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cherryTitle: An Undone War Still Wages
Characters/Pairing: Ensemble, Jack Harkness/Rodney McKay.
Rating: 14A
Notes: Written as my third-straight pinch hit for Multiverse. One of these years, I will actually make the sign-up deadline. Many thanks are extended to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tellitslant for emergency beta. No specific spoilers for Who, end of season one for SGA.
There are always casualties.
An Undone War Still Wages
by Cherry Ice .
Time, like smoke, curls in eddies about them. Rose is laughing as Jack speaks, her head tossed back and one hand to her mouth. Jack's eyes are crinkled, and he is making expansive gestures with his arms. Time drifts easily between Rose's fingers, wraps slowly around Jack at mid-calf, denim fading almost imperceptibly in its wake.
Beneath the Doctor's feet, the hum of the TARDIS changes, the uneven thrum of her engines smoothing. He knows a fraction of a second before it happens, because the eddies whirl madly, drift to one side as if caught in a breeze. There is something that might be anticipation in her as they hurtle faster and faster through the vortex, lights in the console room flickering.
"Doctor?" Rose asks. Her fingers are twined together over her stomach, and she's watching him carefully. Jack, behind her, has his head cocked, listening to the engines. The Doctor is standing immobile with one hand pressed firmly to the console; he realizes, belatedly, that it's not the first time she's called his name.
"Everything all right?" Rose asks.
"Oh ye of little faith," he says, feeling a grin that's all teeth bloom across his face, watching Jack as his eyes dance across the controls. "We've arrived," he says, three seconds before the engines grind to a halt. There's an almost pleased sort of sigh as the TARDIS lands, and the Doctor bounds over to the door.
"Well?" he asks when Rose and Jack lag behind. There's a hum picking away at the back of his skull, muffled and small with pointed edges. "What are you lot standing about lollygagging for?"
He knows before the door swings open that he will not see Beijing.
*
This is a war zone, or the aftermath thereof. Sheppard is jogging through the corridors with a pack of marines on his heels (marines fresh off the Daedalus, they have not been awake for thirty-six, forty-eight hours like his own), trying to ignore the places where wires and circuits extend through broken walls, the scorch marks of weapon blasts.
There's a distant claxon somewhere, wheezing, and he wonders which system has broken down now. There's a couple of scientists in the adjacent hall, working to pull the power conduits back together. He recognizes the Czech swears over the steady pounding of boots. A dead Wraith has been unceremoniously dumped into a corner, and there is human blood dried across the floor, footprints standing out in stark relief.
"Go on," he says to the marines, pointing down the corridor, and he breaks off. Zelenka yelps as he withdraws a hand from the wall, cursing, smell of ozone and singed flesh following him. His eyes are too bright, shadows beneath them like bruises. His hands are shaking as he paces, hair matted and forehead shiny. Simpson, hands still in the wall and tongue caught between her teeth, is grey with fatigue. Her blonde hair is stringy and there are strands plastered to her face she doesn't seem to have the energy to push away. Her uniform has a rip on the shoulder, and the right knee is missing.
"Get out of here," Sheppard says.
Zelenka starts speaking, words tumbling over each other and arms waving. It is all consonants and sonorants, and Simpson doesn't even lift her head in acknowledgment.
"He's right," a voice behind Sheppard says, unfamiliar and slightly amused. "They don't get that fixed up, and this entire section is going to be channeling three megavolts."
"You think this is funny?" Sheppard asks, rounding. The speaker is dark-haired and not alone.
"Never found much funny about the threat of imminent electrocution," the other man says. There's a girl with him, light hair and dark roots, looking pale as her eyes fix on the blood spilled across the metal. There's a man as well, close-cropped hair and one hand pressed to the wall. They are all jeans and leather and peroxide, and not a one of them looks military.
There's another spark of electricity in the wall, smell of burning wire and insulation. Simpson, fresh soot streaked across her palm, barely flinches. "Yeah, well," Sheppard says, "that may be, but I don't know if they're actually doing any good here." He knows Zelenka has been up for more than forty-eight hours, popping stimulants from Beckett with increasing frequency. Twelve hours ago, he walked past Simpson, asleep in the main lab with an alarm clock counting backwards from thirty-five minutes, but he's not sure how long it had been before that.
"More harm than good, actually," the second man says. His eyes focus behind Sheppard. "They're about five minutes away from throwing the entire system into an exponentially building loop."
The first man is already at the wall, crouching beside Simpson, pulling her back. She resists weakly, but lets him ease her away. The girl has an arm around the other woman's shoulders as the first man reaches into the wall.
Sheppard opens his mouth, but his headset blares to life. There's an incident on the east pier, McKay's voice high and strained as he rattles off numbers and probabilities and berates the intelligence of every single scientist assigned to his team. His security escort cuts in, Wraith moving on their position, and Sheppard is off and running.
*
Jack's attention is focussed on the wires before him, the Doctor working beside him with his mouth in a set line. Rose's arm has long since been shaken from around Simpson, and she is leaning against a wall, shoulders hunched and drawn in on herself. There's blood across one cheek and staining the stomach of her uniform. All she'll say is that most of it isn't hers. Her hands are scorched and sliced, pale skin covered with blisters and soot. Zelenka is supervising Jack and the Doctor, hovering, shaking of his hands evident even though he has them fisted in his pockets.
"Come on," she says, taking Simpson gently by the arm. "Let's get your hands taken care of."
"Go," the Doctor says, not looking up.
The doctors in the infirmary look almost as bad as their patients, two-day stubble and creased uniforms. All of the beds are taken, and there are people lain out in the hall, stretching to both ends of the corridor. One of the nurses, fresher-looking in a uniform different than those around him, disinfects Simpson's hands and wraps them in white gauze.
"What happened here?" she asks, snagging one of the doctors as he brushes by her.
"The Wraith, dear," he says, Scottish accent thick, voice so very, very tired. Rose is whole and healthy and painfully out of place; when he pushes bandages and butterfly clips into her hands she does what she can do.
*
Jack pushes back from the wall, grease and soot worked into the palms of his hands, his fingers. There's a burn on the fourth finger of his left hand, and he caught himself on something at some point, scrape down his forearm bleeding sluggishly. The Doctor is standing a few feet away, one palm pressed tightly to the battle-scarred metal of the wall, eyes closed-off and head tilted to the side.
Zelenka is still moving back and forth, feet releasing with a pop whenever he steps in the tacky blood. His cursing is becoming less inventive, words slurring together, fading to prayer and pleas for his family and friends. Jack, whose lips were curled at his tirade, realizes only belatedly that he is probably listening to something Zelenka thinks is private, TARDIS translating something he's not supposed to hear.
"Doctor?" he asks, but it is Zelenka who turns.
"Yes?" Zelenka says, face eyes suddenly sharp. "You are new, yes, Daedalus?"
Jack looks to the Doctor for guidance, but he's staring at a point on the ceiling halfway down the hall. "Got it in one," he says.
Zelenka is nodding. "We generally do not use the honourific," he says. "Too many doctorals in one room makes it inconvenient."
"Right," Jack says. "Of course." He is watching Zelenka as he wavers on his feet, is ready to step forward and catch him when he falls.
"Take care of him," the Doctor says.
Jack, on his knees, shifts Zelenka's body in his arms. When he looks up, the Doctor is striding purposefully down the corridor, lights springing to life as he passes them.
*
The puddle jumper is a proper space ship, dimensions that match inside and out making it seem somehow more human. As it rises from the launch bay, Rose catches a single long look at the building before her (only it's not a building, it's a city, a city on an ocean with a great domed field stretching above it). The city is all spires and arcs, the lines ruined here and there by broken towers, by missing windows with soot around their edges. She catches her breath at it, at the ocean extending endlessly around them.
"Homing," the pilot says, eyes fixed on the holographic displays before him. The flight is almost noiseless, smooth, and she finds that she longs for the comfort of an engine thrum. There are two marines, apart from the pilot, and she and an orderly sit in the back section. The bench seat beneath her is warm to the touch, and she curls her fingers around the edges as they swoop along the border where the forcefield meets the ocean.
"Got him," the pilot says, and the jumper slows to an almost violent halt. One of the marines strips down to a wet suit, and launches out the rear door as it opens, sliding into the turbulence with hardly a splash.
It's probably only two minutes, three before he reappears, but Rose is well aware of the way time can stretch out. When they see him, he is not alone, one arm hooked around an unresisting body. "He's alive!" the marine calls, face twisting away from the spray.
Rose cradles his head on her lap as the orderly does his job. He's not that much older than her, Mickey's age, hair and the colour of his skin an almost painful reminder. He twists a bit, burnt half of his face immobile. His eyes open once, wide and empty, left one black as night.
"Goddamn Wraith," she hears one of the marines mutter.
"Shhh," she whispers, and touches her forehead to his.
*
Rodney wakes in his own quarters, blankets twisted tightly around his waist, tangled about his legs. He is still in uniform but his jacket is folded neatly across his chair, and the hair on the back of his arms stands up in the breeze from the open window. His boots are lined up by the door, and the last thing he remembers, other than twisted fragments of dreams, is the gate room, and Elizabeth's concerned face as she faded around the edges and slipped from his view.
His head is pounding and everything still feels dreamlike, mouth thick and skin clammy. He showers slowly, discovering aches he didn't earn, that after the grime is washed away his skin feels two sizes too small. Beckettt and his voodoo ('Addictive in the long run,' Beckett said, closing Rodney's hand around a bottle of small white pills -- two weeks and five refills previously, but the entire science team was long past the point where coffee or espresso would keep them running, and, hey, not like the Wraith would hold off the attack if asked nicely).
He steals an entire coffee pot in the mess hall, looking around wearily. Conversation is muted, heads low over almost-eggs and actual-coffee. The room is emptier than usual, and he's not sure who's sleeping and who's dead. In the lab, he yells at everyone in sight, more loudly than usual. One of the newbies from the Daedalus bursts in to tears, but his team just shakes their heads. Miko hugs him, a quick, almost violent embrace. She has wiry little arms. "Whatever," he says when she lets go, but only one work station has been cleared, and he shares the coffee. Even with Kavanaugh.
*
"Bring your back arm up more," Teyla says. She holds herself easily in a defensive position, left leg back and weight evenly distributed. Jack watches the glide of her muscles as she sweeps forwards, exposed midriff and caramel skin. "Keep your eyes on me at all times."
He falls back as they move in slow motion, trying to twist his limbs to match her grace, the fluidity with which she moves. Her blows are half-speed, telegraphed, and it is only when he meets them that their motions speed, sparring back across the mat, momentum building until he sees the next blow coming a second too late.
They land awkwardly on the mats, Teyla twisting so that she has one knee planted on either side of his torso. She is smiling, teeth bright, the barest sheen of sweat on her forehead. Jack's heart is beating a little more quickly that he'd like to admit. He crosses his arms behind his head and looks up at her. "This is nice," he says. It's nice to see her smile, to see her out of the infirmary and away from Ford's bedside.
"If you're beating up one of my scientists," someone says from the door, "at least make sure to beat some sense into him at the same time."
McKay, Jack is guessing. Teyla, still straddling his torso, tosses her hair and turns to the door. "We were merely sparring," she replies. "And may I say that it's nice to see at least one member of the science team interested in being able to defend themselves."
Jack can pretty much hear the eyeroll. "I'm sorry," McKay says, "but some of us have more important things to do than hit each other with sticks."
Teyla smiles serenely. "Do you not owe it to society, then, to ensure that you survive to contribute further?"
"Why do you think I have you guys?"
Teyla shifts, stands, and offers Jack a hand to his feet. "Thank you," she says. "If you should ever desire to train further, I would be pleased to work with you."
"I will most definitely take you up on that offer," Jack says, letting her hand linger in his. Brushes his fingers across the inside of her wrist when he lets go.
"Jack?" McKay asks, and when Jack looks over, his mouth snaps shut, compressed to a line.
"McKay," Jack says. "Small galaxy." And this is a problem, this is a big problem, because Jack hasn't met him yet.
*
Rose is sitting in the infirmary when the Doctor finds her, face soft in the dim light. There is something that is almost a room blocked off, curtains strung up to provide some vestige of privacy for the man lying so very still beneath the covers.
"Hey," Rose says, voice soft and thick. She is curled up in an uncomfortable-looking chair, knees drawn to her chest. "They used the sedative formula you gave them."
Behind his eyes, Atlantis is singing. She leaps at his touch, so very long alone, whispers her secrets to him and weeps at the memories that come pouring from his past. The eddies of time here are like waves, immutable, crashing over him with almost physical force. The humans here understand only a fraction of what they have, Ancient technology nothing more than a hand-me-down of another race higher and a sentient city lost in a psychic wasteland.
Rose has a bruise on the side of her head, and the Doctor brushes the hair carefully away. "Not his fault," she says, turning from Ford to meet the Doctor's eyes. "It's like you said. It's not him, not really. Not anymore."
On the bed, Ford is curled protectively around his burned side. Even in the dark, the Doctor can see that his colouring is not good, face twisted up, shaking all over. The glint of silver is obvious in the dark, the cuff that runs from Ford's wrist to the bed.
"You could fix him," Rose says, quiet.
The Doctor closes his eyes. "I can't fix anyone."
Liar, Atlantis says, straining against her bonds to reach her children, broken and hurting, their blood worn into her halls.
*
The thud echoes down the corridor as McKay is slammed back into the wall. Jack's hands slide across his sides and down his hips, leg nudging between his thighs. Breathing hard, lips on necks and hands tangling in hair, they stumble towards McKay's quarters. Jack's hands are familiar but he moves like a stranger, like he's discovering McKay's body for the first time.
He closes his eyes when he comes, because he's just looking for release (from everything, from the stress and the idiots and the constant, never ending fighting), and in his head this is like a reunion, and he doesn't want to see the distance.
When they're done he collapses in a carefully constructed sprawl, hogging most of the bed, making sure they are not caught up, tangled in each other. McKay breathes deep and waits for Jack to leave.
Sleep finds him first, wraps him close to her chest and swaddles him in darkness.
*
Atlantis at night sings like the waves. Jack's footsteps echo in the corridors, swallowed by the surf and the hum of technology. He feels empty and cold, draws the jacket of his liberated uniform closed.
Rose and the Doctor are in the infirmary when he finds them. There are two people sleeping in the main bay, one with a casted leg, the other with an arm and shoulder wrapped in gauze. The lights are dimmed and the air is heavy, a single potted plant struggling valiantly in the corner.
The curtains at the back are partially open. Rose looks small and so very young, arms around her knees and hair pulled into a messy pony tail. The Doctor stands almost completely in shadows, one hand on her back and eyes antediluvian.
"Time to go," Jack says, quiet.
"We can't just leave him," Rose says, eyes fixed on Ford. "We can't."
"He has people here who love him," Jack says. "People who knew him."
"We could save him, though," Rose says. She lifts her eyes to the Doctor. "I've seen you save people worse off."
"I can't save him," the Doctor says, and his voice is dead, like he's a part of the shadows around him.
"Can't, or won't?" Jack asks. He can't help the bitterness that creeps into his voice, because he is a soldier, too. "If he was some great mind, a scientist or novelist, you'd have no problem bending the timeline. A solder's role in a war is, after all, to die."
*
A slap fills the room, and the Doctor raises his head. There is a red mark coming up along Jack's cheek, and he raises one hand to it. There's no wonder in it, nothing but resignation.
"That wasn't fair," Rose says, and her voice is no more than a whisper. She reaches up and pulls Jack's hand away, touches her own to his cheek. "I -- I'm sorry, Jack, but it wasn't fair and it wasn't nice."
"He's supposed to die," the Doctor says. The time that curls on the bed around Ford is not eddies and whirls, it is not mobile and fluid. It moves sluggishly, like water freezing, slowing with his every breath. "We shouldn't be here at all. You have no idea how crucial for humanity the next seven years in this city are."
"What if he just... went away?" Rose asks. "What if we took him away, and he never came back?"
Please, Atlantis says. She has lost so many of her children.
"Every war has casualties," Jack says, voice carefully blank. Rose still has a hand pressed to his cheek.
The city dips and curls at the back of his mind, waking, alive. Please.
The Doctor closes his eyes. "Just this one," he says, and does not think of Gallifrey. "Just this once."
*
One day, this will all be worth it, a note found on Lieutenant Ford's bed reads.
Characters/Pairing: Ensemble, Jack Harkness/Rodney McKay.
Rating: 14A
Notes: Written as my third-straight pinch hit for Multiverse. One of these years, I will actually make the sign-up deadline. Many thanks are extended to
tellitslant for emergency beta. No specific spoilers for Who, end of season one for SGA. There are always casualties.
by Cherry Ice
Time, like smoke, curls in eddies about them. Rose is laughing as Jack speaks, her head tossed back and one hand to her mouth. Jack's eyes are crinkled, and he is making expansive gestures with his arms. Time drifts easily between Rose's fingers, wraps slowly around Jack at mid-calf, denim fading almost imperceptibly in its wake.
Beneath the Doctor's feet, the hum of the TARDIS changes, the uneven thrum of her engines smoothing. He knows a fraction of a second before it happens, because the eddies whirl madly, drift to one side as if caught in a breeze. There is something that might be anticipation in her as they hurtle faster and faster through the vortex, lights in the console room flickering.
"Doctor?" Rose asks. Her fingers are twined together over her stomach, and she's watching him carefully. Jack, behind her, has his head cocked, listening to the engines. The Doctor is standing immobile with one hand pressed firmly to the console; he realizes, belatedly, that it's not the first time she's called his name.
"Everything all right?" Rose asks.
"Oh ye of little faith," he says, feeling a grin that's all teeth bloom across his face, watching Jack as his eyes dance across the controls. "We've arrived," he says, three seconds before the engines grind to a halt. There's an almost pleased sort of sigh as the TARDIS lands, and the Doctor bounds over to the door.
"Well?" he asks when Rose and Jack lag behind. There's a hum picking away at the back of his skull, muffled and small with pointed edges. "What are you lot standing about lollygagging for?"
He knows before the door swings open that he will not see Beijing.
*
This is a war zone, or the aftermath thereof. Sheppard is jogging through the corridors with a pack of marines on his heels (marines fresh off the Daedalus, they have not been awake for thirty-six, forty-eight hours like his own), trying to ignore the places where wires and circuits extend through broken walls, the scorch marks of weapon blasts.
There's a distant claxon somewhere, wheezing, and he wonders which system has broken down now. There's a couple of scientists in the adjacent hall, working to pull the power conduits back together. He recognizes the Czech swears over the steady pounding of boots. A dead Wraith has been unceremoniously dumped into a corner, and there is human blood dried across the floor, footprints standing out in stark relief.
"Go on," he says to the marines, pointing down the corridor, and he breaks off. Zelenka yelps as he withdraws a hand from the wall, cursing, smell of ozone and singed flesh following him. His eyes are too bright, shadows beneath them like bruises. His hands are shaking as he paces, hair matted and forehead shiny. Simpson, hands still in the wall and tongue caught between her teeth, is grey with fatigue. Her blonde hair is stringy and there are strands plastered to her face she doesn't seem to have the energy to push away. Her uniform has a rip on the shoulder, and the right knee is missing.
"Get out of here," Sheppard says.
Zelenka starts speaking, words tumbling over each other and arms waving. It is all consonants and sonorants, and Simpson doesn't even lift her head in acknowledgment.
"He's right," a voice behind Sheppard says, unfamiliar and slightly amused. "They don't get that fixed up, and this entire section is going to be channeling three megavolts."
"You think this is funny?" Sheppard asks, rounding. The speaker is dark-haired and not alone.
"Never found much funny about the threat of imminent electrocution," the other man says. There's a girl with him, light hair and dark roots, looking pale as her eyes fix on the blood spilled across the metal. There's a man as well, close-cropped hair and one hand pressed to the wall. They are all jeans and leather and peroxide, and not a one of them looks military.
There's another spark of electricity in the wall, smell of burning wire and insulation. Simpson, fresh soot streaked across her palm, barely flinches. "Yeah, well," Sheppard says, "that may be, but I don't know if they're actually doing any good here." He knows Zelenka has been up for more than forty-eight hours, popping stimulants from Beckett with increasing frequency. Twelve hours ago, he walked past Simpson, asleep in the main lab with an alarm clock counting backwards from thirty-five minutes, but he's not sure how long it had been before that.
"More harm than good, actually," the second man says. His eyes focus behind Sheppard. "They're about five minutes away from throwing the entire system into an exponentially building loop."
The first man is already at the wall, crouching beside Simpson, pulling her back. She resists weakly, but lets him ease her away. The girl has an arm around the other woman's shoulders as the first man reaches into the wall.
Sheppard opens his mouth, but his headset blares to life. There's an incident on the east pier, McKay's voice high and strained as he rattles off numbers and probabilities and berates the intelligence of every single scientist assigned to his team. His security escort cuts in, Wraith moving on their position, and Sheppard is off and running.
*
Jack's attention is focussed on the wires before him, the Doctor working beside him with his mouth in a set line. Rose's arm has long since been shaken from around Simpson, and she is leaning against a wall, shoulders hunched and drawn in on herself. There's blood across one cheek and staining the stomach of her uniform. All she'll say is that most of it isn't hers. Her hands are scorched and sliced, pale skin covered with blisters and soot. Zelenka is supervising Jack and the Doctor, hovering, shaking of his hands evident even though he has them fisted in his pockets.
"Come on," she says, taking Simpson gently by the arm. "Let's get your hands taken care of."
"Go," the Doctor says, not looking up.
The doctors in the infirmary look almost as bad as their patients, two-day stubble and creased uniforms. All of the beds are taken, and there are people lain out in the hall, stretching to both ends of the corridor. One of the nurses, fresher-looking in a uniform different than those around him, disinfects Simpson's hands and wraps them in white gauze.
"What happened here?" she asks, snagging one of the doctors as he brushes by her.
"The Wraith, dear," he says, Scottish accent thick, voice so very, very tired. Rose is whole and healthy and painfully out of place; when he pushes bandages and butterfly clips into her hands she does what she can do.
*
Jack pushes back from the wall, grease and soot worked into the palms of his hands, his fingers. There's a burn on the fourth finger of his left hand, and he caught himself on something at some point, scrape down his forearm bleeding sluggishly. The Doctor is standing a few feet away, one palm pressed tightly to the battle-scarred metal of the wall, eyes closed-off and head tilted to the side.
Zelenka is still moving back and forth, feet releasing with a pop whenever he steps in the tacky blood. His cursing is becoming less inventive, words slurring together, fading to prayer and pleas for his family and friends. Jack, whose lips were curled at his tirade, realizes only belatedly that he is probably listening to something Zelenka thinks is private, TARDIS translating something he's not supposed to hear.
"Doctor?" he asks, but it is Zelenka who turns.
"Yes?" Zelenka says, face eyes suddenly sharp. "You are new, yes, Daedalus?"
Jack looks to the Doctor for guidance, but he's staring at a point on the ceiling halfway down the hall. "Got it in one," he says.
Zelenka is nodding. "We generally do not use the honourific," he says. "Too many doctorals in one room makes it inconvenient."
"Right," Jack says. "Of course." He is watching Zelenka as he wavers on his feet, is ready to step forward and catch him when he falls.
"Take care of him," the Doctor says.
Jack, on his knees, shifts Zelenka's body in his arms. When he looks up, the Doctor is striding purposefully down the corridor, lights springing to life as he passes them.
*
The puddle jumper is a proper space ship, dimensions that match inside and out making it seem somehow more human. As it rises from the launch bay, Rose catches a single long look at the building before her (only it's not a building, it's a city, a city on an ocean with a great domed field stretching above it). The city is all spires and arcs, the lines ruined here and there by broken towers, by missing windows with soot around their edges. She catches her breath at it, at the ocean extending endlessly around them.
"Homing," the pilot says, eyes fixed on the holographic displays before him. The flight is almost noiseless, smooth, and she finds that she longs for the comfort of an engine thrum. There are two marines, apart from the pilot, and she and an orderly sit in the back section. The bench seat beneath her is warm to the touch, and she curls her fingers around the edges as they swoop along the border where the forcefield meets the ocean.
"Got him," the pilot says, and the jumper slows to an almost violent halt. One of the marines strips down to a wet suit, and launches out the rear door as it opens, sliding into the turbulence with hardly a splash.
It's probably only two minutes, three before he reappears, but Rose is well aware of the way time can stretch out. When they see him, he is not alone, one arm hooked around an unresisting body. "He's alive!" the marine calls, face twisting away from the spray.
Rose cradles his head on her lap as the orderly does his job. He's not that much older than her, Mickey's age, hair and the colour of his skin an almost painful reminder. He twists a bit, burnt half of his face immobile. His eyes open once, wide and empty, left one black as night.
"Goddamn Wraith," she hears one of the marines mutter.
"Shhh," she whispers, and touches her forehead to his.
*
Rodney wakes in his own quarters, blankets twisted tightly around his waist, tangled about his legs. He is still in uniform but his jacket is folded neatly across his chair, and the hair on the back of his arms stands up in the breeze from the open window. His boots are lined up by the door, and the last thing he remembers, other than twisted fragments of dreams, is the gate room, and Elizabeth's concerned face as she faded around the edges and slipped from his view.
His head is pounding and everything still feels dreamlike, mouth thick and skin clammy. He showers slowly, discovering aches he didn't earn, that after the grime is washed away his skin feels two sizes too small. Beckettt and his voodoo ('Addictive in the long run,' Beckett said, closing Rodney's hand around a bottle of small white pills -- two weeks and five refills previously, but the entire science team was long past the point where coffee or espresso would keep them running, and, hey, not like the Wraith would hold off the attack if asked nicely).
He steals an entire coffee pot in the mess hall, looking around wearily. Conversation is muted, heads low over almost-eggs and actual-coffee. The room is emptier than usual, and he's not sure who's sleeping and who's dead. In the lab, he yells at everyone in sight, more loudly than usual. One of the newbies from the Daedalus bursts in to tears, but his team just shakes their heads. Miko hugs him, a quick, almost violent embrace. She has wiry little arms. "Whatever," he says when she lets go, but only one work station has been cleared, and he shares the coffee. Even with Kavanaugh.
*
"Bring your back arm up more," Teyla says. She holds herself easily in a defensive position, left leg back and weight evenly distributed. Jack watches the glide of her muscles as she sweeps forwards, exposed midriff and caramel skin. "Keep your eyes on me at all times."
He falls back as they move in slow motion, trying to twist his limbs to match her grace, the fluidity with which she moves. Her blows are half-speed, telegraphed, and it is only when he meets them that their motions speed, sparring back across the mat, momentum building until he sees the next blow coming a second too late.
They land awkwardly on the mats, Teyla twisting so that she has one knee planted on either side of his torso. She is smiling, teeth bright, the barest sheen of sweat on her forehead. Jack's heart is beating a little more quickly that he'd like to admit. He crosses his arms behind his head and looks up at her. "This is nice," he says. It's nice to see her smile, to see her out of the infirmary and away from Ford's bedside.
"If you're beating up one of my scientists," someone says from the door, "at least make sure to beat some sense into him at the same time."
McKay, Jack is guessing. Teyla, still straddling his torso, tosses her hair and turns to the door. "We were merely sparring," she replies. "And may I say that it's nice to see at least one member of the science team interested in being able to defend themselves."
Jack can pretty much hear the eyeroll. "I'm sorry," McKay says, "but some of us have more important things to do than hit each other with sticks."
Teyla smiles serenely. "Do you not owe it to society, then, to ensure that you survive to contribute further?"
"Why do you think I have you guys?"
Teyla shifts, stands, and offers Jack a hand to his feet. "Thank you," she says. "If you should ever desire to train further, I would be pleased to work with you."
"I will most definitely take you up on that offer," Jack says, letting her hand linger in his. Brushes his fingers across the inside of her wrist when he lets go.
"Jack?" McKay asks, and when Jack looks over, his mouth snaps shut, compressed to a line.
"McKay," Jack says. "Small galaxy." And this is a problem, this is a big problem, because Jack hasn't met him yet.
*
Rose is sitting in the infirmary when the Doctor finds her, face soft in the dim light. There is something that is almost a room blocked off, curtains strung up to provide some vestige of privacy for the man lying so very still beneath the covers.
"Hey," Rose says, voice soft and thick. She is curled up in an uncomfortable-looking chair, knees drawn to her chest. "They used the sedative formula you gave them."
Behind his eyes, Atlantis is singing. She leaps at his touch, so very long alone, whispers her secrets to him and weeps at the memories that come pouring from his past. The eddies of time here are like waves, immutable, crashing over him with almost physical force. The humans here understand only a fraction of what they have, Ancient technology nothing more than a hand-me-down of another race higher and a sentient city lost in a psychic wasteland.
Rose has a bruise on the side of her head, and the Doctor brushes the hair carefully away. "Not his fault," she says, turning from Ford to meet the Doctor's eyes. "It's like you said. It's not him, not really. Not anymore."
On the bed, Ford is curled protectively around his burned side. Even in the dark, the Doctor can see that his colouring is not good, face twisted up, shaking all over. The glint of silver is obvious in the dark, the cuff that runs from Ford's wrist to the bed.
"You could fix him," Rose says, quiet.
The Doctor closes his eyes. "I can't fix anyone."
Liar, Atlantis says, straining against her bonds to reach her children, broken and hurting, their blood worn into her halls.
*
The thud echoes down the corridor as McKay is slammed back into the wall. Jack's hands slide across his sides and down his hips, leg nudging between his thighs. Breathing hard, lips on necks and hands tangling in hair, they stumble towards McKay's quarters. Jack's hands are familiar but he moves like a stranger, like he's discovering McKay's body for the first time.
He closes his eyes when he comes, because he's just looking for release (from everything, from the stress and the idiots and the constant, never ending fighting), and in his head this is like a reunion, and he doesn't want to see the distance.
When they're done he collapses in a carefully constructed sprawl, hogging most of the bed, making sure they are not caught up, tangled in each other. McKay breathes deep and waits for Jack to leave.
Sleep finds him first, wraps him close to her chest and swaddles him in darkness.
*
Atlantis at night sings like the waves. Jack's footsteps echo in the corridors, swallowed by the surf and the hum of technology. He feels empty and cold, draws the jacket of his liberated uniform closed.
Rose and the Doctor are in the infirmary when he finds them. There are two people sleeping in the main bay, one with a casted leg, the other with an arm and shoulder wrapped in gauze. The lights are dimmed and the air is heavy, a single potted plant struggling valiantly in the corner.
The curtains at the back are partially open. Rose looks small and so very young, arms around her knees and hair pulled into a messy pony tail. The Doctor stands almost completely in shadows, one hand on her back and eyes antediluvian.
"Time to go," Jack says, quiet.
"We can't just leave him," Rose says, eyes fixed on Ford. "We can't."
"He has people here who love him," Jack says. "People who knew him."
"We could save him, though," Rose says. She lifts her eyes to the Doctor. "I've seen you save people worse off."
"I can't save him," the Doctor says, and his voice is dead, like he's a part of the shadows around him.
"Can't, or won't?" Jack asks. He can't help the bitterness that creeps into his voice, because he is a soldier, too. "If he was some great mind, a scientist or novelist, you'd have no problem bending the timeline. A solder's role in a war is, after all, to die."
*
A slap fills the room, and the Doctor raises his head. There is a red mark coming up along Jack's cheek, and he raises one hand to it. There's no wonder in it, nothing but resignation.
"That wasn't fair," Rose says, and her voice is no more than a whisper. She reaches up and pulls Jack's hand away, touches her own to his cheek. "I -- I'm sorry, Jack, but it wasn't fair and it wasn't nice."
"He's supposed to die," the Doctor says. The time that curls on the bed around Ford is not eddies and whirls, it is not mobile and fluid. It moves sluggishly, like water freezing, slowing with his every breath. "We shouldn't be here at all. You have no idea how crucial for humanity the next seven years in this city are."
"What if he just... went away?" Rose asks. "What if we took him away, and he never came back?"
Please, Atlantis says. She has lost so many of her children.
"Every war has casualties," Jack says, voice carefully blank. Rose still has a hand pressed to his cheek.
The city dips and curls at the back of his mind, waking, alive. Please.
The Doctor closes his eyes. "Just this one," he says, and does not think of Gallifrey. "Just this once."
*
One day, this will all be worth it, a note found on Lieutenant Ford's bed reads.