Fic: Tannhauser Gate
newkidfan and I worked together for the latest artword challenge. You can read the details of the challenge here. Below is my story and a link to newkidfan's art; more notes on the process at the end.
Title: Tannhauser Gate
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~2900 words
Summary: Atlantis didn’t love him any more than Troy loved its wooden horse.
A/N: Many, many thanks to siriaeve, fyrie, monanotlisa, luthien, and vee_fic for all their help and support. And to newkidfan, who is always an inspiration, and in this case, my partner in crime. *g*
Tannhauser Gate
She drew back, repulsed. John felt the tendrils of light and energy leave him, blinking down stupidly at the disgusted expression on her face.
“This is a vile thing,” Chaya said.
John frowned. He could still feel her tingling through him; he was dizzy. “You suggested-” he said.
“Go,” Chaya said, turning away. She was looking down at her hands, flexing the fingers like she thought them tarnished, unclean. “Go and do not come back. You or any of your,” she sneered, “people.”
John’s confusion took a sharp turn. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, huh?” he snapped. “Enjoy your exile.”
Walking stiffly back to the jumper, So much for the afterglow, he thought.
He could still remember what it felt like, the first time he stepped out of the wormhole and into Atlantis. Lights coming on all around them, welcoming them, welcoming him home.
The memory burned in the hollow space within his chest. Bitter fruit, the lies.
But most especially, the truth.
It came to him quite suddenly, sitting in the chair. His primary purpose, his main task, was unfulfilled: he could not power the jumpers remotely. But he had to protect the city. He had to protect his people.
“So long, Rodney,” he said, and moved quickly through the halls, into the jumper bay, and out, among the stars.
Later, he was pleased, obviously, not to have died. Although to be honest, he was a little surprised at his own willingness-not to risk himself, no; his unwillingness, then, not to wait, to give Rodney more time.
Standing on the balcony, watching the kamikaze darts, Rodney’s gaze drifted downward, staring at his hands. “I would have,” he said. “Found a way for you not to have to...do that.”
“Well, we’ll never know now, will we?” John said, voice tight and angry, though he didn’t know why.
“Have you thought about it?” Heightmeyer asked him. “Your own death.”
“No,” he said: a lie.
She sat back, regarded him slowly. “Do you believe in life after death?”
“You mean God?” His answer in his tone, in the way he phrased the question.
Her expression was open, her demeanor unfazed. “God, the soul, reincarnation: any kind of continuation of self...”
“No.”
Definitive. Though it was, he realized later, a lie as well. He thought about how people would remember him. And that mattered. Memory.
“Tell me,” Rodney would sometimes say, “about the town where you grew up.”
John didn’t generally like answering questions about his past, but there was something wonderfully innocuous about sharing anecdotes from his early childhood. Also, it was odd, and oddly pleasurable, to watch Rodney react: he actually listened-quiet, lips pressed together, firm. His eyes would flicker across John’s face, and he’d smile at all the right moments; chuckle at all the right moments; look nostalgic and slightly sad at all the right moments, too.
Football and Ferris wheels and hot summer nights.
“What about you, McKay?” he asked once. “How does the typical Canadian youth compare?”
Rodney’s face shut down. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said. And he never did.
He caught Rodney staring at him a lot. Especially in the beginning, when those sort of looks were more understandable: they didn’t know each other. “Seven hundred and twenty,” he’d say, and Rodney’s eyes would swivel to his: stare.
But it had been more than two years, now, and still sometimes he caught Rodney looking, looking. Like John was some strange creature he’d conjured up, one who would disappear the moment he rose to full consciousness, the instant his eyes opened, and he woke up.
On M7O-448, they found an Ancient outpost, and in it, a living, breathing Ancient.
He was in stasis, but unlike the crew of the Aurora, his body had not aged past the point of viability. “He could have information we need,” Rodney said, as nervous and excited, he set about waking the Ancient up. Blinking to life, an old man with a serious face. Even after they pulled him out of the stasis unit, there were still wires trailing from his skull. He looked at each of them, neck moving awkwardly, stiff, his eyes milky with cataracts.
Rodney had opened his mouth, prepared to pepper him with questions, when the Ancient’s gaze suddenly settled on John. His eyes went wide-“Blasphemy!” he declared. “Vile, blasphemous thing-”
John saw him reach for his weapon, but somehow Rodney was faster, Rodney was faster, his hands unshaking, his aim true. The Ancient collapsed back into the stasis unit, eyes closing for good. His blood was startlingly red against the ashy white skin, the bubble of plastic.
“What is the matter with you?” John demanded, turning on Rodney. “You said he’d have valuable information-now you're all shoot first, ask questions later?”
“He was going to shoot you!” Rodney protested, the gun once again inert in his hand.
“Ronon has a stunner!”
Ronon’s fingers were even on the trigger; he looked surprised and a little miffed that McKay had somehow beaten him to the draw.
“I’m sorry!” Rodney said, and he did sound sorry. Really, really sorry. “It...it was an instinct, I...”
The look he was giving John suggested that he was worried that the Ancient had managed to get a shot off before Rodney had killed him.
“Explain that to Elizabeth,” John said.
John wasn’t present when Rodney justified himself, but what he said must have been very convincing, because he never heard her speak a word of censure.
When he asked her about it, she looked at him with weary eyes and launched into a tired speech about the stresses of war. About the sacrifices and the hard choices you had to make, the distasteful things you had to do. Like John didn’t already know about that. Like he didn’t know.
It was clear. So very, very clear. Press the button. Close the shield. The city preferred itself protected, and the Genii weren’t welcome here.
It wasn’t till later, when he was smiling and laughing with Elizabeth, that he realized that he’d killed more than sixty people.
He envied Ronon’s violent, pure hatred for the Wraith they captured. Hatred was simple. John thought he remembered a time when his own emotions had been simpler. He missed it.
But now when Beckett turned pale and with shaking hands, dropped the scissors to the floor, it was John who picked them up. It was John who brushed the long hair away from the unconscious face, who made one cut and then another, snipping away, letting the pieces fall. It was John who gave him a name: casually, the word tripping off his tongue.
Michael, he thought later, patron saint of soldiers.
John didn’t remember learning that. He knew it all the same.
In retrospect, he knew there was something a little odd about it. General O’Neill casually letting him follow him into a top secret government facility, then leaving him alone to wander. Don’t touch anything: nudge nudge, wink wink.
He would have questioned it more at the time, but he was too captivated by the chair, by what he had done. The entire universe conjured into being above his head, lighting up around him: like this was what he was made to do.
Sumner never liked him, never trusted him (except, maybe, in that last moment). John had lots of theories as to why. Because Sumner was a Marine, and John was Air Force; because John wasn’t one of Sumner’s own people, hand-picked and trained; because John was new. Unconventional.
Because of his record. Because of the reports that quietly changed hands, folders pressed tightly closed, paper rustling. Sumner looked at John and his eyes said Mark, marked, black mark. Like it was something tattooed on John’s forehead, something shining out from the center of his eyes.
John knew that he had made mistakes, done wrong things, somewhere out there in the deserts of Afghanistan, somewhere sweaty and dusty and hot. But the sands swirled in his mind, rotating like a wheel, and instead he saw, he felt: the warm glow of the carnival midway, bright bulbs lighting up at his approach, just like Atlantis, coming alive when he stepped inside.
And then the sands swirled again, became flurries of white, Antarctica. Soft snow crunching underneath his boots as he stepped out into the light, blinking. He’d liked Antarctica. It felt real in a way Afghanistan never had.
Death hadn’t felt real either, or at least he’d let the arctic snows numb him to it. Then Sumner had looked at him with trust in his eyes, and John had pulled the trigger, and believed.
People had asked him: When did you know you wanted to be a pilot?
Always, he would answer, always.
And it was true. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known exactly what his true purpose was, what he was meant for.
He hadn’t been particularly coherent at the time (sand and snow swirling in again) but he had an odd memory from one of the long nights during the Iratus bug/retrovirus incident. Lying in an infirmary bed, his body turning into an alien, inhuman thing, and hearing Elizabeth’s voice: quiet and calm, but underlined with worry. “...Side-effect of the replication process?”
“No.” Carson, hushed. “I would think it would make him less vulnerable, not more.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good. They’re looking for an excuse to retire him. They say he’s served his purpose. Become dangerous, uncontrollable.”
“That’s not true!” Rodney, cutting in, harsh and angry. “Elizabeth, you can’t-”
“I’m fighting it. Every step of the way...”
Carson shifting, looking toward him. “It may not matter, soon, anyway.”
“It matters.” Rodney. Almost a true whisper. “Goddammit, it matters.”
He had nightmares for months after: of cold, white rooms; of Beckett leaning over him, chipping the blue scales off his skin; of each of them whispering into his ear in turn, funneling their secrets into his empty head.
Heightmeyer assured him it was perfectly normal.
Sometimes John felt disconnected from the people around him. He knew he had to protect them, and he wanted to, but he walked through the halls and they were just a blur of faces. The city: that was what was real. That was what he felt a connection with. The people meant nothing.
Heightmeyer assured him that this was perfectly normal, too.
“You have a guitar in your room,” Rodney asked him once. “Do you know how to play it?”
“Yes,” John answered. He was good, too.
“Do you play any other instruments?”
There was an odd look in Rodney’s eyes. Anticipatory, John thought. Lips gently parted, searching John’s face.
He felt himself nodding. “Piano.”
Rodney’s smile was a little shaky-but then, that might have to do with the poison gas he’d inhaled. Sometimes it felt like the city itself was fighting them, trying to drive them out; but that was just Rodney’s negativity, John thought, quietly contagious. Atlantis still cleaved to him.
“Tell me about it.”
John scooted closer to the infirmary bed. It didn’t cost him anything, to give Rodney this. Besides: he wanted to.
He told Rodney how he’d started playing at a very young age, how his parents had always encouraged him, how when he was twelve, his teacher had told him that he had the skill-the talent-to play professionally if he wanted to. “But I wanted to fly.”
“Do you still play?” Rodney asked.
John shrugged. There were no pianos in Atlantis.
“I’d like to hear you sometime,” Rodney said, a look of relief on his face as he drifted off to sleep.
One night Chaya came to him, solidifying out of a wriggling knot of light. “I have thought about this for many cycles,” she said. “You are divided from those you would call your people, just as I am. But my choices were mine, whereas yours were not your fault. It is only right that I tell you.”
“You’re lying,” he told her later, his cheeks damp.
All she said was, “I’m sorry.”
He walked through the city and she lit up around him. But not welcoming, he realized now: she was frightened, terrified. Cowering.
Atlantis didn’t love him any more than Troy loved its wooden horse.
He stopped at Rodney’s room, and the door bowed open before him, like a conquered servant.
Rodney was a sound sleeper, but with a mental scream, John scared the lights to full brightness. “What? What?” Rodney asked, sitting up in bed, blinking, eyes widening when he saw John standing there. There was a current of fear in his gaze; John didn’t think he could take that, Rodney being frightened of him, too.
But maybe he should be.
“You,” John said. “You knew.”
“Knew what?” Rodney asked, after a moment. But Rodney wasn’t stupid, and neither was John.
“Was it Beckett?” John asked. “Was he the one who...?”
Rodney swallowed thickly, looking down. “Carson was hired to oversee the project, yes. He. It was primarily his-”
“I was primarily his, you mean.” John’s voice was flat. His mind was off somewhere, racing a million miles a minute, flipping through that scrapbook of memories that Rodney was so fond of perusing with-
“You-you helped,” John said suddenly, and was perversely pleased with the expression of sick self-loathing he saw on Rodney’s face. Other than Project Arcturus, he’d never seen Rodney look anything other than proud of his own work.
“Yes,” Rodney admitted. “I-” and then he gave it up, any hope of an excuse.
“What did you give me?” John asked, circling. “What’s yours?” His eyes flickered over Rodney, sitting slumped and defeated in the middle of the bed; remembered Rodney, wracked with pain on an infirmary cot, asking John to tell him stories. “My mind, right? My memories?”
He could tell from Rodney’s face that Rodney knew it was pointless, but still he said, “I gave you a happy childhood, at least.”
“Yours?” John spat.
Rodney said, “No.”
“And what about,” John swallowed, not bothering to try to unclench his fists, “what happened to my parents, to Mitch and Dex, Afghanistan-was that your creation, too?”
Rodney shook his head. “Doctor Heightmeyer thought that certain psychological traits would aid in...”
“In making me disposable. Self-destructive, even.” He’d never felt more mechanical, machine-like, than he did now, spitting out these phrases that Rodney couldn’t bring himself to say. “Why?”
“What?” Rodney asked. He looked miserable. Good, John thought.
“Why,” he said, slow, deliberate, coming at Rodney now, a straight line, “did you do this?”
Rodney was silent for a moment. Then, “We needed the gene,” he said. “It-it’s even more rare, more weak, than we’ve led you-everyone-to believe. In, in humans.”
“Beckett-” John started.
“No.” Rodney’s hands were flat at his sides; John had never seen him talk so much without gesturing, waving his hands. “He and General O’Neill, they’re two of the only known manifestations, and in them it’s still too weak, not viable. We needed a, a fusion. A human created around the gene. We made you.” Rodney chanced a glance up, but only for a second. “The necessary link...your artificially created genetic material was strong enough to be shared. Imperfectly, maybe, but we could finally make use of Ancient technology, access the city. Have some hope of, of-”
John sank down onto a chair across from the bed, his eyes heavy on Rodney’s slumped form. “And I’m supposed to believe that you’re the good guys.”
Rodney snorted. “Please. I’m not even sure if I believe that anymore.
“Are you going to kill me?” Rodney asked a moment later.
John was too tired even to make a joke, to fuck with him out of spite. “No,” he said. “No, Doctor Tyrell, I’m not.”
“Oh,” Rodney said, and John told himself that any trace of disappointment was just his imagination.
“Can you play the piano, Rodney?” John asked, just as Rodney said, “I can help you get away from here.”
After a moment, “The piano, Rodney,” John prompted.
Rodney still hadn’t moved from his initial position of sleepy-eyed rising. “Yes,” he said, sparing a quick glance at John. Then looking away: “Not very well.”
“Can I, do you think?” John asked. He felt oddly calm, and deliberately quieted his brain when it started supplying-screaming-suggestions as to why.
“I-I don’t know,” Rodney said. “You’re,” and now he did meet John’s gaze, “you’re nothing like I-like what we were expecting.”
John was about to make a crack about Frankenstein’s monster when Rodney said, “But I think you’d play beautifully.”
His hands on Rodney’s body, summoning small, murmured apologies and sweet, drawn-out notes of pleasure. He could fuck Rodney like a man, a man who wanted things like this, and Rodney could take it, would take it, would take anything John chose to throw at him. Even death.
In the dark, “I would take a bullet for you,” Rodney whispered.
I am a bullet, John thought.
“You’re beautiful,” Rodney whispered. “We didn’t do anything to make you beautiful: you just are.”
But I had to be beautiful, John thought, or else she wouldn’t let me in.
“Forgive me,” Rodney whispered. “Forgive me, please, please.”
John didn’t know what to say. His natural instincts were meaningless; he needed to learn to handle these situations as they had taught him, as a living, breathing human would.
Then he realized that he had learned plenty.
Turning, he kissed Rodney’s forehead softly and whispered beautiful lies.
The concept of the latest artword challenge involved the writer and the artist working from the same prompt-the Suzanne Vega song Wooden Horse-but not discussing anything but the main characters we would both be focusing on. Then, halfway through the challenge, we exchanged glimpses of our work to date. You can see both of these glimpses, and my brief notes on the changes I made, here.
Title: Tannhauser Gate
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~2900 words
Summary: Atlantis didn’t love him any more than Troy loved its wooden horse.
A/N: Many, many thanks to siriaeve, fyrie, monanotlisa, luthien, and vee_fic for all their help and support. And to newkidfan, who is always an inspiration, and in this case, my partner in crime. *g*
Tannhauser Gate
She drew back, repulsed. John felt the tendrils of light and energy leave him, blinking down stupidly at the disgusted expression on her face.
“This is a vile thing,” Chaya said.
John frowned. He could still feel her tingling through him; he was dizzy. “You suggested-” he said.
“Go,” Chaya said, turning away. She was looking down at her hands, flexing the fingers like she thought them tarnished, unclean. “Go and do not come back. You or any of your,” she sneered, “people.”
John’s confusion took a sharp turn. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, huh?” he snapped. “Enjoy your exile.”
Walking stiffly back to the jumper, So much for the afterglow, he thought.
He could still remember what it felt like, the first time he stepped out of the wormhole and into Atlantis. Lights coming on all around them, welcoming them, welcoming him home.
The memory burned in the hollow space within his chest. Bitter fruit, the lies.
But most especially, the truth.
It came to him quite suddenly, sitting in the chair. His primary purpose, his main task, was unfulfilled: he could not power the jumpers remotely. But he had to protect the city. He had to protect his people.
“So long, Rodney,” he said, and moved quickly through the halls, into the jumper bay, and out, among the stars.
Later, he was pleased, obviously, not to have died. Although to be honest, he was a little surprised at his own willingness-not to risk himself, no; his unwillingness, then, not to wait, to give Rodney more time.
Standing on the balcony, watching the kamikaze darts, Rodney’s gaze drifted downward, staring at his hands. “I would have,” he said. “Found a way for you not to have to...do that.”
“Well, we’ll never know now, will we?” John said, voice tight and angry, though he didn’t know why.
“Have you thought about it?” Heightmeyer asked him. “Your own death.”
“No,” he said: a lie.
She sat back, regarded him slowly. “Do you believe in life after death?”
“You mean God?” His answer in his tone, in the way he phrased the question.
Her expression was open, her demeanor unfazed. “God, the soul, reincarnation: any kind of continuation of self...”
“No.”
Definitive. Though it was, he realized later, a lie as well. He thought about how people would remember him. And that mattered. Memory.
“Tell me,” Rodney would sometimes say, “about the town where you grew up.”
John didn’t generally like answering questions about his past, but there was something wonderfully innocuous about sharing anecdotes from his early childhood. Also, it was odd, and oddly pleasurable, to watch Rodney react: he actually listened-quiet, lips pressed together, firm. His eyes would flicker across John’s face, and he’d smile at all the right moments; chuckle at all the right moments; look nostalgic and slightly sad at all the right moments, too.
Football and Ferris wheels and hot summer nights.
“What about you, McKay?” he asked once. “How does the typical Canadian youth compare?”
Rodney’s face shut down. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said. And he never did.
He caught Rodney staring at him a lot. Especially in the beginning, when those sort of looks were more understandable: they didn’t know each other. “Seven hundred and twenty,” he’d say, and Rodney’s eyes would swivel to his: stare.
But it had been more than two years, now, and still sometimes he caught Rodney looking, looking. Like John was some strange creature he’d conjured up, one who would disappear the moment he rose to full consciousness, the instant his eyes opened, and he woke up.
On M7O-448, they found an Ancient outpost, and in it, a living, breathing Ancient.
He was in stasis, but unlike the crew of the Aurora, his body had not aged past the point of viability. “He could have information we need,” Rodney said, as nervous and excited, he set about waking the Ancient up. Blinking to life, an old man with a serious face. Even after they pulled him out of the stasis unit, there were still wires trailing from his skull. He looked at each of them, neck moving awkwardly, stiff, his eyes milky with cataracts.
Rodney had opened his mouth, prepared to pepper him with questions, when the Ancient’s gaze suddenly settled on John. His eyes went wide-“Blasphemy!” he declared. “Vile, blasphemous thing-”
John saw him reach for his weapon, but somehow Rodney was faster, Rodney was faster, his hands unshaking, his aim true. The Ancient collapsed back into the stasis unit, eyes closing for good. His blood was startlingly red against the ashy white skin, the bubble of plastic.
“What is the matter with you?” John demanded, turning on Rodney. “You said he’d have valuable information-now you're all shoot first, ask questions later?”
“He was going to shoot you!” Rodney protested, the gun once again inert in his hand.
“Ronon has a stunner!”
Ronon’s fingers were even on the trigger; he looked surprised and a little miffed that McKay had somehow beaten him to the draw.
“I’m sorry!” Rodney said, and he did sound sorry. Really, really sorry. “It...it was an instinct, I...”
The look he was giving John suggested that he was worried that the Ancient had managed to get a shot off before Rodney had killed him.
“Explain that to Elizabeth,” John said.
John wasn’t present when Rodney justified himself, but what he said must have been very convincing, because he never heard her speak a word of censure.
When he asked her about it, she looked at him with weary eyes and launched into a tired speech about the stresses of war. About the sacrifices and the hard choices you had to make, the distasteful things you had to do. Like John didn’t already know about that. Like he didn’t know.
It was clear. So very, very clear. Press the button. Close the shield. The city preferred itself protected, and the Genii weren’t welcome here.
It wasn’t till later, when he was smiling and laughing with Elizabeth, that he realized that he’d killed more than sixty people.
He envied Ronon’s violent, pure hatred for the Wraith they captured. Hatred was simple. John thought he remembered a time when his own emotions had been simpler. He missed it.
But now when Beckett turned pale and with shaking hands, dropped the scissors to the floor, it was John who picked them up. It was John who brushed the long hair away from the unconscious face, who made one cut and then another, snipping away, letting the pieces fall. It was John who gave him a name: casually, the word tripping off his tongue.
Michael, he thought later, patron saint of soldiers.
John didn’t remember learning that. He knew it all the same.
In retrospect, he knew there was something a little odd about it. General O’Neill casually letting him follow him into a top secret government facility, then leaving him alone to wander. Don’t touch anything: nudge nudge, wink wink.
He would have questioned it more at the time, but he was too captivated by the chair, by what he had done. The entire universe conjured into being above his head, lighting up around him: like this was what he was made to do.
Sumner never liked him, never trusted him (except, maybe, in that last moment). John had lots of theories as to why. Because Sumner was a Marine, and John was Air Force; because John wasn’t one of Sumner’s own people, hand-picked and trained; because John was new. Unconventional.
Because of his record. Because of the reports that quietly changed hands, folders pressed tightly closed, paper rustling. Sumner looked at John and his eyes said Mark, marked, black mark. Like it was something tattooed on John’s forehead, something shining out from the center of his eyes.
John knew that he had made mistakes, done wrong things, somewhere out there in the deserts of Afghanistan, somewhere sweaty and dusty and hot. But the sands swirled in his mind, rotating like a wheel, and instead he saw, he felt: the warm glow of the carnival midway, bright bulbs lighting up at his approach, just like Atlantis, coming alive when he stepped inside.
And then the sands swirled again, became flurries of white, Antarctica. Soft snow crunching underneath his boots as he stepped out into the light, blinking. He’d liked Antarctica. It felt real in a way Afghanistan never had.
Death hadn’t felt real either, or at least he’d let the arctic snows numb him to it. Then Sumner had looked at him with trust in his eyes, and John had pulled the trigger, and believed.
People had asked him: When did you know you wanted to be a pilot?
Always, he would answer, always.
And it was true. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known exactly what his true purpose was, what he was meant for.
He hadn’t been particularly coherent at the time (sand and snow swirling in again) but he had an odd memory from one of the long nights during the Iratus bug/retrovirus incident. Lying in an infirmary bed, his body turning into an alien, inhuman thing, and hearing Elizabeth’s voice: quiet and calm, but underlined with worry. “...Side-effect of the replication process?”
“No.” Carson, hushed. “I would think it would make him less vulnerable, not more.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good. They’re looking for an excuse to retire him. They say he’s served his purpose. Become dangerous, uncontrollable.”
“That’s not true!” Rodney, cutting in, harsh and angry. “Elizabeth, you can’t-”
“I’m fighting it. Every step of the way...”
Carson shifting, looking toward him. “It may not matter, soon, anyway.”
“It matters.” Rodney. Almost a true whisper. “Goddammit, it matters.”
He had nightmares for months after: of cold, white rooms; of Beckett leaning over him, chipping the blue scales off his skin; of each of them whispering into his ear in turn, funneling their secrets into his empty head.
Heightmeyer assured him it was perfectly normal.
Sometimes John felt disconnected from the people around him. He knew he had to protect them, and he wanted to, but he walked through the halls and they were just a blur of faces. The city: that was what was real. That was what he felt a connection with. The people meant nothing.
Heightmeyer assured him that this was perfectly normal, too.
“You have a guitar in your room,” Rodney asked him once. “Do you know how to play it?”
“Yes,” John answered. He was good, too.
“Do you play any other instruments?”
There was an odd look in Rodney’s eyes. Anticipatory, John thought. Lips gently parted, searching John’s face.
He felt himself nodding. “Piano.”
Rodney’s smile was a little shaky-but then, that might have to do with the poison gas he’d inhaled. Sometimes it felt like the city itself was fighting them, trying to drive them out; but that was just Rodney’s negativity, John thought, quietly contagious. Atlantis still cleaved to him.
“Tell me about it.”
John scooted closer to the infirmary bed. It didn’t cost him anything, to give Rodney this. Besides: he wanted to.
He told Rodney how he’d started playing at a very young age, how his parents had always encouraged him, how when he was twelve, his teacher had told him that he had the skill-the talent-to play professionally if he wanted to. “But I wanted to fly.”
“Do you still play?” Rodney asked.
John shrugged. There were no pianos in Atlantis.
“I’d like to hear you sometime,” Rodney said, a look of relief on his face as he drifted off to sleep.
One night Chaya came to him, solidifying out of a wriggling knot of light. “I have thought about this for many cycles,” she said. “You are divided from those you would call your people, just as I am. But my choices were mine, whereas yours were not your fault. It is only right that I tell you.”
“You’re lying,” he told her later, his cheeks damp.
All she said was, “I’m sorry.”
He walked through the city and she lit up around him. But not welcoming, he realized now: she was frightened, terrified. Cowering.
Atlantis didn’t love him any more than Troy loved its wooden horse.
He stopped at Rodney’s room, and the door bowed open before him, like a conquered servant.
Rodney was a sound sleeper, but with a mental scream, John scared the lights to full brightness. “What? What?” Rodney asked, sitting up in bed, blinking, eyes widening when he saw John standing there. There was a current of fear in his gaze; John didn’t think he could take that, Rodney being frightened of him, too.
But maybe he should be.
“You,” John said. “You knew.”
“Knew what?” Rodney asked, after a moment. But Rodney wasn’t stupid, and neither was John.
“Was it Beckett?” John asked. “Was he the one who...?”
Rodney swallowed thickly, looking down. “Carson was hired to oversee the project, yes. He. It was primarily his-”
“I was primarily his, you mean.” John’s voice was flat. His mind was off somewhere, racing a million miles a minute, flipping through that scrapbook of memories that Rodney was so fond of perusing with-
“You-you helped,” John said suddenly, and was perversely pleased with the expression of sick self-loathing he saw on Rodney’s face. Other than Project Arcturus, he’d never seen Rodney look anything other than proud of his own work.
“Yes,” Rodney admitted. “I-” and then he gave it up, any hope of an excuse.
“What did you give me?” John asked, circling. “What’s yours?” His eyes flickered over Rodney, sitting slumped and defeated in the middle of the bed; remembered Rodney, wracked with pain on an infirmary cot, asking John to tell him stories. “My mind, right? My memories?”
He could tell from Rodney’s face that Rodney knew it was pointless, but still he said, “I gave you a happy childhood, at least.”
“Yours?” John spat.
Rodney said, “No.”
“And what about,” John swallowed, not bothering to try to unclench his fists, “what happened to my parents, to Mitch and Dex, Afghanistan-was that your creation, too?”
Rodney shook his head. “Doctor Heightmeyer thought that certain psychological traits would aid in...”
“In making me disposable. Self-destructive, even.” He’d never felt more mechanical, machine-like, than he did now, spitting out these phrases that Rodney couldn’t bring himself to say. “Why?”
“What?” Rodney asked. He looked miserable. Good, John thought.
“Why,” he said, slow, deliberate, coming at Rodney now, a straight line, “did you do this?”
Rodney was silent for a moment. Then, “We needed the gene,” he said. “It-it’s even more rare, more weak, than we’ve led you-everyone-to believe. In, in humans.”
“Beckett-” John started.
“No.” Rodney’s hands were flat at his sides; John had never seen him talk so much without gesturing, waving his hands. “He and General O’Neill, they’re two of the only known manifestations, and in them it’s still too weak, not viable. We needed a, a fusion. A human created around the gene. We made you.” Rodney chanced a glance up, but only for a second. “The necessary link...your artificially created genetic material was strong enough to be shared. Imperfectly, maybe, but we could finally make use of Ancient technology, access the city. Have some hope of, of-”
John sank down onto a chair across from the bed, his eyes heavy on Rodney’s slumped form. “And I’m supposed to believe that you’re the good guys.”
Rodney snorted. “Please. I’m not even sure if I believe that anymore.
“Are you going to kill me?” Rodney asked a moment later.
John was too tired even to make a joke, to fuck with him out of spite. “No,” he said. “No, Doctor Tyrell, I’m not.”
“Oh,” Rodney said, and John told himself that any trace of disappointment was just his imagination.
“Can you play the piano, Rodney?” John asked, just as Rodney said, “I can help you get away from here.”
After a moment, “The piano, Rodney,” John prompted.
Rodney still hadn’t moved from his initial position of sleepy-eyed rising. “Yes,” he said, sparing a quick glance at John. Then looking away: “Not very well.”
“Can I, do you think?” John asked. He felt oddly calm, and deliberately quieted his brain when it started supplying-screaming-suggestions as to why.
“I-I don’t know,” Rodney said. “You’re,” and now he did meet John’s gaze, “you’re nothing like I-like what we were expecting.”
John was about to make a crack about Frankenstein’s monster when Rodney said, “But I think you’d play beautifully.”
His hands on Rodney’s body, summoning small, murmured apologies and sweet, drawn-out notes of pleasure. He could fuck Rodney like a man, a man who wanted things like this, and Rodney could take it, would take it, would take anything John chose to throw at him. Even death.
In the dark, “I would take a bullet for you,” Rodney whispered.
I am a bullet, John thought.
“You’re beautiful,” Rodney whispered. “We didn’t do anything to make you beautiful: you just are.”
But I had to be beautiful, John thought, or else she wouldn’t let me in.
“Forgive me,” Rodney whispered. “Forgive me, please, please.”
John didn’t know what to say. His natural instincts were meaningless; he needed to learn to handle these situations as they had taught him, as a living, breathing human would.
Then he realized that he had learned plenty.
Turning, he kissed Rodney’s forehead softly and whispered beautiful lies.
The concept of the latest artword challenge involved the writer and the artist working from the same prompt-the Suzanne Vega song Wooden Horse-but not discussing anything but the main characters we would both be focusing on. Then, halfway through the challenge, we exchanged glimpses of our work to date. You can see both of these glimpses, and my brief notes on the changes I made, here.