, reflected back. But none of that compares to the wreck of a man in Halling’s skin, haunting the gateroom and the control tower; or even to Elizabeth, thinking herself alone and quietly breaking down, because in the confusion, she’d forgotten to get word to the mainland in time.
He finds Sheppard in the armory, clearly taking a cue from Ronon and loading himself down with more weapons than should be physically possible. What are you doing? he asks, although he already knows the answer: I’m going after it, Sheppard says. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.
You’re skipping ahead, Rodney thinks. He says, You have a plan?
I will. Sheppard tightens the laces on his boots.
You’re going alone, Rodney says, flatly. That’s your plan. That’s your idea of a plan.
I’m going to take care of it, Sheppard repeats.
Rodney wants to say: This isn’t a Western, John. Stop playing Gary Cooper. Stop playing John Wayne.
He says: She was having an affair, you know.
Sheppard barely glances at him. What?
In the book, Brody’s wife. She was fooling around with Hooper.
Hmm, Sheppard says. Maybe I ought to regrow that beard.
And that’s how he leaves him. Like there’s a contest, a challenge to see if each successive non-goodbye can be more and more inane.
Sheppard takes a puddlejumper, rising up, vanishing through the roof. Rodney paces the control room like a widow’s walk, fists tight and clenched. Not a comfort that Elizabeth is doing the same thing; it makes it worse, actually, because everyone acts like her grief and fear are more expected, more genuine. More appropriate; and that really stings, because deep down, Rodney can’t shake the feeling that that, at least, is true.
He was never stupid enough to think it would get easier. But for it to get harder, exponentially harder... Just take me with you next time, Rodney imagines saying, knowing he will never say any such thing. That would be merciful.
It should be a mercy that Sheppard comes back, and comes back triumphant. Puddlejumper intact, no less, which puts him one up on the crew of the Orca. Rodney watches him walk through the gateroom, receiving congratulatory pats on the back; watches Elizabeth pause just short of giving him another awkward hug; watches as he goes in to talk to Halling, and then--then Rodney turns away.
He runs into Sheppard much later, in line at the mess. He has to say something, and so: You’d think you would have the decency to loose a leg, at the very least.
Sheppard blinks for a moment. But you’d still follow me, he says finally, wouldn’t you, Starbuck?
It’s not funny. It’s really, really not funny.
Rodney laughs.
*
Sheppard makes a big deal about going swimming, proving to everyone that it’s safe, that they’re secure, that he’s fixed things for them. Rodney would like to be self-righteous and say that he’s glad Halling’s not there to see, but in truth, Sheppard seems to be doing something right: Atlantis starts to calm down, to breathe again. Sheppard even coaxes Elizabeth out, just a short swim from which she returns smiling and shaking drops of water from hair that suddenly seems girlish instead of matronly severe. Colonel Sheppard knows what he’s doing, she says to his scowl: This is how we begin to heal. And Rodney mumbles something, something unmemorable and unheroic, and they both let the subject drop.
But Rodney still won’t go near the water.
Why won’t you come in the water, Rodney? Sheppard asks. Has asked, repeatedly. You have to know how to swim; don’t they teach the doggie paddle in Canada?
No, because Canada’s known as being the Northern Hemisphere’s Sahara, Rodney snaps.
Sheppard smirks. Oh, I know you have water. I just figured it was frozen all the time.
I can swim just fine, Colonel, Rodney says. And after a pause, in which he almost reconsiders: I simply prefer to risk my life only when there might be an appreciable gain.
Every last trace of laziness leaves Sheppard’s face. And what exactly do you think I was doing? he says, voice dangerously controlled.
Rodney can’t quite match his tone, gives himself away with a slight vibrato. What you always do.
And what’s that? Sheppard asks, stepping closer, getting in Rodney’s personal space. But Rodney’s spent too long being afraid for him to be afraid of.
He plants his hand on Sheppard’s shoulder, gives him a firm push. Feels the reverberation of his back connecting with the wall. Elsewhere in the empty lab, he can hear a faucet drip: a gentle plock plock plock, the quiet echo of water on steel.
Reckless, Rodney says, you’re so damn reckless (shaking now) you’re going to get yourself killed. And then...
And then? Sheppard says. He isn’t moving; is, in fact, holding unnaturally still. He stares into Rodney’s face, dark eyes like drowning pools, deadly and deep.
Rodney gives him another shove, pushing away, turning around. He feels his hands, suddenly cold, clench into fists. Damn you, he says. Goddamn you.
A whisper of something, maybe nothing; impossible to distinguish noise in all this silence. But maybe, maybe a movement: Sheppard’s hand reaching out and parting the air like a fin the waves. And yet--he can’t move in for the kill any more than Rodney can. But Rodney can execute his escape: four steps forward, no looking back, and the doors swoosh open in front of him, silent and sterile and safe.
*
Rodney has his movies, his monsters confused: he dreams violent splashes, soaked in red and choked in silence; just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water no one can hear you scream. He wakes with a gasp that catches in his throat: something is standing over him, a vision in deadly white.
Look, says Sheppard, look. He’s shirtless, his pants riding low on his hips. He jerks the waistband further down, pointing to the space just above his left hipbone. An angry red mark, stitched through with white. Do you see? Sheppard says. Rodney nods, mute. And this? (Raised white ridge on the inside of his forearm.) And this? (Pale blush of a bite mark on the side of his neck.) And this? (Scratch like the path of a ghostly fingernail, bisecting his heart.) Do you think I don’t know the cost of recklessness? Do you think I don’t get it?
Rodney has to struggle to find his voice. And this--the fact that you’re stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster--this is supposed to make me feel better?
No! Sheppard says. His shirt, Rodney notices, is in his hand, knotted into a tight ball. It’s--
Why are you here? Rodney says, realizing with a start what he should have led with: You think you can just come barging into my room in the middle of the night? Get out!
There’s something akin to panic in Sheppard’s eyes, and maybe Rodney was wrong: maybe he can be scared of, still. Sheppard shakes the clump of cotton in his fist. Come swimming with me! he demands.
What? No!
Rodney...
He advances, both sudden and slow, crawling up on onto the bed. Rodney would scramble back, but he has nowhere to go. Rodney, Sheppard repeats, looming over him, voice low, loaded. Come swimming with me.
Rodney stares up into his eyes: swirling green and brown; a rough, violent sea. He feels his lips part, dry lips wetted by a thirsty tongue as the words form, as they come into being.
He says:
“I can’t.”
A flash of something across Sheppard’s face, too fast for Rodney to catch, to make any sense of if he did. He thinks it looks like a lightning-quick show of teeth, lips peeling back over gums, white lines jagged and sharp.
Then it’s gone and Sheppard’s flopping down next to him on the bed. Their arms don’t touch; almost, but not quite.
You see this? Sheppard says, pointing to a line, just one line out of many, the one like the path of a white-hot finger: Right there. Mary Ellen Moffit. She broke my heart.
Rodney wants to say: So this is weird. He doesn’t say anything, though. He’s forgotten his lines.
After a moment, Sheppard fills the gap. What’s that one? he says. That one, there, on your arm?
It says a lot about the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney thinks, that he has to pause and consider, Which arm? But it’s the left that Sheppard’s pointing to, not the right; and besides, Sheppard knows the other, knows Kolya’s handiwork better than almost anyone.
Oh, well, he says, trying for casual. That’s a tattoo. I got it removed.
Sheppard smiles. Change your mind about somebody?
Rodney doesn’t answer. Sheppard rolls with it, however; he’s an expert, it seems, at covering for other actors when they fall down on the job.
Now he tilts his head back. Looking at the ceiling, and in a voice wavery and worn, but still somehow fitting: staring up into space, he sings.
Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain...
And Rodney knows this one, recognizes this cue. He starts in, a whisper at first but steadily growing, building when Sheppard’s voice slips in under his, off-key but there, there; there for the second verse, same as the first:
Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Well I had a little drink about an hour ago and it went right to my head. For wherever I may roam, by land or sea or foam, you can always hear me singing this song: show me the way to go home...
Sheppard reaches out and touches the mark on Rodney’s arm, the mark that isn’t a knife wound and isn’t a tattoo. Rodney would tell him, he thinks, if he asked again: tell him about those long hours not-long-enough, working side by side with Zelenka, trying to turn hunks of Genii metal into their last stand, their salvation. Both of them were clumsy and over-tired, far too graceless for that kind of work. But despite their...their recklessness, the only accident that had occurred was the brief moment when Rodney’s arm had brushed against a split wire: a slight burn, nothing more; through the haze of drugs and panic, he’d barely felt it.
Rodney would tell John if he asked. But Sheppard was tired and a bed was found, and he lies beside Rodney now, head propped on his own scarred forearm, dead to the world. Rodney stares at his face, both hardened and vulnerable, watching lips curved and gently parted, expelling each hard-won breath.
Rodney lowers his own head until he’s lying next to him, as close as he dares to get. Anyway, he says and does not say: Anyway. We delivered the bomb.
*************