Characters: John Sheppard, with a little smidge of Weir at the start.
Pairing: None
Genre: Angst
oOoOoOo
"You're overdue. What happened?" Elizabeth Weir asked as John Sheppard strode purposefully through the 'gate, the rest of his team a step or two behind him.
"Lucius Lavin," John answered, as though those two simple words explained everything, and perhaps they did…
Elizabeth's eyebrows rose, a flurry of warring emotions swirling across her face as she replied bemusedly, "Lucius!"
John raised a halting hand, "I'll tell you all about if after I've had shower."
Elizabeth paused. She was curious now and not inclined to wait for information, but something in John's posture said he needed some time – for more than just a shower. Reluctantly, she nodded. "Okay, John. Go shower. We can debrief after I've read your report."
"Thank you," John replied cheerily, but it seemed to Elizabeth to be forced cheerfulness.
He's tired, she thought, as he strolled away toward his quarters, but a gnawing ache in her stomach whispered that it was something it more than that. Turning back to the rest of the team, Elizabeth saw confirmation of her feeling in four sets of concerned eyes. She titled her head in unspoken question.
Unexpectedly, it was Ronon who answered her, with one word that said it all. "Kolya."
oOoOoOo
Lucius, Lucius, Lucius. John shook his head and grinned weakly. Tempting as was to turn his thoughts away from that troublemaker, John kept picturing Lucius's irritating face – because that almost kept the other face from coming to the surface.
Kolya.
John pressed his head against the slick shower wall, letting the hot water pelt his neck and shoulders, but that didn't help ease the stiffness in them. Nor did it drive away the clear, vivid image of Koyla lying in the grass with a hole in his chest. It had been too quick, too easy, too painless.
Rather anticlimactic, John thought to himself. After weeks of nightmares, weeks of pummelling the punching bag (his pillow, Ronon, and the occasional wall) while imaging it was Kolya he was hitting, he'd simply shot him. Over. Done. Finished.
Too easy. Too simple. Too painless.
John punched the wall. Koyla should have suffered! Punch. John had wanted him to suffer. Punch. He still wanted him to suffer. Punch. It was only fair. Punch. Where was the justice in a quick, painless death. Punch. Kolya wouldn't have offered such a death to John, if he could have avoided it.
In the end, though, that was just he sort of death Kolya had offered – because he couldn't avoid it. Kolya had feared him; John smiled grimly at that. Kolya had tried to kill him slowly, painfully – excrutiatingly slowly and painfully – and failed. John had survived, escaped, lived to fight another day seemingly, on the surface at least, unscathed, and that had made Kolya desperate and afraid – afraid of the day John would come for him, because they both knew he would. They both knew he had to… It could only end one way, this thing between them.
And so it had. Too easy. Too simple. Too fast. Too painless.
John punched the wall again.
oOoOoOo
Disclaimer: Idea, mine; characters and universe, MGM's.