Title: The Opposite of Coexistence
Category: tag scene
Season/Episode: Season 2, 'The Lost Boys'
Feedback: Yes, please.
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is not owned by me, nor do I make any material profit from this story.
Spoilers: 'The Lost Boys'
Warnings: Character death
A/N: This is the second of two stories I thought up on a very bad day (the first was 'Tension'). There have been two even worse days since, which prompted me to go ahead and write this, despite my misgivings about writing a story with character deaths. Sorry if you find this depressing – you've been warned. At least I kept it short.
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She didn't even have to touch him to force him to his knees. The pressure of her mind on his was overwhelming, smothering. He couldn't struggle – there was nothing for him to resist but the inexorable slice of her will into his.
She spoke directly into his mind, only she didn't use words, and he grasped that this was how the Wraith communicated amongst themselves: in images and concepts. There wasn't much in the way of emotion. He identified hunger and anger easily enough, and satisfaction a moment later. She expressed to him that she was allowing him to know these things just before she sliced into him again.
Her face filled his vision, pale and delicate and oddly flat, the long hair framing her face whiter than snow, as blinding as the endless icy fields of Antarctica. Sudden terror flashed through him as he realized that his memories were bubbling to the surface, to be pored over and examined with brutal efficiency.
He tried to pull away from her, both bodily and mentally, and managed a slight twitch of one hand before she clamped down, still without touching him. She cut into his mind, his memories, peeling away layer after layer swiftly and effortlessly.
It wasn't physically painful – more like the pressure of the drill when the Novocain has done its job properly. But knowing that she was taking every scrap of information he had to give about Atlantis, about Earth, its whereabouts and defenses, was excruciating. Guilt was useless, but he felt it anyways, until that, too, was sliced away and analyzed by a mind that couldn't comprehend it.
His last coherent thought was of Rodney. He couldn't remember why he was concerned about him, or even quite who Rodney was, but he had just enough of his mind left to hope Rodney was able to escape, to live.
That part of him that retained awareness of his situation, his last bastion of self, faltered and began to gray out under the increasing pressure from her and lack of support from his memories as everything that defined him was inexorably stripped away. What little remained welcomed the approach of death, before it, too, was snuffed out, and his brain was just so much dead flesh encased in his skull, barely enough left intact to keep autonomic functions going.
She didn't even bother to drain his life from him. His body was dumped, vegetative but still breathing, into space with the rest of their trash.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
What John Sheppard never knew was that at the same time his mind was being ripped apart by the Wraith Queen, Rodney McKay was on the floor of the sparring area back at Ford's hide-out, gasping for breath and clutching his chest as his heart pounded frantically, the beat strange and faltering. An accidental overdose of the Wraith enzyme flooded his veins, throwing his metabolism into instant overdrive. His heart, though perfectly healthy, was suddenly forced to beat faster and harder, and couldn't handle the demand suddenly placed on it. His kidneys had already shut down, his liver swelled with more toxins than it could process, but Rodney didn't have time to feel the effects of it.
The two men left to guard him stood watching helplessly. Their instructions had been to give the scientist from Atlantis a full dose of the enzyme once Ford and the others left on their 'mission'. One guard had pulled three doses worth of the drug into a syringe and had injected himself first, he and his comrade carelessly willing to be stuck with the same needle. The second dose was intended for the second guard, the third for Rodney himself, but he divined their intentions and made a sudden panicked bid to escape. He'd been wrestled to the floor, more afraid of needle sharing than the Wraith enzyme, and in the struggle the guard accidentally gave him the entire contents of the syringe.
Now he lay there, dizzy and struggling to draw breath against the tightness in his chest as his heart seemed to flutter like it had grown tiny wings. His vision dimmed as his mind shut down from pain and lack of oxygen.
If he had been on Atlantis, his life could have been saved easily. But his guards lacked the knowledge and the resources to do anything for him, and could only stand, powerless, while the scientist's lips turned blue and his eyes bulged and glazed over.
Of the many ways Rodney had speculated he might lose his life in the Pegasus Galaxy, an alien drug-induced heart attack had never occurred to him.
His last thought, oddly, was that he hoped he didn't Ascend.
fin