The Hollow Men by trinityofone (Amnesty/Bloody Challenge)
Title: The Hollow Men
Author: trinityofone
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘Trinity’
Length: ~3250 words
Summary: He held his hand.
The Hollow Men
John stumbled blindly into his room, his empty hands held in front of him like an offering. Into the bathroom he walked, the lights coming on at a silent command. He didn’t want to look at himself, but the mirror called. Set mouth and hooded eyes: he looked the same, exactly the same. Insulting, almost. He pried the mirror back, fumbling for a fresh bar of soap. The paper pulled back and the water gushed out, filling the basin that plugged itself when he asked. He stuck his hands under the tap and watched as the water turned red.
He scrubbed mechanically: palms, fingers, knuckles, the matted hairs on the backs of his hands. He scrubbed until the sink was full; the plug drew back and the water rushed down the drain, swirling. Rusty red rivulets, he thought: his brain filled with Rs, not, not thinking the only one that mattered.
His skin felt raw. He scraped his hands dry on his pants, then reached out and pushed the mirrored medicine cabinet door shut.
Rodney stood behind him, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
John didn’t scream. He didn’t make any sound at all. He did whirl around, though, fingers behind his back gripping the edge of the sink. His mouth opened in a wordless, shuddering breath.
Rodney smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “That was a little too ‘bad horror movie,’ but I couldn’t resist.”
His smile faltered when John’s expression failed to match his own. “Hi,” he said, sounding very unsure and unRodneyish. “I’m back?”
John stared at him. Rodney was wearing his one pair of comfy jeans and his favorite shirt, pale blue and frayed around the sleeves and hem. He wore it to bed sometimes, and John had many memories of rolling it slowly up his body, nibbling his way across the curve of Rodney’s belly; or the way Rodney’s nipples pressed against the thin fabric when John ran over them with rough thumbs; or falling asleep with his head pillowed on Rodney’s chest, the warmth of his body heating the cloth, lulled into slumber by the steady beating of Rodney’s heart.
It was not the outfit Rodney was wearing the last time John saw him.
“John?” Rodney said, and now his eyes were wide and worried. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t...I didn’t know any other way to...”
Blue eyes, framed by pale, delicate lashes. Skin a little too white, but no more so than usual. Strong hands reaching out then hastily drawing back when John flinched away: Rodney looked the same as he always did. He looked the same as he always had.
It was a fucking lie.
“You’re dead,” John said, anger lacing his tone in place of a tremor. “You died, I felt you--” His hands came off the sink with a squeak of wet skin on porcelain. He held them out so that this, this thing with Rodney’s face could see. “You bled out onto my hands...”
The Rodney-thing made another movement like it wanted to touch him, but stepped back, pressed itself more firmly against the far wall instead. “I know,” it said. “John, my body died, but I’d been working on a way to upload my mind to the Ancient--”
John felt himself move forward, the words Get out! ready on his lips. Instead he bent double and vomited all over the Rodney-things’s shoes.
“Sorry,” he croaked, automatically. He was kneeling on the ground; his fingers were still raw and the tile was cold. He glanced up: the familiar sneakers were trying to extract themselves from the puddle of sick. It should have been disgusting--it was disgusting--but John couldn’t stop staring.
“Yes, well.” Familiar voice, familiar inflection. “Under the circumstances--”
“You’re solid,” said John.
“Yes,” said Rodney, in a tone that was, for him, patient. “I tried to--oh, never mind, let’s get you cleaned up.”
He reached out again. Quickly, John stood, scrambled back. “Don’t touch me,” he said.
Rodney’s mouth opened to protest, then shut.
“Just--” John said, still wincing away. “Just let me do it. Take care of yourself.”
Rodney met his eyes for the briefest of moments, then looked down, away. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom,” he said. He flickered out of existence.
Alone in the bathroom, John had nothing but new stains to convince himself that he wasn’t going crazy. A thought turned on the water, and then those, too, washed away.
*
Rodney was sitting on the edge of the bed when John emerged from the bathroom. He was wearing the same outfit as before, except every trace of John’s purge was gone. It was like the encounter in the bathroom had never taken place. “Neat trick,” John said.
Rodney tried to smile. “The miracle of science,” he said.
John’s mouth was tight. “Science has taught you how to conquer death?”
Rodney’s hands were twisting in his lap. “I told you, my body’s dead.” He said it casually, callously, and John was shocked and a little disgusted to see Rodney--Rodney who had whined and cried for hours about a splinter or a hangnail--dismiss dying like that. John had died. He knew it wasn’t that easy.
“My body’s dead,” Rodney repeated, as if he were reminding himself. “But I’ve been working, from almost the day we arrived, on a way to upload my mind to the Ancient database in the event of my death.” He smiled at John: neat rows of white teeth, like the owner of a funeral parlor. The event of my death, he said: like it was a garden party, marked down months in advance, circled in red on the appropriate page of his engagement calendar. Like it wasn’t something hard and fast and sudden: Rodney at his side one minute, and the next, something empty and cold lying at his feet.
Rodney spread his hands. “I guess it worked!” he said. His grin broadened, arrogance if not life rushing back by the second. “Of course it did; the system was designed by me, after all.”
“So you’re,” John started, forcing his tongue to move; he didn’t want to interrogate this. “You’re like a hard-light hologram or something?”
Rodney’s smile fell. “Yes yes, take months and months of hard, strenuous, and infinitely complicated work and reduce it down to the level of Red Dwarf. But, um.” He shifted. “Yes.”
John just looked at him. He didn’t know what to say.
“John,” Rodney said, getting to his feet. “The reason I did this--well, I did it for the good of humanity and to prevent this city from crumbling back into the ocean without my being around to save you from yourselves, but the reason I--” He gestured vaguely, picking at the hem of his shirt. “John, I didn’t want to lose--”
“Elizabeth will be so pleased,” John heard himself say. “And Radek. I think he was worried he was going to have to start going off-world more, with you gone.”
The words had their intended, if not desired, effect. “I...I guess I should go tell them, then,” Rodney said.
“Be right behind you,” said John.
Rodney shook his head. “No, you won’t.” Then a blink, and he was gone.
*
Elizabeth let Rodney hug her--initiated the embrace, in fact. Zelenka, too, awkwardly took Rodney’s arm, but he recovered more quickly: “Why did you not tell anyone of this?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure it was ready,” Rodney explained. “I mean, I thought it was, but I had no way to test it.” He looked around at the assembled personnel, his gaze lingering longer on some than on others. “Not...ethically, anyway.”
Radek clapped him on the shoulder again. “But...it worked! You are here!”
“Yes, yes,” Rodney said, his smile just a little bit strained. “Now you’ll never be rid of me.”
Clearly, he was expecting people to blanch. Instead they kept coming up, touching him: some his arms, some his shoulders, some his hands. Ronon gave him a light punch; Teyla drew his forehead down to hers. John was the only one who kept his hands to himself.
Rodney’s eyes never left his.
*
It was good for the city, John had to admit, to have Rodney still around. In a crisis he was better than ever: less inclined to panic, and now that he didn’t need to eat or sleep, didn’t need to walk or run or even take a transporter to get from place to place, he really could be anywhere and everywhere at once--up in the control tower, quickly briefing Elizabeth; in the labs with Zelenka; down in the bowels of the city, right there with the dangerous chemical leak itself. He could save Atlantis a thousand thousand times and never break a sweat. The only thing he couldn’t do was leave.
“Here comes our guardian angel,” John heard one of the Marines say as Rodney passed. Only half-kidding.
There goes my ghost, John thought, not kidding at all.
He scheduled a lot of missions. Zelenka had to go off-world after all; he would get used to it, adjust.
*
John wasn’t the type to count his blessings, but if he were, at the top of his list would have been his capacity for sleep. He had trained himself to fall into slumber the second his head hit the pillow, and once he was out he was gone. He could be woken in a flash, sure--but there had to be something to wake him.
He used to wake sometimes when Rodney rolled over, snuffling and snoring and burrowing his face into John’s neck. Or when Rodney tried to slip stealthily from between the sheets, instead tangling them all up and cursing as he knocked against the nightstand. Or when Rodney dreamed, tensing and crying out: soft moans or sobs that weren’t, quite. John used to hold his hand and stroke his head until he drifted back to sleep, until he carried John back with him.
One night, a few weeks after, John woke to an empty and silent room. He sat up in bed and looked all around him: there was no one there. Nothing there. He was sure, though, positive: Rodney had been in his room. Rodney had been there, watching him. Watching and not touching, because John still couldn’t, still could never see himself granting Rodney that.
John had given his last touch. He had held Rodney's hand as he died.
Anything after that would be an invalidation, a lie.
*
“I know it can’t be like it was,” Rodney said. “But will you at least look at me? Talk to me?”
He had cornered him outside the gym. John was a hard man to sneak up on, but Rodney wasn’t ashamed to use the advantages he had. “John,” he said, because they were alone, because it didn’t matter anymore, anyway. “John, please.”
John clenched his fists then relaxed them, slow and purposeful. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know!” Rodney said--spat, because he’d never been able to do pleading for very long. “Maybe for you to at least pretend you’re not the only one who isn’t glad I’m back?”
“Back,” John said.
“Yes, back!” Rodney slammed his fist into the wall; it shook, the delicate stained glass rattling. “See? Solid!”
John raised an eyebrow: careful, controlled. “Did that hurt?” he asked.
Rodney’s mouth crumpled into a frown. “I can’t believe you,” he said. “I did this--”
“Do not tell me you did this for me!” John shouted, his hold slipping before he was even aware of it. “You said you were working on it from the start--for the good of Atlantis, you said! Well, guess what, Rodney? Atlantis may be grateful, but we all know what your little selfless act was really about: comforting a man who was so afraid of the world continuing on without him that he was willing to give up flesh and blood for some, some mechanical half-life--”
“Give up,” Rodney whispered, and it was worse than if he had screamed. “Give up? Do you think that I wanted this? Do you think for one second that I wanted this?” He stepped toward John, the space between them a weapon. “Can’t eat, can’t sleep. Can’t taste or touch or smell or feel and know that it’s real ever again.” He had stopped moving, was staring into John’s face with cold, unflinching eyes. “Can’t have you.”
He let the words stand for a moment, then brushed past John, just just not touching. “I could, though,” he said, to John’s rigid spine. “I could. But you won’t let me.”
Rodney was smart, John thought, once he had gone. Really, really smart. But he didn’t get it.
John wouldn’t let himself.
*
The list went up about a month later. Not anywhere public, not where anyone could see, but people knew. Knew what to do to sign up; knew who had, and who hadn’t. There were no secrets in Atlantis.
No secret that there were already more than fifty names on the list; no secret that John’s name wasn’t one of them.
“Getting to be quite the trendsetter, aren’t you McKay?” John said, not yet turning around. He had begun, slowly, over time, to be able to sense Rodney’s presence like he sensed other aspects of Atlantis, her joys and her ills. Rodney registered with that, now. Not with people. “First the gene therapy; now this. I wonder what the next flavor of the month will be.”
Rodney didn’t say anything for a long time, but John never questioned himself, never thought for a moment that he might be wrong, might be talking to an empty room. There was no shift of flesh against fabric as Rodney moved, but John was able to anticipate that he was close, anticipate it in time to get out of the way. The hand Rodney was reaching out fell on empty air.
Was, John reminded himself, empty air.
“You don’t trust me at all,” Rodney said. “Maybe you never did.”
“Is this about the One Virtual Life to Live list?” John asked. He undid the holster on his thigh, tossed the gun aside; it wasn’t what he needed. “Maybe it’s against my religion.”
A flicker at the back of his brain: Rodney’s shoulders stiffening. “This isn’t about letting other people store their minds and memories in the database--which is an excellent opportunity, by the way, not to mention a great relief for a lot of people and an incredible asset to this expedition! You can--” He paused, his eyes closing and his nose twitching in disgust. “You can waste yourself as much as you want, but you can’t--”
“I can’t?” John prompted, when the silence had stretched to the breaking point.
“You owe me an explanation!”
“For what?” John said.
“For your behavior! You’re being irrational!” And in Rodney-speak, as it had once amused John to note, there was no greater insult besides the tried-and-true You’re being stupid. It was not so funny, now.
“Some things are,” John said, dropping his watch onto the bed, next to his gun. He looked away, watched it bounce. “You used to know that.”
“There are a lot of things I used to know,” Rodney said, and John knew suddenly that they could continue like this forever: bruising each other with words for as long as he refused to let them touch. Until he died, and Rodney had to move on, had to haunt someone else.
“If I had known,” John said. “If I had asked you not to--would you still have done it?”
Rodney said nothing.
Grimly satisfied, “I thought so.”
He waited for Rodney to leave, to vanish. That was how all their arguments, all their encounters ended these days. When Rodney didn’t, John found himself startled into looking up.
“You don’t understand,” Rodney said. His eyes looked moist, but John knew it was only an illusion. “Before you, I would have been a brain and not a body. I was prepared for that, ready; this--” He flexed his fingers, curled them in to the palm. “--Had never been much good to me. But you changed my mind.
“You changed my mind,” he repeated, and John felt the words like a touch, a shockwave. He shuddered but stood tall.
“You can change it again, though,” Rodney said. “I don’t have to stay like this. This body, a physical form--” His arm extended, that lovely curve of bicep that John’s hands had known so well rippling in a flash of muscle, then snapping back. “--It’s nothing but a waste of power. A drain on my resources.” He looked at John. “I should get rid of it. I will get rid of it.” A beat in which John’s heart crumpled like spent coal within his chest. “If you tell me to.”
John’s lips parted, and no sound came out.
“Tell me to,” Rodney said. “Set me free, John. Let me go.”
His tongue rolled, his mouth moved. “Never,” he said.
He said: “I’m never going to put my name on that list.”
Rodney didn’t blink. “I stopped believing in our happily ever afterlife a long time ago.”
“Then what’s the point?” John asked. “What’s the fucking point?”
Sounding, looking tired, “You never asked that question when I was alive,” Rodney said.
“I’m asking now.”
He shrugged. “There isn’t one. There never was. I don’t know.”
John clenched his eyes and fists tight. He had a bad feeling he was on the verge of crying. He said, “It’s not fair.”
“You’re right,” Rodney said, “it’s really not.”
John’s hands fell to his sides, open, flat. His eyes stayed closed. “You used to be warm,” he said. “You used to be warm and heavy and made of bone. You used to make noise when you moved and when you hurt, and I wiped the blood away until there wasn’t any more. You used to walk with me on other worlds, and even if your afterlife is in this city, your death took place outside its walls. I was there; I held your hand as you died. I kissed your lips. You tasted like coffee.”
He opened his eyes. Rodney was standing before him, his shoulders hunched. His body twitched, tiny spasms of invisible light.
They had burned Rodney’s body, sent the ashes up to the stars and out across the sea. John had slipped his fingers inside the urn and opened them into the air, but pieces of Rodney had still clung to him, heavy and thick, smudged indelibly into his skin. Even the blood eventually washed away.
Now Rodney’s hands were perfect: in every detail--in each artistically frayed nail--in their intricate map of calluses and scars. John reached out and traced across them and the fingers didn’t melt; the palms didn’t fade; the lifeline remained steady and thick and true. Rodney shivered under his touch, and John shivered, too: shivered and shook and forced himself not to pull away.
“I might, still,” Rodney said. “Taste like coffee.”
Yes, John thought, holding light and air and molecules: yes. He leaned forward, bowing his head. Rodney’s kiss would be strong and dark and lasting, with more than a hint of bitterness.
Someday, he would drink.
*************
NOTES:
1. A few--months?--ago, somebody posted a story where Rodney has made, and subsequently gets rid of, a holographic copy of himself. I can’t remember the name of the story or who it was by, but it obviously planted the seed that this grew out of, so thank you! (And if anybody wants to provide the above information, I would very much appreciate it. Danke!) Inspired by stillane's Destiny Manifest, which I just re-read and which is heart-breaking and wonderful without even having to resort to killing somebody. ;-) Go check it out!
2. To needlessly belabor the metaphor, if that story was the seed, then watching ‘Aurora’ while drunk on absinthe (really!) and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if Red Dwarf were written as a tragedy?” was obviously the fertilizer. *g*
3. And the sun, and the rain: The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. Read it.
Author: trinityofone
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘Trinity’
Length: ~3250 words
Summary: He held his hand.
The Hollow Men
John stumbled blindly into his room, his empty hands held in front of him like an offering. Into the bathroom he walked, the lights coming on at a silent command. He didn’t want to look at himself, but the mirror called. Set mouth and hooded eyes: he looked the same, exactly the same. Insulting, almost. He pried the mirror back, fumbling for a fresh bar of soap. The paper pulled back and the water gushed out, filling the basin that plugged itself when he asked. He stuck his hands under the tap and watched as the water turned red.
He scrubbed mechanically: palms, fingers, knuckles, the matted hairs on the backs of his hands. He scrubbed until the sink was full; the plug drew back and the water rushed down the drain, swirling. Rusty red rivulets, he thought: his brain filled with Rs, not, not thinking the only one that mattered.
His skin felt raw. He scraped his hands dry on his pants, then reached out and pushed the mirrored medicine cabinet door shut.
Rodney stood behind him, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
John didn’t scream. He didn’t make any sound at all. He did whirl around, though, fingers behind his back gripping the edge of the sink. His mouth opened in a wordless, shuddering breath.
Rodney smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “That was a little too ‘bad horror movie,’ but I couldn’t resist.”
His smile faltered when John’s expression failed to match his own. “Hi,” he said, sounding very unsure and unRodneyish. “I’m back?”
John stared at him. Rodney was wearing his one pair of comfy jeans and his favorite shirt, pale blue and frayed around the sleeves and hem. He wore it to bed sometimes, and John had many memories of rolling it slowly up his body, nibbling his way across the curve of Rodney’s belly; or the way Rodney’s nipples pressed against the thin fabric when John ran over them with rough thumbs; or falling asleep with his head pillowed on Rodney’s chest, the warmth of his body heating the cloth, lulled into slumber by the steady beating of Rodney’s heart.
It was not the outfit Rodney was wearing the last time John saw him.
“John?” Rodney said, and now his eyes were wide and worried. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t...I didn’t know any other way to...”
Blue eyes, framed by pale, delicate lashes. Skin a little too white, but no more so than usual. Strong hands reaching out then hastily drawing back when John flinched away: Rodney looked the same as he always did. He looked the same as he always had.
It was a fucking lie.
“You’re dead,” John said, anger lacing his tone in place of a tremor. “You died, I felt you--” His hands came off the sink with a squeak of wet skin on porcelain. He held them out so that this, this thing with Rodney’s face could see. “You bled out onto my hands...”
The Rodney-thing made another movement like it wanted to touch him, but stepped back, pressed itself more firmly against the far wall instead. “I know,” it said. “John, my body died, but I’d been working on a way to upload my mind to the Ancient--”
John felt himself move forward, the words Get out! ready on his lips. Instead he bent double and vomited all over the Rodney-things’s shoes.
“Sorry,” he croaked, automatically. He was kneeling on the ground; his fingers were still raw and the tile was cold. He glanced up: the familiar sneakers were trying to extract themselves from the puddle of sick. It should have been disgusting--it was disgusting--but John couldn’t stop staring.
“Yes, well.” Familiar voice, familiar inflection. “Under the circumstances--”
“You’re solid,” said John.
“Yes,” said Rodney, in a tone that was, for him, patient. “I tried to--oh, never mind, let’s get you cleaned up.”
He reached out again. Quickly, John stood, scrambled back. “Don’t touch me,” he said.
Rodney’s mouth opened to protest, then shut.
“Just--” John said, still wincing away. “Just let me do it. Take care of yourself.”
Rodney met his eyes for the briefest of moments, then looked down, away. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom,” he said. He flickered out of existence.
Alone in the bathroom, John had nothing but new stains to convince himself that he wasn’t going crazy. A thought turned on the water, and then those, too, washed away.
*
Rodney was sitting on the edge of the bed when John emerged from the bathroom. He was wearing the same outfit as before, except every trace of John’s purge was gone. It was like the encounter in the bathroom had never taken place. “Neat trick,” John said.
Rodney tried to smile. “The miracle of science,” he said.
John’s mouth was tight. “Science has taught you how to conquer death?”
Rodney’s hands were twisting in his lap. “I told you, my body’s dead.” He said it casually, callously, and John was shocked and a little disgusted to see Rodney--Rodney who had whined and cried for hours about a splinter or a hangnail--dismiss dying like that. John had died. He knew it wasn’t that easy.
“My body’s dead,” Rodney repeated, as if he were reminding himself. “But I’ve been working, from almost the day we arrived, on a way to upload my mind to the Ancient database in the event of my death.” He smiled at John: neat rows of white teeth, like the owner of a funeral parlor. The event of my death, he said: like it was a garden party, marked down months in advance, circled in red on the appropriate page of his engagement calendar. Like it wasn’t something hard and fast and sudden: Rodney at his side one minute, and the next, something empty and cold lying at his feet.
Rodney spread his hands. “I guess it worked!” he said. His grin broadened, arrogance if not life rushing back by the second. “Of course it did; the system was designed by me, after all.”
“So you’re,” John started, forcing his tongue to move; he didn’t want to interrogate this. “You’re like a hard-light hologram or something?”
Rodney’s smile fell. “Yes yes, take months and months of hard, strenuous, and infinitely complicated work and reduce it down to the level of Red Dwarf. But, um.” He shifted. “Yes.”
John just looked at him. He didn’t know what to say.
“John,” Rodney said, getting to his feet. “The reason I did this--well, I did it for the good of humanity and to prevent this city from crumbling back into the ocean without my being around to save you from yourselves, but the reason I--” He gestured vaguely, picking at the hem of his shirt. “John, I didn’t want to lose--”
“Elizabeth will be so pleased,” John heard himself say. “And Radek. I think he was worried he was going to have to start going off-world more, with you gone.”
The words had their intended, if not desired, effect. “I...I guess I should go tell them, then,” Rodney said.
“Be right behind you,” said John.
Rodney shook his head. “No, you won’t.” Then a blink, and he was gone.
*
Elizabeth let Rodney hug her--initiated the embrace, in fact. Zelenka, too, awkwardly took Rodney’s arm, but he recovered more quickly: “Why did you not tell anyone of this?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure it was ready,” Rodney explained. “I mean, I thought it was, but I had no way to test it.” He looked around at the assembled personnel, his gaze lingering longer on some than on others. “Not...ethically, anyway.”
Radek clapped him on the shoulder again. “But...it worked! You are here!”
“Yes, yes,” Rodney said, his smile just a little bit strained. “Now you’ll never be rid of me.”
Clearly, he was expecting people to blanch. Instead they kept coming up, touching him: some his arms, some his shoulders, some his hands. Ronon gave him a light punch; Teyla drew his forehead down to hers. John was the only one who kept his hands to himself.
Rodney’s eyes never left his.
*
It was good for the city, John had to admit, to have Rodney still around. In a crisis he was better than ever: less inclined to panic, and now that he didn’t need to eat or sleep, didn’t need to walk or run or even take a transporter to get from place to place, he really could be anywhere and everywhere at once--up in the control tower, quickly briefing Elizabeth; in the labs with Zelenka; down in the bowels of the city, right there with the dangerous chemical leak itself. He could save Atlantis a thousand thousand times and never break a sweat. The only thing he couldn’t do was leave.
“Here comes our guardian angel,” John heard one of the Marines say as Rodney passed. Only half-kidding.
There goes my ghost, John thought, not kidding at all.
He scheduled a lot of missions. Zelenka had to go off-world after all; he would get used to it, adjust.
*
John wasn’t the type to count his blessings, but if he were, at the top of his list would have been his capacity for sleep. He had trained himself to fall into slumber the second his head hit the pillow, and once he was out he was gone. He could be woken in a flash, sure--but there had to be something to wake him.
He used to wake sometimes when Rodney rolled over, snuffling and snoring and burrowing his face into John’s neck. Or when Rodney tried to slip stealthily from between the sheets, instead tangling them all up and cursing as he knocked against the nightstand. Or when Rodney dreamed, tensing and crying out: soft moans or sobs that weren’t, quite. John used to hold his hand and stroke his head until he drifted back to sleep, until he carried John back with him.
One night, a few weeks after, John woke to an empty and silent room. He sat up in bed and looked all around him: there was no one there. Nothing there. He was sure, though, positive: Rodney had been in his room. Rodney had been there, watching him. Watching and not touching, because John still couldn’t, still could never see himself granting Rodney that.
John had given his last touch. He had held Rodney's hand as he died.
Anything after that would be an invalidation, a lie.
*
“I know it can’t be like it was,” Rodney said. “But will you at least look at me? Talk to me?”
He had cornered him outside the gym. John was a hard man to sneak up on, but Rodney wasn’t ashamed to use the advantages he had. “John,” he said, because they were alone, because it didn’t matter anymore, anyway. “John, please.”
John clenched his fists then relaxed them, slow and purposeful. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know!” Rodney said--spat, because he’d never been able to do pleading for very long. “Maybe for you to at least pretend you’re not the only one who isn’t glad I’m back?”
“Back,” John said.
“Yes, back!” Rodney slammed his fist into the wall; it shook, the delicate stained glass rattling. “See? Solid!”
John raised an eyebrow: careful, controlled. “Did that hurt?” he asked.
Rodney’s mouth crumpled into a frown. “I can’t believe you,” he said. “I did this--”
“Do not tell me you did this for me!” John shouted, his hold slipping before he was even aware of it. “You said you were working on it from the start--for the good of Atlantis, you said! Well, guess what, Rodney? Atlantis may be grateful, but we all know what your little selfless act was really about: comforting a man who was so afraid of the world continuing on without him that he was willing to give up flesh and blood for some, some mechanical half-life--”
“Give up,” Rodney whispered, and it was worse than if he had screamed. “Give up? Do you think that I wanted this? Do you think for one second that I wanted this?” He stepped toward John, the space between them a weapon. “Can’t eat, can’t sleep. Can’t taste or touch or smell or feel and know that it’s real ever again.” He had stopped moving, was staring into John’s face with cold, unflinching eyes. “Can’t have you.”
He let the words stand for a moment, then brushed past John, just just not touching. “I could, though,” he said, to John’s rigid spine. “I could. But you won’t let me.”
Rodney was smart, John thought, once he had gone. Really, really smart. But he didn’t get it.
John wouldn’t let himself.
*
The list went up about a month later. Not anywhere public, not where anyone could see, but people knew. Knew what to do to sign up; knew who had, and who hadn’t. There were no secrets in Atlantis.
No secret that there were already more than fifty names on the list; no secret that John’s name wasn’t one of them.
“Getting to be quite the trendsetter, aren’t you McKay?” John said, not yet turning around. He had begun, slowly, over time, to be able to sense Rodney’s presence like he sensed other aspects of Atlantis, her joys and her ills. Rodney registered with that, now. Not with people. “First the gene therapy; now this. I wonder what the next flavor of the month will be.”
Rodney didn’t say anything for a long time, but John never questioned himself, never thought for a moment that he might be wrong, might be talking to an empty room. There was no shift of flesh against fabric as Rodney moved, but John was able to anticipate that he was close, anticipate it in time to get out of the way. The hand Rodney was reaching out fell on empty air.
Was, John reminded himself, empty air.
“You don’t trust me at all,” Rodney said. “Maybe you never did.”
“Is this about the One Virtual Life to Live list?” John asked. He undid the holster on his thigh, tossed the gun aside; it wasn’t what he needed. “Maybe it’s against my religion.”
A flicker at the back of his brain: Rodney’s shoulders stiffening. “This isn’t about letting other people store their minds and memories in the database--which is an excellent opportunity, by the way, not to mention a great relief for a lot of people and an incredible asset to this expedition! You can--” He paused, his eyes closing and his nose twitching in disgust. “You can waste yourself as much as you want, but you can’t--”
“I can’t?” John prompted, when the silence had stretched to the breaking point.
“You owe me an explanation!”
“For what?” John said.
“For your behavior! You’re being irrational!” And in Rodney-speak, as it had once amused John to note, there was no greater insult besides the tried-and-true You’re being stupid. It was not so funny, now.
“Some things are,” John said, dropping his watch onto the bed, next to his gun. He looked away, watched it bounce. “You used to know that.”
“There are a lot of things I used to know,” Rodney said, and John knew suddenly that they could continue like this forever: bruising each other with words for as long as he refused to let them touch. Until he died, and Rodney had to move on, had to haunt someone else.
“If I had known,” John said. “If I had asked you not to--would you still have done it?”
Rodney said nothing.
Grimly satisfied, “I thought so.”
He waited for Rodney to leave, to vanish. That was how all their arguments, all their encounters ended these days. When Rodney didn’t, John found himself startled into looking up.
“You don’t understand,” Rodney said. His eyes looked moist, but John knew it was only an illusion. “Before you, I would have been a brain and not a body. I was prepared for that, ready; this--” He flexed his fingers, curled them in to the palm. “--Had never been much good to me. But you changed my mind.
“You changed my mind,” he repeated, and John felt the words like a touch, a shockwave. He shuddered but stood tall.
“You can change it again, though,” Rodney said. “I don’t have to stay like this. This body, a physical form--” His arm extended, that lovely curve of bicep that John’s hands had known so well rippling in a flash of muscle, then snapping back. “--It’s nothing but a waste of power. A drain on my resources.” He looked at John. “I should get rid of it. I will get rid of it.” A beat in which John’s heart crumpled like spent coal within his chest. “If you tell me to.”
John’s lips parted, and no sound came out.
“Tell me to,” Rodney said. “Set me free, John. Let me go.”
His tongue rolled, his mouth moved. “Never,” he said.
He said: “I’m never going to put my name on that list.”
Rodney didn’t blink. “I stopped believing in our happily ever afterlife a long time ago.”
“Then what’s the point?” John asked. “What’s the fucking point?”
Sounding, looking tired, “You never asked that question when I was alive,” Rodney said.
“I’m asking now.”
He shrugged. “There isn’t one. There never was. I don’t know.”
John clenched his eyes and fists tight. He had a bad feeling he was on the verge of crying. He said, “It’s not fair.”
“You’re right,” Rodney said, “it’s really not.”
John’s hands fell to his sides, open, flat. His eyes stayed closed. “You used to be warm,” he said. “You used to be warm and heavy and made of bone. You used to make noise when you moved and when you hurt, and I wiped the blood away until there wasn’t any more. You used to walk with me on other worlds, and even if your afterlife is in this city, your death took place outside its walls. I was there; I held your hand as you died. I kissed your lips. You tasted like coffee.”
He opened his eyes. Rodney was standing before him, his shoulders hunched. His body twitched, tiny spasms of invisible light.
They had burned Rodney’s body, sent the ashes up to the stars and out across the sea. John had slipped his fingers inside the urn and opened them into the air, but pieces of Rodney had still clung to him, heavy and thick, smudged indelibly into his skin. Even the blood eventually washed away.
Now Rodney’s hands were perfect: in every detail--in each artistically frayed nail--in their intricate map of calluses and scars. John reached out and traced across them and the fingers didn’t melt; the palms didn’t fade; the lifeline remained steady and thick and true. Rodney shivered under his touch, and John shivered, too: shivered and shook and forced himself not to pull away.
“I might, still,” Rodney said. “Taste like coffee.”
Yes, John thought, holding light and air and molecules: yes. He leaned forward, bowing his head. Rodney’s kiss would be strong and dark and lasting, with more than a hint of bitterness.
Someday, he would drink.
*************
NOTES:
1. A few--months?--ago, somebody posted a story where Rodney has made, and subsequently gets rid of, a holographic copy of himself. I can’t remember the name of the story or who it was by, but it obviously planted the seed that this grew out of, so thank you! (And if anybody wants to provide the above information, I would very much appreciate it. Danke!) Inspired by stillane's Destiny Manifest, which I just re-read and which is heart-breaking and wonderful without even having to resort to killing somebody. ;-) Go check it out!
2. To needlessly belabor the metaphor, if that story was the seed, then watching ‘Aurora’ while drunk on absinthe (really!) and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if Red Dwarf were written as a tragedy?” was obviously the fertilizer. *g*
3. And the sun, and the rain: The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. Read it.