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"Hegira - Part Four"
Title: Hegira - Part Four
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: Adult Themes
Word Count: 2,006
Spoilers: None
Category: AU
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine
Summary: “Will that make this less scary for you?” John asked gently and coming from anybody else, Rodney might have taken offence but with John it was merely a question.
“I plan on being terrified all the time, but I like being prepared while I’m terrified.”
“O’Neill. Code seven, twenty, seven, nine. Secure Line. Fielding please.”
“O’Neill? I hear you had some trouble.”
“One of the subjects is terminated, Sir. Shall I still proceed with retrieval of the second?”
“McKay’s dead? Well, that’s not ideal.”
“No, Sheppard Sir.”
“Uh, O’Neill, are you sure?”
“Yes, I stayed until they carted him off in a meat wagon. He was checked over and-“
“I’m sorry O’Neill, but you are going to have to take my word for it that you are still hunting two subjects and the priority is still retrieval.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, Jack, I’m very serious.”
“Hell Bart, just what are you guys doing?”
“Believe me, Jack. That isn’t a question you want to ask.”
~~
The NID labs were so uniform in their construction and vast in their scope that if a person got out on the wrong floor, they could be unaware until they turned up at what they thought was their lab door and find that it was a completely different room.
Despite having worked for the NID for six months, this is what happened to Rodney on an otherwise unassuming Tuesday. Not being able to find the way back to the elevator, he tacked himself onto the back of a group of serious looking men in suits, led by a severe-looking woman who was taller than all of them, in the hopes that they would eventually lead him out.
“We hadn’t had much success with the Project until our most recent subject. We are lucky enough to have a brilliant geneticist working with us who actually discovered an anomaly with this subject’s genetic makeup that made the whole thing workable.”
Rodney, who’d been told to lay off looking into the medical programs of the NID, perked immediately. As he watched, the woman swiped a card and stepped through a doorway that Rodney would not have been able to access. He paused for a second on the threshold behind the fifteen others in the group, wiping sweaty hands on his pants, but professional curiosity and the annoyance that he had yet to have any bigwigs traipsing through his labs lead by someone professing his brilliance pushed him that extra step and the door snicked shut behind him.
Rodney, cautious by nature, didn’t realise that one tiny step had just changed his life.
~~~
“The scope of favours you owe me could not be calculated by conventional math, even if we employed a Chaos Theorist, so answer the goddam phone!”
There was the hollow clunk of a phone being picked up and the answering machine being disengaged before a tired sounding and thickly accented voice said, “I screen calls for a reason you know.”
“I know, so you don’t have crazy people ringing you in the middle of the night,” Rodney said impatiently and heard a snort on the other end.
“Yes, I am glad I took the necessary steps to ensure that did not happen.”
“Look, Radek, I’m calling in my chit.”
“You’re what?”
“Isn’t that what they say? Or is it marker?”
“Rodney, I little understand what you are saying at the best of times, but it is two in the morning and I only got to sleep an hour ago. Just ask what it is you want so I can say no and we can both go back to our lives.” Rodney heard the dry rasp that was probably Radek Zelenka passing a weary hand over his face.
“Look, I need to find someone.”
“Do I look like directory to you?”
“Radek, this is important,” Rodney said and something in his tone must have finally gotten through to the sleep-addled Czech on the other end because all the weariness had gone from his voice the next time he spoke.
“Rodney, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rodney said morosely. “Plus, it’s probably better for you if you don’t know.”
“I will do what I can. What do you need?”
Rodney had to take a moment to squeeze the phone against his chest, the simple relief of someone willing to help, of caring after so many weeks of living on tenterhooks was almost too much. When Rodney had recovered enough, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper.
“I don’t have much, just two names,” Rodney said, unscrunching the paper and smoothing it out on his thigh.
“Doctor Carson Beckett and Doctor Samantha Carter.”
~~~
Three weeks in, John had been hit by a car.
Up until that point, the very fact that John was different was something that Rodney had been able to sort of look at in a peripheral sense, but when you had to face it head on, it became scary.
They’d been darting across the road when a car had come out of nowhere and John had shoved Rodney out of the way, getting bounced over the hood of the car and starring the glass of the windshield. The driver had taken off in a scream of wheels, nearly taking out another two people on the sidewalk in his hurry to skirt the hit and John’s prone body.
Rodney had gotten up slowly, bruised but otherwise okay and John had been crumpled and broken and so painful to look at that Rodney had wanted to run screaming, but instead he’d torn back across the road, dimly conscious that he was yelling for someone to call an ambulance.
Then John’s arms had moved, coming up and planting hands on the road. He’d flipped himself over and there’d been a horrible popping sound that Rodney would never forget, and then John was sitting up and had kind of shook his head like a dog. When he’d made to stand, mostly unassisted because people were standing in a paralysed ring around him, including Rodney, one of his legs hadn’t been cooperating until John had grasped the knee between two hands and had twisted sideways. There was another popping sound and then John was on his feet, shaking out the leg like he’d just gotten mud on his boot.
“Are you alright?” John had asked, squinting through the blood stinging his eyes.
Rodney hadn’t quite known how to respond to that.
~~~
“Who do you reckon that guy was?” Rodney asked. He was sitting on the corner of yet another motel bed, trying to fix a hole in one of his socks but the sickly yellow light of the nearby lamp was making the task difficult.
“What guy?” John was watching cartoons on the television, his eyes following the colourful action and every now and then snorting in amusement. John seemed voracious for cartoons and wouldn’t watch anything else, going as far as to leave the room if Rodney insisted they catch up on the news.
“We won’t be on it,” John always complained and Rodney had known he would always be right and that concept was scarier.
“The bus guy. You think that wasn’t an accident and he certainly wasn’t a team of black wearing militant guys like the last lot. Bounty hunter maybe?”
John snorted and turned on his side so his shins were resting along Rodney’s lower back. Gooseflesh chased up Rodney’s skin where bare touched bare because John always ran cool, even when he was awake and functioning. Because it was John, Rodney didn’t mind at all.
“You watch too much television,” John snorted, curling forward until he could twine the bottom of Rodney’s shirt between two fingers. “Do you want me to do that?” he asked, reaching out with a toe to tap the sock between Rodney’s fingers.
“No, I’m not completely useless you know,” Rodney snapped and he felt John still.
“I never said you were.”
“Then how about we talk about what happened instead of you trying to protect me. You must have some idea on what’s going on and just what we’re dealing with. You might not have recognised who he was but you certainly knew what he was and I’d like to know too.”
“Will that make this less scary for you?” John asked gently and coming from anybody else, Rodney might have taken offence but with John it was merely a question.
“I plan on being terrified all the time, but I like being prepared while I’m terrified.” Rodney gave up the sock for dead, wadding it up and flinging it across the room so it thunked against the motel door. He took up one of John’s feet instead and rubbed a thumb over John’s instep.
“I only really have half-formed notions and suspicions,” John said, making a contended noise and flopping back onto the bed when Rodney turned so his feet were in Rodney’s lap and Rodney’s fingers were tracing up his calves.
“Well, that’s better than me. I have no idea. I thought that guy was going to shoot you.”
John’s face stilled and his eyes ticked away. “No, I don’t think he was. For one, you’d be dead now.”
“Ah, right. Maybe this isn’t so reassuring.” Rodney pushed John’s feet off his lap and stood, pacing the room.
John swung his feet onto the floor, pulling himself upright. “We just need to keep moving. We’ll be okay.”
“No, no, I really don’t think so. We need to know just what the hell is going on and get something… anything to hold over these people so they’ll have no choice but to leave us the hell alone.”
John’s face blanked into careful neutrality. “Rodney, what did you do?”
Rodney stopped his pacing and came over to the bed, dropping onto his haunches in front of John and then wincing and moving back up to the bed. “I have this friend that might be able to track down your Doctor Beckett. I asked him to-“
“Rodney!” John exploded, flinging to his feet. “You can’t contact anyone you know. Hell, these people will have guys parked outside a girl’s house you talked to once in high school. They’re thorough and they know what they’re doing. Plus, you could potentially have risked your friend’s life, did you think about that?”
“We can’t keep running around blindly. You saw what happened. This guy tipped over a bus and hurt a bunch of people just to get near us. You were right when you said we were travelling on luck. They’re going to run us into the ground unless we can get help, John.”
John sighed and pressed back against the wall, slipping down it until his knees were under his chin.
~~~
“Some people are going to track you down and I want you to let them and then tell me when they’re coming to you.”
The woman sitting across from Jack paused in stirring her coffee to look at him for a beat, weighing him with her eyes. “Are you going to hurt these people?”
“Is that your concern?” Jack asked.
“Well, I would say so, yes.”
“It’s not my intention. If they come quietly.”
The woman sighed, taking a sip of coffee and then setting it aside carefully. “Do they ever come quietly?”
“In my experience, no.”
“You’ve used up all your favours with me already you realise.”
Jack chuckled, low and deep in his throat. “For cryin’ out loud, Sam. I think we have a ways yet to go before we’re even.”
Samantha Carter, now known as Samantha Andrews, canted her head and narrowed her eyes. “How are they going to find me? You took great pains to hide me in the first place.”
Jack smiled at the woman across from him. Her hair was dark red but he would always think blonde when he pictured her. “Because someone has already started looking and I’m going to nudge him in the right direction.”
“Why do you still do this? You’ve lost the taste for it. I’m pretty sure I’m living proof of that.”
“I thought you’d learned by now, just because I was good to you, don’t make me good.”
Part Five
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: Adult Themes
Word Count: 2,006
Spoilers: None
Category: AU
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine
Summary: “Will that make this less scary for you?” John asked gently and coming from anybody else, Rodney might have taken offence but with John it was merely a question.
“I plan on being terrified all the time, but I like being prepared while I’m terrified.”
“O’Neill. Code seven, twenty, seven, nine. Secure Line. Fielding please.”
“O’Neill? I hear you had some trouble.”
“One of the subjects is terminated, Sir. Shall I still proceed with retrieval of the second?”
“McKay’s dead? Well, that’s not ideal.”
“No, Sheppard Sir.”
“Uh, O’Neill, are you sure?”
“Yes, I stayed until they carted him off in a meat wagon. He was checked over and-“
“I’m sorry O’Neill, but you are going to have to take my word for it that you are still hunting two subjects and the priority is still retrieval.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, Jack, I’m very serious.”
“Hell Bart, just what are you guys doing?”
“Believe me, Jack. That isn’t a question you want to ask.”
~~
The NID labs were so uniform in their construction and vast in their scope that if a person got out on the wrong floor, they could be unaware until they turned up at what they thought was their lab door and find that it was a completely different room.
Despite having worked for the NID for six months, this is what happened to Rodney on an otherwise unassuming Tuesday. Not being able to find the way back to the elevator, he tacked himself onto the back of a group of serious looking men in suits, led by a severe-looking woman who was taller than all of them, in the hopes that they would eventually lead him out.
“We hadn’t had much success with the Project until our most recent subject. We are lucky enough to have a brilliant geneticist working with us who actually discovered an anomaly with this subject’s genetic makeup that made the whole thing workable.”
Rodney, who’d been told to lay off looking into the medical programs of the NID, perked immediately. As he watched, the woman swiped a card and stepped through a doorway that Rodney would not have been able to access. He paused for a second on the threshold behind the fifteen others in the group, wiping sweaty hands on his pants, but professional curiosity and the annoyance that he had yet to have any bigwigs traipsing through his labs lead by someone professing his brilliance pushed him that extra step and the door snicked shut behind him.
Rodney, cautious by nature, didn’t realise that one tiny step had just changed his life.
~~~
“The scope of favours you owe me could not be calculated by conventional math, even if we employed a Chaos Theorist, so answer the goddam phone!”
There was the hollow clunk of a phone being picked up and the answering machine being disengaged before a tired sounding and thickly accented voice said, “I screen calls for a reason you know.”
“I know, so you don’t have crazy people ringing you in the middle of the night,” Rodney said impatiently and heard a snort on the other end.
“Yes, I am glad I took the necessary steps to ensure that did not happen.”
“Look, Radek, I’m calling in my chit.”
“You’re what?”
“Isn’t that what they say? Or is it marker?”
“Rodney, I little understand what you are saying at the best of times, but it is two in the morning and I only got to sleep an hour ago. Just ask what it is you want so I can say no and we can both go back to our lives.” Rodney heard the dry rasp that was probably Radek Zelenka passing a weary hand over his face.
“Look, I need to find someone.”
“Do I look like directory to you?”
“Radek, this is important,” Rodney said and something in his tone must have finally gotten through to the sleep-addled Czech on the other end because all the weariness had gone from his voice the next time he spoke.
“Rodney, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rodney said morosely. “Plus, it’s probably better for you if you don’t know.”
“I will do what I can. What do you need?”
Rodney had to take a moment to squeeze the phone against his chest, the simple relief of someone willing to help, of caring after so many weeks of living on tenterhooks was almost too much. When Rodney had recovered enough, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper.
“I don’t have much, just two names,” Rodney said, unscrunching the paper and smoothing it out on his thigh.
“Doctor Carson Beckett and Doctor Samantha Carter.”
~~~
Three weeks in, John had been hit by a car.
Up until that point, the very fact that John was different was something that Rodney had been able to sort of look at in a peripheral sense, but when you had to face it head on, it became scary.
They’d been darting across the road when a car had come out of nowhere and John had shoved Rodney out of the way, getting bounced over the hood of the car and starring the glass of the windshield. The driver had taken off in a scream of wheels, nearly taking out another two people on the sidewalk in his hurry to skirt the hit and John’s prone body.
Rodney had gotten up slowly, bruised but otherwise okay and John had been crumpled and broken and so painful to look at that Rodney had wanted to run screaming, but instead he’d torn back across the road, dimly conscious that he was yelling for someone to call an ambulance.
Then John’s arms had moved, coming up and planting hands on the road. He’d flipped himself over and there’d been a horrible popping sound that Rodney would never forget, and then John was sitting up and had kind of shook his head like a dog. When he’d made to stand, mostly unassisted because people were standing in a paralysed ring around him, including Rodney, one of his legs hadn’t been cooperating until John had grasped the knee between two hands and had twisted sideways. There was another popping sound and then John was on his feet, shaking out the leg like he’d just gotten mud on his boot.
“Are you alright?” John had asked, squinting through the blood stinging his eyes.
Rodney hadn’t quite known how to respond to that.
~~~
“Who do you reckon that guy was?” Rodney asked. He was sitting on the corner of yet another motel bed, trying to fix a hole in one of his socks but the sickly yellow light of the nearby lamp was making the task difficult.
“What guy?” John was watching cartoons on the television, his eyes following the colourful action and every now and then snorting in amusement. John seemed voracious for cartoons and wouldn’t watch anything else, going as far as to leave the room if Rodney insisted they catch up on the news.
“We won’t be on it,” John always complained and Rodney had known he would always be right and that concept was scarier.
“The bus guy. You think that wasn’t an accident and he certainly wasn’t a team of black wearing militant guys like the last lot. Bounty hunter maybe?”
John snorted and turned on his side so his shins were resting along Rodney’s lower back. Gooseflesh chased up Rodney’s skin where bare touched bare because John always ran cool, even when he was awake and functioning. Because it was John, Rodney didn’t mind at all.
“You watch too much television,” John snorted, curling forward until he could twine the bottom of Rodney’s shirt between two fingers. “Do you want me to do that?” he asked, reaching out with a toe to tap the sock between Rodney’s fingers.
“No, I’m not completely useless you know,” Rodney snapped and he felt John still.
“I never said you were.”
“Then how about we talk about what happened instead of you trying to protect me. You must have some idea on what’s going on and just what we’re dealing with. You might not have recognised who he was but you certainly knew what he was and I’d like to know too.”
“Will that make this less scary for you?” John asked gently and coming from anybody else, Rodney might have taken offence but with John it was merely a question.
“I plan on being terrified all the time, but I like being prepared while I’m terrified.” Rodney gave up the sock for dead, wadding it up and flinging it across the room so it thunked against the motel door. He took up one of John’s feet instead and rubbed a thumb over John’s instep.
“I only really have half-formed notions and suspicions,” John said, making a contended noise and flopping back onto the bed when Rodney turned so his feet were in Rodney’s lap and Rodney’s fingers were tracing up his calves.
“Well, that’s better than me. I have no idea. I thought that guy was going to shoot you.”
John’s face stilled and his eyes ticked away. “No, I don’t think he was. For one, you’d be dead now.”
“Ah, right. Maybe this isn’t so reassuring.” Rodney pushed John’s feet off his lap and stood, pacing the room.
John swung his feet onto the floor, pulling himself upright. “We just need to keep moving. We’ll be okay.”
“No, no, I really don’t think so. We need to know just what the hell is going on and get something… anything to hold over these people so they’ll have no choice but to leave us the hell alone.”
John’s face blanked into careful neutrality. “Rodney, what did you do?”
Rodney stopped his pacing and came over to the bed, dropping onto his haunches in front of John and then wincing and moving back up to the bed. “I have this friend that might be able to track down your Doctor Beckett. I asked him to-“
“Rodney!” John exploded, flinging to his feet. “You can’t contact anyone you know. Hell, these people will have guys parked outside a girl’s house you talked to once in high school. They’re thorough and they know what they’re doing. Plus, you could potentially have risked your friend’s life, did you think about that?”
“We can’t keep running around blindly. You saw what happened. This guy tipped over a bus and hurt a bunch of people just to get near us. You were right when you said we were travelling on luck. They’re going to run us into the ground unless we can get help, John.”
John sighed and pressed back against the wall, slipping down it until his knees were under his chin.
~~~
“Some people are going to track you down and I want you to let them and then tell me when they’re coming to you.”
The woman sitting across from Jack paused in stirring her coffee to look at him for a beat, weighing him with her eyes. “Are you going to hurt these people?”
“Is that your concern?” Jack asked.
“Well, I would say so, yes.”
“It’s not my intention. If they come quietly.”
The woman sighed, taking a sip of coffee and then setting it aside carefully. “Do they ever come quietly?”
“In my experience, no.”
“You’ve used up all your favours with me already you realise.”
Jack chuckled, low and deep in his throat. “For cryin’ out loud, Sam. I think we have a ways yet to go before we’re even.”
Samantha Carter, now known as Samantha Andrews, canted her head and narrowed her eyes. “How are they going to find me? You took great pains to hide me in the first place.”
Jack smiled at the woman across from him. Her hair was dark red but he would always think blonde when he pictured her. “Because someone has already started looking and I’m going to nudge him in the right direction.”
“Why do you still do this? You’ve lost the taste for it. I’m pretty sure I’m living proof of that.”
“I thought you’d learned by now, just because I was good to you, don’t make me good.”
Part Five
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“I thought you’d learned by now, just because I was good to you, don’t make me good.”
Damn, girl, daayuum.
*dances happily from foot to foot, unable to wait for more* Yes, posting it like this, deeeeeefinately way better. Again, I will be thinking about this all day at work.
And sorry about poofing when we were chattting about established relationships. I got D/Ced and my dad wanted to use the Internet (blasted dialup!). *shrug*
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We gonna get why Jack was good to Sam? More soon please!
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Yep, this is great! More soon I hope. :)
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you make Jack O'Neill damn terrifying....
still shivery goodness.
ooking forward to the rest...
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Yes, it's the capslock o'doom--and I am totally hooked!
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Aaahh! I love Jack as a independent contract killer. This line man, this line!