Stackhouse, Ford and Teyla made their escape attempt on Christmas morning. Perhaps they thought Sheppard would be too drunk to notice, or too busy opening all the gifts the terrified residents of Atlantis had bestowed upon him, or too busy debauching McKay again. The three betrayers got as far as activating the Stargate before Kavanaugh shut it down. Sheppard had them executed in the gate room with everyone but Beckett and his patient present. Grodin fired the gunshots, one-two-three, clean and simple. Kavanaugh wanted to do it but he would have made too much of a mess, and John Sheppard hated messes.
He had Weir clean up the blood and gore by herself, crouched on hands and knees.
"You didn't have to kill them," she said. Her eyes were rimmed red.
Sheppard kissed the top of her head and slid the knobbed handle of a scrub brush between her teeth. Kavanaugh would make sure she kept it there. "Sure I did."
Christmas music was playing over the intercom system. He whistled along with it, did a mental check of Atlantis's systems and defenses, and sauntered down to the infirmary. Beckett hadn't wanted to decorate, but Sheppard had told him to put up tinsel or lights, anything, just to help the holiday spirit along. Now there was a small tree in the corner, and on it were small silver bulbs. It looked, Sheppard thought, rather pathetic.
"Major," Beckett said, rising from his desk. His voice was steady, though his gaze didn't quite meet Sheppard's eyes.
"Doctor," Sheppard said, with the same formality. "How's my boy?"
"There was tearing again. He can't do what you want him to do."
"All he needs to do is loosen up." Sheppard pulled back the curtain around McKay's bed and peered down at the still, pale form. McKay had lost weight over the months. His skin was sallow, his eyes rimmed with dark circles. So fragile, these humans. So maddening and yet so desirable.
Beckett said, "Can't you see that he's exhausted through and through?"
Sheppard laced his fingers with McKay's and kissed their cold tips. McKay had seemed more tired than ever lately, but he just needed more good loving, more attention. With a smirk he asked, "Are you volunteering to take his place, Carson?"
"Would you accept?" Beckett asked, without flinching.
McKay stirred on the bed but didn't waken. Sheppard stroked his cheeks and smoothed the lines on his forehead until he was still again. "What's that called? A conditional sacrifice? You'll offer yourself up but only if you know I won't have you. Take your chances, doc. Maybe you can save him, for a little while."
Beckett took a deep breath. "Then take me. Leave him be."
"You're such a good friend." Sheppard kissed McKay's forehead and then tucked the blanket around him. He wasn't done with Rodney McKay, not by a long shot. The snark might have been backhanded out of him, the snot and arrogance wiped away, but the essential McKay still persisted under the bruises and rope burns. "I want him back tomorrow. In my bed and ready to go. Use the Atlantis equipment I showed you to speed the healing along."
"I'm telling you that he can't take much more. He could suffer a rupture, you could injure his--"
Sheppard pulled the curtain closed. "The day he can't take more is the day I lose interest in you all, Beckett. Then everyone dies."
But the little Scottish doctor wasn't so easily silenced. "Some might prefer that."
Sheppard paused. With a flicker of unease he wondered if he'd been manipulated into executing Ford and the other two as part of some crazy plan. But no. The humans weren't really that clever, and death was always death. Even now the bodies were down in the cryofreezers he'd brought from PX2- 897, ready for him to make use of later. Yet it bothered him that they'd gotten so far in their plans without him realizing it. His mental concentration was slipping. He would have to be more careful.
"Do you prefer death?" Sheppard asked.
"Not yet," Beckett said.
Sheppard departed, whistling Christmas songs again.
McKay was in Sheppard's bed as ordered, looking defenseless and yet somehow totally unapproachable. He acted as if he was imprisoned in some dire dungeon despite the fluffy pillows Sheppard had propped up behind him and the silken sheets he'd confiscated from one of the female scientists. Sheppard's suite, the largest and finest in the city, overlooked the ocean and sky and let in fresh breezes all day long. The color blue soothed Sheppard, made him feel at peace. He wished the mood were contagious.
"You always come back from the infirmary mad," Sheppard observed, sitting on the edge of the mattress.
"You should stop sending me there," McKay said, his voice tremulous. Maybe he was cold again. Sheppard had confiscated his medical pajamas, of course. There was no use having a clothed sex slave.
Sheppard stroked McKay's leg. "I don't like it when you make me hurt you. All I want is for you to take me, like you used to take him."
McKay didn't answer. Neither did he kick or jerk away, reactions which Sheppard had been forced to train out of him with restraints, corporal punishment and small electrical shocks. McKay was a fast learner, no surprise there, but he often clung to old habits and ideas of propriety. Sheppard thought that maybe he was biding his time, hoping for some improbable rescue. Maybe he dreamed that the real John Sheppard would return one day, woken from his frozen sleep like a fairy tale prince. All of Atlantis would be delivered from the evil imposter and peace and joy would flow through the city like a great gold river.
"Rodney," Sheppard sighed. It saddened him that McKay and the others couldn't appreciate what they had under his rule. No more threat from the Wraith, with whom Sheppard had made an agreement. No need to worry about food, not with the Athosians laboring to support the city's every need. No wishy-washy leadership under Elizabeth Weir, no experimentation with chancy technology they didn't understand, no vague hopes of going back to earth. Sheppard had locked Earth out of the dialing instruments and for good measure had programmed the shields to erect instantly if anyone dialed in from the SGC.
McKay was gazing at his own hands, at the faint rings around his wrists. He was so damned beautiful, Sheppard thought. There were more aesthetically pleasing men and women on Atlantis, true, but none of them sufficed in his bed. Grodin was too eager to please, too willing to assume any humiliating position. Teyla had been entertaining for only an hour or so, her skin glistening with sweat, her little cries forced out of her. Of the others, they either fainted too soon or wept from start to finish, like Zelenka. But McKay was stronger than the rest and a little more desperate. He had loved Sheppard.
"Come here, Rodney," Sheppard said, feeling his heart swell with appreciation. He stretched out on the bed and forced McKay to cuddle against his chest. He stroked the back of McKay's bare neck and nuzzled behind his ear. He encountered no resistance or frigidity but no real enthusiasm, either. Well, fatigue could do that to a man. At least McKay now smelled like lemon-scented soap instead of blood. Maybe Beckett had washed him. The idea of other people touching his property angered Sheppard and he dug his fingers into the cheeks of McKay's ass, bringing forth a small grunt.
"Sssh." With one deft move Sheppard rolled McKay onto his back and pinned him to the bed. He began kissing McKay's lips and chin and throat, basking in the fresh and salty taste of human skin. "Let me love you, Rodney. Let me make you feel the way he did."
McKay's eyes were bright but his voice was wooden. "You're not him."
"Call me John."
"I can't," McKay said.
"For Christmas," Sheppard said. His teeth found the gold ring he'd inserted through Rodney's left nipple and tugged on it lightly. McKay arched beneath him, his legs shifting under the sheets. "I notice you didn't give me a present yet."
"You're not him," McKay repeated with a gasp.
"Call me John or I'll have Beckett stripped and whipped from head to toe." Sheppard reached down to cup McKay's balls and gave them a hard squeeze. "Remember the one I used on you? How you screamed in the cafeteria while everyone watched? You had stripes on your skin for weeks."
"John," McKay whispered, and Sheppard kissed his tears away.
McKay always wanted to sleep but never wanted to wake up. Sleep meant darkness free from fear or shame. Sleep meant escape. Sometimes nightmares followed him down into the deep but more often than not he was too exhausted to dream, or at least to remember whatever visions were churned up by his subconscious. Once in a great while he imagined his John Sheppard, the real one, reaching through a barrier of ice to hold and protect him, and to whisper reassurances in his ear.
"I'm alive," he would say. "I'm coming to rescue you all."
Waking meant the return of sensation and fear and having to find out what torture waited him in the real world. While he was asleep or unconscious the alien Sheppard might have tied him bent backward, wrists fastened to ankles, ribs and shoulders twisted tight, for failure to suck hard enough or come to orgasm fast enough. For the same transgressions Sheppard might have hung him from a hook on the wall so that his arms were stretched far overhead and only his toes scraped the floor, or folded him into a small crate where McKay could not sit up or twist around or do anything but suffer as cramps gradually seized his muscles and rattled his bones. Once, because he'd failed to swallow ejaculation, McKay had woken up gagged with a wooden dildo that Halling had been forced to carve. Sheppard had made McKay follow him throughout the city for an entire day with that disgusting thing strapped over his face so that it filled his mouth and tickled his throat. He only relented when thirst made McKay choke and struggle for air. Beckett had said, "You're killing him!" and received a backhand for his impertinence. Since then McKay had never been able to rid his mouth of the taste of wood, even when other and more fouler things were shoved between his teeth.
McKay woke now, afraid as always of what he might find. Night had fallen and the Pegasus galaxy stars, as beautiful as ever, were spread like diamonds across the sky. Of the alien there was no sign. He could be anywhere, but lately he'd been spending more and more time in research rooms six levels down. McKay shifted experimentally and was relieved to find no restraints and no more than the usual soreness in his groin and nipples. Sheppard hadn't attempted to penetrate him, not so soon after the last disastrous attempt. McKay had a headache, too, but that was more-or-less usual and a little physical discomfort was nothing compared to the deep, ragged grief he felt over Ford and Teyla's execution. They hadn't been much help to McKay since the whole nightmare started, but they'd all been one team once. They had been friends. He hoped they were at peace, wherever they were, and hated them for having managed to escape.
The need to urinate pulled him out of bed, and the craving for fake coffee made him pull on his boxer shorts. He checked the clock. Almost midnight, but the cafeteria was always open. Sheppard let him wander at will through the city, the only one given such freedom, but he was never allowed to dress in anything other than the boxers. Consequently he was always cold and nearly-bare under the pitying gaze of others. He had learned to live with it. Arms wrapped over his chest he made his way down to the cafeteria. He poured a cup of the coffee substitute, carefully avoided looking at the spot where he'd once been chained and whipped into unconsciousness, and glanced over a tray of wrapped pastry and sandwiches. Beckett had told him that he had to eat more, but hypoglycemia was sort of a given these days and nothing looked or smelled appetizing. He started for his old lab, the only place where he felt like a semblance of his former self, but the halls weren't as empty as he would have liked.
"So, McKay," Kavanaugh said, standing at the junction of two corridors. "Getting your strength back for round two? Or is it round three? The night's still young."
McKay had learned to ignore Kavanaugh's voice, to see right past him if they were in the same room. He turned but Kavanaugh blocked him, one strong hand gripping his forearm.
"I'm the one who stopped them, you know," Kavanaugh said in a low, gleeful voice. His breath smelled sour. "Ford and Teyla and Stackhouse. They would have gotten away if it wasn't for me."
McKay kept his gaze on the floor and said nothing.
Kavanaugh shook him. "So where's my reward? I'm better than you. Better than Zelenka. How come he doesn't take me to his bed?"
McKay almost laughed. He'd known Kavanaugh was a lost cause long before Weir had. He'd fought against Kavanaugh ever coming to Atlantis. His science was often sloppy, his hypotheses never reasoned through. But McKay's objections had been over-ruled, and many people had paid the price since. Any sensible person invited to the false Sheppard's bed would run away as fast as they could before sliding between those soft sheets. But the real Sheppard ... McKay pushed down a pang of loss and longing. His own John had been sweet and adventurous in his lovemaking, a connoisseur of pleasure and never pain.
"Why?" Kavanaugh demanded, and shoved McKay against the wall so hard that he felt something crack in his back. Pain flared like fireworks. One of Kavanaugh's hands kept him pinned there while the other roamed freely between McKay's legs. "Why you and not me?"
He couldn't help himself. "Because I'm not some asshole traitor!" McKay said, dumping the fake coffee over Kavanaugh's arm.
"Argh! Son of a bitch!" Kavanaugh cradled his burned arm against his side and punched the wall beside McKay's head so hard that McKay felt his teeth rattle. "Fuck you, Rodney. Everyone knows you love being his slut."
Kavanaugh stormed off. Dizzily McKay slid to the floor and landed butt-first on the icy tiles. The fake coffee, already cooling, was puddled on the floor around him. He covered his eyes with the palm of his hands, willing himself to breathe steadily until his lightheadedness passed and some strength returned to his legs. Then he pulled himself up and went in search, reluctantly, for Beckett.
Beckett was in the infirmary, thank goodness. Maybe he slept there now, though everyone else in Atlantis was required to bunk down in one of the jumper bays. Easier for the alien to keep an eye on them, though his powers allowed him to spy on just about anyone, anywhere, by turning on cameras and intercoms at will. Weir was sitting on one of the examination beds, her head bent close to Beckett's as they murmured something under the hum of the air unit overhead.
"Rodney," Beckett said when he saw him. Unlike the old days there was no amusement at whatever predicament McKay might have gotten himself into this time. "Are you hurt?"
McKay waved a hand. Yes, of course he was hurt. He'd been nothing but hurt since the false Sheppard arrived. But he was more interested in Weir. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," she said briskly, her gaze sliding right past McKay's bare chest and the nipple ring. McKay knew the piercing made her uncomfortable. He himself hated the sensation of cool metal through his flesh, the bite of it when he rolled on top of it while sleeping or brushed it while washing himself. But as far as indignities went, this was just a tiny and inconsequential thing. Elizabeth pulled a sock up over her ankle and laced on her boot. "I was just leaving."
She was gone just like that, no other words, nothing about Teyla and Ford and Stackhouse's Christmas execution. What could she say, anyway, that he didn't know or suspect? Everyone thought McKay should be doing more to stop Sheppard. Everyone thought he should stab him in the side during a passionate embrace, or smother him with a pillow in the middle of the night, or push him over a balcony when he was least expecting it. He wished he were that brave, so foolish. Sheppard had told him that even the smallest attempt would result in Beckett losing his eyes, Weir her breasts, and McKay his own cock. Sheppard had even shown him the knife he would use to do it.
"Sit down." Beckett slid a warmed blanket over McKay's shoulders. His foresight in always keeping them on hand was a kindness, a blessing. The back pain returned with a vengeance when McKay tried to lower himself to a chair. Beckett made a swift examination and cursed. He said, "I think he cracked your rib. Damn it, it hasn't even been forty- eight hours--"
"It wasn't him," McKay replied, weary enough to rest his head on Beckett's arm. Defending the alien was ridiculous. Surely there'd been enough hurts inflicted, and more would certainly be forthcoming.
Beckett's voice rose in indignation. "Someone else hurt you?"
McKay snickered. He couldn't help but find it amusing. "Yes, someone else. That's not so hard to imagine, is it? I know what they call me."
"Oh, Rodney." The compassion in Beckett's expression was unmistakable. "It's harder for you than anyone else. Every sensible person knows that."
"I should get an award," McKay said, because that was what the old McKay would have said, and he was man enough to pretend that some semblance of his former self still existed despite the long dark descent of his soul. "Now fix me up, why don't you, before his lordship beckons?"
Within fifteen minutes the rib was healed again, courtesy of Atlantean medical equipment that the alien had showed Beckett how to operate. Not quite as good as a Goa'uld healing device, nowhere near as effective as a sarcophagus, but it worked well enough. McKay knew Sheppard might come looking for him but he hated to leave the warmth of the blanket. "I'm just so tired," he murmured, only half-aware he was saying the words aloud. Fatigue had been his constant companion for months, but recently it seemed so much worse. "What's wrong with me?"
"You need more iron." Beckett prepared a hypodermic, swabbed McKay's arm and slid the needle in. "You've become anemic."
"I've become worse."
"No." Beckett put two hands on his shoulders. "You haven't. You're doing what you have to do. Just hang in there as long as you can, all right? Can I get you anything?"
Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was the ever-present fear of whatever kinkiness or punishments Sheppard had next in store, but McKay felt his eyes water. "How about a nice tall glass of orange juice?"
Beckett's grip tightened. "No. Don't say such a thing."
McKay wiped at his tears angrily. "I can't do this, Carson. Today and tomorrow and for the rest of the week and for months and years to come--"
"Rodney." Beckett pulled him up and held him close. God, it was so nice to be held without fear of physical abuse, so lovely to just relax against Beckett's strong body. Beckett murmured, "Don't think about the future. All you have to do is get through today. One day at a time, as they say."
The absurdity of it made McKay protest. "Carson, this isn't a twelve step program."
"Promise me you won't hurt yourself," Beckett insisted.
McKay pulled away. He took a steadying breath. "Fine. I won't hurt myself or give up. I hope you're happy."
Beckett's voice was very soft, his eyes full of sorrow. "No. I'm not happy." Unexpectedly he leaned forward and kissed McKay on the forehead. "Just remember, you're not alone in this. I promise, you're not. Things will get better some day."
Fervently McKay wished that were true.
Sheppard had spent most of the day frivolously on the mainland, where he'd claimed first rights on a young Athosian bride. Her virginal awkwardness should have amused him but instead it was only irritating. He felt restless, anxious even, but after just a few hours he had the bride ready to service a man in any way required. He'd trained Weir the same way, though she was far less flexible with her hips. Returning to the mainland, he whipped two of Beckett's nurses for not drawing his bath the proper way and then let Grodin join him in some lazy, slippery amusement beneath the churning water.
While Grodin bucked and squirmed Sheppard did a mental check of the city. The ATA gene was such a simple thing to manipulate, so easy to control. How pathetic that its human carriers didn't know how to use it to its full advantage. Within minutes of arriving he'd flooded a pier, turned off the lights and shut off oxygen to an interior laboratory, asphyxiating eight people. Weir and her people hadn't lasted long at all in the face of his power. Pity, really. He would have enjoyed more of a fight. But something seemed wrong with his control today. He felt muddied and slow, and not able to check on every sensor and monitor with his customary speed.
"Enough," he said to Grodin, pushing his shoulders away. Sheppard toweled off and padded to his suite, where McKay was standing on the balcony watching the ocean glint beneath the sun.
"Miss me?" Sheppard almost asked, but he didn't want to hear any lies. Instead he nuzzled the back of McKay's neck and said, "Did you sleep?"
McKay sounded distant. "A little."
Beckett insisted it was fatigue that made McKay so sleepy and sluggish lately. Could it be catching? Some kind of virus or bacteria? More likely they both were just succumbing to the dullness of routine. Sheppard thought of a way to spice things up while still getting work down in his lab. "Come on," he said, and led McKay to the bed. "Lay back and relax."
He tied McKay spread-eagle to the bedposts with soft restraints. Nothing too tight, nothing that would cut the skin. He let McKay have a little leeway in his arms and legs but not too much. Never too much. With the sunlight shining on him McKay was all angles and planes, a marvelous work of art ruined only by the anxiety on his face. But McKay knew better than to beg or plead, or even ask why. He suffered because Sheppard wanted him to, and he suffered in silence because to do otherwise was to invite only more pain.
"You're so beautiful," Sheppard murmured, stroking McKay to hardness. He wound red Christmas ribbon around the erection and tied it off with a bow and a tinkling bell. He kissed McKay's mouth and wondered if McKay could taste Grodin on his lips. "Am I beautiful to you?"
"Yes," McKay said.
Sheppard's gaze narrowed. "Because I look like him."
"What do you look like when you don't look like him?" McKay asked, and there it was, a trace of the old snarkiness.
Sheppard was amused. "I'll always look like him, Rodney. The man you love."
For a gag he used a long but narrow strip of bedsheet, more symbolic than obstructive. Sheppard liked to hear McKay's moans and groans. He held up an Athosian tapered candle, six inches long and yellow as honey. McKay's eyes widened as Sheppard greased it with lubricant.
"Beckett said practice would make perfect." Sheppard wedged a pillow beneath McKay's hips to lift and tilt him. "You're too tight. Don't fight it. It's going in no matter how much you whimper."
McKay didn't fight, but his breathing hitched as the candle slid in inch by glorious inch. When only a small bit of it remained outside, Sheppard removed the pillow and let his lover sag back down to the mattress. McKay twisted against the restraints, grinding his ass against the sheet. A shudder ran through him from head to toes. Sheppard imagined the fullness and hardness, the constant sensation of penetration. He wanted to rip it out and plunge his cock into that tight hole, but that would have to wait until later.
"Almost done," he promised McKay, and then blindfolded him. McKay hated blindness but they both knew it freed him from having to gaze at the same dull shadows all night long.
"Just so you know," Sheppard said, whispering close to McKay's ear, "I have to go to work. I've put this room on live feed in the cafeteria. Everyone in Atlantis will be watching you while they eat dinner. If that candle's still inside you when I return, I'll let you loose. If it's out, you'll get something bigger, something worse. Understand?"
McKay swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He made a small noise in the back of his throat.
"Good." Sheppard patted his cheek. "As a special treat, you can listen to music. All of my favorites."
He slid heavy-duty headphones over McKay's ears and turned up the volume on the iPod that he'd found in the real Sheppard's footlocker. Such crude technology the humans had, but useful. Their music was even cruder, but had interesting rhythms and strong beats. McKay gave a start as Pink Floyd flooded into him and then twisted his head back and forth. He pulled at all his restraints, making the bed creak.
"Thought you'd like that," Sheppard said, but of course McKay couldn't hear him. He gave him one final kiss and then left him alone to his torment.
None of the songs had repeated yet. Or maybe some had. McKay tried to figure out how long it had been since the alien had left him tied to the bed but it was hard to concentrate, hard to figure anything out. The songs varied in length, and his mental skills weren't what they used to be even when he wasn't struggling against pain and weariness and the predicament of trying to keep the candle inside him. The music was wasn't John's modern heavy metal stuff, thank God. This was classic Pink Floyd, some of it hard enough to make his head ache, some of it more mellow. The headphones and blindfold blocked out the outside world, leaving him adrift in the undiluted anguish of being constantly pulled to the bed corners. His back ached and his legs were coated with sweat and his inner muscles were stinging with effort, but so far he had succeeded in his terrible task.
Without warning, cold hands touched McKay's thighs. He jerked in surprise. The hands skimmed the ribbon tied around his cock and played with the candle, shifting it so that McKay's hips lifted from the bed in protest. Roger Gilmour was crooning in his ears, or was that Dave Waters, and where were the hands now? Skimming his ribs, pulling on the nipple ring, rocking the candle hard. McKay felt his head thrashing from side to side and was sure that he was crying out, begging wordlessly, but he couldn't hear himself. He could hear nothing but the music, experience nothing but his own helplessness. A weight straddled his waist and he realized in horror that it was not the alien who had come to torture him, but someone else entirely. The stranger was heavier than Sheppard, his hands bigger, his breath more foul.
Lips touched his. Cold and slimy, like fish scales. McKay lost control and frantically pulled at the restraints. The visitor edged down, licking him from neck to belly-button, and then a hot tongue was touching the few parts of his cock the ribbon did not encase. Everyone in Atlantis will be watching you, Sheppard had said. But no matter how hard he tried to will it otherwise, his body responded to the overwhelming sensations and he came in little jerks. To his horror the candle slid out, leaving him feeling strangely empty.
The visitor left. Or did he? McKay imagined the hands just out of reach, a set of eyes boring into him. "Comfortably Numb," was playing in his ears now, and his body was shutting down in the aftermath of release, and he could almost remember the day that John had first introduced him to the band. "You can't have gone to college and never heard of Pink Floyd," John had said indignantly, and soon they were entwined on McKay's bed and arguing and laughing at the same time, and John had kissed him until his lips were swollen, and they had stayed secluded against the troubled outside world for what seemed like days.
That was before the mission to PX2-897, before John had been flash-frozen by what should have been a dormant piece of equipment, before an alien rose from a tank with John's memories and John's face but not his conscience--
The hands returned to cup his cheeks and trace down the sides of his throat with surprising gentleness. He braced himself, expecting more violation. Then a pillow came down over his face and all the air, all the music, and all his memories went away.
***
He woke to the sounds of a cardiac monitor beeping and was disappointed, once again, to find himself still alive. McKay's head ached fiercely, as if someone had broken it into pieces with a hammer and chisel. He wanted nothing more than to sink back into oblivion but Beckett was talking to him from very close by, his voice low and urgent.
"Rodney, can you hear me?" Beckett's hand, warm and firm, grasped Rodney's. "I need you to wake up now."
McKay tried to turn away but his shoulders burned as if on fire, and every other muscle followed suit. He heard himself groan and clamped his teeth down. He didn't want the alien to hear him. There was a blanket on top of him and he tried kicking at it, feeling trapped and hot. His legs felt slow and heavy, and his rectum burned.
"Can't you give him any more for the pain?" Weir asked from somewhere farther away. She almost sounded concerned.
Beckett ignored her. "Rodney, please. We don't have much time."
McKay forced his eyes open. Beckett was standing over him with fatigue and concern lined into this face. Behind Beckett, Weir offered a weak smile.
"We knew you were still with us," she said.
"What time is it?" McKay mumbled. The infirmary had no windows. Was it day or night? How long had his latest ordeal lasted? He fumbled at his ears, which felt dull and cottony. He covered his face, horrified that everyone had seen his latest humiliation.
"About one a.m.," Beckett said. "You have to listen. We can't talk long."
"Someone tried to kill me," he said, remembering the dull horror of being smothered. Like drowning, his lungs starving for air, the dark world turning even darker. He had bucked and struggled but in the end he'd been powerless. He didn't know whether to be indignant or grateful that someone had tried to put him out of his misery.
Beckett said, "Yes. But listen. You have to let the alien take what he wants."
McKay tried to turn his head, to blot out the words. His heart started hammering and the monitor's volume increased in urgency: beep, beep, beep.
Weir came around to the side of the bed. "Rodney, it's important. We know it's hard, but you have to let him do it. Let him penetrate you."
She spoke of it as if it was some dull detail in a mission briefing, a minor clause in some Mideast treaty. Clearly both she and Beckett were both insane. McKay had always figured his own sanity would snap first, but stress worked in different ways on different people. Or perhaps he really had lost touch with reality. In no version of the world he knew would his so- called friends urge him to do the one thing he'd so far managed to avoid.
"Rodney, look at me." Beckett grasped his chin and peered at him intently. "Do you trust me? All we've been through, this whole nightmare, have I ever lied to you? You have to believe me. Let him do that last thing, and we'll all be the better for it."
They both looked so earnest, so sincere, but McKay shook his head until dizzy spots flashed before his eyes.
"He's coming," Weir warned, and then the alien was standing in the infirmary, solicitously asking about Rodney's health.
Grodin told McKay it was Kavanaugh who had tried to kill him.
"The major told him to come up here and keep you entertained," Grodin said, rather cheerfully. He put the breakfast tray on the corner of Sheppard's oversized bed and shook out a cloth napkin. "That was amusing, wasn't it? I enjoyed watching it."
Curled up under a blanket, weary to the bone, McKay couldn't bring himself to answer. It didn't make sense that Sheppard had sent Kavanaugh. The alien was absurdly possessive. Maybe Sheppard was growing tired of him, or suffering from the same muddled, impaired thinking that McKay suffered from. Contagious confusion. It might have been funny, under different circumstances.
"But he must have snapped," Grodin continued. "Lost his mind completely. Everyone knows how jealous he was about your being in the major's favor."
McKay wanted to pull his pillow over his head, but he didn't have the strength. He wished he had another blanket. The day outside was rainy and cool but Sheppard had turned up the heat for him. The extra warmth didn't help--deep down, McKay knew he would be cold for the rest of his life--but it was a small act of kindness. Sending Grodin up with a tray of his favorite food was probably meant to be another, but just the sight of pancakes and pastry and scrambled eggs made him want to vomit.
"Of course, Major Sheppard punished him." Grodin looked at his watch with flat eyes. "Still being punished, in fact. Do you know how long it takes someone to die once they've been nailed to a wooden cross?"
McKay found that he had the strength to cover his face after all.
Grodin left with threats of returning in a half hour to make sure the food was gone. McKay stared out at the gray sea and gray sky and wondered how long it would take to drown if he threw himself off the balcony. He was never going to see his John again in this world, but if there was an afterlife, maybe they'd be permitted a moment or two together. A moment long enough to kiss, perhaps. A moment in which he could say to John, "I'm sorry. I tried." And John would shush him and hold him tight. As a scientist, McKay had always discounted tales of life after death but the lure of it, the hope where he had none, was undeniable.
Beckett had fixed up the strained muscles in his shoulders and legs and given him a sedative to take, but the aches that he felt weren't physical anymore and no pill could ease his mind. McKay shuffled out onto the balcony, feeling the wind whip around him. The gusts cut through him like knives. He gripped the railing with hands that no longer looked like his own and stared down at the rolling waves a hundred feet below. A plunge, an impact, a moment or two of frantic flailing, and then the cold seawater would rush into his lungs and he wouldn't be bothered by any of it anymore. He fingered the cold ring in his nipple and thought, why not? He started to lift a bare foot.
A voice from inside the suite caught his attention. "Rodney, won't you come in?" Zelenka said. "I'd feel ever so much better."
McKay continued to stare down at the water.
"I'm not a fan of heights," Zelenka said a moment later, coming to his side. He blinked owlishly behind his glasses. "I'm afraid you might fall over, and the major will very displeased with the rest of us."
McKay give him a sideways look.
Zelenka put his hand on McKay's. "Please come in?"
He let himself be led back inside. Zelenka ushered him under the blankets and he realized how violently he was shivering. "How about some tea?" Zelenka asked, his accent thicker than usual, and busied himself with the hot water and tea bag on Grodin's tray. McKay noticed how tired he looked, how frightened. The last time he'd been in Sheppard's suite, the alien had raped him while McKay sat roped to a chair and bore witness.
"Why are you here?" McKay asked.
"I thought you might like to play chess."
"Chess?"
"It's New Year's Eve. Or soon will be. In my family we always play board games until midnight."
"Oh." McKay didn't think he remembered how to play chess. He wasn't even sure he was up to playing checkers. But Zelenka had come prepared with a deck of cards as well, and they ended up with a slow-paced game of "Go Fish." McKay had trouble telling the hearts and the diamonds apart. His eyesight seemed to be failing along with everything else.
"Does he know you're here?" McKay finally asked, after twenty minutes in which they'd managed not to mention Sheppard at all.
"Of course. He told me to stay with you while he's busy in his lab."
McKay felt what might have been a pang of disappointment. It was hard to say.
"I don't care much for the surroundings," Zelenka admitted, "but it's good to see you. I've been afraid. Everyone has been."
"Fear gets old," McKay said, and it was true. He felt almost empty of it now, drained dry.
"Afraid or not, do what you have to do, Rodney. That's the only way to get through this."
There was an odd intensity to Zelenka's voice, but McKay didn't have the strength to investigate it. A few minutes later McKay won the game. He suspected Zelenka had let him. He fell asleep without meaning to, the weariness pulling him down like an undertow, his final thoughts being, "Oh, this is what it's like to die." But he didn't die. He woke close to dusk, the room dark gray streaked with starlight. Sheppard was sitting in a corner chair, watching him. Zelenka was gone.
"Your people don't appreciate a thing I've done for them," the alien said, his voice curiously flat.
McKay pushed himself up against the headboard, fighting off a pang of dizziness as he did. "Why do you say that?"
"I tell them to celebrate the turning of the year as they count it. To dance and to sing. But they act as if there's nothing to be joyous about."
"Well, you know humans. Rape, murder and torture doesn't always go over well."
He didn't know where the words came from. He couldn't even have said why he didn't stop them. But as Sheppard's gaze narrowed in the gloom of the suite McKay realized a truth he should have known months ago. He didn't have to kill himself after all. The alien would do it for him.
Sheppard rose from the chair, all sinew and muscle and energy. "You're feeling better, I see. Up to some calisthenics? Let's see how far your mouth and ass can take you."
McKay lifted his chin. John, he thought. Carson. But they couldn't help him now. This last journey through pain and degradation, for however many moments or hours it took to die, would be one he traveled alone.
The room was dark, lit only by the warm glow of candles. McKay had rounded them up from the Athosians, who made fat ones and round ones, and ones that smelled like fir, and others that smelled like cinnamon. He and John were in bed together, slow music playing on laptop, their bodies entwined. John was thrusting slowly, exquisitely, into him.
"I can't believe you're letting me do this," John whispered. His cock slid deeper and deeper. His hands were steady on McKay's hips, and his skin was furnace-hot. "Or that we're listening to Enya."
McKay ground himself against the bed and pillows. The ability to speak, to form any kind of coherent thought, was rapidly disintegrating under waves of pleasure. "You wanted Yanni," he said, ready to dissolve in a hot red haze. "Or was that John Tesh?"
Whatever response John made was drowned out by McKay's own hoarse cry. The noise of it shattered the illusion he'd built and suddenly he was back in alien Sheppard's suite, his hands roped to the headboard, his face and chest facing the sheet, his knees folded beneath him. He could feel open welts on his back and the stickiness of blood on his flanks. New Year's Eve in Atlantis and all he had to hold onto was the hope he'd be dead before the clock ticked past midnight. He felt nearly dead, gone far into a world of torment and sadness. The pressure of the alien attempting to slide into him was edging him further into grayness, but it also brought an involuntary cry from McKay's throat.
"You did it for him," the alien was saying, sounding wild and enraged. "You'll do it for me."
McKay tried to capture the memory of the candlelit room, the sweetness of John's banter even as he committed such intimacy and broke down all of McKay's walls. He'd never let anyone do that to him before. It had felt strange and uncomfortable, but at the same time oddly filling. And John's little sounds of pleasure had made him flushed and warm, so very grateful for that man in his life.
The alien grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back. Pain ripped through McKay's neck.
"Open for me, Rodney, or I'll shove myself so deep you'll feel my cock in your throat."
"Go ahead and try," McKay ground out, and the alien punched him in the kidney. The explosion of agony drove away all thought and reason. When McKay swam back to consciousness the alien was sucking at his cock so hard it felt like it would rip off. He climaxed into the wet mouth as if he was a teenager with no control at all. Then the alien flipped him over again, slipped in more easily, and again thrust forward.
"No," McKay said, because that was almost all he had left; the air in his lungs and denial. He didn't care what might happen to him next. But then Beckett's face flashed behind his eyes, and Beckett was saying please, trust me, and even Weir was saying it, and Zelenka was quiet but staring at him intently, and Ford and Teyla and Stackhouse were still dead, and somewhere the real John was saying, Live. Live for me. And so McKay stopped fighting and let all resistance flow out of him and surrendered that last precious thing, and the alien was grinding against his prostate and filling him with semen and McKay was screaming and together they slumped to the sheets.
"Thank you," the alien said. His voice sounded odd, almost strangled. He gave a little sigh. "I love you, Rodney."
McKay could not speak. He lay curled up on his stomach, panting, with the damp sheets twisted around his legs and the alien's weight pressing his cut-open back and pain churning through his gut like wildfire. Music drifted up from a balcony below: the New Year's celebration that Sheppard had ordered was underway. After awhile McKay managed to edge away from his captor and half-rolled, half-fell to the floor, the rope on his wrists keeping him tethered to the bed. He was dead tired, and the floor was cool against his hot cheek.
Sometime later--he couldn't say when--the door chime was ringing, which was practically unheard of. No one disturbed Sheppard or his victims while they slept.
"Major?" Beckett asked. "Are you there? Rodney?"
"Get this door open," Weir said to someone.
How odd. How bold. McKay used the rope to drag himself up and peered across the great expanse of mattress. Sheppard was wide-eyed and staring right back at him, but there was no rise and fall to his chest. There was no awareness in those eyes at all, just a thin trickle of blood that had dried on its way out of his nose. In the moonlight his skin was pale and flawless and tinged with blue.
The alien was dead.
They wrapped McKay in blankets and carried him to the infirmary. He was only half-conscious by then, disoriented and sick to the bone. He could still feel the alien shoved into him. He could taste his foulness on his mouth. But at the same time he knew his tormenter was dead. Wasn't that right? Several times he asked Beckett to tell him the truth.
"Yes." Beckett's hand was warm against McKay's cheek. "He's dead. I promise. You have to sleep now, Rodney."
"Dreams," he muttered, though his eyes were already closing. If he did dream, he didn't remember. His body and mind shut down for awhile. He was aware, now and then, of voices. Of someone pressing a wet cloth to his parched lips and a needle inserted in the back of his hand. Sometimes he cracked open an eyelid and saw Beckett or Zelenka sitting beside him. Sometimes he saw John, his John, as insubstantial as a thin cloud over the ocean. When McKay was strong enough to stay awake for several minutes at a time, Beckett and Weir explained everything they'd done.
"I'm sorry," Beckett said, over and over again.
"There was no other way," Weir said, her chin held high.
It took repeated conversations for Rodney to process what they were telling him. Beckett's most recent apology, delivered with a dinner that made McKay's stomach churn, was by now moot. Besides, they'd had no other choice.
"Carson, stop," McKay said, waving a dismissive hand. "You did what you had to do. End of story."
Beckett looked unhappy, but he plunged ahead anyway. "The fatigue, the nausea, the dizziness--the possible brain damage-- Rodney, it could persist for months or years, even with the medicine I've started you on. If there'd be any other way--"
"I understand completely. Now please go away. Go poison someone else."
Beckett looked stricken. McKay sighed. When had everyone on Atlantis lost his or her sense of humor? "I mean that in the best possible way."
Zelenka piped up from where he was sitting in a chair. "Maybe Rodney needs some more sleep."
Yes, sleep. He craved it. In sleep he didn't have to mull over the duplicity of the friends who had poisoned him in order to kill the alien. From McKay's trips to the infirmary, Beckett had been able to collect several specimens of the alien's hair, semen and skin cells, which were quite different than the real Sheppard's. Beckett and Zelenka had been able to analyze the alien's chemical makeup and potential vulnerabilities. They had settled on lead. Lead injected into Rodney's blood and lead pellets, now removed, that had been implanted in his prostate. "So I was a Trojan horse," McKay had said flatly, once the facts sank in. Maybe one day he'd care enough to get furious at them. Right now he just wanted to sleep.
But he couldn't. Even after Beckett left him and turned down the lights, even after Zelenka's regular breathing turned to snores, McKay couldn't rid himself of feeling stained and damaged, and of no use to anyone anymore. He thought about the alien rising from death and stalking him in revenge. He thought about the ocean, cold and deep, inviting him to its depths forever. He swung his feet to the floor and would have fallen if not for Zelenka's steadying hand.
"Where do you think you're going?" Zelenka asked.
"Anywhere but here." McKay meant no offense to Beckett, but just one more minute spent in the infirmary's antiseptic cleanliness would make him start screaming his head off. Much of his physical damage had already been repaired by Beckett's machines, and he'd had enough rest that exhaustion was no longer an immediate problem. The after-effects of the lead poisoning remained, but he had forever to learn to live with those.
"Well," Zelenka said, "at least get dressed. It's cold this time of night."
The nipple ring was gone, thanks to Beckett. The scrape of fabric against his chest was odd without it. Walking around fully clothed felt strange too, and he'd almost forgotten what it was to have shoes on his feet. "Where to?" Zelenka asked, and McKay knew without asking that companionship was something he was also going to have to adjust to. At least until Beckett and Weir were sure that he wouldn't kill himself. But wouldn't it be easier for everyone if he did? He was a walking trash receptacle, dirtier than a used condom thrown by the side of a highway. As long as he lived, everyone who looked at him would see the alien's whore.
"He was working in a lab," McKay said. "Show me."
Zelenka looked troubled, but took him down six levels to where two marines were guarding a warren of research facilities. The marines' customary frowns turned to scowls when they saw McKay. He lost heart immediately and turned back to the transporter. Next they went up to McKay's old lab, which was unexpectedly a wreck. Glass had been broken, instruments shattered on the floor. His laptop had been smashed into component bits.
"Kavanaugh," Zelenka said with disgust. "We'll get it cleaned up for you. You can have my computer 'til we fix yours."
"Don't worry about it," McKay said. He went to his old room, which hadn't changed at all. Sat on the small bed. Looked at his books. The letters on the spine twisted and danced in his vision. He dug around in his locker until he came up with a snapshot that had been taken of him, John, Teyla and Ford on their way to some mission or other. John was grinning broadly at the camera, his eyes lit up with a devilish secret. Maybe that was the mission where they'd celebrated Rodney's birthday was a smuggled bottle of schnapps and a sleeping bag for two.
"Hold on to this for me, will you?" McKay asked Zelenka.
Zelenka solemnly put it into his pocket. "Would you like to play cards? Maybe some checkers?"
"No." McKay rubbed his eyes. "Not right now. Will you leave if I promise to stay here and get some sleep?"
Zelenka looked troubled.
"Weir wants someone to keep watch on you all the time," he said. "We trust you, Rodney. But not while you're ill."
"I don't blame her." McKay leaned back and pulled a blanket over his shoulder. The illness of which Zelenka spoke was psychological, of course. And perhaps as permanent as the lead damage. "Make yourself comfortable. Didn't I say I understand completely?"
The last time McKay had been in the conference room, the alien had shoved him beneath the table and forced him to perform oral sex on him with his hands tied behind his back. The two Wraith envoys sitting in the opposite chairs had been quite amused. If they'd had cocks, Sheppard would have probably made McKay suck them dry as well. Now McKay was sitting in a regular chair wearing warm clothes with a hot beverage at hand, almost as if he were a normal person. He suspected that he was there for courtesy's sake only. Weir had retaken command quickly and thoroughly, banishing those like Grodin who had been loyal to the alien. Kavanaugh had been the worst of the offenders, but he was dead. McKay felt no regret for that. The city itself hadn't suffered much from the alien's ministrations but its people--the damaged yet walking shells around him--were like ghosts, at least to McKay. Insubstantial and dream-like, and speaking across unfathomable distances.
"We have to go back," Beckett was saying, and McKay blinked several times.
"No," Weir said.
Zelenka, who had been promoted to Grodin's old job as Weir's advisor, leaned forward and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "It's necessary, Doctor. The real Major Sheppard might be retrievable. And we'll learn more how the cryogenics process works, perhaps enabling us to revive Teyla, Lieutenant Ford and Sergeant Stackhouse."
McKay's head swam. Retrieve John? Pull him out of his frozen dreams and reinsert him here, where he would face unmitigated fear and hatred for what the alien had done while wearing his face? It would be too cruel, too thoughtless. But at the same time, the prospect of reviving the others was tempting. He knew they had been frozen very quickly after their execution. Their hearts might have stopped meeting, but brain activity could still have been going on. Any chance of bringing them back to life depended on the cryo process itself and Beckett's ability to repair and jump-start their bullet- ridden hearts.
"Maybe in a few weeks," Weir hedged, but Beckett had already thought of that.
"We don't know how the freezers affect human tissue," Beckett said. He twisted a coffee cup between his hands. "They've been frozen for more than ten days now. There might be a threshold when there's no turning back."
And John had been frozen for nearly three months. McKay saw his hands were trembling and sat on them both. Weir said, "We can't take the chance there's another one of his kind. Another like the one who impersonated Major Sheppard."
"If there were more," Zelenka said, "wouldn't he have brought them to Atlantis? For their knowledge, perhaps, if not for the companionship. We think his experiments here were to try and manipulate his hybrid human tissue to last longer, be stronger. He suspected, in his notes, that there was something deficit and wrong with the body he'd cloned."
McKay spoke up for the first time. "Deficit? How?"
Beckett and Zelenka looked at each other. No one spoke.
"Guys," McKay said. "Just go ahead and say it."
Beckett answered slowly. "He felt unusual sensations, unusual perceptions. He didn't understand his own actions toward you. He thought he loved you, yet at the same time he wanted to destroy you. It was obviously the effects of the lead exposure."
McKay shrunk further back in the chair. That the alien had written down notes about him made him sick to his stomach. "Oh."
In the end Weir approved the trip for the next day. How could she not, with three or four lives hanging in the balance? Beckett and Zelenka would go, along with six marines. McKay considered volunteering but he couldn't make his mouth open. Just the thought of stepping through the gate, crossing a stretch of red barren plain and walking into the alien's cave make him want to piss his pants. He told himself he needed time, that in a few weeks or months he might be able to handle the stress of a mission, but that was a lie. He would never be able to feel courage again. He would never be able to stand up to anyone who might simply slap him, or cuff him in the ears, or look at him cross-eyed.
"Carson," he said, visiting him in his quarters that evening. Beckett's quarters were small and homey, with a tartan quilt on the cot and postcards of the Highlands tacked neatly to the wall.
"Rodney. Sit down. How are you feeling? I'm told you didn't go to dinner."
True. He couldn't eat in front of the people who'd witnessed his humiliations. Even just walking around the city he had to endure people's long glances, their sideways whispers. Maybe they wondered if he still wore the alien's ring through his nipple. Maybe they wondered what other marks had been left behind on his skin, or if he was now as perverted as the monster who'd raped him. Wasn't molestation and violence a cycle? Wasn't he a danger to them all now?
"Rodney?" Beckett asked.
McKay brushed off his concern. "Do you really think you can revive John?"
"I think we can try. How do you feel about that?"
McKay allowed himself a small, humorless smile. "I think you're not a mental health professional."
"No," Beckett agreed sadly. He rubbed his temple. "Ours are all dead. I'm all we have. And I don't know ... I don't know how to heal injuries I can't see on a monitor or with my own two eyes, Rodney. But I'm willing to try. There are some anti-depressants in Heightmeyer's supplies, and I'll listen to whatever you have to tell me."
McKay felt raw and exposed enough as it was. The prospect of talking about his degradation was simply appalling. He patted Beckett's arm awkwardly. "You're a good friend, Carson. But you were a victim in all this as well."
"Not so much."
"Yes," McKay said. "You had to patch up people like me and send us back to him."
Beckett gave a half-shrug. His voice was very quiet. "It wasn't enough."
"I know you'll do your best for John. If it doesn't work, it won't be for lack of trying."
"Will you be all right if we bring him back?" Beckett asked. "Can you look at him every day and not think of the thing that tormented you?"
McKay nodded and lied. "I'll be fine. Just bring him home."
"Rodney," Weir said, joining him on the balcony above the Stargate. She handed him a cup of almost-coffee.
"Thanks." McKay sipped at it while gazing down at the empty bay. It was so hot it almost scalded his tongue. Had she done that deliberately? The alien had done that, at the beginning-- given him food that was too salty, or drinks that were too sour, just to see how he reacted. He told himself he was being paranoid. He shivered despite his turtleneck and sweater and jacket and trousers.
"Did you sleep at all last night?" Weir asked.
"Yes," he said, though he hadn't. "You?"
"No," she said, and there was the Weir he knew, honest to a fault.
"Dr. Weir, it's time," called out Sergeant Bates, who was manning the panels in the control room. They'd given Beckett's team forty minutes to get to the alien's cave. "We're ready to open the wormhole and establish radio communication."
The news, when it came, was good enough. Beckett's team was still alive, for starters, and they had established that the real John Sheppard was still alive in his icy prison. Something that had been clenched inside McKay's chest let go its grip. The next update would be in an hour. Always an outgoing wormhole; Weir wasn't about to let anything non-human make its way back, as it had the first time, with hostages in tow. They'd set up new passwords and when the time came only person would be allowed at a time, at five minute intervals. Marines were already on guard in the gate room, outfitted with lead bullets.
By noon Beckett was ready to make his first attempt at freeing Sheppard from frozen stasis. McKay found himself chewing on his thumbnail, a habit left over from childhood. "No, it didn't work," Beckett reported, and added some curses in Gaelic. McKay imagined a dozen horrible things going wrong--John waking up with his body intact but mind wiped clean, or with irreparable brain damage, or in excruciating pain. He should have gone to oversee the operation himself. Zelenka was good, but sometimes freaked out under pressure.
As McKay had done so often himself, as he would for the rest of his life.
But there was good news around four p.m. "He's awake," Beckett said, relief clear in his voice. "A little confused, but talking. I need to examine him some more."
Weir folded her arms tightly over her chest. "That's very good news."
McKay rose from where he'd been sitting for the last hour. His knees wobbled and his palms were wet, but he felt surprisingly calm. "Elizabeth. I have to go rest for awhile."
"I understand," she said, which was bullshit. No one understood. Weir asked, "Do you want us to wake you when they return?"
"Sure," he said.
Sergeant Markham went with him. A long time ago--a hundred years, it seemed--they had been on a puddle jumper together, and the jumper had gotten stuck in a Stargate with Sheppard dying from a Wraith bug stuck on his neck. Doom seemed guaranteed, but it all ended well. That had been a good day, in fact. Markham and the other marines had treated him pretty decently for awhile. Now Markham was sure to keep a few feet between them, as if McKay had alien cooties.
"Your quarters are this way, Dr. McKay," Markham said as McKay made a deliberate turn away from them.
"We have a pit stop to make," McKay told him. "I need something from my old--from the alien's rooms."
Markham grimaced. McKay could only guess at what stories had been told about what had occurred there. "It'll be easier for both of us if you wait outside," he said when they reached the door, and to his immense relief Markham nodded and took up an at-ease stance in the hall. McKay let himself in, and for a moment, as the door closed, had to fight down the urge to hyperventilate. So much had happened here. So much he wanted to forget. But the memories were emblazoned on his brain as surely as if they'd been burned there by a red-hot branding iron. No time would ease those wounds. There wasn't enough time in all of eternity for that.
The room had been vandalized. McKay was surprised by that, but in retrospect he supposed he shouldn't have been. People needed an outlet for their hatred, their shame. He looked at the burn marks on the walls but not at the place where the bed used to be. He didn't glance at all into the bathroom, site of many additional humiliations. Instead he went out to the balcony. It was a nice day, actually. The sky was blue with fluffy white clouds on the horizon, and the sea was calm and dark green.
"Atlantis," he said, just to hear its name aloud one last time. He took in a steadying breath of the salty air. Then he slipped off his jacket and folded it neatly so that the Canadian emblem was face-up. He placed it just inside the door in case the wind kicked up. In a zippered pocket was a handwritten letter to everyone and a letter just for John. He had tried to make both as lucid as possible but suspected he wasn't in an entirely lucid state of mind. In actuality he felt the guiltiest about Beckett, who find some way to blame himself. McKay had tried to address that concern with a hastily penciled addendum.
"Carson," he had written. "You can only save the ones who want to be saved. This is not your fault."
Just before going over the balcony he took off his boots. Maybe someone else could use them. He pointed them north, so they'd know which way he'd gone. And then Rodney McKay bid farewell to the fabled city of the Ancients, so that when Markham finally broke the door down there was no one left to find.
Sometimes John Sheppard heard the city whispering to him in Rodney's voice, saying, "Don't cry, I'm here, I couldn't go far from you."
Then he would wake and find his face wet and McKay's jacket, the one he kept bunched beneath his head, damp again. He would slap cold water on his cheeks and put on his stoic expression and go to work, just another day fighting off Wraith and trying to keep Atlantis safe. It didn't matter that his own men made excuses to leave whenever he walked into a room, or that Weir never quite looked him in the eye, or that even Beckett sometimes seemed unhappy to see him. McKay's death had made it clear that Sheppard's only duty was to repair debts he had never incurred in the first place, and to live with the misery of being the only one on Atlantis the alien hadn't stripped naked or lashed against a post or molested in some horrifying way or another.
Beckett said he was being ridiculous. "No one blames you, Major," he said. But even the slightest reference to Rodney made Beckett's eyes go sad, and sometimes Sheppard would find Beckett sitting in his infirmary staring blankly at a wall, oblivious to anyone's attempt to talk to him.
Sometimes Sheppard found Weir rocking back and forth in the small space under her desk.
Once he ran into Zelenka sobbing hysterically in the jumper bay.
Sheppard himself shed no tears, not while awake. He didn't think he had the right. He'd been asleep under ice while the alien used his face and his memories to flay those Sheppard loved and respected. He hadn't been publicly and privately sexually assaulted, like Rodney. He hadn't been tortured, like Rodney. He hadn't been stripped away of every defense and every shred of dignity and every last ounce of strength until the only option left was to throw himself into the unforgiving sea.
Sheppard often looked at the waves and wondered how it would feel to have them close over his own head forever.
"So my evil twin took over Atlantis?" he'd asked that first day, after Beckett had woken him, before he understood what had happened. It was the last time he ever joked about it. As they'd trudged back to the Stargate, Sheppard had tried to wrap his mind around the horrors that Beckett had described. His poor Rodney. How could he ever help to heal such bitterly deep wounds, and how would they deal with the lingering damage from the lead poisoning? But McKay had taken those worries away from him. Sheppard had gone numb at the news that greeted them upon their return home. Beckett had actually collapsed to his knees, and had to be helped away by his own staff.
The letters that McKay had left explained everything and nothing. "I'm not the man you loved," he'd written in the one that John kept folded in a pocket close to his heart. McKay had been so wrong. Nothing, *nothing,* could have soiled McKay beyond Sheppard's love. Certainly not some son-of-a-bitch monster wearing John's face. But he'd never had the chance to prove it to McKay. Never had the chance to whisper "I love you" one last time, not even to McKay's corpse. Everyone presumed it had been sucked into the machinery under Atlantis or tugged away by the currents. Without a grave to decorate Sheppard had to make do with the water and waves, sometimes skimming a puddle jumper so close to the surface that he could almost reach down and wet his hand.
The alien's body had been destroyed. Incinerated in the event horizon. No one spoke of him anymore, or at least not while Sheppard was within earshot. Valentine's Day came but no one celebrated the art of love. St. Patrick's Day arrived, and a few Irish clovers appeared on doors. A lot of people took the opportunity to get rip-roaring drunk on Athosian hooch. On a city in the middle of the ocean it was hard to judge seasons, but soon spring was rippling across the mainland. The season of renewal was in full swing, Sheppard thought, but once a thing had been irradiated, no life ever grew from it again. Atlantis was alive but sterile, devoid of new beginnings.
He was working out in the gym a week before Easter when Beckett paged him. Sheppard showered and went down to the infirmary. "Come in here," Beckett said, and they sat down with Zelenka in an alcove away from the nurses and a handful of patients. Beckett seemed to vibrating with anticipation, while Zelenka seemed more restrained. Beckett handed him a sheet of paper and said, "Take a look at this."
Sheppard scanned the list. "Missing Items," it read, and underneath was a list arranged in reverse chronological order. A laptop from the astrophysics lab. Sergeant Bates's clothes from the laundry room. Some minor equipment from the jumper bays, a few pieces of medical equipment, a bit of food. Sheppard's own iPod.
"So we've got a thief," Sheppard said. "Maybe more than one. You're the one who said people respond to trauma in different ways, Carson."
"Yes," Beckett said. "You could interpret it that way. But what if it was just one person taking those things, and not because of post traumatic stress but instead for survival?"
Sheppard raised an eyebrow.
Zelenka said, "You know we've been studying ways in which to bring Ford, Teyla and Stackhouse back to life. Some of the team who've been working on the cryofreezers think the research labs are haunted. They feel like they're being observed. A shadow moves. Equipment isn't always exactly were they left it."
Sheppard had been down in the labs. Sometimes he found it comforting to talk to Ford, even if Ford couldn't talk back. Sure, once or twice he'd felt like someone was watching him from the shadows, but he'd put it down to the guilt he carried every day, the ghosts of people he'd never had a chance to save. He'd never considered the prospect that someone might be alive and hiding in the bowels of the city.
"If there was an intruder, the city computers would show their life signs," Sheppard reminded them.
"Not if the computers had been reprogrammed," Beckett said.
Zelenka leaned forward. "And there's only one person who could do that so cleverly we'd never know about it. Only one person who understands the subroutines that way."
Sheppard felt goosebumps rise on the back of his neck and ripple down both arms. His mouth was suddenly dry, his heart pounding on the insides of his ribs. "No. He went over a balcony."
Beckett's expression was a mixture of hope and apprehension. "Markham didn't see him jump."
"It could be an Athosian," Sheppard argued. "Or maybe one of Kolya's men that we never found."
Zelenka said, "They wouldn't need the missing equipment. They wouldn't know what to do with it."
Sheppard stood up. He couldn't afford to invest in their crazy notions only to see them crash in a fiery spectacle in the not-so-far future. But neither could he force his feet to carry him away from this crazy conversation. "It's been more than three months. He can't be alive. He would have needed to steal a lot more food than what you've got listed."
"Maybe someone's been helping him," Zelenka said. "Bringing him leftovers, potable water, things like that."
Beckett nodded and rubbed his hands together. His expression spoke of deep determination. "Conjecture is fine, but there's only one way to find out. We'll have to search the city."
Sheppard felt dizzy. Rodney McKay, alive. Possibly. The season of renewal had only just begun on Atlantis, and against all odds it had brought a sliver of hope with it.
The End