SGA_fic: Home Style Burn, Gen, R, SG-1 x-over Part 2

[vain_glorious]

Title: Home Style Burn 2/2 Part 1
Author: vain_glorious 
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Stargate: SG-1
Summary: The IOA calls Team Sheppard in for a little chitchat on Earth, where it is completely safe and they have no enemies. Right.
Rating: R for violence and language.
Word Count: ~ 12,000. In 2 parts due to length, not flow.
Warnings: Torture, violence
Disclaimer: Not Mine
Author's Note: Set in early season 5 - spoilers for 5X01. Feedback is delicious.

 

It went a lot like the first time. Except knowing what was coming, Sheppard tried to sock Boris in the face with his cuffed hands. He missed, mostly because Ivan grabbed him by the neck and hauled him backwards. Jackson didn’t even bother attempting to get off of the floor and Sheppard didn’t blame him.

The Russians had switched places. This time it was Ivan holding Sheppard in a chokehold and Boris circling Jackson on the floor. He didn’t bother with the initial violence like he had with Sheppard, at least.

Ivan was a strong motherfucker and he was making it very hard for Sheppard to breath. He also had that fucking stick, clutched in his hand at the end of the arm that wasn’t crushing Sheppard’s neck.

Talking was impossible, so Sheppard could only watch as Boris put the little Ancient square on the floor next to Jackson. But Boris had something else this time. A big black case, and he was a lot less gentle with it when he dropped it next to Jackson.

“Um,” Jackson said, looking at the device and the case. “What?”

“You fix,” Boris said.

“What?” Jackson repeated. He glanced at Sheppard.

Boris crouched down and unsnapped the case lid. He pulled it open and then stepped back. Sheppard peered over Ivan’s hairy arm, trying to get a look.

It was a toolbox. A fucking toolbox.  The kind you could get a Sears at Christmas, with various sizes of wrenches and screwdrivers.

“You fix,” Boris said, again. He looked at Ivan for approval.

Jackson wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding his total bafflement. “I can’t –” he began.

That was when Ivan jabbed Sheppard in the back with the cattle prod thing. He did it without warning, completely ruining Sheppard’s plan to endure this shit with stoicism and no screaming.

Jackson was right. It really fucking hurt.

As soon as he could, Sheppard snapped his lips shut and clenched his teeth, fortifying himself to take another blow in silence.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jackson was saying, looking frantically from Ivan to Boris and back again. “You don’t have to –”

Ivan jabbed Sheppard again. He didn’t scream this time, but neither did he get through it completely silently. It felt like the fucking stick was boring a giant fiery hole in his skin. It kept burning, even when Ivan took it off.

Now Jackson was babbling in Russian, talking faster and faster, sounding more and more upset. Whatever he was saying didn’t make Ivan very happy, because he brought the cattle prod down about a dozen times in rapid succession, moving from Sheppard’s back to his torso.

It hurt so much Sheppard might have yelled again. For some reason, the front burned much more intensely than his back. He twisted and struggled, trying to get away from the sensation. He completely lost track of Jackson, focused completely on the agony exploding across his skin.

Sheppard wasn’t sure how long it went on, or for how long it took for him to come back to things once it stopped.

When he could comprehend anything outside of his body, he was sagging pathetically in Ivan’s hold.

Jackson was speaking English again. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

Sheppard had no idea what he thought he could do. You couldn’t fix Ancient technology with screwdrivers.

“Undo my hands,” Jackson said. “You have to undo my hands.”

Maybe he was planning on taking a screwdriver and stabbing Boris in the throat with it. That’s what Sheppard would have done, anyway.

There was a short debate between Boris and Ivan in a language Sheppard couldn’t understand. But then Boris produced the handcuff keys from his pocket and unlocked Jackson’s wrists. Sheppard made a note of the pocket the keys came from.

He also made note of the cattle prod stick, now suddenly hovering inches from his face. Sheppard could feel the heat already. He concentrated on holding very, very still.

Jackson went to work. Very purposefully he selected a large screwdriver from the tool kit. He examined the Ancient object, carefully turning it over in his hands. Then, he set it on the floor and turned it, again, until it was at the angle of his liking. Sheppard had no idea what the man was doing. Jackson picked up the screwdriver he’d chosen. He turned it around, too, until he was holding it by the tool end. All his movements up to now had been slow and direct. But now, he glanced at Sheppard, made a face, then brought the butt of the screwdriver down as hard as he could. Sheppard heard the surface of the Ancient component shatter. He squeezed his eyes shut and held himself rigid, afraid he would feel the cattle prod against his face.

Ivan was slower to figure it out. But Boris started yelling and then he understood. He didn’t hit Sheppard in the face. He just hurled him against the wall with no warning. Sheppard hit hard enough to jar his entire body, arms fortunately landing before his head did. It took him a second to get collected. When he could see straight again, he became aware that Boris and Ivan had both converged on Jackson and commenced beating the crap out of him.

Sheppard rolled to his feet and jumped head first into the fray.

~

Ivan didn’t kill Jackson and Sheppard didn’t stab Boris in the brain with a screwdriver, so they called it a draw.

Well, he was fairly sure he got called some really nasty names in whatever their native language was. Jackson got handcuffed again. The Russians collected the broken Ancient component and the tool kit, and then slammed the door shut as they left.

Jackson had taken a giant fist to the face. He had a red mark covering the entire left side. It was rapidly swelling, such that he wouldn’t be able to see out of that eye much longer.

“Your cheek might be broken,” Sheppard said, peering at the other man’s face. He figured poking it wouldn’t do any good.

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “Some of my teeth, too.” He winced and seemed to be prodding the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

“Good thinking,” Sheppard said. “Smashing that thing.”

Jackson nodded. “I thought he was going to gouge your eye out when I did it.”

Sheppard paused. He decided not to dwell on that thought. “Nope,” he said. “But you were right, that fucking thing hurt.” He looked down at the welts on his chest. The one nearest his right nipple hurt the most.

“Yeah,” Jackson said. “Not as much as my face right now, though.”

Sheppard appreciated Jackson’s calmness. He was perfectly aware that it was utterly insane, but it was working for them right now.

“Might not get any more burgers after this,” Jackson observed, after a few minutes of silence. He was suggesting they were probably going to be killed.

Sheppard shrugged. He wasn’t sure Jackson wanted comforting or not.

“If we do,” Jackson added. “You can have mine. Since I can’t chew.”

“Thanks,” Sheppard said. He moved away from the center of the room, found a wall to lean against. The cold concrete felt kind of good now. “You did good,” he said, eventually. “Destroying it.”

“Thanks,” Jackson said. He seemed to be trying to scowl but deciding against it since it involved moving his swollen face. “I don’t know which bothers me more,” he said, after a second. “Dying over a toaster or that the people that are going to kill me think I’m Rodney McKay.” He paused and kind of squinted. “I think it’s the toaster.”

Sheppard blinked at him. “What about McKay?” he asked.

“They think I’m McKay,” Jackson repeated. “That why they thought I could fix it,” he said, snorting. “With a screwdriver.” He shook his head.

“Oh,” Sheppard realized. He’d been focusing on the guy with the cattle prod, not what they were being called. “Right.”

“I guess because we were in the same car,” Jackson said, flatly. “It can’t be anything else. I have all my hair,” he continued. “And my ego fit in a car with two other people.”

Sheppard glanced at him.

“No offense,” Jackson said, abruptly.

Sheppard shrugged. McKay would probably be a lot more hysterical about this kind of treatment. He might also have been able to turn the toaster charger into an improvised grenade. It was a trade off.

The Russians were basing the McKay thing on one loud and continuous shared characteristic, Sheppard figured.

~

The Russians didn’t kill them.

It was actually really weird.

They did get more burgers and water jugs. Thrown through a gap in the door, which was immediately slammed shut. No interaction at all. Sheppard had braced himself for a few more rounds with the fucking cattle prod, but it didn’t happen.

It didn’t really make any sense. For two guys a-okay with torture, they apparently had very little interest in tormenting their prisoners any more.

Jackson really couldn’t eat very well, only able to chew with half his mouth. The room hadn’t gotten any warmer, of course, and their toilet was starting to fucking stink. Sheppard figured it was probably only a matter of time before their shared collection of blisters and open sores got horribly infected under these conditions.

But they weren’t being tortured every day. That was good.

Having a face injury made Jackson a lot quieter. Sheppard noticed this and then decided he was pretty sick for having observed that in a positive way.

Sheppard had a couple of thoughts about why two thugs – or more, since there’d been a bunch in the van the day they’d been taken – would bother keeping two guys locked up in a basement when it probably would have been simple and not particularly morally problematic to kill them.

The first thought was that he and Jackson were collateral, somehow. That another SUV had been taken that day and his and Jackson’s lives were being threatened to ensure the cooperation of whoever else they’d captured. Except there weren’t any video cameras in the room and no photos had been taken. And frankly these guys didn’t seem bright enough to be trying to run a scheme like that.

The second thought was that Boris and Ivan were building up to something worse that somehow still involved Sheppard and Jackson. It wasn’t that expensive to keep them alive on burgers and tap water.

Sheppard asked Jackson what he thought was going on.

“I don’t know,” Jackson said. His left eye was swollen shut now, turning a deep blood-purple. “Ransom?”

“No pictures,” Sheppard pointed out. “Haven’t cut our thumbs off yet.”

Jackson blinked at him out of his good eye. “I didn’t realize that was an option,” he said, unhappily.

“I don’t think Boris and Ivan are that smart,” Sheppard offered.

“Who?” Jackson looked confused.

Sheppard sank back against his wall. “I just started calling them that,” he muttered.

“You named them,” Jackson said. “Okay.”

“You got better ones?” Sheppard demanded.

“No.” Jackson rolled his eyes, than grabbed at the side of his face as if that had hurt.

~

They seemed to be getting one meal per day. It was hard to measure time, but that was Sheppard’s guess. And it’d been maybe a week since they’d arrived if their mutual beard growth was anything to go on.  Too long, in his opinion, for the Russians just to be stalling on getting around to killing them. Starting to indicate a long term thing.

Boris and Ivan came back on the seventh day. There was a halfhearted scuffle, but Ivan had that goddamn jabbing stick and Sheppard’s only weapon was a bucket of shit and piss that he wasn’t quite willing to use when it didn’t seem likely to work and the prospect of a shower was a ways off. Shortly, both Sheppard and Jackson were each pinned down. Only long enough for their cuffs to be unhooked from one wrist and reattached in the back, though. And for two pairs of shackles to be locked to their respective ankles.

Ivan didn’t even zap either of them, not even for the fun of it. He and Boris left without so much as bothering to threaten them. Oh, and the two seemed to have had a sudden attack of brains, because they were now wearing ski masks. As if Sheppard and Jackson hadn’t already seen their faces.

“What the hell?” Sheppard asked, when the door slammed shut and he and Jackson were alone.

Jackson, left on his belly, was trying to roll over and sit up. He was having trouble.

“This is going to make peeing hard,” he mumbled into the floor.

“I think we’re going somewhere,” Sheppard said.

Jackson grunted as he finally managed to roll over, then rolled again so he was side by side with Sheppard. “Some place nice?” he asked, sarcastically.  “I hope.”

Sheppard kicked his feet, allowing the shackles to jingle.  “Opportunity to escape,” he said.

That was when the fluorescent light in the ceiling went out, plunging the room into darkness.

“Not good,” Jackson muttered, after a few seconds. “Really not good.”

The door opened then, light coming in through the cracks as figure entered their prison. It was too small and slender to be Ivan or Boris. Sheppard thought it might be a woman. The door shut again and there was only darkness.

The individual must have been standing directly in front of it. Sheppard waited for her – he was pretty sure it was a her – to speak. He was really hoping – but not counting on – it being Sam or Teyla or hell even Vala.

Jackson didn’t wait. “Hello?” he called.

The person paused for a second. Sheppard heard their feet shuffle slightly in place. Heels clicked against the floor. Definitely a woman.

She sniffed audibly and coughed.  The room probably stank, Sheppard realized.

“This is unpleasant,” she said. It was another Russian, only with a lighter accent and much better English than the other two. Maybe this was the boss lady. “I apologize, gentlemen, I did not realize these were your conditions.”

“Apology accepted,” Jackson piped up. “Are you going to let us go?”

The introduction of shackles and rearrangement of their handcuffs suggested ‘no’ to that question.

The woman sort of laughed, which was actually pretty horrifying.

“No,” she said. “But I must explain that this was not my doing. A fortunate accident.”

“Fortunate for who?” Sheppard demanded.

“That’s a good question,” Jackson followed up.

“My organization would never attempt to take you gentlemen,” the woman said. “It would be too dangerous to risk exposure.” She paused. “Although, it apparently is much easier than I would have thought.”

There was silence for a second, while Sheppard processed her statement and told himself it wasn’t worth being insulted that she was now under the impression that capturing him was evidently not all that hard.

Jackson spoke first. “Huh?” he said.

“Those goons out there,” Sheppard translated. “Sold us.”

“Correct,” Russian lady said.

Sheppard would have dubbed her ‘Natasha,’ except that Jackson seemed to think naming your enemies was silly. And perhaps it was, but Sheppard was going to do it, anyway.

“Is very unusual that they have useful product,” Natasha went on. “For last six months, they have been selling us pieces of a toaster.”

In the darkness, Jackson made a noise. It actually sounded like a giggle. “We got kidnapped to turn on a toaster?” he asked, thickly.

“Yes, Dr. McKay,” Natasha said. She sounded like she shared his humor, except in a really evil way.

“I’m not –” Jackson began. Before he could finish, Sheppard shifted in place, bent his knees, and kicked out in the darkness. By luck, he struck Jackson solidly in the shin. “Oww! What the hell?”

“Shut the hell up, McKay,” Sheppard ordered.

Jackson paused. He seemed to understand that he shouldn’t necessarily reveal who he actually was. But he was also battling with how mad being identified as Rodney made him.

“When we demanded the power source,” Natasha continued, “We did not expect to be given Colonel Sheppard.” Sheppard couldn’t see her in the blackness except for a vague outline, but he was pretty sure she was grinning.

“Now you can have toast,” Sheppard said, keeping his voice calm. “I do bagels, too.”

“Actually,” Jackson interrupted. “I broke the toaster. Smashed it good. I guess you’ll have to let us go and get a Cuisinart or something.”

Natasha ignored him. “Do you know how rare the ATA gene is among citizens of Eastern Europe, Colonel Sheppard? In Slavs in particular?”

“No,” Sheppard said, neutrally. “Can’t say that I do.”

“Quite,” she said. “And the ATA gene therapy is less effective on Slavs as well, did you know?”

Sheppard thought about Zelenka, on whom the therapy had indeed failed. “You don’t say,” was all he said.

“Is only 24% likely to work on Slavic subject,” Natasha said. “Is very frustrating. IOA uses it as an excuse to exclude many of my people from your mission.”

“Can’t you take that up with them?” asked Jackson, petulantly. “I didn’t get to –"

“Shut up, McKay!” Sheppard snapped pointedly at Jackson, again.

“Oh, right.” Jackson shut up.

“But having access to strong gene-bearer,” Natasha said. “Very valuable to my heritability study on the ATA gene.”

“Heritability?” Sheppard asked, suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“What, you going to make me jerk off in a cup?” he demanded.

“Is no reason to be crude.”  She had the nerve to sound offended. Her heels clicked on the floor as she took a step back. “You will very valuable to my research.”

“What am I?” Jackson complained. “Chopped liver?”

That was actually a fairly good imitation of McKay, if that’s what he was going for.

“Irrelevant to my interests,” Natasha admitted. “I am certain I have colleagues who need your expertise, Dr. McKay.”

“Oh, good,” Jackson said, sounding unhappy. “They should know all this Dr. McKay ever does is break things."

“I am sure they have means of encouraging you to cooperate,” Natasha said, utterly reasonable. “Excuse me now, I just wanted to introduce myself before your trip.”

“Trip?” Jackson asked.

Sheppard was thinking some very, very dark thoughts.

“To my lab,” Natasha said.

“How we getting there?” Jackson probed. “I don’t think the U.S. government would be very happy about us being taken out of country.”

“No,” Natasha agreed.

“No way in hell you get a flight in to get us out,” Sheppard challenged. “Especially the week we happen to go missing.”

“That would be very suspicious,” she said, still sounding agreeable. “But there was another fortunate accident, one that happened before the one that brought us together.” Her heels clicked on the floor and she rapped twice on the metal door. “Two weeks ago, two brothers from Moscow died in tragic car accident on their way to skiing resort right here in Colorado. I do not know why they come here; Russia has plenty of snow.”

“Oh, shit,” Sheppard spat out, his mind working ahead.

“Their families are having their bodies returned to Moscow,” she continued. “U.S. government will not check their caskets.”

“You’re smuggling us out of the country in coffins?” Jackson demanded.

At that, the door was opened from the outside and Natasha swiftly stepped through the crack. “Yes,” she called back. “We are.”

Seconds after the door shut, the fluorescent light flicked back on.

Jackson turned his face towards Sheppard. “Shit,” he said.

Sheppard stared straight at the ceiling, blinking against the sudden brightness. “You get the chance to run again,” he said, “you take it.”

~

About an hour passed after the woman spoke to them.

It was impossible to do anything. Jackson and Sheppard just lay flat on their backs, hands crushed beneath their backs. Sheppard’s arms were falling asleep, but it was hard to be all that bothered by the tingling.

Jackson was babbling. He sounded a little unhinged about the prospect of a multi-day airline journey in a casket. Sheppard mostly was ignoring him, unwilling to think about the details all that much. He didn’t think Natasha was lying, but he was much more concerned about what would happen once they reached their destination.

The fact that unless Natasha had a few kinks worked out, they’d suffocate and/or freeze to death on their way was actually comforting in this regard. To Sheppard, anyway. Less so, evidently, to Jackson. He’d thought the guy would be okay about these kind of things by now.  

Sheppard tried to distract the other man.

“Why’d the IOA get pissed at you?” he asked. “You never said.”

Jackson paused in his rambling about their imminent deaths. “What?”

“SG-1,” Sheppard reminded him. “IOA.”

“Oh.” He let out an empty laugh. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

Jackson exhaled loudly. “Vala sold the President of the United States to a chieftain for a map to hidden treasure,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Sheppard choked on his own laugh. “And you let her?”

“Mitchell let her,” Jackson corrected. “Sam and I shared a hallucinogenic peanut butter sandwich and spent about four days running around the planet buck naked thinking we were eagles. Or penguins. I thought I was an eagle. She was the penguin. It took two SG teams to catch us.”

Forcefully, Sheppard swallowed another laugh. “I can see why the IOA was displeased,” he said. “Sounds like Mitchell’s fault, though.”

“He had some magic peanut butter, too,” Jackson said. “Just not as much. He thought selling the president was funny. Until later.”

Sheppard fought down a chuckle, but Jackson heard him.

“I guess it is kind of funny,” Jackson said, resignedly. “Until this part.” He jangled his shackles.

“It’s still over a fucking toaster,” Sheppard reminded him.

“Right.” Jackson kind of snickered. Then he sobered. “I don’t think Vala predicted this outcome, though.”

“What outcome was she trying for?”

“Treasure,” Jackson said, immediately. “And possibly blackmailing the US government. Probably both.”

Sheppard was silent for a moment, his mind racing.

“What?” Jackson prompted.

“Does Vala have access to any of the labs studying Ancient tech in the Mountain?” he asked.

“Um,” Jackson said. “Not officially. But that’s not a “no”, I guess. Why?”

“I was trying to think of someone at Cheyenne devious and enterprising enough to sell an Ancient toaster piece by piece to our two Russian morons.”

“Oh shit,” Jackson spat. He sounded horrified. “She wouldn’t, I mean, oh shit.”

“She would?” Sheppard guessed.

“Not if she thought they’d try this,” Jackson muttered. “But yeah, that’s actually exactly her style.”

“Okay,” Sheppard said.

“Okay?”

“Nothing we can do about it now,” Sheppard reminded him.

“We could wish those two idiots mention to her that they got someone to turn on the toaster,” Jackson suggested, hopefully.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. He didn’t say that they should also hope that Natasha and her agency didn’t blow Boris and Ivan’s heads off after taking custody of him and Jackson.

Natasha came back to knock them out. The lights were turned off again.

It was spectacularly creepy to lie there in the dark while she prepared a syringe full of dope for each of them. It was also spectacularly creepy that she apparently had no difficulty doing so in complete blackness.

“I do not trust my associates to do this,” she said, jabbing the needle into the fleshy part of Sheppard’s shoulder. It pinched and stung, but he didn’t give her the benefit of a reaction. “They would kill you with embolism.”

It took several minutes for the drug to kick in. Sheppard felt it taking effect, like a blurry wave moving over his body and mind. But he was still awake when she moved on to Jackson.

Predictably, Jackson tried to talk her out of it.

It didn’t work. Sheppard couldn’t see, but he could hear her clothing rustling as she kneeled down and rummaged with her equipment.

 

Jackson tried first in English, then switched to Russian.

“Where did you learn Russian, Dr. McKay?” Natasha asked, curiously.

Sheppard was beginning to fade out. He tried to stay awake but his thoughts kept falling apart. When he heard the question, he managed to get his mouth to cooperate a little.

“McKay,” he slurred. “You don’t speak Russian!”

But, Jackson was pleading in Russian, anyway. Sheppard heard Natasha repeat a word he’d said, confused.

“That does not mean what you think,” she said in English, sounding amused.

In response, Jackson snapped two of the few words of Russian that Sheppard understood, the last thing he heard before he drifted into unconsciousness.

~

Sheppard woke up to the sounds and medicinal scents of a clinical setting. He kept his eyes shut, trying to use his other senses to assess the situation. At least he hadn’t woken up in the fucking coffin.

He was in a bed and the sheets felt thin and starched like typical hospital linen. There were bandages across his back and torso. It was warm for the first time in days.They’d bathed him, patched up Ivan’s handiwork, and put him in a patient gown of some kind. By some stroke of luck, Sheppard wasn’t tied up anymore. There was an IV in his left wrist, but otherwise he was free. That was a giant mistake on Natasha’s part. She must have thought he’d stay out longer.

It didn’t sound like anyone was with him. He couldn’t hear any voices. Either Jackson was still unconscious or they’d been separated. The only noises were the hum of a machine by his bedside and the beep of his heart rate. Sheppard moved his hand, careful not to dislodge the pulse ox on his finger. He didn’t want anyone checking up on him yet.

Suddenly, there was a puff of warm air against his face. Sheppard froze. Someone was leaning over him, breathing.

“I know you’re awake,” came a light female voice. It wasn’t Natasha.

Sheppard made his left hand into a fist, prepared to club this woman in the face. He didn’t even open his eyes, just struck out and swung towards where her head should be.

His arm sliced through the air and didn’t hit anything, but he heard the woman squeak and jump out of the way. Sheppard’s eyes shot open, just in time for Vala Mal Doran to lean back over and stick her head back in punching range.

She saw his eyes were open and immediately smiled at him. It was a big, goofy, and apologetic grin. Her face looked horribly guilty.

“You can hit me,” she volunteered. “If it will make you feel better. I promise I won’t duck this time.”

Sheppard dropped his hand heavily on the gurney top. Not that the offer wasn’t tempting. He just glared at her, then cast a quick glance around their surroundings. A blue curtain was pulled around his bed in a small rectangle, so he couldn’t see much.

“SGC infirmary?” he guessed.

Vala nodded.

He could practically feel his heart slow with the enormous relief that he wasn’t in a clandestine Russian gulag-type lab.

It was kind of strange that he was in the infirmary and the only person waiting for him to wake up was the person responsible for him being there.

“Where’s –” he began.

“They got kicked out,” Vala interrupted. “Dr. Lam said too many people were here and they couldn’t decide who got to stay, so she made them all leave.”

“Except you?” Sheppard questioned, doubtfully.

“No.” Vala tilted her head. “I, ahem, came back.” She looked at him. “I don’t often do as I am told.”

“You don’t say,” he muttered.

Vala dropped on to the stool set besides Sheppard’s bed. She folded her hands in front of her body and looked down at him with her expression as serious as he’d ever seen it.

“I wanted to apologize,” she said, voice as oddly genuine as her face. “First. Alone. So that you would know it wasn’t for show.”

“Okay.”

“I am sincerely sorry for my actions,” Vala went on. “I never had any intention for this to happen. I never would have done any of it if I had known.”

“Okay,” Sheppard repeated.

Vala looked him, expression uncertain. “You forgive me?” she asked, hopefully.

“You got us out, right?” he asked.

She nodded. “They contacted me to boast they had a better source and no longer needed me as an intermediary.” Vala paused. “Boris is one of the most spectacularly stupid people I have ever met. I’m not sure if he thought you were a toaster manufacturer…”

“Boris?"

“I named him that after a cartoon Daniel showed me,” Vala said.

“I need to be more creative,” Sheppard muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Sheppard shifted in bed. “The driver who took us. Is he dead?”

“No,” Vala said, quickly. “He was part of the reason we were able to find you. They didn’t kill him. Your people caught everyone.”

“Including Natash-” he paused, corrected himself –“Russian scientist bitch?”

Vala nodded.

“Okay,” Sheppard said. “Then no one died. You didn’t mean for us to get captured and you helped find us. It’s over.”

“We’re good?” Vala asked. “Friends?” She smiled again, hopefully.

“You need to stop smuggling classified shit out of this facility,” Sheppard told her. “And stop selling the president to people. Do that and we’re good.”

“That was an accident,” Vala said, sharply, swiveling on the stool. He looked at her, keeping his face harsh. “Understood,” she said. “But, I am serious. I will not smuggle any more classified shit out of this facility. Not even kitchen equipment. And I will not try to blackmail the executive branch ever again. I already got that lecture, before.”

“Okay,” he said, “then we’re good. Will you go tell them I’m awake?”

Vala hopped off of the stool. “Certainly. Will you tell your team they’re not allowed to kill me?”

“They know that,” Sheppard said. He cranked the gurney up so he was in a sitting position.

“I would like you to repeat it for clarification purposes,” Vala said.

Sheppard waved his hand. “Fine. Would you go?”

Less than a minute after Vala slipped through the curtain, it was practically torn off its rod as she returned with Rodney, Ronon, Teyla, Mitchell, Carter, Jackson, and even Teal’c. They were followed by a woman in a white lab coat. There were so many people, the area was suddenly much dimmer as all the heads blocked the lighting. The doctor lady picked up his arm and found his pulse with her fingers.

“Hey,” Sheppard said, tiredly. He looked at Jackson. “You’re awake?”

“They gave me less sedative,” Jackson said. “I think she was afraid of you.” He looked okay. Face still interestingly colored and swollen, but okay.

“If I could never again see you pulled out of a coffin looking like a corpse,” Rodney said, “that’d be fantastic.” He had his arms crossed.

“Will do,” Sheppard said.

“It was very frightening,” Teyla said, earnestly, and Ronon grunted in agreement.

“Sorry,” Sheppard said. He noticed both of them were glaring daggers at Vala. “Um, no killing Vala.”

“Thanks,” Vala mouthed at him, but she was still hiding half behind the mountain of flesh that was Teal’c.

“We’ll handle her,” Mitchell promised.

“They could have her, actually,” Jackson said, mildly. “Go for it.”

“I said I was sorry,” Vala protested.

“I would still like to speak to her,” Teyla said. “Extensively.”

 Vala ducked fully behind Teal’c.

“Speaking is fine,” Sheppard said. “With words.”

Ronon, at least, seemed to accept the order. “You okay?” he asked, looming over Sheppard.

Sheppard shrugged. “Don’t suppose I missed the IOA meeting?” he asked.

Rodney coughed. “Um, I don’t think they want to see you anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“They made us come anyway,” Carter volunteered. “Even though you two were missing.”

The doctor dropped Sheppard’s wrist back on the gurney and quietly excused herself. Teyla took her place, putting one hand gently on his shoulder.

“They now have many different orifices from which to defecate,” Teal’c said, his voice booming in the enclosed space.

Mitchell chuckled. “That’s one way to put it, T.”

“Oh,” Sheppard said. “That’s…great, actually.”

“There’s a lot of people here,” Carter said. She put her hands around her teammates. “We’ll let you have some alone time.”

“I’ll try to see you under less traumatizing circumstances before you leave,” Jackson offered, and Sheppard nodded.

Alone time turned out to mean SG-1 left and pulled the curtain around his team.

“You mean that about Vala?” Ronon asked.

“No killing,” Sheppard ordered. “It was a mistake. She tried to fix it.”

“I wasn’t going to kill her,” Ronon said.

“Me either,” piped up Teyla.

“I’m pretty sure she just lost any privacy and freedom of movement for the next decade,” Sheppard said. “All she actually did was steal a broken toaster. Leave it.”

“Okay,” Ronon said, but he didn’t look happy.

“Very well,” said Teyla.

There was silence for a second. Then Rodney spoke up.

“Did they really think Jackson was me?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“What the hell?” Rodney exploded. “Where the hell did they get that from? I’m nothing like him! Just because we have the same number of doctorates? His are all in stupid crap! And he’s a smug little jerk…”

Rodney was off and rolling. Sheppard leaned back against his pillow and listened to a much more familiar ranting monologue.

“I have no idea why they thought that,” he said.

 

~
~Please Feed the Author~