Drawing the Line – part 3 of 4

I meant to post this yesterday, but the site wasn't co-operating. I also tried to reply to reviews yesterday, but it kept kicking me out. One or two got through, but the rest got eaten. Sorry! They have all been greatly appreciated, though.

Sheppard could hear the sound of McKay's breathing, and could hear his torrent of low whispering, as he was pouring out words, talking to himself.

"Knife," he heard McKay breathe, as he felt a tugging at his boot. "Where do you people keep these things?"

Why did McKay need his knife? Sheppard forced his eyes to open, forced his body to move. The pain had left no room for anything else, but McKay's fear was like a window opening, letting in a chink of thought that was different.

McKay had the knife in both hands. The blade was still red with blood. Didn't clean it, Sheppard thought. Ronon'll be mad.

"What?" he managed, his lips moving with barely a sound coming out.

"Someone's coming." McKay jerked his chin at the edge of the crag. "I've got it covered."

Sheppard saw a hand appear over the top of the crag, saw it grope around, seeking a handhold. McKay sat frozen, yards from the edge, the knife unsteady in his hands.

Sheppard pushed himself forward, striding through the wall of pain, and emerging on the other side. He snatched the knife from McKay's hand, and McKay didn't resist, only reached out for it after it had gone. When another hand appeared, and then the top of someone's head, Sheppard reached out and grabbed the man by his collar, holding the blade ready and visible as a threat. "McKay!" McKay was at his side almost instantly. "Help me. We need to drag him up."

"Why?"

"So he can't tell the others."

"But that means…"

"McKay!"

Darkness danced at the edge of his vision, and he saw through a tunnel, as if he was seeing things in a flashlight beam in the dark. He saw the young man's face, that much was clear. He saw him struggling, torn between wanting to free himself from their grip, and wanting to avoid falling to his death. But he saw him, too, just an hour before, a young man in his early twenties, laughing with his friends as the sentence was passed, planning what they would do to McKay as he hung naked after the branding. He saw McKay's chained hands beside his own blood-stained ones. Then the world tipped over, and the man was across his body for a moment, and then McKay shouted something, and next the man was on his back, and Sheppard was kneeling over him, and the blood-stained blade was dark against the young man's throat.

"Don't!" McKay gasped.

"He wants to disembowel you, McKay." His voice came from a cold place outside himself. "Perhaps he was the only one who saw us climb – wants the glory of capturing us himself. If he can't tell the others…"

The man was fighting. He brought his knee up, driving it into Sheppard's middle, tearing him apart with pain. His hand grabbed Sheppard's wrist, and Sheppard fought, the knife juddering between them, but strength was flowing away from him like water. "Rodney!" he hissed, and McKay was there opposite him, one hand holding the young man's arm down against the ground. As the youth bucked and squirmed beneath them, their eyes met for one brief moment. "Don't," McKay said again, and Sheppard had to look away.

Then another kick almost robbed him of consciousness. He saw the knife in his hand. Beneath him, the terrified, young, desperate face faded into the sneering face of the cocky youth who had planned to torture McKay, and had laughed while doing so.

"Never shoot," Sheppard said, "unless you're prepared to kill."

But it was so much more visceral with a knife. You felt the faint popping as the frail skin broke. You felt the warm blood, fading to cold. You saw the eyes turning opaque. With a gun, all that was far away. A gun protected you from the nightmares. Perhaps a knife was better, then, because at least then you couldn't hide. At least then, when you looked in the mirror, the darkness stared back at you. The darkness…

Rodney's hand reached out behind him, and his closed on a large stone. As Sheppard's eyes lost their focus, Rodney lashed out, smashing the stone into the side of the young man's, then again, until he lay still. "Rodney," he heard Sheppard whisper. "Don't…"

Rodney's hand dropped to his side. He was too late to stop Sheppard as he slumped sideways; too late to catch him as he hit the ground, and lay still. The young man was still, too, half-buried by Sheppard's body. Even in the fading light, the blood showed clearly. Blood on the stone, blood on the young man's face – looking so young now, almost like a boy – and blood on Sheppard's hands. Blood on his own hands, too. He dropped the stone, letting it fall from his stiff fingers.

Minutes later, perhaps, he thawed enough to move. The young man had a gouge across his shoulder, starting at the curve of his neck. He was still breathing. Then Rodney wondered why he would check this man first, before checking on Sheppard. Sheppard… He touched his neck, too – He would have killed him ­– and found his pulse rapid, but still there.

He took a deep breath, swallowing the taste of cold stone. The young man had a sash. Yes, quick, tie him up with that. It wasn't easy with his hands cuffed – oh, did the man have a key? No, no time to look – but he managed to tie the youth's hands together, and then fashion a crude gag. The boy didn't stir at all, and a terrifying amount of blood was pooling beneath his head.

Sheppard would have killed him, he thought, if he hadn't fainted first. He would have killed him, if I hadn't…

He saw a body-bag being wheeled out of a room. Then he was still for a few minutes more, clasping and unclasping his hands in his lap. Sheppard's chest was still rising and falling. Although he was unconscious, his hand still gripped the knife.

It was almost twilight now. When Rodney edged towards the rim of the crag, he could see lights out in the valley. Each one was somebody's home, and here he was, out in the cold. Then he tore his gaze back to nearer places. He couldn't see anyone else stalking the ground beneath the rocks. He couldn't hear anyone. Perhaps the others had given up. Perhaps they knew that night on these mountains would kill anyone.

"Sheppard," he said at last, managing to voice sounds at last.

Sheppard stirred, as if summoned by his name. "Got to go. I know."

"Is there anything…?" Rodney's hands fluttered. "Binding the… the wounds, I mean?"

"No bandages." Sheppard raised himself painfully up onto his hands and knees. "Just clothes… torn bits from clothes, and they're…" The moan was barely audible, but Rodney heard it. "Dirty," Sheppard said. "Counter-productive."

He tried to stand. A moment later, Rodney hurried over to help him, and remembered how Sheppard had helped him to his feet not long before, before Rodney had known about his injury. When they started to move again, he had no idea how Sheppard managed to keep walking. Rodney let him lean on him, though, although his chained arms could not support him properly. Before they moved a single step, though, he saw how Sheppard sought out the body of the young man he had almost killed. He saw the muscles of Sheppard's face tighten when he saw him, but he had no idea what that meant.

Walking grew harder and harder and harder. There was so little light, and the ground was treacherous, and Sheppard was leaning more heavily by the minute, and when they were this close, Rodney could hear the small sounds of pain that Sheppard could not suppress. He had never heard him make sounds like that before, he thought. He had never been so close, his body able to feel all the tremors and faltering breaths of a badly injured man.

"I have to stop." It was not entirely for his own sake that he said it.

"I know."

Sheppard sat down heavily. He sat with his back to the high crags, his head leaning back, the last dregs of light falling on his face. Rodney crouched not far away, the chain stretched tight across his knees.

"You were going to kill him," Rodney said. "You would have, if you hadn't… If I hadn't…" His words ran out, swallowed up by the image of a body bag.

Sheppard nodded minutely. "Perhaps you did kill him. Head injury's a serious thing, and here, in the dark..." He moistened his lips.

"People get better from head injuries. I did." Unconscious for a while, then on your feet again; that's what it was like in the movies. "And his friends will be there in a minute." I was trying to save him. I was... I was trying to save you - to save you from killing him.

"Mercy isn't always merciful. Sometimes it's just a way to make ourselves feel better."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Not 'supposed to' anything. Just is."

Now Sheppard's blood was on his hands, too. He wiped them on his cloak. "Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"

"It wouldn't have helped."

"You lied to me."

"Just… withheld the truth."

"Damn it, Sheppard." One hand dragged the other out, and he cried out, almost snarling in his fury, because he hated this. He was chained, and Sheppard was… was maybe dying because of him, and Sheppard hadn't told him, and had come all this way with him with an arrow in his side, for God's sake, and had tried to take his punishment for him, and had been prepared to murder for him, and… and he hated it. He hated it.

"Wouldn't have helped." Sheppard's gaze was steady. "Would have slowed us down, while you wanted to check. Our options were the same, with or without you knowing."

"Options you decided for us."

Sheppard still did not lower his eyes. "Yes."

"I can't believe this." He looked at his hands, stained red. "I never asked you to protect me. I never asked you to get hurt for me." He swallowed, remembering things that could never be forgotten. "To kill for me. You scare me sometimes. I hate it."

Sheppard closed his eyes, and Rodney let out a breath. "I told Teyla once," Sheppard whispered. "I'd do anything, for any one of you."

Sheppard had the luxury of darkness, but Rodney's eyes were wide open. "But I don't want you to." Don't want to be the weak one who gets rescued. Don't want you to have to kill for me. Don't want to be the person that you sell your soul to darkness in order to save.

"It isn't about you."

"Then that's selfish."

Something screamed up on the mountain – a small animal dying in the claws of something larger. Rodney peered upwards. "Can't help that," Sheppard said.

And the worst thing was that everything he had said was a lie. It felt wonderful to be rescued. If felt warm and safe to know that your team would come for you no matter what. He had been terrified of facing the Wraith, but Sheppard had spared him that, and had taken the burden of guilt onto his own shoulders. Rodney had the happy ending, but what did Sheppard see when he fell asleep at night?

"Would you really kill me?" he asked at last, when the silence had stretched for too long. "To save me from the disembowelment, I mean."

He still had no idea if Sheppard had meant that as a joke, but he seemed to be considering it seriously. "If it came to that," he said, his eyes still closed, "I'd know it was necessary, but…" He opened his eyes. "I don't think I could do it, Rodney. It would mean giving up."

"Well…" Rodney shifted awkwardly. "Let's hope you never have to face that dilemma." He was aiming for a light tone, but it came out stilted.

But Sheppard smiled, though. "Yeah."

Rodney pressed his hand to his brow, where a headache was developing. "I'm sorry–" He flapped the hand in circles. "–about…this."

"I'm not."

Cloud was beginning to obscure the far mountain. He saw a flock of birds swooping towards their roost, moving like smoke.

"Do you really think I killed him?" he asked.

Sheppard offered no comfort there, no reassurance. Is that what you bear,Rodney thought, daily, for all of us? You, Ronon, Teyla, everyone whose job is to kill? He fixed things with his brain and his hands; Sheppard and the others were prepared to kill so that he would be free to do such things. He had known it for always, of course, but perhaps he had never truly felt it before, not until he had seen a body bag wheeled out of the room, and had watched Sheppard lie to him, never quite meeting his eye.

He hated it, and he welcomed it, both at the same time. What Sheppard had done for him on Earth should have felt like the worst thing imaginable, but instead it had felt like the most terrifying and humbling act of friendship that anyone had ever committed for him. And he hated feeling like that. He, too, bore that guilt.

He opened his mouth to say something – but not that, though, never that – but a sound from above him made him snap his head up. A dozen men were climbing easily down the higher crags towards them. Two had already reached the bottom, and were standing there with bows ready. As he watched, another reached the ground, and then another.

It was all over. The enemy had found them. "Sheppard," he hissed, but Sheppard's eyes were closed, and his head had slumped sideways onto his shoulder, and even his chest seemed still.

end of part three