"Life Wish"
by Maisie (maisierita@comcast.net)
Rating: R for language only
Pairing/Characters: Sheppard, McKay, vaguely McShep 'coz I'm obsessed
Spoilers: Siege II
Warnings: Many run on sentences and lots of ellipsises
Disclaimer: Not mine more than any other obsessions have been. ::sniff::
Written for the 38 Minute Challenge at SGA_flashfic
He was going to die, and he was okay
with that.
Well, no, no he wasn't. Not okay with it, as such. Actually, he was about as far
from being okay with it as was possible, but that was all right, because he'd
accepted it. It was necessary.
To save Atlantis, to save Earth, to save that grungy place he used to go to get
the best Chinese food ever, to save it all, it was necessary.
So he was going to die, and yes, he'd accepted it, but no, he really wasn't okay
with it. And the worst of it was that he was fucking doing it to himself. The
Wraith were to blame, yeah, but he was going to blow himself to bits with a
nuclear bomb, so in the end, he was committing suicide. For a good cause and
all, but hey, still suicide, and that was just wrong, really, in a way he
couldn't have explained if he'd had all the time in the world, which he
definitely didn't.
He'd never had a death wish, not even at the worst times. People thought he did;
they thought that was why he was always taking stupid risks, but the fact was
that he took the risks because he had a life wish, and he figured the
best person to take a suicide mission was the one guy who was damn sure he
wanted to still be alive at the end of it.
But here he was, and there was just no way he could see this playing out that
didn't end up with him dead, and that really sucked, even though it was for a
good cause, the best cause, even. And it sucked even though it had to be
him, because it had to be done and no way in hell would he have let anyone else
do it.
The only consolation, if you could call it that, was that death -- the actual
dying part, he meant -- was going to be fast and painless. At the heart of a
nuclear explosion, you had to figure there wouldn't be time to feel anything.
It'd just be like, here one minute, gone the next, and maybe there was an
afterlife and maybe there wasn't, but he didn't expect there'd be time for much
of a journey from beginning to end.
He'd just be alive, then dead an instant later, and damn it, he was starting to
freak out about that a little, so he started thinking about strategy instead,
because he had to destroy two Wraith hive ships with one nuclear warhead, and
there would be no second chances and only one acceptable outcome.
That helped for a while. A good while, actually, and he was already on top of
the hive ships before he had any time to start freaking out again. By that time,
he was too busy dodging Wraith darts to freak out about anything except the
possibility that they'd destroy the jumper and the damn nuke would explode too
early, and he wouldn't have accomplished anything at all.
Flying he could do, and maybe there was a god after all, because if he got to
spend his last few minutes flying like this, flying like his life depended on it
-- which it did -- then just maybe that was okay. Maybe it made everything a
little bit better.
But there were Wraith darts everywhere, so fucking many of them, and they were
all shooting at him and even the best pilot in the galaxy wouldn't have been
able to avoid taking a few hits. He wondered, vaguely, about his shields and an
indicator popped up obligingly in the corner of his screen. He wished it hadn't,
then, because now he could see exactly how much shield strength remained, and it
didn't look like it'd be enough.
Fuck it, he thought savagely, it has to be enough; on Star Trek it's always
enough. The shields go down to 10%, and Engineering can't repair them in time
but then they get in the lucky shot and destroy the Romulans, and they fix the
shields between one week's episode and the next, and everything's okay by the
time the credits roll.
Another shot hit the jumper and a console exploded in his face, and since there
was no one else around, John let himself scream. Damn it, that was not
part of the deal; he was going to die but it was supposed to be fucking
painless, and having half his face blown off was just not in the script.
And now the console was fucked and he couldn't even steer, but it was okay
because he'd armed the nukes and the two hive ships were there, and yes, thank
god, he'd get them both; even if the Wraith blew the jumper to bits now, he'd
still get both ships. So he'd done it, thank god, and yeah, he was going to die,
but it didn't seem quite so bad now, since it would mean his face would stop
hurting. Which was, all things considered, a really good thing because, god
fucking damn it, it hurt, and where was the morphine when you needed it?
No time for morphine now, even if he'd had it. The whine of the reactor was
getting louder and it was down to less than a minute now, just seconds really,
and he was going to die and he was okay with it ...
... but some part of him still wasn't, and that part, the part that could still
think clearly even through the agony of the burns and the gut-twisting terror,
that part was still thinking he'd didn't want to die, he didn't want to die, he
really fucking didn't want to die.
In another part of the galaxy, someone heard him.
Two down, Rodney was thinking dully,
watching the blips on the sensor screen dim, then fade. More than two, of
course. Thousands down all over the galaxy, and too many to count on Atlantis,
but two that really hurt. Two that really mattered. First Peter, which hurt
because it was his fault, really, that Peter was stranded on that
satellite, and then John, which hurt because it was John, and he was supposed to
be the kind of hero who always almost died, but never actually got around
to doing it.
There was cheering in the control room, but it was muted, because when the two
big blips had disappeared, they'd taken a little blip with it, and John Sheppard
wasn't supposed to die. Everyone knew that.
Rodney was standing there, standing still, barely breathing, trying to work it
all out in his head, trying to make it make some sort of sense, when there was a
sudden flash of light, bright as sunlight, and suddenly Chaya was there,
cradling a bloody and unconscious John Sheppard in her arms.
Which was ridiculous, because John just been in the middle of a nuclear
explosion, and there shouldn't be a body left, you didn't end up burned and
bloody after a nuclear explosion, you ended up a puddle ...
... but then the body groaned, and coughed, and Chaya smiled and ran her fingers
gently through his hair.
"You --" Rodney said, blinking and wondering if he'd finally gone insane,
because John had just died. They'd seen it.
"He'll require medical attention."
"Yes, yes, of course he will," Rodney said, mesmerized by the steady rise and
fall of Sheppard's chest. In the background, someone was yelling for Carson to
hurry it up, already. "How did you ..."
"He called out," she said simply.
And Rodney didn't want to know that. Really, he didn't want to know that, when
dying, John Sheppard called out for his ex-Ascended ex-girlfriend, but the
jealousy was muted because for a few horrible minutes, Rodney had known that
John was dead, and now he didn't know that any more.
Chaya was shaking her head, looking indulgently at Rodney, which was, Rodney
thought, very strange and unexpected. "He didn't call out to me," she said. "I
was just the one who happened to hear."
Then without another word, she took pulled Rodney down to the ground, next to
John where he lay on the floor. "I was just to one who happened to hear," she
repeated, smiling softly. "But he wasn't calling out to me. He was calling out
to you." She took Rodney's hand, wrapped it carefully around John's -- the one
that wasn't burned -- and looked Rodney straight in the eye. "He'll want you
when he wakes."
She was gone, then, in another swirl of light, and all Rodney could see was the
rise and fall of John's chest, and to see that the burns weren't so bad, really,
and to wonder where the hell Carson was, because it turned out John hadn't
gotten around to dying after all.
And that ... that was good.