In the End
#13 of The
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Don’t own them or the jackalope they rode in on…oh wait, I guess I do own the jackalope they rode in on, sorry. But the boys, nope; never did, never will.
I know they’re comin’.
As I sit here, watchin’ monitors that don’t need me to watch them, even though we’re so far below the active part of the city that there’s no possible way to hear what’s goin’ on above, I know they’re on their way down to get me. I even know who it is – Dr. Weir and Major Sheppard, and possibly Lieutenant Ford as well, for backup.
I pat Rodney’s hand. I knew they’d come, it’s not important. And I’m not goin’ anywhere.
They come in cautiously, almost creepin’ around the corner like they’re afraid of what they’ll find – and yes, they did bring Ford with them. Fully armed, too. Dr. Weir is tryin’ to focus on me so she won’t have to look at Rodney. “It’s time, Dr. Beckett. Are you ready to go?”
I sit back a bit more in my chair, lettin’ my body language answer for me. Sheppard’s lookin’ around the room – although lookin’ at Rodney doesn’t seem to be a problem for him – and I see his eyebrows go up when he spots the box of supplies I’ve left sittin’ against the wall. “O-kay,” he says. “Maybe we had a little miscommunication here, Doc. We’re leaving now, as in almost everyone is already out of the city. We’re not staying until the shield fails, you didn’t need to lay in food and stuff to wait it out.”
I stay right where I am. “Actually, I’ve just got enough there to see me through as long as Rodney’s got left, which is all I’ll be needin’. I didn’t take much.”
Weir tries to look sympathetic, antsy as she is; this obviously isn’t goin’ the way she wanted it to. “How long does he have left?”
I don’t even hesitate. “Six days, ten hours, and approximately 17 minutes.” She goggles at me a bit, and I point up to one of the monitors. “The city’s keepin’ track. It’s all automatic, you see.”
“It’s okay, we can take the supplies with us,” Sheppard says. “But once the Gate is shut down it’s going to stay shut, so we’ve really got to get a move on.” He checks his watch. “We’ve got about twenty minutes of our window left, give or take.”
Ford chooses that moment to pipe up, checkin’ his own watch. “We really do need to head back up there now, Dr. Beckett. I can carry the box…”
“The box isn’t goin’ anywhere – and neither am I.” I cross my feet at the ankles and settle in a bit more, curlin’ my fingers around Rodney’s unresponsive hand. “Like I said, I’ve got enough laid in to do me until it’s time, so you can just be on about your way.”
“Okay, maybe you still don’t understand.” Sheppard’s smile is a little tight now. “There won’t be any more trips, once that Gate shuts down there won’t be enough power to activate it again. Now I know this is probably some doctor thing, but your patient there is asleep and feeling no pain…”
“He is, actually.” That stopped him, now it’s his turn to goggle at me. I raise an eyebrow. “Major, you seem to be forgettin’ that Rodney’s not an Ancient, he’s just a regular Earth human with an ATA gene that I gave him. You weren’t in pain; he’s in bloody agony and unable to do anythin’ about it.” I point to the monitors again, a different one this time. “Right there, see?”
He tries to argue with me, but I expected that. “No, you must be reading that wrong,” he tries to scold me. “Chaya said it wouldn’t be much different for him…”
“I’m sure she did,” I break in. So the bastard did manage to get off to see her again, so much for Rodney’s plan to save him. “I also know she despises Rodney because of the bloody gene therapy, so I’m not havin’ much faith in anythin’ she says that might affect him.”
“Now where did you get something like that from?” Sheppard wants to know. “Chaya’s never said anything about that, and there’s no way she could know how McKay got his ATA gene anyway. She’d never…”
“Oh really?” I ask, not even tryin’ to keep the contempt out of my voice. “You were so smitten that you didn’t notice the way she looked at him, were you? She knew, Major, most likely from the moment she set eyes on him – she knew he wasn’t truly one of you, not an Ancient at all. Why did you think she tried to turn all of you against him?”
It makes him angry when people talk about her, like she’s somethin’ so far above everythin’ else that even sayin’ her name wrong can make him scowl. He’s definitely scowlin’ now. “You know, in spite of what McKay might have told you, he was an asshole almost from the moment he met her. So what, next you’re going to say that he ‘sensed’ something about her was off and that’s why he acted that way?”
He’s tryin’ to pick a fight but I don’t fall for it, I just catch his eyes and hold them. She can’t have driven everythin’ I told him out of his head. “Even Rodney didn’t know why he took such a dislike to her, actually. I seem to remember tellin’ you that he came to me after gettin’ back from Proculus, askin’ me to check him over.” I squeeze the hand I’m holdin’. “That’s when I discovered the pheremone reaction, of course – somethin’ you also already know about. But there wasn’t any way I could tell him or anyone else that another part of his problem was just plain simple jealousy.”
The major looks quite funny when his mouth falls open like that, pity I’m not in a laughin’ mood. Dr. Weir’s not much better off than he is, but she finds her voice quicker. “Wait, you’re saying that Rodney…”
“Dr. McKay to you,” I snap. She’s not entitled to be familiar with him, not here, not now. “And I said a good part, not all; so far as the rest of it went his instincts were chimin’ right in with mine that somethin’ was wrong about the woman – which is why he was feedin’ the data from his scans to me through his laptop, remember? I’m the one who told him what she was. He just didn’t tell you how he knew it.” I squeeze his hand again. “He didn’t want either of you to know I’d been in it with him, you see.”
Major Sheppard finds his voice, or at least part of it. “So Rodney was…but I’m not…”
“He knew that.” This time I scowl at him. “Just because he knew nothin’ would ever come of it doesn’t mean he didn’t have feelin’s for you.” I wave my free hand, encompassin’ the room and what it means. “He cared enough about you to trade his life on a chance to save yours, you stupid bastard.”
That knocks him back a bit. “But once he got me out, we might have been able to get everyone out…”
“No.” Thank God for Rodney’s last letter, he made sure I’d know why he did what he did…because he knew he couldn’t tell me himself and still get to do it. “He’d checked every possibility, there was no way to save everyone without someone keepin’ up the shield.” I smile at him, not a nice one. “He worked out a way to get you out tryin’ to save you, Major; he took your place to save everyone else.”
It’s good to see him flinch, even though I know it doesn’t mean anythin’. “He should have told someone. There might have been a way he didn’t think of.”
The guilt is good too. But not good enough, not for me. “There wasn’t – and there wasn’t time to find out. If he hadn’t gotten you out when he did, there’d have been no gettin’ you out at all. Not alive and human, anyway. Your Chaya saw to that.”
I know I sound bitter, but that’s because I am. Weir jumps back in. “
“Dr. Beckett to you.”
That made her mad. Good. “All right, Dr. Beckett,” she starts back in, but with more of an edge this time. “Dr. McKay made his choice, for whatever reason: he’s as good as dead. And from what the major here said about his time in this room, he doesn’t even know you’re here. So why exactly is it that you’re staying down here, hmm?”
Oh,
But in the absence of that… “I won’t let him die alone,” I tell her, very calmly. “Perhaps what the major didn’t see fit to tell about this machinery was that once the city can’t use the person who’s sittin’ here any more, it will release them – most likely with the intent that someone else will be there to take their place and someone else will be there to try to save them. Rodney will wake up, for a short time, right before the end. And I refuse to let him wake up with the water crashin’ in all around, too weak to move, and spend the last few moments of his life alone and scared in the dark.”
She steps back from me, white-faced, and the look she gives
Sheppard is full of horror. I wish the
major had the same look, but he doesn’t; whatever it was that Chaya did to him,
he’s not the same man poor Rodney once admired so much, maybe even loved so
much. He’s not the same man I trusted,
either.
Weir does nod at that. “We do need you. You have the ATA gene, and you’re our chief medical doctor…”
“I’m not your only medical doctor.” Rodney pointed that out to me in his last letter. I smile again, and have the satisfaction of seein’ her step back a little farther. Looks like she finally recognized that devil, if a bit too late. “And you do need me, but I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to get by. As to the ATA gene, once this city is gone you won’t be needin’ it so much any more – and if you do, you’ve got the major here and the few others who’ve got the misfortune to be related to the Ancients.”
Sheppard’s frownin’ again, but just when he’s startin’ to gesture to Ford I let go Rodney’s hand and take hold of somethin’ else. And doesn’t it look like our major doesn’t much like havin’ a stunner pointed at him. If Weir’s eyes get any wider I think she might lose them. “Car…Dr. Beckett, what are you doing?” she all but whispers.
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Stayin’ here,” I tell her. “Did you think I was stupid, then? That I wouldn’t realize you’d try to take me out by force? Woman, I think you’ve underestimated me one time too many.”
“You won’t…” Sheppard makes a move to attack, thinkin’ she’s got me distracted, and I pull the trigger; he goes down twitchin’, much to everyone’s surprise. “You…you shot him!”
“Of course, he was about to jump me.” I’ve still got the weapon raised, pointin’ at them – and at Sheppard, because I may not know exactly what Chaya did to him but I know she did somethin’ that affected his ATA gene and the way he can use it. So I won’t be takin’ any chances that he’s not really out, and I’m fairly certain a second shot won’t kill him. Fairly certain. I’m not any too worried about it at the moment, I’ve got people still left I want rid of so I can be about my business. “All right,” I tell the other two, gesturin’ with the stunner. “You’ve said all the goodbyes I want to hear from ye, so pick him up and get out of here.”
Weir hesitates but Ford doesn’t, and when he hisses at her she snaps out of it and helps him pick the major up. Both of them still have their eyes on the stunner, though, and they stay on it until they’re out of sight. I stay where I am for a good half hour past that, just in case, but no one comes so after that I go back to makin’ preparations.
Yes, preparations. I’ll die with Rodney if that’s the way it has to be, but we won’t be dyin’ here in this tomb of a city, this monument to a race that cloaked its evil with bright light and beautiful architecture. Another check of the corridor, and then I’m into the darkest corner of the room and haulin’ out somethin’ I found and plan to use in six days, ten hours, and about 5 minutes give or take.
Why did it never occur to anyone that livin’ underwater the people here must have had some way other than the Stargate or surfacin’ the city to get out? I had to look around a bit, but I finally found the suits and the pods and the underwater exits that go with them…and I found out from Rodney’s notes that I can have him mostly in a suit before the fact without disruptin’ anythin’ or hurtin’ him. I wouldn’t hurt him for all the world.
But I also won’t let him die if I can help it. And if he does, it won’t be alone.