I, A Knife's Blade (R)
Title: I, A Knife's Blade
Author: lavvyan
Pairing: McShep
Rating: R for temporary character death and very explicit images. Please do not read this if stuff like that offends you.
Summary: There are a lot of things John Sheppard never wanted to do. Ridding Rodney of a Goa'uld is possibly the worst of them.
A/N: For the philosophy_20 prompt #16, "God". This is pre-slash, actually. And to be blamed entirely on munchkinofdoom, as she made me write it even though I didn't want to.
~~~
Cover by smuffster
I, A Knife's Blade
"Do you think they will kill us again?" Rodney asked, pacing nervously around the rather spacious holding cell. "Colonel? Because if they do, I don't think I-"
"McKay," he said tiredly from his place on the floor, and Rodney shut up, still pacing, but wringing his hands in silence. John leaned back, and closed his eyes, listening to McKay's footsteps. It had been three days since either of them had been killed, and he sincerely hoped that was marking a trend. Maybe they had given up on the questioning. On the other hand, why keep feeding them, then?
A Goa'uld mothership turning up in the Pegasus galaxy had been a surprise, to say the least. So had John's first encounter with the ring device. And his first time in the sarcophagus wasn't something he liked to dwell upon, either. Thankfully, the 'Jaffa' guys had only managed to capture him and McKay; the rest of his team had been able to escape. You had to be grateful for small favours.
Rodney had been afraid in a way John had never seen before from the moment they had been beamed up on the mothership. Frankly, he hadn't quite gotten it. Sure, they were overpowered and outnumbered, except they had been before, and they had always gotten out of it so far.
"But what if they have a sarcophagus?" Rodney had whispered.
John hadn't understood him then.
He wished he still didn't.
They had spent the first day in their holding cell, opulent golden walls, covered with what looked like hieroglyphs. The Jaffa had been wearing the mark of Anubis, according to Rodney, but the Goa'uld who had started to interrogate them on the second day had called himself Sobek.
He wanted Atlantis. Not much of a surprise there.
All he had gotten from John was name, rank, and serial number. All he had gotten from Rodney was a long, increasingly nervous babble with numerous reasons why coming to Pegasus generally was a Very Bad Idea, with very capital letters. John had never been so proud of his friend.
Then the torture had started. And McKay still hadn't spilled anything, which had made John wonder dazedly through a pain that was worse than anything he had ever experienced. The last thing he had seen before the knife had sliced him open from belly button to ribcage had been Rodney's tear-streaked face, pale from blood loss.
The last thing he had heard was his friend begging: "Please. Please, don't."
He had woken up surrounded by a light so bright it hurt his eyes, had been thrown back into the holding cell dazed and confused. Rodney had been there, his blood-soaked clothes bearing holes John didn't want to think about too much, and tiredly explained about the sarcophagus. How it brought people back to life. How telling your secrets would be of no use at all. How this could go on and on and on for years to come. How you could become addicted to it. How it changed you, took a tiny little piece of your soul each and every time they put you in it.
They both had been in there so many times now that, were they to die one final death, neither God nor the devil would want to have them. They were hollow. Empty.
Ironically, it had turned out to be way more painful to watch Rodney die than experience it himself. Or maybe not so surprising, considering the friendship they had built and managed to keep through various ordeals, the biggest of them so far their screw-up on Duranda. They had both made mistakes that day, but had been able to get back on track, even if it had taken them a while. Still, John hadn't expected to feel so torn, so broken, that he would scream himself hoarse as Rodney had first been drowned within an inch of his life, and then just sliced open and left to bleed out, fearful blue eyes never leaving John's face as he faded away.
Those eyes, vacantly staring into his own, were enough to keep him supplied with nightmares for the rest of his life. And yes, ironic how a sadistic Goa'uld had made him realize that he would do everything, everything, to keep Rodney alive, to keep him safe.
Except for the one thing he couldn't. And that was hand over Atlantis.
Rodney knew that. Hell, Rodney agreed, had had to watch John scream and bleed and sully himself before he died with a pitiful whimper more than one time. They both would never be the same around each other if they ever got out of this.
If. John wasn't really all that optimistic about that anymore.
Heavy footsteps made him look up warily to eye the four approaching Jaffa, made Rodney whisper something that might or might not have been a prayer. From what they had seen so far, there seemed to be only the one Goa'uld and seven Jaffa on this ship. Maybe they had rebelled and escaped in time, using Anubis' superior technology to come here. Maybe they had begun their journey to Pegasus a millennium ago. He didn't really care, and McKay for once wasn't in the mood to speculate.
"You will come," the head Jaffa - not a first prime, none of them were, that much Rodney had explained - announced and pointed at Rodney, who shrank back against the wall. He wasn't quite broken, not yet, and John liked to think that it was his presence that had kept the scientist sane until now. But it wouldn't take much more to destroy him, John could see it in the slump of his shoulders, in his shivers, in the way his eyes wouldn't really meet John's anymore.
He balled his hands into fists, stepping between Rodney and the three Jaffa who had entered the holding cell.
"What do you want with him?" he demanded. A hesitant touch on his shoulder silenced him.
"Don't," Rodney said, his voice rusty and bitter. "No use in both of us dying if we don't have to, Colonel, is there?"
He flashed a small, brave smile that made John's heart break a little more, and followed the Jaffa without a struggle, never turning back as they marched down the corridor.
John hated the waiting that followed. He didn't know what they were doing, wasn't there to lend his friend what little strength he could, and that alone was enough to drive him up the walls. Add to it the niggling feeling that something very, very bad was about to happen, and he was on edge, unable to sit still for any length of time, pacing around the cell more and more anxious, more and more… afraid.
The four Jaffa came back alone. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. It could mean that Rodney was still alive. It could mean that he was in the sarcophagus right now, and Sobek had gotten too bored to wait for the next round of torture.
It could mean that the Goa'uld had grown tired of them and left Rodney dead for good. The thought alone was enough to make John's stomach churn.
McKay was there when the Jaffa led John into the torture chamber, unchained, clad into simple greenish-brown clothes instead of his ruined uniform, and for one second, John felt nothing but relief. Then his friend turned, met his eyes, and John flinched back.
There was nothing in those eyes. No compassion, no friendship, none of the thousand little things Rodney had never been able to hide.
"Who are you?" he croaked, his voice tinny and hollow in his ears.
Not-Rodney grinned maliciously, his eyes flashing golden before he answered in a deep, silky voice.
"I am Bevrek. It is," he cocked his head, like listening to something only he could hear, "a pleasure to meet you, I think your kind would say."
"This won't help you. I won't give you anything," John said defiantly, although his thoughts were a litany of God, please, not this, not Rodney, not this, Rodney, please, God, no.
Rodney's crooked grin looked cruel under Bevrek's control.
"You don't understand. You don't have to give us anything. All we need to know," he tapped against the side of his head, "is right here."
"Why now? Why torture us if you could have just taken one of us all along?" And why not me, was what he didn't ask. Why not me?
"Bevrek has matured only recently," Sobek answered from somewhere behind them. "And it took us a while to decide which one of you should be taken as a host. We agreed that, as a soldier, you could be spared."
"Then why keep me alive?" John asked, because he didn't want to be; if it went down like this, he really, really didn't want to be.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Rodney's words, if not Rodney's voice, and it hurt so much that John wanted to cry. Then suddenly there was real, physical pain, a hot burning in his gut that made him gasp, didn't leave him enough air for a scream. His sight blurred, and the silky voice was purring into his ear.
"We are on our way to your city right now. We don't have to keep you alive anymore. Now, we can just… play."
"Don't… Rodney, please," he breathed through his agony, and Bevrek laughed.
"Nothing of the host remains," he answered simply, and with a sharp, searing pain, everything went dark.
Rodney was carding his fingers through John's sweat-dampened hair when he woke up again, his head propped up on the scientist's lap.
"Rodney," he whispered, blinking, wondering if maybe it had all just been a dream.
Rodney smiled down at him. "You're beautiful," he murmured, fingers still carding through John's hair. "I've always thought that."
But the smile was only close, not quite right, and John flinched back, scrambled away until his back hit the wall of the torture chamber, surprised at how weak he felt. Maybe they had taken him out of the sarcophagus too soon this time. Bevrek laughed again, a deep, amused chuckle that was so wrong coming out of Rodney's throat that John could feel a deep, sudden hatred rising inside, almost overwhelming him with its viciousness. He tried to hide it, but the Goa'uld had already noticed it, seemed even more amused.
"Shall we play a little more, then?" he asked, still smiling. "I intended to leave you dead, but your pain was truly a thing of beauty."
He nodded to a Jaffa John hadn't noticed before, who handed his master a long, sharp-looking knife.
"Restrain him," Bevrek commanded, his voice now cold and business-like as he advanced. John tried to take the Jaffa down, but he was too weak, his struggle too uncoordinated, and the Jaffa easily twisted his arms behind his back, held him.
"Rodney, please, don't do this," he begged, trying to reach his friend.
"I told you. Nothing of the host remains," Bevrek sneered, but there was a flicker in those familiar blue eyes, a flash of something that had nothing to do with the Goa'uld and his game of torture and killing.
"You're lying," John spat, smirking at the frowning Goa'uld with a conviction he didn't quite feel. "This is Rodney McKay, the brightest mind in two galaxies. He can fight you. He's stronger than this."
"Insolence," Bevrek hissed, knife hand shooting forward, and John steeled himself for a round of really nasty revenge. Only that the knife changed its angle just a fraction, stabbing the Jaffa's shoulder instead of sliding between John's ribs, and the man behind him staggered back with a surprised exclamation as Bevrek roared with fury. John broke free, smashing his elbow into the Jaffa's nose and grabbing the knife, pulled it out and sliced the man's throat in one fluid movement that was more instinct than planned action. Bevrek lunged forward, tackling him to the ground, but John's grip around the knife handle was sure and fast, his teeth clenching with hatred as he struck with all the force he could muster, burying the blade to the hilt in the side of the Goa'uld's neck. Blue eyes widened, flashed golden before they faded, before they stared vacantly into his own once again.
And just like that, it was over. Everything was… over.
John lay on the hard floor, panting, trying to catch his breath, Rodney's body a heavy weight on top of him, blood seeping from his friend's neck into his torn shirt, mixing with his own. There was so much of it, sticking the fabric to his chest with what seemed to be the only warmth in the whole room, and he chuckled quietly, a desperate sound that ended with a broken sob. Rodney's head was resting on his shoulder, and he ran his fingers through the soft brown hair.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, "so sorry."
He didn't know how long they were lying like this, Rodney's body slowly cooling out above him while he tried to gather the strength and will to move, to stand up. He didn't know how long he had been staring at the ceiling before he remembered the sarcophagus. And he really had no idea just how much time it had taken him from closing his hand around he handle once more to yanking out the knife and starting to do what had to be done.
He felt numb as he sliced through the green-brown shirt, exposing Rodney's broad, naked back. His hand was shaking as he rested the tip of the blade on pale, smooth skin near one of the top vertebrae, closed his eyes briefly against the tears that were burning behind his lids before he broke the cool flesh, slicing it open up to the point where spine met skull. The knife slid through muscle and sinews with a horrifying ease, the slick sound of parting flesh enough to make John cry for real, quiet, shaky gasps that echoed unnaturally loud in the silent room. The too familiar smell of blood was heavy in the stale air, powerful, nauseating. Rodney's blue-tipped fingers started tapping a rapid-fire drumbeat on the cold dirty floor as John's hands grabbed and pulled at the dead parasite that had wound itself around his friend's spinal chord, blood covering his arms halfway up to his elbows.
It was stuck. God help him, it was stuck, and hot tears were running across John's face, his breath hitching as he drove the knife a little further into Rodney's skull, rooting around to cut the Goa'uld loose. Rodney's body jerked, and he swallowed hard, trying desperately not to lose it, not yet, searching for the right place - there. He pulled again, and this time the slick, thin body let itself be pulled out easily. He tossed it aside, flung it across the room and against the wall, a red smear where it slid down to rest on the floor in a small, lifeless heap. Rodney's body lay still and silent before him.
"Oh God," he whispered brokenly, clutching his friend's blood-slick shoulder and crying, crying, shaking with the force of his grief, not even bothering to pull himself together. Of all the things he'd ever had to do, nothing had prepared him for this, for the horror of cutting his best friend's neck open and pulling an alien snake out of his brain. And he wished he could have been sick, wished he could have turned away, wished he could just forget this and never think of it again.
But he didn't have the time for a breakdown, Rodney needed him, and with an effort, he managed to calm himself down again, heart pounding against his chest as he rose to his feet and straightened himself up. He cleaned the blood from his arms with Rodney's ruined shirt, traces of red-brown smeared into his skin, stuck under his fingernails.
"I'll be right back," he promised the corpse on the floor. "Wait for me."
And while part of him was glad that once he had a weapon, getting grid of an unsuspecting enemy was ridiculously easy, another part wanted to wallow in blood as long as it took for that numbness inside him to fade away. Part of him wanted to kill and keep killing, even as the remaining Jaffa had met his knife and Sobek had died far more quickly than he had deserved to.
Part of him wanted to revive them all just to take their lives again and again and again.
John dragged Rodney's body along the empty corridors, to the room he had woken up in far too often to count. It felt like they had spent years on this ship, even though it couldn't have been more than two weeks. Rodney was heavy in death, and John had reached the end of his strength, so getting the body off the floor and into the sarcophagus wasn't easy. But he managed, anguish fuelling him where simple muscle couldn't, and then the lids closed, and all John could do was wait.
He tried not to think, to let the numbness inside spread and mellow him. It didn't quite work, and he counted the hieroglyphs on the walls instead, absently wondering if they would add up to a prime number. He must have nodded off at some point, because the grating sound of the sarcophagus opening caught him by surprise, and he jumped to his feet in time to see Rodney open his eyes.
"Hey, Rodney," John croaked around the lump in his throat.
Rodney blinked slowly, stared at him, blinked again.
"John," he whispered, and there really shouldn't be pieces of his heart left that were big enough to be broken, except there were, and his breath hitched again.
"Come on," he said, ignoring the way his voice wavered and reached down to clasp Rodney's warm hand. "What say we get out of here?"
He tossed him a shirt he had liberated from one of the rooms he had come across while cleaning out the mothership, and looked away as Rodney turned his back towards him when he put it on. By unspoken agreement, they made it to the engine room, where McKay sabotaged the machines so they would overload. And if John was hovering, was standing a little too close to the scientist, Rodney didn't comment on it. They still didn't talk on their way to the hangar, John following Rodney without question as he led them to one of the Death Gliders. Any other day, that name alone would have been enough for a Star Wars quip. Today, he just climbed in.
The controls were similar enough to the X-302's to make handling the alien spacecraft relatively easy. And once you had flown a Wraith Dart, anything else was just a piece of cake anyway. Rodney was a warm, solid presence in his back, clothes rustling as he moved, soothing John's frazzled nerves.
None of them looked back as they flew out of the hangar and headed for the planet Rodney had claimed to carry the closest Stargate. None of them talked as they made their way back home. Back to something approaching normalcy.
Behind them, the mothership exploded.
~~~
continued in prompt # 17, "Lack of God"
Author: lavvyan
Pairing: McShep
Rating: R for temporary character death and very explicit images. Please do not read this if stuff like that offends you.
Summary: There are a lot of things John Sheppard never wanted to do. Ridding Rodney of a Goa'uld is possibly the worst of them.
A/N: For the philosophy_20 prompt #16, "God". This is pre-slash, actually. And to be blamed entirely on munchkinofdoom, as she made me write it even though I didn't want to.
~~~
Cover by smuffster
I, A Knife's Blade
"Do you think they will kill us again?" Rodney asked, pacing nervously around the rather spacious holding cell. "Colonel? Because if they do, I don't think I-"
"McKay," he said tiredly from his place on the floor, and Rodney shut up, still pacing, but wringing his hands in silence. John leaned back, and closed his eyes, listening to McKay's footsteps. It had been three days since either of them had been killed, and he sincerely hoped that was marking a trend. Maybe they had given up on the questioning. On the other hand, why keep feeding them, then?
A Goa'uld mothership turning up in the Pegasus galaxy had been a surprise, to say the least. So had John's first encounter with the ring device. And his first time in the sarcophagus wasn't something he liked to dwell upon, either. Thankfully, the 'Jaffa' guys had only managed to capture him and McKay; the rest of his team had been able to escape. You had to be grateful for small favours.
Rodney had been afraid in a way John had never seen before from the moment they had been beamed up on the mothership. Frankly, he hadn't quite gotten it. Sure, they were overpowered and outnumbered, except they had been before, and they had always gotten out of it so far.
"But what if they have a sarcophagus?" Rodney had whispered.
John hadn't understood him then.
He wished he still didn't.
They had spent the first day in their holding cell, opulent golden walls, covered with what looked like hieroglyphs. The Jaffa had been wearing the mark of Anubis, according to Rodney, but the Goa'uld who had started to interrogate them on the second day had called himself Sobek.
He wanted Atlantis. Not much of a surprise there.
All he had gotten from John was name, rank, and serial number. All he had gotten from Rodney was a long, increasingly nervous babble with numerous reasons why coming to Pegasus generally was a Very Bad Idea, with very capital letters. John had never been so proud of his friend.
Then the torture had started. And McKay still hadn't spilled anything, which had made John wonder dazedly through a pain that was worse than anything he had ever experienced. The last thing he had seen before the knife had sliced him open from belly button to ribcage had been Rodney's tear-streaked face, pale from blood loss.
The last thing he had heard was his friend begging: "Please. Please, don't."
He had woken up surrounded by a light so bright it hurt his eyes, had been thrown back into the holding cell dazed and confused. Rodney had been there, his blood-soaked clothes bearing holes John didn't want to think about too much, and tiredly explained about the sarcophagus. How it brought people back to life. How telling your secrets would be of no use at all. How this could go on and on and on for years to come. How you could become addicted to it. How it changed you, took a tiny little piece of your soul each and every time they put you in it.
They both had been in there so many times now that, were they to die one final death, neither God nor the devil would want to have them. They were hollow. Empty.
Ironically, it had turned out to be way more painful to watch Rodney die than experience it himself. Or maybe not so surprising, considering the friendship they had built and managed to keep through various ordeals, the biggest of them so far their screw-up on Duranda. They had both made mistakes that day, but had been able to get back on track, even if it had taken them a while. Still, John hadn't expected to feel so torn, so broken, that he would scream himself hoarse as Rodney had first been drowned within an inch of his life, and then just sliced open and left to bleed out, fearful blue eyes never leaving John's face as he faded away.
Those eyes, vacantly staring into his own, were enough to keep him supplied with nightmares for the rest of his life. And yes, ironic how a sadistic Goa'uld had made him realize that he would do everything, everything, to keep Rodney alive, to keep him safe.
Except for the one thing he couldn't. And that was hand over Atlantis.
Rodney knew that. Hell, Rodney agreed, had had to watch John scream and bleed and sully himself before he died with a pitiful whimper more than one time. They both would never be the same around each other if they ever got out of this.
If. John wasn't really all that optimistic about that anymore.
Heavy footsteps made him look up warily to eye the four approaching Jaffa, made Rodney whisper something that might or might not have been a prayer. From what they had seen so far, there seemed to be only the one Goa'uld and seven Jaffa on this ship. Maybe they had rebelled and escaped in time, using Anubis' superior technology to come here. Maybe they had begun their journey to Pegasus a millennium ago. He didn't really care, and McKay for once wasn't in the mood to speculate.
"You will come," the head Jaffa - not a first prime, none of them were, that much Rodney had explained - announced and pointed at Rodney, who shrank back against the wall. He wasn't quite broken, not yet, and John liked to think that it was his presence that had kept the scientist sane until now. But it wouldn't take much more to destroy him, John could see it in the slump of his shoulders, in his shivers, in the way his eyes wouldn't really meet John's anymore.
He balled his hands into fists, stepping between Rodney and the three Jaffa who had entered the holding cell.
"What do you want with him?" he demanded. A hesitant touch on his shoulder silenced him.
"Don't," Rodney said, his voice rusty and bitter. "No use in both of us dying if we don't have to, Colonel, is there?"
He flashed a small, brave smile that made John's heart break a little more, and followed the Jaffa without a struggle, never turning back as they marched down the corridor.
John hated the waiting that followed. He didn't know what they were doing, wasn't there to lend his friend what little strength he could, and that alone was enough to drive him up the walls. Add to it the niggling feeling that something very, very bad was about to happen, and he was on edge, unable to sit still for any length of time, pacing around the cell more and more anxious, more and more… afraid.
The four Jaffa came back alone. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. It could mean that Rodney was still alive. It could mean that he was in the sarcophagus right now, and Sobek had gotten too bored to wait for the next round of torture.
It could mean that the Goa'uld had grown tired of them and left Rodney dead for good. The thought alone was enough to make John's stomach churn.
McKay was there when the Jaffa led John into the torture chamber, unchained, clad into simple greenish-brown clothes instead of his ruined uniform, and for one second, John felt nothing but relief. Then his friend turned, met his eyes, and John flinched back.
There was nothing in those eyes. No compassion, no friendship, none of the thousand little things Rodney had never been able to hide.
"Who are you?" he croaked, his voice tinny and hollow in his ears.
Not-Rodney grinned maliciously, his eyes flashing golden before he answered in a deep, silky voice.
"I am Bevrek. It is," he cocked his head, like listening to something only he could hear, "a pleasure to meet you, I think your kind would say."
"This won't help you. I won't give you anything," John said defiantly, although his thoughts were a litany of God, please, not this, not Rodney, not this, Rodney, please, God, no.
Rodney's crooked grin looked cruel under Bevrek's control.
"You don't understand. You don't have to give us anything. All we need to know," he tapped against the side of his head, "is right here."
"Why now? Why torture us if you could have just taken one of us all along?" And why not me, was what he didn't ask. Why not me?
"Bevrek has matured only recently," Sobek answered from somewhere behind them. "And it took us a while to decide which one of you should be taken as a host. We agreed that, as a soldier, you could be spared."
"Then why keep me alive?" John asked, because he didn't want to be; if it went down like this, he really, really didn't want to be.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Rodney's words, if not Rodney's voice, and it hurt so much that John wanted to cry. Then suddenly there was real, physical pain, a hot burning in his gut that made him gasp, didn't leave him enough air for a scream. His sight blurred, and the silky voice was purring into his ear.
"We are on our way to your city right now. We don't have to keep you alive anymore. Now, we can just… play."
"Don't… Rodney, please," he breathed through his agony, and Bevrek laughed.
"Nothing of the host remains," he answered simply, and with a sharp, searing pain, everything went dark.
Rodney was carding his fingers through John's sweat-dampened hair when he woke up again, his head propped up on the scientist's lap.
"Rodney," he whispered, blinking, wondering if maybe it had all just been a dream.
Rodney smiled down at him. "You're beautiful," he murmured, fingers still carding through John's hair. "I've always thought that."
But the smile was only close, not quite right, and John flinched back, scrambled away until his back hit the wall of the torture chamber, surprised at how weak he felt. Maybe they had taken him out of the sarcophagus too soon this time. Bevrek laughed again, a deep, amused chuckle that was so wrong coming out of Rodney's throat that John could feel a deep, sudden hatred rising inside, almost overwhelming him with its viciousness. He tried to hide it, but the Goa'uld had already noticed it, seemed even more amused.
"Shall we play a little more, then?" he asked, still smiling. "I intended to leave you dead, but your pain was truly a thing of beauty."
He nodded to a Jaffa John hadn't noticed before, who handed his master a long, sharp-looking knife.
"Restrain him," Bevrek commanded, his voice now cold and business-like as he advanced. John tried to take the Jaffa down, but he was too weak, his struggle too uncoordinated, and the Jaffa easily twisted his arms behind his back, held him.
"Rodney, please, don't do this," he begged, trying to reach his friend.
"I told you. Nothing of the host remains," Bevrek sneered, but there was a flicker in those familiar blue eyes, a flash of something that had nothing to do with the Goa'uld and his game of torture and killing.
"You're lying," John spat, smirking at the frowning Goa'uld with a conviction he didn't quite feel. "This is Rodney McKay, the brightest mind in two galaxies. He can fight you. He's stronger than this."
"Insolence," Bevrek hissed, knife hand shooting forward, and John steeled himself for a round of really nasty revenge. Only that the knife changed its angle just a fraction, stabbing the Jaffa's shoulder instead of sliding between John's ribs, and the man behind him staggered back with a surprised exclamation as Bevrek roared with fury. John broke free, smashing his elbow into the Jaffa's nose and grabbing the knife, pulled it out and sliced the man's throat in one fluid movement that was more instinct than planned action. Bevrek lunged forward, tackling him to the ground, but John's grip around the knife handle was sure and fast, his teeth clenching with hatred as he struck with all the force he could muster, burying the blade to the hilt in the side of the Goa'uld's neck. Blue eyes widened, flashed golden before they faded, before they stared vacantly into his own once again.
And just like that, it was over. Everything was… over.
John lay on the hard floor, panting, trying to catch his breath, Rodney's body a heavy weight on top of him, blood seeping from his friend's neck into his torn shirt, mixing with his own. There was so much of it, sticking the fabric to his chest with what seemed to be the only warmth in the whole room, and he chuckled quietly, a desperate sound that ended with a broken sob. Rodney's head was resting on his shoulder, and he ran his fingers through the soft brown hair.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, "so sorry."
He didn't know how long they were lying like this, Rodney's body slowly cooling out above him while he tried to gather the strength and will to move, to stand up. He didn't know how long he had been staring at the ceiling before he remembered the sarcophagus. And he really had no idea just how much time it had taken him from closing his hand around he handle once more to yanking out the knife and starting to do what had to be done.
He felt numb as he sliced through the green-brown shirt, exposing Rodney's broad, naked back. His hand was shaking as he rested the tip of the blade on pale, smooth skin near one of the top vertebrae, closed his eyes briefly against the tears that were burning behind his lids before he broke the cool flesh, slicing it open up to the point where spine met skull. The knife slid through muscle and sinews with a horrifying ease, the slick sound of parting flesh enough to make John cry for real, quiet, shaky gasps that echoed unnaturally loud in the silent room. The too familiar smell of blood was heavy in the stale air, powerful, nauseating. Rodney's blue-tipped fingers started tapping a rapid-fire drumbeat on the cold dirty floor as John's hands grabbed and pulled at the dead parasite that had wound itself around his friend's spinal chord, blood covering his arms halfway up to his elbows.
It was stuck. God help him, it was stuck, and hot tears were running across John's face, his breath hitching as he drove the knife a little further into Rodney's skull, rooting around to cut the Goa'uld loose. Rodney's body jerked, and he swallowed hard, trying desperately not to lose it, not yet, searching for the right place - there. He pulled again, and this time the slick, thin body let itself be pulled out easily. He tossed it aside, flung it across the room and against the wall, a red smear where it slid down to rest on the floor in a small, lifeless heap. Rodney's body lay still and silent before him.
"Oh God," he whispered brokenly, clutching his friend's blood-slick shoulder and crying, crying, shaking with the force of his grief, not even bothering to pull himself together. Of all the things he'd ever had to do, nothing had prepared him for this, for the horror of cutting his best friend's neck open and pulling an alien snake out of his brain. And he wished he could have been sick, wished he could have turned away, wished he could just forget this and never think of it again.
But he didn't have the time for a breakdown, Rodney needed him, and with an effort, he managed to calm himself down again, heart pounding against his chest as he rose to his feet and straightened himself up. He cleaned the blood from his arms with Rodney's ruined shirt, traces of red-brown smeared into his skin, stuck under his fingernails.
"I'll be right back," he promised the corpse on the floor. "Wait for me."
And while part of him was glad that once he had a weapon, getting grid of an unsuspecting enemy was ridiculously easy, another part wanted to wallow in blood as long as it took for that numbness inside him to fade away. Part of him wanted to kill and keep killing, even as the remaining Jaffa had met his knife and Sobek had died far more quickly than he had deserved to.
Part of him wanted to revive them all just to take their lives again and again and again.
John dragged Rodney's body along the empty corridors, to the room he had woken up in far too often to count. It felt like they had spent years on this ship, even though it couldn't have been more than two weeks. Rodney was heavy in death, and John had reached the end of his strength, so getting the body off the floor and into the sarcophagus wasn't easy. But he managed, anguish fuelling him where simple muscle couldn't, and then the lids closed, and all John could do was wait.
He tried not to think, to let the numbness inside spread and mellow him. It didn't quite work, and he counted the hieroglyphs on the walls instead, absently wondering if they would add up to a prime number. He must have nodded off at some point, because the grating sound of the sarcophagus opening caught him by surprise, and he jumped to his feet in time to see Rodney open his eyes.
"Hey, Rodney," John croaked around the lump in his throat.
Rodney blinked slowly, stared at him, blinked again.
"John," he whispered, and there really shouldn't be pieces of his heart left that were big enough to be broken, except there were, and his breath hitched again.
"Come on," he said, ignoring the way his voice wavered and reached down to clasp Rodney's warm hand. "What say we get out of here?"
He tossed him a shirt he had liberated from one of the rooms he had come across while cleaning out the mothership, and looked away as Rodney turned his back towards him when he put it on. By unspoken agreement, they made it to the engine room, where McKay sabotaged the machines so they would overload. And if John was hovering, was standing a little too close to the scientist, Rodney didn't comment on it. They still didn't talk on their way to the hangar, John following Rodney without question as he led them to one of the Death Gliders. Any other day, that name alone would have been enough for a Star Wars quip. Today, he just climbed in.
The controls were similar enough to the X-302's to make handling the alien spacecraft relatively easy. And once you had flown a Wraith Dart, anything else was just a piece of cake anyway. Rodney was a warm, solid presence in his back, clothes rustling as he moved, soothing John's frazzled nerves.
None of them looked back as they flew out of the hangar and headed for the planet Rodney had claimed to carry the closest Stargate. None of them talked as they made their way back home. Back to something approaching normalcy.
Behind them, the mothership exploded.
~~~
continued in prompt # 17, "Lack of God"